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What Is Your Internet Response Strategy? If you don't have a process, in writing, for following up sales leads you are not likely to follow up at all.

By Grant Cardone Edited by Dan Bova

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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What happens when someone hits your website? Is there a plan in place? If not, you are leaving money on the table. Every person that goes to your website is looking for something. Are you following up? Are you actually serving them? Last week I discussed three mistakes people make with their internet leads, but today I want to tell you about the three main things you need in your internet response strategy -- predictability, consistency, and process.

What are the benefits of having a process to follow up? It gives predictability. You know there's a path. Do you think you are just going to know what to do? You're not. You don't know and your team doesn't know. A path, a process, steps -- these things cause predictability. They make me comfortable. 1,2,3,4,5.

If you got a package in the mail and there weren't steps in it, you wouldn't know what to do. If it's a mystery, I don't want a part of it. Or they send you the instructions and you can't read them. When people don't have a path, they just want to send the package back and not deal with it. This is what salespeople do. "These leads suck." And the next thing you know, days pass before they follow anybody up. You and your team need certainty about the number of times you will follow up.

Related: 3 Basics for Scaling Your Business

A laid out follow-up process is going to give you consistency. You need to do the same things over and over. Consistency is vital for you getting results. If you're doing something different every time you go out on the field, you'll never win because you're never going to have the certainty of what works and what doesn't work. This is going to give you clues about what your clients like and don't like, what they are complaining about, and what gives you more business.

When's that first contact? It should be the same time every time no matter what. You get a hit on your website -- BOOM -- if you want to go automated then go automated every time and make sure it's done in the same time. Maybe it's 12 seconds. Just get consistent. That way you can find out where your follow-up program needs to be modernized, modified, and where it needs to accommodate your buyer. Consistency will find if you are getting more business, if your prospects like it, and figure out for you what is working.

Related: Customer Retention Is No Accident -- How Small Business Can Get It Right

Process allows you to scale. It allows you to start hiring people and laying out the book and saying this is what we do. It also allows you to scale in other spaces. I can give that book to other people and tell them this is how we follow up. That becomes valuable when you start crossing time zones. When you go web people can hit you from California or Miami or Hong Kong in the same moment. I can literally hire people in different time zones, give them my process, and say to them when this lead hits in your space, this is what we do. It allows you to scale.

Take the time to build a process for you and your business and your expansion. Twentytwo million out of 28 million small businesses in America have no employees. They haven't scaled. They didn't grow, they didn't get big. They take small business to a whole new level. You don't grow your business because you don't scale it -- because you haven't written out what the processes are. A specific process in writing that you can deliver to other people creates consistency, credibility, confidence and growth. Figure out your process. You need the process to create consistency and predictability.

Related: Top 10 Customer-Centric Marketing Trends for 2016

Once you get predictability, consistency, and process with your internet response, you will start converting more leads. If you'd like more tools to help you and your business find and manage leads, get on Cardone University today. It's the #1 sales training platform in the world designed to close deals, skyrocket your income, and expand big time.

Grant Cardone

International Sales Expert & $1.78B Real Estate Fund Manager

Grant Cardone is an internationally-renowned speaker on sales, leadership, real-estate investing, entrepreneurship and finance whose five privately held companies have annual revenues exceeding $300 million.

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