By: Sam Marks

5/27/2010

 

Companies that don’t have effective lead processing strategies in place are literally throwing money and business away. No matter how much you market and attract new guests, your profit margins will diminish by not thinking each day how to increase your lead-to-booking conversion rate. In this game, speed, information, and accuracy are key.
 

Just remember that when someone inquires about a property or room rental, they are in the shop and compare mode. Unless they have been a loyal guest of yours for years chances are they are skipping site to site comparing properties apples to apples.
 

Speed - If you are the 2nd or 3rd company to follow up on a lead, chances are that you will lose this booking or have to close the deal at a smaller margin by offering a super discount. Bookt’s CRM pulls in lead information instantly and sends site administrators notification emails. In the Control Panel we provide management and follow up tools to help streamline your processes.
 

Information – If you don’t capture the right information at the time of the inquiry you will turn off the potential guest by having to dig for these details. Take advantage of your competitors deficiencies here by capturing travel dates, # of Adults and Children, type of property and location they are seeking, and special requests. Bookt’s websites capture leads on 3 levels, all gathering applicable information regarding the guest travel criteria. Information is power….
 

Accuracy – If you are not accurate when proposing a suitable and appealing rental unit then you will lose the prospect’s interest right away. This goes hand and hand with capturing the right information. When following up with a lead, you should be able to have a “perfect” property, and 3-5 others that are “excellent alternatives”. Always be armed with backup properties of like (accuracy) size, price, location, amenities and overall flavor. With this information captured, Bookt clients can easily search their inventory filtering by multiple attributes to drill down on a handful of ideal and relevant properties.
 

*Speed in many cases will make up for information and accuracy. Staff your company with a confident, well spoken, and personable reservationist that isn’t afraid to pick up the phone and dial away. Have them man your email and/or CRM with a top priority of follow up to each lead by phone within 5 minutes of receiving the notification. Do this, and engage with the guest prospect faster than your competition. The guest will appreciate the responsiveness, build faith in your services, and be willing to work with the reservationist to find and reserve that perfect rental.
 

I was speaking to the CEO of a well known rental portal the other day over dinner, and we were discussing different marketing initiatives regarding the specific traffic sources and the quality (often determined by the lead-to-booking conversion ratio) of each traffic source. We started talking about SEO and he immediately dismissed it touting the fact that they didn’t need it. His reasoning was simple. Instead of investing many thousands of dollars in SEO with fuzzy performance tracking and slow returns, they focus exclusively on paid search. With this, they know exactly what they are paying for, and tracking ROI is much more tangible. The Key – maintain a competitive advantage in lead-to-booking conversions. Where most companies will lose spending $2 per click on SEM, they are able to make a nice return because they have perfected speed, information, and accuracy.
 

Focus on optimizing your lead response processes and it will open up marketing avenues once believed to expensive to play.