The Essentials Every Solopreneur Needs to Track about Leads, Prospects and Clients

Solopreneurs who provide professional services know that “who they know” goes a long way in bringing in new business. There’s no sitting around and waiting for new clients to find us; we have to make connections. And that can be done in many different ways.

But as important as making connections is, so is keeping tabs on how those connections happened and where they’ve led. Without having a handle on where leads, prospects and clients are coming from and the outcome of those inquiries, there’s no way to really know which of your marketing tactics are working the best for you.

Tracking those things doesn’t require any sort of elaborate database. A simple Excel spreadsheet will do the trick provided that you record the information that matters – and that you keep up with it!

The essentials:

• Name of the lead/prospect/customer (Company and contact name)
• Email address
• Physical address
• Phone number
• Website and Social Media links
• Types of services inquired about
• How did they find you? / How did you connect with them? (e.g. Chamber mixers, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, web search, referral from a client, direct mail campaign…)
• Date when you first connected
• Potential assessment (e.g. general interest/no specific opportunity, specific project opportunity, potential for recurring work, etc.)
• If applicable, date when they became your client

Easy, right? It will take you 5 minutes tops to capture this basic information when someone contacts you about your services and even less to update it when a prospect converts to a paying customer. If you devote that small bit of time to the cause, you’ll have at your fingertips a simple way to quickly see where the majority of your leads – and clients – are coming from. And with that, you can begin to focus your marketing and sales time, energy and dollars on the strategies and tactics that have shown the most promise and results.

Your turn! How do you keep track of where your leads, prospects and clients are coming from? What marketing tactics are working best for you?