Are you capturing all possible sales, or could you be losing opportunities? For example, perhaps a customer buys most of their products from you but goes to your competitor for a particular product. Or, maybe your customer buys your product but doesn’t upsell to the related products in the line.

Few things are worse than a leak in your sales and marketing funnel that is costing your company revenue. No matter where you get your leads, it is important to identify where sales are leaking and address it.

Today and tomorrow, Promotional Consultant Today looks at six key strategies for containing your sales leakage, from sales expert Phill Keene.

Because it can be difficult to identify where sales are leaking, this process will take time. Keene suggests testing at each stage of the sales funnel.

1. Storyboard your current process from lead to close. Before you begin, your team needs to understand what a prospect needs to do business with you and how to optimize the buyer’s journey. Take time to write out each individual step from the lead form to the close.

When you build out the buyer’s journey, think too about potential flaws in your systems that make it hard for a prospect to do business with you. Far too often, companies sacrifice customer experience for internal process. Make sure that you break down barriers and make it easy for prospects to engage with your team at every stage.

2. Examine initial lead response time. According to InsideSales.com, 35 – 50 percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first. With the average lead response time over five minutes, the chance of turning a lead into a customer decreases quickly. Today’s buyers are changing; they are expecting a B-to-C experience from B-to-B companies. That means speed wins deals.

The time it takes for your company to respond to leads once they hit your inbox may be the first source of a leak. Once you can respond at a healthy pace, review lead creation time from the lead form to the CRM to the inbox. This is an important step because even if your team is responding immediately, it might take a long time for a lead get to them.

3. Track attempts and touches until initial conversion. Although starting with your initial response time is important, you must also understand your ongoing pursuit of a prospect and what it takes to convert those who don’t answer right away.

Various sources, including Topo, SalesLoft and The Bridge Group, identify six to 13 as the optimal number of touches it takes to get a prospect to convert to a customer. Test out multiple cadences for yourself to discover what works best for your business.

Tomorrow, PCT examines three more ways to address your sales funnel and minimize sales leakage.

Source: Phill Keene brings commitment to learning and development to the inside sales space. He currently leads the sales development team at TinderBox, and through his experience he has learned how to be a strategic resource to companies trying to reach their revenue goals and attain quota. He brings best practices around sales productivity, lead generation and technology.