How Long Does It Take You To Convert A Lead?

How long does it take for a new lead that comes into your agency to convert into a client? That's the topic of today's conversation and I'm going to explain to you why understanding this length is so important. And I also think that you're going to be really surprised at how long the typical sales cycle is. I'm going to give you a tool to help you figure this out. So that's what we're talking about in today's episode. How long does it take to convert and what are the tools, techniques and marketing strategies that you can implement to help move people through your sales funnel? So another action packed episode. Grab your pen and let's get on with today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. Before we jump into today's episode of the podcast, I want to really quickly tell you about some free, value packed training I'm going to be delivering in September. This training is entitled how to easily fill your sales pipeline with high quality leads in the next 90 days. Now this is a 60 minute training where I'll be talking about why referral based clients are actually setting your agency up to fail, the importance of niching your agency and how to go about niching that to discover your zone of genius, how to create compelling marketing messages that instantly build credibility with your target audience. I'll be talking about the importance of building your mailing list and making sure that your agency is aligned across the market, product, service and price. So this is a real action packed 60 minute training with some exclusive bonuses and all you need to do is head over to training DACostacoaching.com. That's training.dacostacoaching.co.uk salespipeline webinar and you can save your seat. I'll put a link to this in the show notes. But let's get on with today's show. One of the mistakes I see so many agencies making when it comes to their marketing is that they focus really hard on building new contacts into the top of their sales funnel and then they sort of expect those people to convert at some point. They really don't think about the activities they need to focus on in the middle of the funnel. So let me kind of explain what I mean by that and then I want to talk about working out how long it takes you to convert your leads. And I'm going to share with you a tool that I usually give My paying clients to help you work out what the timed conversion is. So many agencies are good at doing their own marketing. Well, of course you'd hope they would be right. But what they tend to be good at is generating new leads. So they're good at their social media, they are good at putting content out there on their blogs and SEO and PPC and all that kind of stuff. And that brings new leads into their business. And then they sort of hope that those new leads will automatically convert themselves. And of course some of them will because maybe 1 in 100 have absolutely the need that you can solve there and then. So they will reach out to you. But what are you doing for the other 99 new leads that have come into your business to nurture them? And as I said, what I think a lot of agencies are good at is generating new leads into the top of their funnel and then they're good at the bottom part, which is the prospect meeting and the conversion. So writing the proposals, having those initial meetings. But what they're not good at is that middle portion of the sales funnel, which is what I call education based marketing. And this is where you're building your know, like and trust with your audience. You're building credibility with them through providing more detailed marketing support with things like ebooks and guides and tools and templates. And then you get them into the prospect meeting or the phone call, which is where you can move them further down the sales funnel. So we need to get better at doing that middle part. Now one of the ways that I highlight to my customers the importance of this is to help them work out what is the time to conversion. So what I mean by that is when a new contact learns about your agency, how long does it take from that point to them becoming a customer? And I think you will be surprised at how long it takes. Like I've done this analysis for myself and it can typically take up to 12 months. That's 12 months from someone learning who Rob DaCosta is to them actually becoming a paying customer, either through their private coaching with me or through one of my online coaching programs. So if it's going to take 12 months, I better have some great marketing to stay front of mind with those people during that 12 month period. Because I always feel like every time you engage with a potential contact, someone who knows about you but hasn't bought from you, you are refilling the sand timer. And if you don't engage with them again before that sand timer runs out, then they forget about you and they'll end up buying your product or service from somebody else. So it's super important that you have a bunch of ongoing marketing activities that keep you front of mind with your prospective clients. So this could be through weekly emailing, it could be through content you post on your blog or social media posts, or videos that you post on your YouTube channel or other kinds of outreach. But you need to have a way of consistently being in front of your target customers so that when they have a need, they know that you're the person to talk to because they understand who you are, they know like and trust you. You've built empathy and credibility with them and they also understand what you do. And