![Sell the Sizzle Sell the Sizzle](https://data-1.podcastai.com/shows/DBjdAsSVofMEwZ0xaCAidg/cover-2.jpg)
Don't let leads die in the graveyard
Hey there, izzlers! Ever feel like your business graveyard is expanding, tombstones engraved with "Lost Opportunities" and "Missed Conversions"? Well, it's time to step into the role of the Lead Whisperer.
In this podcast, we'll unveil the magic elixir: speed. Picture yourself as a caffeine-fueled cheetah sprinting towards follow-up, leaving the competition in the dust. Why? Because in the sales world, prompt action is the key to converting those leads and preventing them from becoming lifeless bodies in someone else's graveyard.
If you enjoyed the show please give me a review on Apple Podcasts!
Also, check out my new book:
The Ultimate Formula for Winning Work With General Contractors.
It's packed with tips to help you double your sales conversion rates!
How to be a lead whisperer and breathe life into your lead graveyard.
I talk to a lot of a lot of business owners and one of the things that I can help a business with is, you know, I'm the growth guy. I'm all about helping you grow your business by the numbers, improving your revenues, amplifying your profits and making your cash flows exceptionally predictable and healthy.
So I'm all about how do we get the right revenue? How do we drive in new business? How do we attract new clients? And I have lead, artificial intelligence and sales automation systems to deliver and manufacture what I call the revenue factory. If you don't take a factory like mentality to producing something, it's not going to be very consistent.
So I have a methodology I call the revenue factory. But that's a little bit of an aside. What I've found in talking to a lot of business owners is, Mick, you know, we don't really I don't know if we want more leads. I give leads to my salespeople now, and they don't follow up. They don't call them. They think the leads are rubbish, and they're very, very busy.
So why don't people follow up on their leads? Because they don't believe that they're any good or they don't have confidence in Converting them. All those leads came to them so easily there was no none of their sweat equity put into it So they don't have that Connection with it, but whatever the case, leads are in abundance and are treated very badly.
I go into a lot of organizations and there's just graveyards and they've got tombstones out the back. The ones bearing the names of lost opportunity and missed conversions or don't know. I get that a lot. So did you win the deal or you didn't win the deal? Well, we don't know. What do you mean you don't know?
Didn't you call them and ask for the order? Oh, by the way, most people don't ask for the order. That's why they don't get the order. But not knowing, you know, what you're happening. So you've got all of this detritus, these dead bodies everywhere, pipelines that have got rotting, horrible corpses in them that you spent a lot of money on, but nothing ever happened.
But let's talk about those leads that Come in those leads that come in every day. The purpose of this, podcast is I talked earlier in one of my earlier podcasts on the importance of followup, but I'm going to focus on something that's very, very, I think, overlooked. I think it's overlooked, so I'm going to educate you on why it's important.
That is the need for speed.
Because what happens is you let leads die. They die on the vine until they shrivel and die. You need to be a lead whisperer. The necromancer of the sales world. The one who breathes life into cold leads and converts prospect callsinto cold, hard cash. And if you're in sales, you take your fair portion of that cash in the form of commission and for today's purposes, the only magic elixir you need, if you went to Hogwarts and brewed up a potion to help you increase your sales by 500%.
I'Ve got to think of a name for the potion. That's a good one. I'll do that offline. Yeah. You've got to be able to, the magic elixir you've got is speed. You've got to be like a caffeine fuelled cheetah, sprinting towards that follow up. So let me give you some, facts to illustrate that.
I took, I took a moment there to go on to Bard, because I asked Bard, as Head of Potions at Hogwarts, I want you to give me the name of a potion that could help you close more sales, because you act with speed, and give me the ingredients.
I've got to read this, it's really good.
I present to you, Felix Felicis Vendicio, the Elixir of Swift sales. This potent potion harnesses the magic of swiftness and persuasion, ensuring your sales pitch strikes with the accuracy of a well aimed amente and the charm of a winning quidditch match.
And then it goes on to give you the ingredients.
One. Dittany stem symbolizes resilience and adapt adaptability in the face of rejection.
One teaspoon of crushed flu network powder, which enhances connections and expedites communication.
Three dragonfly winds, imparts agility and the ability to seize fleeting opportunities.
A pinch of powdered unicorn horn, which infuses confidence and inspires trust in your offer.
Two Moalcoff Whiskers, whisk away hesitation and doubt, allowing for decisive action.
A single Gillyweed Stalk, which grants the courage to dive into uncharted waters and pursue new leads.
Two teaspoons of Honeyduke's Buzzing Sweets, which sweetens your words and leaves a lasting positive impression.
And then a dash of Verita Serum, ensures your message is clear. honest and resonates with your prospects needs
Bard goes on to tell me how to make this elixir. I love AI. very, very clever. But anyway, all joking aside, actually, if you went through that list. I mean, those are all essential elements of clear and concise communication, you know, swift speed, but we're talking about speed and I'll talk to you about some facts.
So listen here,
only 37 percent of companies respond to leads within an hour. So that means that 73 percent of companies move slower than a snail on Valium when it comes to follow up. You need to be the Usain Bolt of customer contact, not a dusty tumbleweed blowing through the inbox. Now, here's another killer thing.
If you respond to a lead within the first hour, you're seven times more likely to chat with the decision maker, right? When you get on the phone, skip the small talk, get straight to the money talk. Think the CEO is on the line.
If you get really, really good. And follow up in 60 seconds, your conversion rate skyrockets, like a SpaceX launch, it goes up 500%, 500%.
