“I know exactly what I want. My budget is whatever you charge. I just need a little push with a sales pitch”
That’s what we call a good lead.
The reality though is that’s just a very small percentage of leads — it doesn’t matter what your lead source is (referrals included).
Back in March I made my sales team start classifying each lead as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on in-take. No specifications. That month, 800 came in, less then 5% were tagged as good (service calls or upsells from service were not tagged).
Yes, even with a well established / branded company, an essentially a bottomless budget for marketing, and my marketing expertise (ref this blog, success of my company, accolades earned, publications featured), that few of our leads were tagged as good.
The others, we’ll call crappy leads, were anything that didn’t fit the above definition. They may have had unrealistic budget expectations, or just kicking tires or maybe were soliciting other bids. Hell maybe they just didn’t answer on the first phone call, or respond to the voice mail.
So what happens to the other ‘crappy’ leads? Most trades business owners, or the sales people that have would naturally just ‘disqualify’ them. “Just move on” — that’s the attitude.
Are you doing the same thing?
From what I see in my Facebook group and others about CRAPPY LEADS, I’d say most of use are.
Is Thumbtack Better than HomeAdvisor? Are Google Ads still generating good leads? All my leads are tire kickers. These kinds of topics come up every single day. They’re searching for greener grass.
I’m going to break some bad news here. There is no source of ‘good leads’ by that definition. Every lead source is going to have a few good leads, in the midst of MANY bad leads. Some might be marginally better than the others, but in aggregate the extreme majority of the leads will not fit the definition of good leads.
If you want to make $$$, you need to take the ‘sales professional’ approach. A seasoned sales professional would take that pile of crappy leads, and say “let’s have some fun”. They would see opportunity in turning these leads into a sales.
On an individual level, the leads would be followed up with until contact was made. Then a meeting would be scheduled and a concerted effort would be made to sway the decision maker. If no sale was made follow ups would be scheduled. This can be systematized with required response and follow up times / quantity.
On a company level these leads would get dropped into what we call nurturing and/or re-marketing. That way we’re always in front of the leads (and past customers) with authentic content. Customers will see projects that you’re completing and think “these are guys for my projects”. They’ll see the people behind your customer and feel like they know you on a personal level (they’ll at least know you better then a competitor). They’ll see other projects and say “I want that”. My two ways of doing this are with Facebook Ads & Email Marketing.
In this framework & training video I cover more in detail the methods I use: [FRAMEWORK] HOW TO TURN SHIT LEADS INTO PREMIUM CUSTOMER.
For the “Company Level” stuff, the Connected Contractor is for you. We create the content, and strategically deliver it to your leads and past customers. Your customers will think it came from your own in-house team.
Learn more about it here: https://go.homeprosuccess.com/connected-contractor/