No matter what business or profession you are in, from a marketing perspective, you have leads. When a lawyer begins discussing a potential case, that's a "lead", and it's no different than a customer browsing in a store, or a plumber answering questions about a potential service call. Leads are the lifeblood of the business. As such, it makes sense to take a closer look at your system for generating AND handling leads, right through the entire sales process.

Once you look a little closer, the next question is, "Are you getting your fare share, and if not, how do you get to work on fixing that?"

Here's a 3-step process to help you begin figuring this out.

First, profile your typical prospect's thought process. Use the questions below to get started:

·         When does your typical prospect START to think about buying the product/service you sell?  

·         What kinds of information does your typical prospect want or need in order to feel like they have made the best decision possible when it comes to buying what you sell?

·         How does the information you currently provide match up with what they want to know in order to make a final decision?

Second, armed with the information from your answers to the above, review how your competition is handling the situation. You may need to do some business intelligence to

get answers, but it's well worth the time and expense. It's like the football coach going over game films with the team. You will see competitive openings that have been right under your nose - like a child tugging at your sleeve because they want to show you something you're too busy to notice. All you need to do is pay attention to the tug, take a look, and ACT.

Third, quantify your market based on the total number of possible prospects, AND what percent are NOW buyers versus FUTURE buyers. Answering the first two questions above will

give you a pretty good general idea on how to break your market down into Now Buyers and Future Buyers so you can put some numbers to it.

We use this process to quantify where your lead opportunities may exist. Once you document the information gathered in the three steps above, you're ready to go to work on a strategy that will literally dominate the competition.

It's really simple. Not easy, but simple.