I can increase your conversion by 500 percent if you only just did one thing, and that is you respect
Oh no, impossible. Oh no, no, no. We're busy installing our HVAC. We're on top of a roof, you know, putting the felt down. We, we're, we're on a construction site, you know, and our phone is in the trailer on the side, you know, we can't respond to things in 60 seconds.
Well, If you want 500 percent your lead, you're sort of going to start thinking about that.
Let me come back to the speed and when you're not quite able to get to that call.
Otherwise what happens is the prospect wanders off and they become zombies in somebody else's graveyard.
Here's a killer fact. Here's a killer fact. 35 to 50 percent, one third to half of all sales, not just, not just leads, all sales, go to the first company who whispers sweet nothings into the prospect's ear.
If you're the first person to speak to somebody when they're shopping for something, you've got to A third to a 50 percent chance of winning that work. If that doesn't tell you that you need to get on those leads. Because people don't just shop around one, they shop around one, two, three or four places.
I mean, think about when you last shopped for something. And you went and bought something. Do they ever call you back? You went to a furniture store and you looked at a table and you're like, Oh, well, I like this, but I'm not sure it will fit. I'm going to take some measurements and go home. Does the furniture salesman call you?
No, they don't. They never call you.
Even the best company in the world doesn't call you, right? Apple, you go in there and buy a MacBook, or you go and look at an Apple Watch. They don't call you. They don't follow up with you. You're a lead, you walked in, you say, I have money to spend, I'm looking at watches and computers and then you walk out the store and nobody calls you.
I mean, how crazy is it? So that's how, that's how Broad this issue is, so it doesn't take much for you to be truly outstanding.
And 48 percent of salespeople are absolutely allergic to follow up. They never follow up. They just don't make any calls.
So don't, don't, don't, talk about slow. Talk about non existent. So don't, don't let that Be you.
I mentioned this on one of my earlier podcasts, right? 80 percent of business happens after the fifth call. Only 2 percent happens on the first call and only 3% on the second
So if you only make two calls or less, you're only competing for 5 percent of the business.
80 percent of the business comes after the fifth call.
So you want to think Rocky. You want to think Rocky, not Rambo, right? Rocky stays in for 12 rounds. He dukes it out. Rambo just goes and shoots things. So you want to be relentless, not reckless.
So you need to build a follow up sequence that has at least steps, five steps to it. Now that doesn't mean five phone calls. It might mean a text, a phone call, an email, a handwritten note. But you've got to be able to get in front of that prospect, several times
now coming back to the immediacy coming back to the speed one of this. I found this one quite fascinating. If you were actually on a call with the prospect and you text them while you're in the call, your your conversion rate. Goes up hugely, significantly. Where's my stats that I'm looking at? it Is very, very significant.
There it is, 40 percent higher. You're going to get a 40 percent higher conversion rate if you text. So when you're talking to somebody on the phone, you're talking about, say, hey, I've, I've got a brochure on this with several options. Let me text it to you. Now, you might have called their office phone.
I mean, the holy grail is getting the mobile number, right? And you say to the prospect, Hey, I need to show you these options. Where can I text it? Give me the number I can text it to you. And you text it to them. There and then, boom. That. Impress them or have something and you always want to be present.
Never just present one thing. You want to present multiple, multiple offers because most of the time they don't know really what they want. So you want to present a range of a range of options. So being able to text something to them, a brochure anything, or a piece of content, while they're on the phone, has a profound impact.
Again, speed, alacrity, responsiveness, you can be, you, this prospect is going, I've talked to all these other people, and nobody got back to me. And nobody seemed to be on the ball. And I'm talking to this guy, Mick Holley. He called me back within 60 seconds. He's, he's, he's texting me really valuable, uh, content.
, I'm, I'm really, really impressed. The other people just aren't going to get a look in. They're just, they're just not going to get a look in.
There are 34 million small to medium sized businesses in the United States and 70 percent of them are one person companies that don't have any employees.
I mentioned this earlier, who has time for follow up? You know, you, maybe you're in a bigger company, but you're doing that, you're doing the work, you're doing installation, you're doing fitting, whatever it might be, you don't have time to respond. So let Let the world of AI do that for you. I mean, it's so simple to set up.
If somebody calls you, you can send them an automatic text back. It will collect their telephone information. It will collect their email information. You can even have some questions that the AI can actually. Ask them while they're on the text and it'll say something like, Hey, I'm busy with another customer right now.
I do really, really want to help you. Your call is really, really important. I'm gonna call you right back as soon as well. So, so they get that message within a few seconds. Again, that responsiveness communicates subliminally that when I work with you, your company and your organization, right? If I have a problem, you're going to respond to it quickly.
I like this.
So prompt follow up. It's just not a box to tick. It's an absolute necromancy spell. It's about respect, momentum, and ultimately preventing those leads from entering their dusty graves or doing business with your less able competitor who just happened to be faster on the draw.
You need to act like Jack.
Jack be nimble. Jack, be quick.
You remember that poem?
So ditch the shovel and pick up the phone.
Channel, channel your inner lead whisperer. Breathe life into those valuable leads and watch those sales numbers soar higher, rise faster than a vampire on Red Bull.
Remember, slow and steady loses the race. You don't want to be slow.
You can be steady, but if you're steady and slow, you're going to lose.
You need to hustle. Hustle like it's your middle name.
There's a need. A need for speed. So, run!
Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I will put The Hogwarts magic potion in the show notes and at any time if you want to talk to me you can go to speaktomick.com and I will rapidly respond to your request Because I know leads are like gold.
We'll see you next time