Where Your Lead Funnel Is Breaking (And How to Fix It)

Dave, in your world, so at Clients, Heather, obviously you're touching a lot of different brands.

And so that's why I'm coming to you first with this question of how have you seen brands start to approach conversion either differently or with a different priority? And what happens when they shift priority to really start to focus on that conversion piece?

Yeah, great, great question.

And before I even answer, I'm going to play a political game.

So you'll be ready for this, Lizzie.

But I've got to just substantiate what you said.

So we sit in this interesting position where the marketers have done their great job, have created leads.

And then inherently what happens is systems aren't in place.

So the franchise owners panic or they don't follow up as effectively as they can.

And their lead conversion rate goes down.

because 98% of the time, it is a sales process problem.

It's not a lead quality problem.

Now, I've seen lead quality issues, and you can fine tune that.

You can see that often, but I just want to substantiate what you're saying.

The whole industry, because lead volumes are generally down in most categories except for luxury goods, because they are always pretty static, regardless of economic and consumer confidence.

But right now, lead volumes are down.

So why is everybody hyper-focused on conversion rate? Because they're like, I got to get more juice out of the squeeze.

So do you mind, Catherine, since I just distracted, I wanted to talk on that.

Can you ask the question one more time so I stay focused on what you were just asking me a minute ago?

Yeah.

Well, I want to hear from your perspective how, what has changed when the prioritization of conversion, it becomes the priority?

Yeah, so the priority, well, the ultimate metric for everybody is revenue, right? Like my revenue and profitability for the franchise operators, or if it's FranDev, then it's a number of new candidates that have signed, right? So the franchise is awarded.

But some people got so hyper-focused on, let's say, top of funnel leads, and that was the only thing they were thinking about, that they were, sometimes there were some issues where they were just bringing anybody in that they could so they could hit a target to hit a top of funnel lead, but their end results were not revenue for the franchise owners and profitability for the franchise owners.

They were spending more and more and more to get this arbitrary high top of funnel number, and they weren't seeing the return on the back side of it.

So now what's shifting in my mind, and I'm glad to hear it because this is like my script, right, that I talk to people about is you've got to focus on the ROI of the lead.

Dave, in your world, so at Clients, Heather, obviously you're touching a lot of different brands.

And so that's why I'm coming to you first with this question of how have you seen brands start to approach conversion either differently or with a different priority? And what happens when they shift priority to really start to focus on that conversion piece?

Yeah, great, great question.

And before I even answer, I'm going to play a political game.

So you'll be ready for this, Lizzie.

But I've got to just substantiate what you said.

So we sit in this interesting position where the marketers have done their great job, have created leads.

And then inherently what happens is systems aren't in place.

So the franchise owners panic or they don't follow up as effectively as they can.

And their lead conversion rate goes down.

because 98% of the time, it is a sales process problem.

It's not a lead quality problem.

Now, I've seen lead quality issues, and you can fine tune that.

You can see that often, but I just want to substantiate what you're saying.

The whole industry, because lead volumes are generally down in most categories except for luxury goods, because they are always pretty static, regardless of economic and consumer confidence.

But right now, lead volumes are down.

So why is everybody hyper-focused on conversion rate? Because they're like, I got to get more juice out of the squeeze.

So do you mind, Catherine, since I just distracted, I wanted to talk on that.

Can you ask the question one more time so I stay focused on what you were just asking me a minute ago?

Yeah.

Well, I want to hear from your perspective how, what has changed when the prioritization of conversion, it becomes the priority?

Yeah, so the priority, well, the ultimate metric for everybody is revenue, right? Like my revenue and profitability for the franchise operators, or if it's FranDev, then it's a number of new candidates that have signed, right? So the franchise is awarded.

But some people got so hyper-focused on, let's say, top of funnel leads, and that was the only thing they were thinking about, that they were, sometimes there were some issues where they were just bringing anybody in that they could so they could hit a target to hit a top of funnel lead, but their end results were not revenue for the franchise owners and profitability for the franchise owners.

They were spending more and more and more to get this arbitrary high top of funnel number, and they weren't seeing the return on the back side of it.

So now what's shifting in my mind, and I'm glad to hear it because this is like my script, right, that I talk to people about is you've got to focus on the ROI of the lead.