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Why Getting More Leads Might be Harmful to Your Business

By Kevin Nations Posted on Aug 04, 2007

I was in Philadelphia recently with my son Geoff and we went to dinner with Tom Beal (VP – Ops for Mike Filsaime). Tom told us a GREAT story about a sales manager who had a salesman looking for more leads.The sales manager told the rep to come back the next day because he had gotten a very special set of leads. The rep got the leads and that day- he closed 90% of them into sales.

This went on for a couple of weeks and the fourth time he came back to the sales manager and said – I need even MORE of those leads. His manager handed him the phone book and said – “Today you get them yourself. Here’s where I’ve been getting them.”

The sales rep – thinking that the leads were special – had applied a different SYSTEM to closing the ‘valuable’ leads and as such had enjoyed a high closing ratio. Want to know what happened when he found the leads were randomly generated? Would you believe that his closing ratio returned to his normal 25%?

On my websites, I ask people their biggest sales challenge and ‘MORE LEADS’ beats the next closest competitor out by a more than two-to-one margin. I even sell a tremendous package on how to get more leads. I call it The Ultimate Prospecting System.

But without a SYSTEM to manage your Prospects into Profits, acquiring more leads means that you’ve just wasted your opportunity to sell to all those leads that you’ve acquired and not acted on.

One of Robert Cialdini’s Laws of Psychological Persuasion was the Law of Consistency and Commitment. People tend to continue in the manner in which they relate to someone. It’s the same law that makes it hard to start a romantic relationship with a long-term friend. You just don’t see them that way.

So – more importantly than acquiring leads is to make sure that from the beginning – your prospects “see you that way” – that is, that they see you as someone that they aspire to do business with. Someone that they aspire to benefit from your service.

Without that, you’re building up a large list of people who like your free information but don’t take you or your offers seriously. And that is a COSTLY mistake. You would have been better off to wait until you had a system to convert them.

Do you?

The Client Acquisition System of the New Economy works in Four Steps to bring every qualified client to the point where they do business with you – while weeding out those who are not qualified and ensuring that you spend your quality time with serious candidates for your service.

First – it puts into place a Lead Collection System. Somewhere to automatically manage the flow of leads and the communications that need to be delivered in order to expose their need for your service.

Secondly – you have a Lead Seduction and Selection Process in place where people are educated to their need for your service and are qualified by their responses to ‘trigger’ offers.

Third – You have a POWERFUL Lead Conversion System that brings their need to the top of their awareness and allows them to realize the value of NOT moving forward with you – which motivates IMMEDIATE Client Conversion.

Finally – after all of these are in place (In other words, after you know what to do with your leads once you get them) – you institute your Lead Attraction System. Because you now convert Leads at a measurable return on investment per lead, you’ll be able to invest SIGNIFICANTLY more to acquire leads and as such continue to raise your ROI.

This four-step process will cure any sales slump. Because it deals with personal human interaction, it is the fastest way possible to generate immediate cash and it also has elements to protect your list from over-exposure to your offer since all of your marketing simply drives to the Lead Conversion Process (or Strategy Session).

This is without doubt the de facto System for Client Acquisition in this New Economy. And those who apply it consistently will profit beyond their ability to imagine.

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Kevin Nations trains experts and entrepreneurs how to boost Big Ticket Sales within their businesses by using Automated Profit Systems to convert Prospects into Profits with ease. Sign up HERE for his newsletter, the Ultimate Profit Journal>> REPRINT AUTHORIZATION
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