Do you want leads, referrals or prequalified sales? Do you know the difference?
I spent a lot of years chasing leads and I used to get a bunch of them. I spent almost every evening returning calls and running around town writing estimates for these leads. It worked though, I did get a lot of work. I think I ended up doing work for at least 1 out of ever 10 of those leads.
As time progressed, my reputation grew and as I got more into networking I began to get more referrals. With referrals I had a jump on the whole like and trust building part of the sales cycle and my closing ratios showed it. I wasn’t getting exactly the jobs I wanted but at least I wasn’t having to spend quite as much time with as many tire kickers.
When the business finally started getting to the point where I could spend the time needed really working “on” my business instead of just “in” my business the picture became clearer.
I gave myself very defined goals and in doing so realized that time spent chasing leads was counterproductive. The time it would take to call all of them, go through the whole sales process, write the estimates, etc. to only have one or two out of ten actually work with us compared to the profits made on the jobs turned out to be less than I could make just going to work for someone else. The referral numbers were better but still not good enough for me to achieve my goals.
Digging deeper I identified some clients who I had barely spent any time with before they signed up and noticed some very unusual things about them. Those were the clients who purchased the most and were the easiest to manage. Boom! How do I get more of those?
I quickly figured out that you’re not going to get those via any traditional marketing, advertising, networking or social media. I also figured out that it’s not something you can do quickly but I did figure it out and when I did, my closing ratios were literally over 95%!
I know that sounds impossible to many but the simple truth was the system I came up with was generating calls from people who were basically just calling to sign up. I barely had to tell them anything other than when we could start.
Too good to be true? Maybe for another business but not for yours? Or maybe you just don’t believe it all. I will admit that there have been a couple businesses in which I struggled to come up with a way in which to implement my plan but only a couple.
If you’re tired of cold calling, tired of writing all of those proposals and estimates that never pan out, tired of all that networking and tired of spending all of that money on marketing and advertising without the returns you need, challenge me!