How Long Should It Take to Close a Purchased Solar Lead?

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December 27, 2018 | By RGR Marketing Blog

Using the Lead Lifecycle to Improve Your Close Rate on Purchased Solar Leads

If you’re paying out good money to purchase solar leads from a solid lead generator, then you would naturally expect to be closing a significant amount of those leads. If you’re not closing as many as you expect to, it can be tempting to blame the quality of the leads.

But even the best of solar leads can be extremely challenging to close if you’re not engaging with them at the right time and in the best manner possible.

In this post, we’ll take a look at the lead lifecycle of purchased solar leads. In the process, we’ll examine where some go wrong in engaging with these leads, talk about what to do with purchased leads throughout their lifecycle, and get into what a reasonable closing percentage is for purchased leads vs. organic leads.

The Lead Lifecycle in a Nutshell

Generally speaking, there are eight stages in the lifecycle of a lead: subscriber, lead, marketing-qualified lead, sales-qualified lead, opportunity (prospect), customer, evangelist, and other (a catch-all for any lead that doesn’t fit into the other seven stages). With purchased solar leads, it should be safe to assume that your team is already past the first three of these stages beforeyou get the lead.

Sales qualification of leads is where you begin the work of selling, making initial contact with the lead and determining if it is a quality lead or not. If you’re stalling at this point with too great a percentage of leads, then it may be time to re-evaluate what you’re paying for or to take a look at your sales staff’s expectations. Leads that make it through this stage are opportunities – real prospects to close.

The additional two stages, customer and evangelist, may at first seem self-explanatory. But, if you’re not continuing to work your leads after they become customers, failing to convert a good percentage of them into brand evangelists for your solar installation business and solar in general, you’re missing a great low-cost marketing opportunity.

Where Closing Often Goes Off the Rails

Where closing, defined as moving a sales-qualified lead through the opportunity stage and making them a customer, often goes wrong happens in a few key ways. The old adage “Always Be Closing” holds true, but even if you are building buy-in throughout the qualifying and sales process, you can still torpedo a sale – even on a well-qualified prospect, by tripping up in some key ways:

Failing to Understand the Buyer’s Perspective
- What are the keys to their decision-making process? What will close them? Don’t get so caught up in your pitch that you aren’t listening for clues as to what their pain points are. How did they become a lead in the first place?
Trying to Close too Early
- Yes, you should always be closing, but trying to jump past the buyer’s decision-making process will stall out your close nearly every time.
Trying to Close the Wrong Party
- Understanding how your prospects’ relationships work, knowing who to close and how, is something you need to wrap your head around before you attempt to close.
Failing to Create a Sense of Urgency
- One of the biggest questions you’re trying to overcome in your prospects’ minds is: “Why now?”
Not Asking for the Close, Filling in the Silence After the Close, or Arguing With “No”
- Once you’ve advanced to closing the sale, you must ask the hard question and wait for their answer. Filling in the awkward silence is sales death, and arguing with “no” just makes closing at a later date more difficult. There’s no such thing as “no,” just “not right now.”

Getting the Most Out of Purchased Leads

One way to get the most out of your purchased leads is to recycle them. As mentioned above, you can (and should) keep circling back with prospects until they become customers – either yours or someone else’s. Once they are customers, they become a different kind of lead, one that could become an evangelist.

As to what percentage of purchased leads you should expect to be closing – that’s an entirely different (and very large) subject all by itself.

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Using the Lead Lifecycle to Improve Your Close Rate on Purchased Solar Leads

The Lead Lifecycle in a Nutshell

Where Closing Often Goes Off the Rails

Getting the Most Out of Purchased Leads

Start making more
money today!

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Using the Lead Lifecycle to Improve Your Close Rate on Purchased Solar Leads

The Lead Lifecycle in a Nutshell

Where Closing Often Goes Off the Rails

Getting the Most Out of Purchased Leads

Start making more money today!

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