Author NameA familiar situation: advertising brings in leads, the sales team is working, but revenue does not grow. The first instinct is to change the ads. That is almost always a mistake.
The problem lives after the click
A lead is not a sale. There are four or five steps between leaving contact details and paying, and people drop out at every one. If those steps are not visible in your numbers, you are fixing the wrong thing.
A cheap lead that never reaches payment costs more than an expensive lead that buys.
Take your last 100 leads and follow them through the funnel: how many were reached, booked a meeting, showed up and paid. The largest drop is your bottleneck.
What to fix first
Most often the issue is response speed and follow-up. If a manager replies a day later, even perfect advertising will not save the lead. Set up statuses, SLA rules and reminders, and many lost leads will return.
Advertising brings people in. The system sells: offer, funnel, follow-up and analytics working together. Start by making the numbers visible — the right decisions become much easier.
