You have thousands of leads sat in your CRM. Here's what to do with them.

Most service businesses generate far more enquiries than they ever convert. So if you've got thousands of leads sat in your CRM, the answer isn't to spend more on ads. It's to go back to the people who already showed interest, get back on their radar and start a conversation.

Why do so many leads end up sat in your CRM?

Most service businesses are running ads, creating organic content and funnelling leads through lead magnets. All of it generates far more enquiries than actually convert.

There are many reasons for this. A salesperson who didn't follow up enough. A lead who never picked up their phone. Someone who opted in, then got busy. And a thousand other reasons.

The reasons don't matter. What matters is that once upon a time, these people were interested. Your service resonated with them in some way, and that makes them warmer than any cold lead you're spending money on right now to feed the top of your funnel.

What is a leaky bucket in sales?

We call this a leaky bucket, and most sales teams suffer from it.

A lead comes in. They're not contacted fast enough. They aren't followed up with, because new leads get prioritised. They go cold, forget what they opted in for and remain dormant in your CRM.

The game is always to reduce how many leads leak through the bucket. To do that, you need to plug the gaps.

How do you stop leads going cold?

There are three gaps to plug, and they work in order.

1. Speed to lead

The first thing is always speed to lead. Respond to your leads as fast as you can. (Run the Speed-to-Lead Audit to see what slow replies could be costing you.)

But speed doesn't always solve the problem. What if someone doesn't pick up? They don't recognise the number. Your emails get lost in the inbox ocean alongside the spam and the marketing. It's easy to miss.

2. An efficient follow-up process

The second thing you need is an efficient follow-up process. This usually means a rep focused on completing as many touchpoints with a lead as possible, until it's no longer worth their time.

Typically, that's a relentless run of morning and evening touchpoints for four to seven days. After that, it starts taking up too much of their time and pulls them away from new leads, which should always be the priority.

3. A reactivation agent

This is where an agent needs to take over. Getting a rep to work through a dormant database is the fastest way to burn them out.

How do you reactivate old leads without burning out your team?

Companies are still sceptical about using AI in their sales process. But this is a use case that genuinely works. It saves a lot of time, sounds human and does your pipeline a lot of favours.

Here's how it works. When a lead has been inactive for a set amount of time, with no touchpoints, that triggers an agent to send a series of messages to re-engage them. It starts with a simple question:

"Hey, is this the same [Name] who requested an energy quote a few weeks ago?"

No pitch. Just the start of a conversation. That's followed by a series of follow-ups, with the intention of booking an appointment.

The likelihood is that people are still in the market. They just didn't receive your recent attempts.

The same agent also works through your existing dormant database, so the leads that have already leaked out of the bucket get another chance too.

Are old leads actually worth chasing?

Yes. You've already paid for these leads, and they've already shown their interest. As I wrote in last week's Field Notes, "not right now" isn't the same as "no".

Getting back on their radar is an easy way to create more opportunities, reduce your customer acquisition costs and increase revenue, without having to feed the top of your funnel any more than you currently are.

What does this look like in practice?

For AssignX, reactivating a 15,000-lead dormant database brought in 562 responses in week one. Those were leads already sitting in their CRM, not new ones they had to pay to generate.

Plug the bucket before you fill it

Before you spend more on ads, look at what's already in your CRM.

Respond fast. Follow up properly. And when your reps have done their part, let an agent pick up the leads that would otherwise leak out of the bucket for good.

That's how you make the most of your ad spend.