Whenever we get on the topic of lead generation, the most commonly asked question we hear from business owners is around quality of leads. How can we minimize the tire kickers who take up a bunch of our team’s time?

After 14 years of helping businesses grow, we know that the best way to save time and improve your businesses efficiency is to have a system in place to better qualify leads as they come in. When you can spend less time qualifying, you have more time for closing!

On that note, let’s begin by uncovering small but powerful ways to improve the quality of the leads you are attracting.

Attracting Qualified Leads

Working in the home improvement and construction space, we know that when you’ve been doing great work for more than a decade, the quantity of leads your business generates is often not the issue preventing growth. It is the quality of leads. When you have a strong team in place and you do great work, the leads organically grow and marketing initiatives start to really pay off year over year.

Without the right systems in place, however, the quality of leads may not be where it needs to be. When that’s the case, the minimum project size is not increasing, resulting in too much time spent qualifying leads and missing out on new opportunities.

When it comes to addressing this issue, it starts at the top: attracting a qualified lead to inquire with you in the very first place. We use the following benchmarks when looking at lead quality: 

1. Their expectations and whether or not they line up with yours 
2. Their budget to work with you

If you’re spending a great deal of time qualifying the leads that are inquiring through your website, it is a great idea to consider these 3 components of your online presence: 

1. Adding Fields To Your Contact Forms 

A common myth in marketing is that you want to eliminate questions that could create potential barriers of entry into your business. This myth is the reason you are attracting tire kickers! So when it comes to putting in the right barriers to reduce tire kickers and improve quality, the first step is to look at the contact form.

If you’re suffering from a lead quality issue, now is the time to add more qualifying questions to your forms on your website. People who are serious about working with you will take the time to fill out the fields. If they are not, they won’t. It’s that simple!

Here is an example of a contact form that asks enough qualifying questions without consuming more than a minute of time from a potential lead.

The most important field here is budget. While some of our clients choose to leave this as a blank field, others have drop down menus with price ranges. This latter option allows you to set the minimum which provides a lot of clarity for the person filling out the form. 

If this scares away a lead, it is likely one you would have spent time disqualifying, not one that is qualified to work with you.

2. Crafting Your Website To Speak To Your Ideal Client

The content on your website should always be built around attracting the type of clients you want more of. This is an opportunity to speak directly about the very specific situations that your best clients encounter when they decide to work with you. 

If you’re a home improvement company that has core competencies in key areas for homeowners, stating those areas off the bat can help with attracting the type of client you want to work with. Here is an example from George Kent Home Improvements that showcases their 6 key offerings: 

If someone comes to their website looking to have their basement finished, for example, this homepage will likely disqualify them. While it may be scary to focus on attracting a very specific audience, there is a reason that in the marketing world, we say: “The riches are in the niches.”

People want to work with experts who have experience dealing with their specific needs. If your best customers come to you with similar requests or challenges, the content on your website should speak to how you help them overcome these challenges. Again, George Kent Home Improvements does this by addressing the top 4 reasons someone would want to consider working with them. Everything from the number of satisfied homeowners they have worked with to their lifetime warranties. 

While there may be a host of issues you can solve for your customers, you should look at the main issues coming from your top clients. These issues should inform your messaging in order to attract more leads who resemble your top clients.

When people feel a message is speaking to them and not just to anyone, that is when they will take action! So don’t be afraid to get specific. Identify your niche, consider their main challenges, and craft your online presence to attract that niche audience. This is one of the key strategies to attracting more of your best clients and scaling your business.

3. Asking The Right Qualifying Questions

Once you have harnessed the power of your refined contact forms and made your website content and images more about your ideal clients, then the quality of the average lead will start improving. While your adjustments to your marketing will help reduce under-qualified prospects, you won’t be able to avoid them entirely. 

It is really important to consider how you can set your team up for success to better qualify prospects from the very first touch point. Determining early on whether each opportunity warrants going through your extensive quoting process is critical. Take the approach of asking questions that uncover what the lead is looking for. Some common questions to ask in the home improvement and construction space could be: 

• How did you hear about us? 
• What work are you looking to have done? 
• How long have you been considering this work?
• Have you contacted anyone else to possibly do this work for you?
• Do you have a budget that you’re looking to stay within for this project? 
• What timelines are you considering for this project? 

By getting a combination of budget, timelines, and expectations from a new lead over the phone, you gain a much better understanding of whether you can help them. You may say that some people will contact you without a budget. In this case, if there is a project value that you have set out as a minimum, laying out that number politely can help with creating a lot of clarity for the potential client.

There is nothing worse than someone taking time out of their day to find out that you’re not a fit for them. In my experience, when we set boundaries on the work we specialize in, people understand and are always grateful for your upfront honesty. 

If you’re spending too much time with unqualified leads and seeing your conversion rates drop year over year, now is a great time to look at the messaging on your website. Review your contact forms and add one or two qualifying fields. Then refine your qualifying process over time.  If you want to see how Intrigue could help you improve the quality of your leads, contact the team at Intrigue today for a free consultation. 

As a Marketing graduate from the University of Guelph, Zoey is an Intrigue team member who was thrilled to find an organization she aligned well with out of university. Zoey is a marketer who loves helping businesses get noticed and found by their ideal clients. In the community, she is on the Board of Directors for the Young Professionals Network of Guelph and is on the fundraising committee for the Big Brother’s Big Sister’s of Guelph Wellington and Lakeside HOPE House Annual JOY Home Tour. In her spare time, she enjoys getting fit, being around dogs, the occasional shopping spree, and spending quality time with her friends and family.