A sales lead (or potential client) is anyone with whom you establish contact of any kind in order to offer your goods or services with a goal of making new sales. Specifically, for renters this equates to all future guests.

The number of quality sales leads is the most important thing along with the sale itself because without leads even the most skilled sellers will not have an opportunity to hone their skills and make sales.

However, before you start investing too much time and money into new ways of gaining leads you should consider optimizing what you already have to increase your effectiveness.

First off, start with the web-page because many people tend to neglect the fact that a significant amount of visits to a web-page does not result in new web leads (sales leads created by the web-page). The reason for this is simple – visitors do not leave any sort of contact information.

Things that should be removed from a web-page in order to increase the number of web leads are listed below…

Accommodation prices

Although you are obligated by the law to display prices in each room/apartment (at least in some countries), the same does not apply to your web-pages. By displaying prices you are creating a possibility for a visitor who finds them unacceptable to leave your web-page without providing any contact information.

If you do not have prices on display, chances are that a visitor will contact you to learn about them. An additional advantage along with getting a new web lead for next year is also an opportunity to offer additional discounts that may help you negotiate a reservation right away, which is something you would not be able to do otherwise.

Naturally, it is also possible that a guest who would confirm a reservation based on displayed prices simply leaves a page now when they are not presented. Based on our experience, this scenario does not occur often and the final profits created by this approach are significantly greater than eventual losses. Examples of boosting web sales by removing prices are rare, but I believe that this is one of them.

Another way of using price list, without removing it from your web site, to gather more leads is described in one of our earlier posts “Use a price list to gain new leads“.

Accommodation bookings

The above mentioned principle applies to accommodation bookings as well. If a guest likes what you have to offer and agrees with your price, he or she will automatically turn to the next renter if the accommodation is not available during the period they desire. This will again result in no new web leads and probably in the fact that you will not be contacted next year.

By withholding accommodation bookings information for such a visitor you are creating a need for them to contact you about this.

Even though most guests are very flexible when it comes to adjusting their vacations and showing them your complete (not individual) accommodation bookings would be of assistance to them, I still believe that you can achieve better results if this information is provided after a guest contacts you first.

And in the end if you can’t find anything free in their desired period at least you have their contact information to contact them next year.

Brief description of accommodation and its surroundings

It is better not to provide a description of your accommodation if it will say something along the lines of “the apartment includes a double bed, bathroom, television set and a view of the sea.” Such a description makes your competition look more appealing and it portrays you as someone who did not invest even minimum effort to provide more details of the offered accommodation.

It is also possible that your definition of a “fully equipped apartment” differs from the guest’s definition which may result in accusations of false advertising. This is why it is best to have a well designed detailed description of what you are offering so that a guest who is still in the decision making process can add you to their short list. Because regardless of the fact that you may be offering more or even less than your competition, such an offer will look much better. This means that a guest will eventually contact you…

Ads and similar distractions

The web-page is a form of advertising used for your promotion. Why would you then place and additional ad alongside yours? (Inception effect anyone?)

Ads prevent the visitor from focusing on your content and offers as they push them into a less visible position and they can also take visitors away from your web-page before they even take a good look at it. Finally, what kind of a message are you sending to guests about yourself and the quality of your accommodation if it could seem that insignificant ad revenue is more important to you than renting itself?

The only kinds of ads renters can use are the ones pertaining to activities and awards that additionally highlight the value and quality of you and what you have to offer.

Obstacles to providing information

All your efforts will be in vain if it is difficult for guests to see how and where they can provide their contact information once they decide to do so.

You might know that the contact form is located under a link in the third menu of the first tab, but will this be clear to the guest?! Do you really need a number of their fax and year of birth to reply to their inquiry? These are all unnecessary steps that create friction when a guest decides to contact you and, rest assured, they will change their mind during such a process of providing information.

Adjust your web-page to visitors and allow them to contact you and provide their information from every sub-page.

How can you be sure that all obstacles have been removed? By making sure that all it takes is 1 or 0 clicks to access the contact form or the contact field and that these forms do not have more than 2 or 3 required fields.

My final advice is to experiment with offered advices as only this will let you find an ideal combination for the desired goal – of increasing web leads.

If you have additional suggestions about what could be removed from the web-page to achieve this goal, please share them with us in the comments section.