The increasing demand for better yield in marketing efforts has created challenges for marketers like never before to produce higher quantity and better quality leads. The key to producing qualified leads that result in higher revenue is deploying a lead generation campaign that helps you identify those prospects closest to completing a transaction.

Because buyers use search early on in the sales cycle, only 25% of leads are sales ready at any given time. The remaining prospects are somewhere in the buying cycle but not necessarily ready for sales. Building in a feedback mechanism in your lead generation program provides valuable data that can help you know when to continue the nurture process and when to push the sales-ready leads to your sales department.

Part of a successful lead generation program is building the strategy that helps you better understand “triggers” or customer preferences and subsequent behaviors. Deploying tools like One to One Marketing, which uses personal web landing pages for data collection, can give you real-time insight into where your targets are in the buying cycle. Leads are quickly distributed to sales personnel and appropriate follow up can be completed for those targets that are ready to buy now. A nurturing drip campaign can be established for those that promise to be ready in the future.

Here are four rules of the road for customer retention efforts:

Rule #1: Show Your Appreciation
One of the most common reasons a customer changes vendors is neglect – not because the price was too high or the quality too low. They simply don’t want to be forgotten or neglected. Show them how much you value their business.

Rule #2: Know Your Customer’s Business
Become an expert in your customer’s business. Keep abreast of their industry news and share items of interest with them. Your interest will be apparent to your customer and your insight will be more valuable.

Rule #3: Seek to Understand Their Expectations
Every customer and customer organization is different. When we assume that we understand their expectations, we risk losing the customer in the long term. Regularly ask if you are meeting their needs and strive to surpass them so they have no reason to look elsewhere.

Rule #4: Establish Regular Communications
Your communications reveal your attitudes toward customers. Establishing regular communication via newsletters, email, mailings, etc. will demonstrate your commitment to your customers and foster continued awareness of your goods and services.

However, businesses need to be careful that their cost-per-lead is reasonable when planning events. An expensive booth with all the bells and whistles for a trade show will require that you secure a larger sale-per-lead in order to deliver a reasonable ROI. Smart businesses may be better served by considering lower cost, highly targeted events to drive sales.

Perform an event ROI Analysis to determine if the yield outweighs the costs. Consider the following estimated costs for a 20-person lunch and learn:

Pre-event communications to drive attendance: $3500
Food and venue: $25/head
Total: $4000 for 20 qualified leads at a cost of $200 per lead.

Assuming 20% of those leads buy immediately and the average sale is $5,000, the gross revenue is $20,000. The event was paid for and then some.