“We need more enquiries.” It’s one of the most common things a business owner can say to a marketer, and the obvious response is to start talking about marketing. More social media. Better SEO. Google Ads. A new campaign. Email marketing.
These days, though, I’d probably start somewhere else. How many enquiries did you have last month? How many did you respond to? How many became quotes, and how many of those quotes became customers? How many did you follow up? And where did those enquiries come from in the first place?
If you can’t answer those questions, I’m not convinced that more enquiries is necessarily the problem. Sometimes the answer isn’t more marketing. Sometimes the business needs to get better at dealing with the opportunities it already has.
I learned this lesson selling dental implants
Years ago, I worked for a dental implant company, and I’d regularly meet dentists who had big ambitions for implant dentistry. “I want to become an implant specialist.” “I want to place 100 implants this year.” Great. But my next question was never “How are we going to market you?” It was “When are you going to do them?”
Because 100 implants a year is roughly two cases every week. So where were those two surgeries going to fit alongside an already busy dental practice? How many patients in the existing database actually needed implants? Would the dentist reduce their regular dentistry to create time for implant surgery and case planning? If so, would they employ an associate to take over some of their existing patients — and if they did, where would that dentist work? Did the practice have a second treatment room? If not, could one be created, or would the building need extending? Would they need another dental nurse?
Suddenly, “I want to place 100 implants this year” wasn’t a marketing objective. It was a business strategy. And then we could talk about marketing.
Because there’s another question: will people believe you?
Sometimes I’d walk into a dental practice where somebody wanted to position themselves as a specialist, and the practice didn’t feel specialist at all. There would be posters covering the walls and windows, some of them up for years, corners curling, sticky tape showing, different colours and fonts and messages everywhere. I’d look around and think: how many patients are going to walk through this door and believe they’re in the hands of a specialist?
You can create the most beautiful advert in the world. You can build a sophisticated website. You can tell people you’re premium, experienced, specialist, innovative or exceptional. But eventually they meet the business, and that’s where your brand promise gets tested.
Your reception area is marketing. The way the telephone is answered is marketing. So is the speed at which you respond to an enquiry, the quote you send, the follow-up and your availability. And yes, the tatty poster held up with Sellotape is marketing too — just perhaps not the message you intended to send.
Which brings me back to enquiries
The same principle applies to almost every growing business. Let’s say your marketing works. Someone sees your LinkedIn post. Another person finds you through Google. Someone else recommends you. A potential customer visits your website and fills in the contact form. Fantastic.
What happens next? Where does that enquiry go, who responds, and how quickly? Is it recorded anywhere? If they don’t buy immediately, who follows up? And if they come back six months later, can anybody see what was discussed previously?
This is the point where businesses often start losing opportunities without realising it. Not because they’re bad businesses — they’ve simply grown beyond the “I’ll remember” stage.
When do you need a database?
Probably earlier than you think. And by database, I don’t necessarily mean an enormous CRM system costing hundreds of pounds a month. For a small business, it could start with a spreadsheet: name, contact details, date of enquiry, what they were interested in, where the enquiry came from, what happened next, follow-up date, outcome.
That’s enough to start answering some incredibly valuable questions. Where are your best enquiries coming from? What’s your conversion rate? How long does it normally take someone to become a customer? How much business are you winning — and, perhaps most importantly, how much are you losing?
Because if you’re generating 30 enquiries a month and only properly following up 15 of them, I’m probably not going to recommend spending money generating another 30. Let’s fix the hole in the bucket first.
Then comes capacity
This is the bit that’s often missing from marketing conversations. Imagine I create a brilliant campaign for you and your enquiries double. Can you actually handle them? Can you answer the phone, produce the quotes and do the work? Can you maintain the same quality? Can customers get an appointment within a reasonable timeframe?
If you’re already working evenings and weekends just to keep up, doubling your enquiries isn’t necessarily business growth. It might just be doubling your stress.
Which means sometimes the marketing conversation needs to become a capacity conversation. Do you need another employee? Could you outsource something? Could a Virtual Assistant handle enquiries, appointments and follow-ups? Could a freelancer take something off your plate, or could software automate some of the repetitive work? And perhaps the biggest question of all: when do you stop doing everything and start managing the business?
Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should
This is particularly difficult for owner-managed businesses. You probably can send the invoices, answer the emails, update the spreadsheet, post on Instagram, chase the quote, book the appointment and order the stationery. You can probably also unblock the loo if necessary. But should you?
At some point the question changes from “Can I do this?” to “Is this the best use of my time?” That doesn’t automatically mean employing a full-time member of staff. A few hours of VA support might be enough. A bookkeeper might remove a job you spend half a day doing badly every month. A CRM might automate your follow-ups. A freelance marketer might keep your marketing moving while you concentrate on running the business.
Growth doesn’t always require a huge team. Sometimes it just requires recognising which jobs no longer require you.
Marketing doesn’t sit in a separate box
This is perhaps the biggest lesson I took from those conversations with dentists all those years ago. Marketing couldn’t turn somebody into a successful implant specialist on its own. We could generate awareness, position the dentist, communicate their expertise and help patients understand the treatment. But the business had to be able to deliver the promise. The capacity had to exist, the people had to be there, the systems had to work, and the experience had to match the positioning.
The same applies to almost every business. So before you say “I need more customers”, I’d ask a few questions first. Do you know how many enquiries you’re currently getting, and where they’re coming from? Do you know how many you’re converting? Are you following up the ones who aren’t ready immediately? Do you have capacity for more work? And does the experience customers receive match the business you’re telling them you are?
Because sometimes the next stage of growth isn’t another marketing campaign. It’s making sure the business is ready for the success you’re asking marketing to create.
