Want to lose business to your competitor? Then wait a day to respond when fresh leads contact you from your website.

We live in an era of instant gratification. Most Internet visitors want their e-mails, voicemails, and website inquiries answered yesterday. When they don't get that fast response, they'll just move on--to your competitor, of course.

Too many professionals with websites think of their site as an overhead expense rather than as a lead- or sales-generating tool. But in order to get ahead of your competition, you need to think of your website in terms of its cost per lead (CPL).

You ostensibly spend money on your site for the purpose of producing leads or sales. So take the amount you spend in a given month or year, and divide it by the number of leads you receive in that time. This is your cost per lead. (If you don't get enough leads from your site to count, you definitely need to contact me for some tips!)

Let's say you spend $300/month on various website related services. That's $3600 per year. If you get 10 leads per month from your site, your cost per lead is $30. If you get fewer than 10 leads per month, your cost per lead is even higher. The more leads you get for the same amount of money, the lower your per-lead cost is.

Whatever your CPL is, putting a number to it should make you think twice about waiting a day to respond to a new lead's website inquiry. That's like going to the store to buy $30 worth of ice cream and letting it sit in the hot car for a day before remembering to get it out of the trunk. It's a colossal waste of both time and money that could have been spent elsewhere on more productive tasks.

There are two major steps in getting the most out of your leads: reducing your cost per lead, and increasing your conversion rate. So let's talk about these two steps.

1. Reducing your cost per lead (Getting more ice cream for less)
   This is roughly analagous to going to Costco rather than Baskin Robins for all of your ice cream. You may spend more up front, but you're buying in bulk to keep unit prices down. If you're spending $200 per month resulting in only one lead, your CPL is $200. That isn't good, because if only one in 10 leads becomes a sale, most businesses are going to be underwater real fast. On the other hand, if you make changes that bump up your lead-capture costs to $300/month and you now net 5 leads per month, you've cut your CPL by 70% to only $60.20.
2. Increasing your conversion rate (Using it before it melts)
   This is the part of the equation that most professionals let slip in the day-to-day operations of their businesses. Let's say your experience shows that you convert one in ten leads into sales. Conversion rates are going to be extremely different for different products and markets, of course. Yours may be higher or lower. But what if you could bump up that "hit rate" to one in eight? How about one in seven or one in five? Small improvements in your conversion rate will show dramatic increases in your bottom line.

How can you make small improvements in your conversion rate? Follow up with your leads like they are ice cream melting in the sun. By decreasing your response time, you are going to increase your conversion rate and get the most bang for your CPL buck. You're able to use more of that ice cream before it melts.

The best way I know to insure a bad conversion rate is to let leads go stale. That's why direct response companies that sell leads drop the prices for them precipitously as they get older. If you want to improve your conversion rate, and you're not in the habit of responding to leads immediately when they come in, here are some techniques to help you kick that bad habit:

1. Create a form on your website that not only stores your leads in a database, but sends an e-mail to you immediately to respond to immediately. And no, I'm not being redundant. Just because you get the e-mail immediately doesn't mean you'll respond immediately. Make sure you do, and you'll be a step closer to making sure your lead turns into a sale.
2. Set up your e-mail so that you will always know ASAP when you have new correspondence. With the volume of junk mail hitting our inboxes these days, this could mean taking proactive steps in combating spam via third party services. It's worth it. Take control of your inbox and you'll begin to take control of your lead conversion rate.
3. If you're not at your computer enough to respond to e-mail quickly, then have the form on your website forward an alert to an assistant who can either call you or deal with it immediately, or to your cell phone so you can.

An instant response is the ultimate in customer service, and that will go a long way toward boosting your conversion rate. Of course, there will always be occasions when family time or a business meeting keeps us from responding instantly. But the faster we can get back to a lead, the less likely they are to walk into the hands of our competitor.

If you don't let the ice cream melt before you get a chance to use it, chances are, you'll get more ice cream. Your leads will turn into customers, and they will be handing you even more leads. Now that's a nice problem to have!

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