you're going to achieve that through the middle of the funnel activities, through that education based marketing. So it's really useful for all of us to know what the typical time to conversion is. And I'm going to share with you a tool in the show notes that you can use to simply capture how long it takes. And all you need to do is look at your customers. Hopefully in your CRM system or in your email marketing system or some other database, you will have a date of when those people first came into your world. And then you need to also put in the date they converted into a customer. And this will automatically work out what the average is over time. So make sure you grab the that tool in the show notes and you can start working out your time to conversion. And I think you will be surprised, as most people are when they do this piece of work, how long it takes. Either they didn't have a clue beforehand or they thought the sales cycle was much shorter than it actually was. And as I said, mine can be 11 or 12 months. So that means I need to have great marketing content to nurture these people to stay front of mind so that sand timer doesn't run out and I'm there when they're ready to buy. Now another way to think about this is that there are three stages that someone can be in when they come into your world, when they first get to know about you and your agency further. So the first stage is I didn't know you before now I know who you are and I'm interested in what you've got to say. The second stage is I know who you are, I'm interested in what you've got to say. And one day I will buy from you, but I'm not ready right now. And then the third stage is I know who you are, I like what you say and I'm ready to buy from you now. And we need to make sure that we are nurturing our contacts through each of those three stages and not just assuming that when a new contact comes into our world, they're immediately in that third box of I know who you are and I'm ready to buy. And this is a mistake that I see so many agencies and people generally who do marketing missing out. So I would really encourage you to go and look at the time to conversion tool that I've put in the show notes, do some analysis maybe over the last two years of your clients, and work out what your time to conversion is and then start thinking about, well, okay, if it's six months or it's nine months, or if it's a year, what marketing can I put in place to nurture these people? And of course, this goes hand in hand with building your email list, because email marketing is one of the best ways of staying front of mind with your prospects. Now, I've spoken a lot about email marketing in the past and if you go back to episode five, you can learn about the introduction to email marketing and email automation. And if you go to episode 79, I talk about how you can use a lead magnet to get new subscribers onto your email list. So I don't need to dig too much into email marketing today, but certainly for me, email marketing is one of the best ways of staying front of mind with my audience. So I am nurturing them and providing value and I'm there when they're ready to buy. And I get a lot of my clients through that approach. So everything I teach I do for myself, so I know it works. So I'd really encourage you to do the same thing. And it's interesting many of you know that when I have a guest on this podcast, I ask them what advice they would give their younger self. And last week someone turned their tables on me and said, well, Rob, what advice would you give your younger self? Just starting out in business. And and although it's very pragmatic, the piece of advice I would say is, Rob, start building your mailing list. Because I probably only really started focusing on a mailing list maybe seven years ago, but I've been in business for, well, I've been running this business for 15 years and I've been in business for a lot longer than that, since the early 90s. So that's the piece of advice I would give myself, which shows how important I think building your email list is. So I'm talking about education based marketing here, but what exactly Do I mean, so this is middle of the funnel activity. So someone has decided that they want to be in your world. They found some of the things that you say interesting and now they're in your email list or in your community. What does education based marketing mean? Well, it means providing more in depth value to them to demonstrate that you're credible and that you can help your potential client or your contact solve some of the problems and pains that keep them awake at night. So this might be a more detailed ebook, it might be some kind of guide, it might be sort of a top 10 tips, it might be some video training, a webinar, or even some kind of quiz. So there are a whole bunch of things that education marketing can be, but you really need to think about what it is that you can put in place to keep nurturing your contacts through the journey from them becoming a contact to a hot prospect to a customer, and then a loyal repeat customer. Now, a really important balance here is, is to make sure that when you're creating this content, you're focusing on providing value. So 80% of your content should be all about providing value. And of course that means you need to really understand who your ideal target customer is. And I'll put a link into my customer avatar workbook. So if you haven't done that already, that guides you through defining exactly who your target customer is. And then 20% needs to be selling. So that balance of 80 value, 20 selling is really