One of the biggest frustrations business owners face is converting more leads at a higher rate, with better efficiency and results. Time is money and so is temperature. Hot leads bring immediate dollars. Cold leads are dismissed to the land of misfit toys.

To better understand why, let’s hop into the way-back machine and head back to the beginning of mankind. When cavemen discovered how to use sticks and stones to make weapons and tools, it made their lives easier when hunting and gathering food. When the wheel was discovered, it made life even that more efficient.

These items allowed them to hunt better and quicker. It allowed them to gather more food in shorter amounts of time. And it lit the fuse that ignited the need for bigger, better and quicker.

Flash forward a few million years, and we are exponentially bigger, better and quicker. Not necessarily as people or society (although there are several National Geographic specials that would probably confirm that notion) but with the technology we use to improve efficiencies and reduce the amount of time we need to access pretty much anything we want or need.

A byproduct of the improved efficiencies and reduced lead times is an incredible need for immediate gratification. It wasn’t enough to cook your own meal, so restaurants sprung up to do that for us. Then, it wasn’t enough to sit down and place your order so they opened up the drive-thru. Still not fast enough? Well here’s a box that will zap your food hot in mere seconds.

So how does this relate to sales and working with leads? Immediate gratification.

Businesses spend valuable dollars and invest incredible time and effort to generate leads to drive people to their cash registers – and credit card swipers. Typically, the leads go into the sales funnel are pre-qualified to determine which ones will lead to immediate sales. Guess what leads are given immediate attention. You got it. The hot leads!

As these hot leads are being worked, additional leads continue to come in. These new leads are then pre-qualified and dealt with in the same manner. Meanwhile, the other leads are sitting in the funnel where the warm leads are becoming cold leads and the cold leads are becoming dead leads.

But warm and cold are only temporary. If all your efforts are poured into converting only the hot leads, you are going backwards on the evolutionary efficiency curve. You’re investing time into building systems to generate leads; do the same to convert more and more of all of those leads – not just the hot ones.

There are several types of systems you can implement to convert these tepid leads. However, one of the fastest growing, widely accepted, and highly effective methods is right in front of your eyes. The e-mailed newsletter.

These people have told you they have some level of interest in your product or service; otherwise they wouldn’t have ended up in your sales funnel. Just because they aren’t ready to ring your register today, doesn’t mean they won’t want to tomorrow, next month or next year. Don’t waste that initial effort. Follow up with these folks on a regular basis with product, service or industry news that is of value to your prospects and keeps you in front of them until they are ready to give you their nickel.

It is very important though to deliver timely and valuable information without choking them with your sales pitch. When they are ready to buy, they will. Until then, be a resource for them. Be someone they will automatically turn to without hesitation when they are ready to pull out their checkbook.

Stop being Cro-Magnon with your lead management. Find a system that works for you, and more importantly for your prospects, turn up the heat and watch those warm and cold leads slowly cook from a simmer to a raging cauldron of increased sales!

Now, Go Get ‘Em!!