- Hi, I'm Dan Martell.
Serial entrepreneur, investor and creator of SaaS Academy and
in this video I'm gonna teach you how to
deal with too many leads.
I know, high quality problem.
You're like, "Come on man, I need more leads."
There're people out there that have too many leads and I'm
gonna teach you how to deal with it in a way that doesn't reduce
your revenue opportunity but gives you way more time back in
your schedule and be sure to stay the end
where I'm going to tell you how to get access
to my Discovery Call framework
to allow you to add a two step process to your
sales flow to qualify sales better
and also prep them ready
for the demo to get more people to buy.
(upbeat music)
So maybe you have this issue where you have way
too many leads coming in.
If you've set up a funnel like I teach my coaching clients where
especially if you do a demo process where they're
essentially filling out an application and then scheduling
time on your calendar and you're just doing product demos,
product demos, product demos, closing deals getting people
on-boarded, activated, et cetera then you may run into an issue
because one of my clients, Tom, came to me first problem we had
to solve was getting more leads.
Once we got him to a couple hundred a month of qualified
leads then the challenge was his calendar was just overflowing.
That he didn't have time to manage a product,
manage his customer success team and he was just getting
overwhelmed with the amount of new opportunities.
So what we did is we added a few things into the mix,
I'm gonna teach you today that not only allowed him to get
clarity into his process but also give him like three
quarters of his time back.
And only spend time with customers that were
higher value, higher revenue potential
and brought a lot of energy to his day.
So I'm going to share with you guys the five ways you can do
that in your business today.
Number one, lead scoring.
Now I'm not going to talk about the technology or the tool,
you can check the comments below to see which ones others are
recommending but there is marketing technology out there
that allow you to do lead scoring.
Essentially, when somebody converts on a newsletter,
an opt in or even signs up for a demo,
you can score their activity based on
did they visit the website,
any information about their company.
There's so much data available to you if you implement lead
scoring but all of that will allow you to then qualify those
new opportunities and kind of rank order and prioritize them
in your business so you don't spend time with folks that
aren't as high value.
Number two, funnel filter.
So when I think of building out a sales funnel I always think of
the top of the funnel and adding a filter,
a form that ask a few questions
of the prospects so that I know
if I can best serve them.
You see this very often in an opt in form where they'll ask
you know, organizational size, monthly budget,
team size, industry, et cetera because what's happening is the
sales team knows that they only have a product that works best
for certain types of clients and they want to essentially add a
filter so that they don't get any of that noise
into their sales process.
So that's number two is just adding a funnel filter to any
kind of opt in form.
Now some of you guys might be worried because you're like well
if I do that then not as many people are going to convert.
That may be true but the tradeoff is worth it where you
get the data to make a better assessment.
Yes, you'll have an impact on your conversions but you'll be
able to make better assessment and have better conversations
with those prospects.
Number three, a two step sales process.
One of my favorite things to do and I've seen many of my clients
do one step, meaning somebody fills out an application,
they get to a product demo.
They close the person on that first demo.
Credit card, purchase, sign up, going,
good to go.
But if you've got the issue that Tom had where he had hundreds of
demos per month then you might want to consider adding after
you've done the lead scoring and a funnel filter
a two step process.
This is where you add a discovery call.
A 15 minute call with the prospect to really understand
if you can even serve them.
And it's in that call that you want to kind of guide them to
the vision and what they want to accomplish and some of the big
challenges they're looking to overcome with your solution but
at the same time ask questions that are gonna allow you to know
if they're going to be the best type of customers
for the most part a more hands on approach to activation and
deploying of the customer, right?
So if they're not a fit, you politely say, "Hey, I appreciate
"your time but unfortunately our product is actually best suited
"for companies like X and I would recommend checking out this
"solution et cetera for your problem," which sounds crazy to
a lot of founders but that's a really great way of being clear
on who we serve and who we don't serve so that your customer
success team doesn't get inundated with trying to serve a
ton of people that have been sold and
really get clear on the customer avatar.
Number four, improve your MQL or SQL definition.
So an MQL is a marketing qualified lead.
An SQL is a sales qualified lead.
What that means typically is you have a marketing person driving
leads that are marketing qualified meaning that they're
potentially the role that you focus on,
they have the budget, et cetera.
So the MQL is saying this person could buy,
they just may not be in the market yet.
So that's an MQL.
The SQL is when prospect or lead turns into an opportunity and
for something to become an opportunity
there needs to be certain characteristics.
One is they have a need identified and they want your
solution and that's usually what an SDR or a BDR,
business development rep or sales development rep,
they focus on creating these opportunities.
All I'm saying is that you can increase the filter and the kind
of limit of what's required for something to be qualified.
And by doing that you're going to reduce the amount of noise
in your sales pipeline.
Again, it's a tough decision because you're like,
"Well, I need more leads.
"And you're saying that I increase the filter and all of a
"sudden now, the qualification.
"All of a sudden now I have less leads in my funnel."
Yes, I'm saying that because they're gonna be higher quality,
higher converting, higher value so that you get people that you
can actually add a ton of value.
There's no point in converting somebody into a customer and
then having them churn after 30 days. Right?
And that's what happens when you get the wrong prospects and the
wrong customers into your product.
Especially if you have a big upfront investment in customer
success and activating their accounts and migrating the data
and doing all this stuff only to have them not stick around.
So you want to make sure that you increase your definitions
for your MQLs and your SQLs.
And number five, create a self service plan.
What this means is that if currently you have a kind of an
application to a demo process and you realize you have way too
many demos and you don't want to hire a bunch of salespeople.
You just want to hire you want to qualify and have a higher
quality of conversation then what you could do is in those
applications if you had a self-service version that might
be priced differently or not but you just say,
"Hey, I appreciate you reaching out.
"Here's a link to sign up for our product to try it out.
"You know, based on this free plan you get access to email
support," and you essentially reduce the burden on your
customer success team by letting the customer self activate.
Yes, you're gonna have higher churn.
Yes, you're gonna have lower activation but that way you're
not losing the lead but you're not in,
you're not having an impact your team in regards to the overhead
and the bandwidth it's gonna require
to service that customer.
So that's a really great way to essentially down sell
a customer that isn't as far along
in the maturity of maybe their organization
that they would need to be to be able to invest
in a more higher tier plan but without losing them a customer
so they could eventually grow with you.
So five changes you can make to deal when you have too many
leads coming in to your startup.
Number one, lead scoring so that you can really understand a 360
view of who that person is before they came
in to your pipeline.
Number two, a funnel filter so you can ask one or two questions
that're really going to get you clear if that person is a great
candidate for your product.
Number three, two step sales process so you can add a
discovery call to really qualify them so you don't take up your
account execs' time.
Number four, improve your MQL and SQL definitions so that you
raise the stakes on what's required to be a marketing or
sales qualified lead.
And five, create a self service service plan so you can
essentially down sell gracefully in an automated way folks that
would never be able to be profitable for you to serve as
it is in your business today.
So as I mentioned beginning of this video I want to share with
you an incredible resource called
the Discovery Call Builder.
You click the link below to get access to your copy today.
Essentially it's a nine box model,
it's a flow conversation structure for you to be able to
do a quick 10 to 15 minute discovery call
with a new prospect.
Most importantly for you to qualify them to make sure
they're the right fit for your solution so you don't clog up
your account execs calendar with unqualified leads so be sure to
click the link below to download your copy.
And as per usual if you like this video be sure
to smash that like button.
Subscribe to my channel.
If there's anybody you care about that you think this is
really serve feel free to share with them directly.
And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.
Alright, alright, alright, alright.