It’s funny how sometimes people can overlook the explanation of something that is not at all foreign to them. I was recently talking with a friend from another country about the recent trades made in the NFL, in intricate detail about the implications of each, forgetting that he was from Brazil. When I was done and asked for his opinion he questioned, “so the cornerbacks defense the receivers, right”? It hit me, I needed to do some more explaining…and help him with his conjugations. First things first, so I told him, “no they ‘defend’ the receivers – and yes…sort of.” Anyway, that was the end of that conversation and it got me to thinking about other things that I just assume people know. I have had people ask me what does hand-raiser mean, and I just assumed that was a pretty generic term used by the masses. Again, I was wrong.

For those of you that are not aware of what a hand-raiser is in the marketing world, it can be summed up in a simple sentence. A person that identifies themselves as a prospective customer, to a company, by giving them their contact information. The important part of the equation is the sharing of the contact information. A name, birth sign, favorite food, the time, or anything else is irrelevant unless that person can be contacted. Well, I guess those other things can be used as research, but how accurate is it? They didn’t even hook you up with the “ten” (phone #) or the email!

Once you realize what they are, it can be easy to see why there is such a clamor to attain these types of introductions. First, you can make a warm contact, rather than a cold one. There is likely information stored about what that contact was interested in learning more about. You can fill your CRM with more names and numbers. Most of all, though, you have a chance to build a new relationship. Like all other things in life, building relationships based off of mutual interest usually works out better for both parties than a predatory style meeting. This is not to say that prospecting and reaching out to new prospects that show a propensity to be interested in services/products like yours is not okay. To the contrary, the hunter is necessary to build revenue streams and develop your business. The fact is, those relationships take longer to build; they are more costly to develop; and the failure rate is much higher.

The statistics about success rate are varied and unreliable. What cold-call company is going to admit a low success rate, and most lead generation tools are going to tell you how much success you can attain through warm leads.  The final metrics I will leave up to you. But, as a general rule people say that you want to have 25 times the number of leads than target sales. So, if you have a goal of 10 new customers per month, then you should be targeting 250 likely prospects. That works out to a 4% success rate. If you can keep your success rate there, then you’re generating the right leads and should continue on. If you’re targeting 500 people and still only selling to 10 new customers a month, I would tell you to look at who you are targeting first. Then, if it seems as though you’re generating interest but no sales then your product and/or marketing message needs to be evaluated, because you should be closing hand-raisers. Then I would tell you to give me your coffee, because “coffee is for closers.”

You don’t want that, and neither do I, so inspire people to be hand-raisers for your products and services then close some deals! Does anyone have warm lead success stories to share?