As I help people learn how to sell their wonderful services and products at fees they are proud of, one of the issues that often comes up is the quality of the leads they are talking to.

I know that time is money to you.  You only have so many hours in the day, and you likely don’t want to spend all 24 of them “searching” for the people who are waiting to buy from you. In fact, if you spend too much time talking to the wrong people, you will not be in business for long!

One way you can make better use of your business time is to make sure you’re talking to the right people – those people who are likely to buy if you find a match between their problem and your solution.

Here are three questions to ask yourself to assess your current strategy.

Question 1:  Do the people I’m having sales conversations have the problem I help solve?  I know this might sound like a “no-brainer,” but I’m constantly amazed at how many people aren’t asking themselves this question to begin with.  You must have a process or strategy that helps identify whether you’re even talking to people who need your help.  Ideally, you want to know that at least 85-90% of the people you’re having conversations with actually have the problem you help solve.

Question 2:  Do the people I’m talking to understand they need to invest in themselves to solve their problem?  This is one I had to learn the hard way early in my business.  When you’re using a lower-level strategy like I was back then (free workshops for basically anyone with a pulse and a wallet), you really have no idea of whether your audience understands that people who get big results make big investments in themselves.  Depending on the environments people are in – and they are probably surrounded by other people who are just as “stuck” as they are, they may have no idea of what it really takes.

If your ideal client is an employee of someone else (vs. an entrepreneur), there is another layer to work through.  People who have always worked for someone else and have all their development magically paid for by someone else often start to believe that solutions are actually free.  And they take that consciousness everywhere with them – they have no idea that they even need to invest money in solutions.

So again, you need a strategy that helps you identify that the people you’re talking to even understand that an investment is required for a big result.

Question 3:  Have the people I’m talking to demonstrated willingness to invest in solutions for their problems?  This one expands on question 2.  Not only do you want the people you’re spending your precious sales time with to understand that they need to invest in themselves, but you also want to know that they are willing to make that investment!  Ideally, you know that the person you’re talking to has made investments in themselves in the past.

Again, this one can get tricky if your market is made up of people who work for someone else.  Especially if they work for a company that has a generous development program.  When I first started my business, fresh out of a 16-year career at a Fortune 100 company, I assumed that most of my future clients would be employees of that company.  It didn’t take long to learn that there was a big issue with that assumption.  Even more so as I started up-leveling my fees.  The problem was that many of the people who worked there had developed a sense of entitlement – it’s someone else’s job to invest in me, not mine!

Getting really clear on these three questions will make a huge difference in how many people you will ultimately serve and how much income you will make in your business.

You simply must have strategies in place to make sure you’re talking to the right people!

Are you floundering in this area? Click here to apply for a Step Up! Strategy Session with Debbie!

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