Why Lead Tracking Is Invaluable For Contractors
Lead tracking is a pretty straightforward term — you’re tracking where your leads are coming from, where they are in your sales funnel, and what they need next from your home services business.
But lead tracking can also give you many invaluable insights as a contractor. For example, lead tracking tells you if your marketing efforts are working and how to improve them.
Lead tracking also benefits contractors by allowing them to:
- Find more leads and close more sales faster
- Create a better experience for their customers
- Predict whether or not a lead will turn into a customer
- Accurately predict future revenue
- Better organize their sales and marketing efforts
- Retain and remarket to existing customers
Lead tracking is a simple yet powerful approach to make your home services business more successful. It’s also a relatively easy task — you or your administrative assistant can create and maintain a simple spreadsheet or use a paid tracking system to store valuable information about your leads.
What You Learn From A Lead Tracking Report
Many companies don’t give lead tracking the attention it deserves because they don’t understand the immense value it can provide.
But with a well-maintained tracking process, you can quickly get insights that help you learn:
- Which marketing tactics are working the best for you
- Which marketing tactics are promising but need improvement
(Your contractor marketing agency can help you see how to fix this.)
- Which marketing tactics won’t work for you or can’t be improved upon
- Your best and worst markets (both demographics and location)
- Whether or not you’re targeting your most profitable markets
- Which services are the most popular and profitable
- Why customers will choose you over a competitor
(AKA your Unique Value Proposition)
Once you know this information, you can easily tweak how you run your business, both operationally and from a marketing perspective, to make it better and better. Pretty soon, you’ll have a well-oiled machine in place, know exactly who your customers are, why they value your business, and the best ways to reach them quickly.
How To Track Sales Leads For Free with Google Sheets
Call us old-fashioned, but you don't need to spend a bunch of money on fancy CRM software to track your leads effectively. In fact, you can set up a simple spreadsheet for free! Both Google Sheets and Microsoft Office have templates and quick video tutorials that anyone can use.
You can set up your lead tracking spreadsheet any way you’d like, but we recommend having columns for at least the following:
- Lead Capture Date
- Marketing Tactic (AKA How They Found You)
- Full Name
- Contact Information
- City or Zip Code
- Age Range
- Primary Service They Requested
- Consultation or Estimate Date
- Contract or Hire Date
If you want to take the data a level deeper, you could also add in details, such as:
- Total Revenue
- Net Profit
- Chance of Sale
- Follow Up Reminder Date
Paid Software Lead Tracking For Home Services Businesses
Another option is to consider a CRM system designed for contractors. There are tons of options, each with its own bells and whistles, and your choice will largely depend on what information and features you value most.
Most lead tracking software includes scheduling, estimating, contract writing and management, customer follow-up, and invoicing. If you want a way to cut down on the amount of time allocated for these tasks, a paid system might be the right choice for your home services business.
However, it’s also important to note that these platforms require an investment, either a financial or time investment. And, while many CRMs seem cheap and easy on the surface, it’s also easy to get locked into a contract for something that doesn’t improve your lead tracking or operations.
As an advocate for our marketing clients, Projects Plus Marketing encourages our contractors to discuss their options with us during their strategy calls so that they can be fully informed about their choice. That being said, some of our clients have had good success with industry-specific solutions, like Jobber, Builder Prime, JobNimbus, and LeadPerfection.
Best Practices Contractors Should Follow When Tracking Leads
Whether you decide on a paid lead tracking solution or prefer the old-fashioned spreadsheet method, it’s important for contractors to follow some basic best practices so their lead tracking actually provides the information they’re looking for. Here are some of our lead-tracking tips.
1. Define Your Goals
Simply put, you can’t be successful if you don’t know what success looks like. Sure, all contractors want more leads, but what else are you looking to accomplish?
Before you can define your goals, you’ll first need to know what a qualified lead looks like for your business. Some leads come in that will never turn into customers, and some leads come in that are simply not worth your time. Putting these ideas into writing will help your team know where to focus their efforts.
Secondly, you’ll want to define your lead sources. Where can you expect your leads to come from? Are you running Google Ads? Do you have billboards or yard signs out in the community? Are you active on social media? Knowing these things will help you know what success really looks like.
After defining your leads and lead sources, you can more effectively communicate your goals. For example, you might aim to increase leads coming through a specific channel. Or, perhaps you’d like to have higher-paying projects or more projects in a specific location.
Define these goals in writing. Then, when it comes time to review your progress, you’ll know whether you’ve reached your goal.
2. Be Consistent
Actually, our entire “Best Practices” list could be this one tip: Be Consistent. We can’t emphasize it enough. Consistency is absolutely crucial for lead tracking.
If you are not consistent in how often you track leads, follow up with leads, or manage the data you collect, you’ll have no idea how accurate or reliable the information is. If you can’t be consistent, you may as well not even bother with lead tracking. That’s how important it is.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to land on your shoulders alone. Lead tracking is a perfect task for an administrative assistant. You could even hire a part-time VA just to track your leads. If you decide to delegate this task, be sure to write a step-by-step instruction document so you can be assured that it’s done the way you want it to be done.
3. Don’t Forget The Follow-Up!
Follow-up is required for a healthy lead-tracking system. While it does take time and effort to continue to follow up on those leads, most sales don’t happen on the first try.
Many homeowners need to deliberate and consider their options before making a decision on a home project. This is especially true if you offer services with a higher price tag like kitchen or bathroom remodels. It’s much more cost-effective to nurture the qualified leads you already have than to try to find new ones, so make sure you have a plan in place for your team to follow up with leads on a regular basis and document their progress.
Navigate Contractor Marketing Success With Projects Plus Marketing
And there you have it: lead tracking, a clear path to contractor marketing success. It's not just about tracing your leads; it's about gaining insights that can revolutionize how you do business.
Another surefire way to be successful as a contractor? Have a dedicated team in your corner. Projects Plus Marketing helps you attract new customers with proven contractor marketing strategies.
But we do a lot more than that. We can be your advocates, loyal advisors, and number-one fans in the ever-evolving realm of marketing. Talk to owner Michelle and see how we can take your business to the next level.