I like your idea of following up those lost/unresponsive leads – perhaps if I had a little more time – or if I was looking to expand then this is certainly something I should be doing more.

Anyways, we have recently started logging leads too, in order to try and manage them better and turn them into conversions. As soon as we get a new lead, the details (description, contacts etc) go into a simple database which we add notes to and update after communicating with the potential customer. When they agree to go ahead with a job, we delete/archive the lead record and enter it into our project management system.

Like you though, we have also found that the majority of leads can be poor and when we respond, we don’t often hear back. The lead management database helps this somewhat as we always make sure to follow them up if we don’t get a response. I don’t want to say something like “if they’re going to waste my time, I’ll waste theirs”, nor would we want to force someone into to committing to a job, but if they’ve taken the time to enquire then the least they can do is say yes or no. Following up leads by phone works alot better I find – especially if you can call them very shortly after they submit an enquiry. Emails can be too easily lost within other mail, ignored or deleted.

Similar to you, most of the clients who have committed to us have been either existing clients or references from other clients.

But I would still respond to the enquiries that might not seem too committed. You never know. We had one in February this year that we never heard back from until last month when they came back to us with a 5 figure project.