You’re probably scratching your head right now, wondering how getting more leads could possibly ruin a business. Rob’s company runs a network of home-repair outlets in the Northeast, and they were early adopters of a popular lead-aggregation website (e.g., Thumbtack.com, Angi.com, etc.).
At first, the results looked incredible. The site delivered an avalanche of new leads—five to ten times more than they typically received in a day. The sales team was thrilled. To manage the surge, the company hired five new sales assistants to verify information and route leads to the right reps. They also added two new salespeople to meet with the influx of potential customers.
But there was a problem: all those new leads didn’t create enough new revenue to cover the payroll added to handle them.
It’s easy to assume that more leads automatically mean more sales, and that more sales inevitably mean more profit. While that logic usually holds up, it can also be dangerously misleading. More leads are not always good for business—and in some cases, even more sales aren’t good for business.
Don’t give up on generating leads. Just be careful what you wish for—sometimes you can get too much of a good thing.
Have you ever had a similar experience?