important. And let's just take a moment to explore why. Well, if all you ever do is provide value, then people will see you as a fantastic resource, but they will never think about you as someone that they would buy from. And of course, if all you did was sell, sell, sell in your outbound comms, then people are going to get fed up and they are going to leave your community, unsubscribe from your list and stop following you. So we want to get this balance right of 80% of the time we're providing value through our education based marketing and 20% of our time we are selling. Now one thing it's worth saying, because I think a lot of my clients suffer from this, is that they realize that they need to produce this content. They keep putting it off because they think it needs to be a really detailed 20, 30 page document and they think that they need to produce lots of these pieces. So I just want to bust a couple of myths here. First of all, it does not have to be 20 pages. No one is judging this on the quantity. In fact, most of your clients are going to be really busy and they won't have time to watch it. So it literally could be a one page cheat sheet or a one page top ten tips, or it could be a five minute video. It does not have to be long. So that's the first myth I want to bust. And then the second myth that again, I wish I could go back and tell my younger self this because I know better now, is you don't need tons and tons of these education based marketing tools. In fact, what you need to do is just purchase one piece of what I call killer content. So what's that one document that's going to be really, really valuable to your target audience? Those contacts in your world who are not yet custom customers. What's that one thing that is genuinely going to provide some value to them, that is going to demonstrate you know what the hell you're talking about and that you understand your clients and it's going to help them and that's the piece of content you need to produce. Like I said, if you go onto my website, you'll find lots of examples of this content, this education based marketing which I produced over the years and is still useful. But if I was starting again, I would just focus on the one thing. So I hope those two pieces of advice kind of remove some blockages that you might have to producing this content. Reminder, it doesn't need to be long and you only need one piece of content to start promoting. And of course, you need to understand who your ideal target customer is so that you understand the pain points that keep them awake at night so that your killer content addresses some of those pain points. Now, if you're thinking, well, Rob, if I do this and I give it away for free, aren't I giving away all my value? Well, the answer is no. Because clients come to you because they want you to solve the problem and they want their hands held through you supporting them, not because they can learn about this somewhere else. I mean, let's face it, if you listen to every single one of the last 80 odd podcasts I've recorded, you're going to learn a lot about running your agency. But do you really have time to untangle that and then make notes and actually implement it? Or do you want a coach who's supporting you through that? So I never worry about, about giving too much value away because I realize the reason people come to me is because they want my support, they want my accountability, and they want my experience to support them through the journey that they were on. And so it doesn't matter whether I give give away a lot of content. And for me that's one of the reasons why I do this podcast, because I really enjoy recording podcasts and I know I can provide value to you guys whether you become a customer of mine or not. But one day you might become a customer or you might refer me to else who has a need that you know I can help with because you've listened to a podcast on that particular topic. So let's just summarize the actions from today's podcast because this is an actionable episode so you need to go into the show notes, you need to click on the file, make a copy of the link that I'm sharing for the time to conversion calculator. You then need to spend maybe an hour filling this in by looking in your CRM system or your database to see when people came into your world and at what point they bought from you. And then you will see a hard number that tells you how many months it typically takes. And then once you understand that, you then need to think about producing some content that's going to nurture them through your sales funnel and use some education based marketing to really help build know like and trust to show that you're credible and you understand your audience. Those are your kind of two actions from today's episode and as I said, you need to understand your audience really well in order to do this. So go and also grab a copy of my Customer Persona Workbook which takes you through the steps and gives you a template to fill in so that you can start to define exactly who your ideal target customer is and the pain points that they have that keep them awake at night. So I hope that was useful. As ever, please make sure you've hit subscribe and please share this with your colleagues. And also I would really love you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts podcast because that helps my podcast reach more people like you, which means I can help more people. But other than that, have a great weekend, go and work out your time to conversion and I will see you next week on the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.