A prospective client recently sent me an email that began, “In the last year, our plastic surgery practice has spent significant marketing dollars in digital and social media, and yet our sales have remained the same.” With the email, he attached a PDF that summarized their SEO campaign.

I looked through the report, and the data was impressive. Bounce rates were down, user visits and time on the site were up, and so was social media traffic. I clicked on their website, and it was clean and easy to understand. The site even had a “call to action” with a weekly special and “call us now” button. Curious, I picked up the phone and called. I instantly knew the problem.

The first words out of the person answering the phone… “hold please!”

After holding for more than a minute, she picked up again, and I had just finished explaining I was interested in the web special, and I was told to hold again. Thirty seconds later, when she came back on the line, her tone was clearly one of distraction and annoyance. I asked her a few basic questions about the procedure and the costs, and all her answers were terse and blunt.

I kept waiting for her to ask me to book the initial appointment…to close the sale…but in the end, I had to ask her.

Many small businesses have the same problem. They allocate enormous resources in digital and social media to acquire a new customer, only to lose that lead because of the first human interaction with their company.

Five easy steps to closing more phone leads-

1. Assign a specific phone number that is connected to all incoming lead calls.
2. Use a service that tracks and records these calls. Once a week, as the business owner, take the time to listen to a sample of the conversations. I like CallRail for its extensive list of features and low cost.
3. When choosing the employee who will answer incoming calls, select the one who is not only outgoing and energetic, but excels in a sales role. Fielding incoming calls should be their first priority.
4. Consider compensating the person answering the phone with some part commission. If you have chosen the right person, they will embrace the idea.
5. Make it a policy that during each call, the customer is asked for the sale and asked what day they would like to set up their initial appointment.

With these easy steps, more of your phone leads should result in a sale.