A client recently told me that they were getting so many leads, but they weren’t necessarily getting qualified leads. Sales is a numbers game, but more isn’t always better if the quality isn’t there. The more calls you make, the more prospects you get, the more appointments you have, the more sales you make. But that also means you get more unqualified leads in the mix. If you don’t do anything different about that, you’re going to continue the cycle of getting too many unqualified leads in your pipeline and that is a huge time suck. It can be demotivating because it can lower your overall commissionable income because you’re spending time on activity that’s not producing revenue. So how do we fix this?

Reverse engineer their decision-making process 

You need to reverse engineer your buyer’s decision making process. If you reverse engineer the decision-making prospect that your buyer makes, you’ll start to identify at what stages in this process you become relevant. A lot of potential buyers for your product or service will start doing research on a product or service many months before they may be ready to make an investment. As people start the research phase, their level of commitment typically isn’t urgent. You don’t want to be out of sight in that phase, but the effort you’ll put into that early-stage prospect isn’t going to be the same as the late-stage prospect. To stay in their mind during that stage, remember what these folks are doing. They’re doing research, looking at blogs, listening to podcasts, watching commercials, reading emails. Meet them where they are in that stage. Focus on things like outbound marketing or social media marketing or whatever marketing is relevant to your business.

Create a client avatar

So that means what you want is to spend time with someone who is at the tail end of that decision making process and is ready to make a decision. When you reverse engineer the process a buyer goes through to purchase your product, you figure out what your buyer is doing long before they make a decision. When they get beyond those early steps, that’s when you really want to be involved. But how do you know?  Once you reverse engineer the buying process, you create your client avatar. In this process, you imagine every aspect of life for the person who uses your products. Are they married? What is their income? What type of business do they own? What did they purchase last year? What struggles are they facing in life? What’s their socioeconomic status? Where do they live? What other brands do they trust? What’s their media diet like?What podcasts do they listen to? What shows do they watch?  You start identifying every key detail about your potential prospect to craft an in-depth client avatar. That should help you figure out the buying process and at what stage you need to come in. During that stage when he’s ready to make a decision, that’s when your time investment is at its highest.

If you’re on a streak of speaking to under-qualified or non-qualified leads, give this a shot. Reverse engineer the buying process and paint the picture of your perfect client avatar. Once you do that, you’ll know how to tailor and target your prospecting activities. If you need help with this process, schedule some time on my calendar. I’m spending some time in the back half of the year, speaking to people who work with me or who who want to work with me. All said and done I’m just spending some time on a call, helping you identify some of these problems. It’s free because I enjoy doing it. So reserve some time on my calendar today.

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