Most professional practitioners and solo-preneurs find themselves — at one point or another — in a dreadful cycle, referred to as feast or famine. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, we accept this cycle as an inevitable part of owning your own business. (It’s not, but convincing you of this fact will have to wait for another day.)
What’s most important today is short-cutting the client / patient acquisition process, therefore allowing you to save time and sell more. You see, part of the “rub” for solo-preneurs is that when we have a bunch of clients, we are busy, you know… serving them. Then, when the clients go away, we scramble to find more.
The permanent solution to this situation will require some work from you. To forever opt out of that feast / famine cycle, you’ll need a simple lead generation sequence, an indoctrination sequence and a sales strategy. BUT for today, I need to help solve a top frustration for solo-preneurs:
Spending Too Much Time with the Wrong Prospects.
You know, those prospects that take up your time. They show up for the free event, free consults, ask you for a proposal, set up a meeting to talk about your options, and then EITHER disappear altogether or finally admit they’re in NO position to buy from you.
Yeah. This sucks. I get it.
And I used to REALLY get frustrated by it. Following up on leads with a sinking feeling they were disappearing. HATING my market because I felt so disrespected by those that “wasted my time.” I ESPECIALLY detested those that said yes, but THEN disappeared.
All that time, I kept telling myself that ONE DAY, I’d be the one walking away. ONE DAY, I’d be the one that had enough leads that I’d INTERVIEW them… and then I’d DECIDE if I wanted them or not. ONE DAY, I told myself, selling conversations would look different.
Then, ONE DAY happened.
But “one day” didn’t look the way I’d imagined…. ME at the top of a mountain with a long line of prospects — check in hand. ONE DAY showed up like this:
One day, I was so FED UP that I decided I’d no longer follow the long sales conversation… leaving investment (cost) issues at the end. ONE DAY, I decided that I’d pre-qualify prospects before spending time on them.
I changed my sales sequence and wrote an email that would go out to ANYONE requesting a consult or time with me. The email “template” noted all of my preferences & requirements for clients. It also “warned” them that my fees are NOT for the faint of heart. It told them that my least expensive program was $1897. It asked them to confirm that all of these requirements were “welcome assurance” that they were in the right place.
ONLY THEN would an appointment be set to meet with them.
Allow me to address the heart palpitations and elephants in the room.
- YES. I was nervous. At first. Thankfully, I was too frustrated with my time being wasted to give into this fear.
- YES, this approach DOES lead to less consults. BUT, here’s the beauty of it:
You spend less time talking to un-ideal prospects, creating proposals that go unanswered, checking email to see if that prospect “came through.” But, you make more money. Because the time you DO spend with prospects is spent with the RIGHT prospects.
Time wasted reduced. Checks cashed, increased. It’s a win-win!
