Ed Gandia breaks down how to handle prospects ready to buy now versus those still months away from deciding. The key: nurture the unready ones anyway, because building trust over time turns them into bigger clients later.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, this episode is much shorter than usual. Rather than my typical 45 minute format. Today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. This is part of the Audio Insights I publish for my private coaching clients every weekday and I thought you'd find it helpful. So here we go. Hope you enjoy it.
Something I quickly learned during my career in corporate sales is that virtually every salesperson out there is only interested in talking to Ready now leads.
These are the people who are ready.
To buy now or in the next few weeks, identify the need, done much of the research already. They have the budget set aside. They're ready to pull the trigger. Usually with you it could be with a competitor, but they're ready to move sometime very, very soon. And you know, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense it's human nature to focus on these prospects because we all have limited time to generate a result. In the case of salespeople, they have quotas to me and for us and for everybody out there who's doing something similar to what we're doing, where we got to bring the business in. We have income goals we want to reach and there are only so many hours in the day to get that done. So we want to optimize our time and resources by focusing on the best possible prospects. One of the most valuable lessons I learned in sales is that while the immediate money might be in the ready now leads column, if you will, the big money, the real money, is in the not yet ready column, or what I like to call the NYR Prospects column for short. NYR standing for Not Yet Ready Prospects. These are the prospects who are well qualified in every other way except for, for one thing, their timing. They're just not in a position to buy right now or in the very near term. When I learned to stay in touch with these NYR prospects in an easy and sustainable way, I found that about 30% of them came back eventually once the timing was right for them. Sometimes it took months, sometimes it took years. But the best part of all this is that a majority of them bought pretty quickly once they re engaged with me. Why? Well, not only because the timing was not right, but because I had done something else over the past few months or even years. I had built trust with them by staying in touch in a low key, professional way. So when they were ready, I was the first person they thought of or one of the first few they knew they were going to contact me and they didn't need to be sold all over again. My entire coaching and online course business is built on this principle. So you can imagine I'm a huge believer of this. A very small percentage of prospects hire me to be their coach when they're new to my world. So they come, they just joined my mailing list. Very, very small percentage. Even those who join my mailing list because they want to inquire about coaching with me, a very small percentage of those hire me within a few weeks. Some do. They're a small minority. Most of my coaching clients spend months or even years on my mailing list consuming my content and applying my ideas and advice before they decided to h. And you know what? That's the way I prefer it for the work that I do. It's important to me that you understand how I think, you understand how I work, that you understand my style of my approach. The way I think of it is if you want to be my roommate, I prefer that we get to know each other for a while first. That way we're confident it's a fit when we do decide to share an apartment. The degree to which this happens in writing and copywriting businesses and marketing consulting businesses varies depending on the target market you go after. There are some target markets where staying in touch with not yet ready prospects is vital and others it's not quite as fruitful. But I've never seen a case where it's not a good idea to practice this concept. It always pays off, even if it takes a few months to start seeing some results and if you do a good job of maximizing lifetime client value. So once somebody does become a client, the payoff of staying in touch with your night ready prospects can be massive. Because when somebody does come in, you know it's not just going to be a thousand dollar job. There's a very high probability we're talking about thousands or tens of thousands of dollars over the course of your relationship. Let me be clear about something, however. You need both. You need marketing that basically asks prospects if they're ready for help right now. And you need marketing that's designed to capture as many prospects as possible, even if most of them are not yet ready. A lead Magnet strategy is a classic example of this concept. Most people who download your lead magnet aren't ready to hire you today, but what this approach gives you is a bigger pool of prospects to work with. Prospects you can then gradually convert into clients when they are ready. So yes, work on implementing both approaches, one for those who are ready now, and one that gives you a bigger pool to work with over time. Do that consistently and you'll never be hungry for work.
Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More and Less time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com where you will also find the detailed shown notes to this in all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
