Dan Martell - January 07, 2019


How To Deal With Too Many Leads in Your SaaS Business


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

192.3904

Word Count

1,849

Sentence Count

68


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor,
00:00:02.280 and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03.960 And in this video, I'm going to teach you
00:00:05.320 how to deal with too many leads.
00:00:07.800 I know, high quality problem.
00:00:09.000 You're like, come on, man, I need more leads.
00:00:11.340 There are people out there that got too many leads
00:00:13.260 and I'm going to teach you how to deal with it
00:00:15.020 in a way that doesn't reduce your revenue opportunity
00:00:17.480 but gives you way more time back in your schedule.
00:00:20.300 And be sure to stay at the end.
00:00:21.740 We're going to tell you how to get access
00:00:23.280 to my discovery call framework
00:00:25.400 to allow you to add a two-step process
00:00:28.300 to your sales flow to qualify sales better
00:00:32.160 and also prep them ready for the demo
00:00:35.200 to get more people to buy.
00:00:49.340 So maybe you have this issue
00:00:51.120 where you have way too many leads coming in.
00:00:53.300 If you've set up a funnel, like I teach my coaching clients,
00:00:55.920 where, especially if you do a demo process where they're
00:00:59.220 essentially filling out an application and then scheduling
00:01:01.600 time on your calendar and you're just doing product demos,
00:01:03.600 product demos, product demos, closing deals,
00:01:05.560 getting people onboarded, activated, et cetera,
00:01:08.300 then you may run into an issue because one of my clients,
00:01:11.440 Tom, came to me.
00:01:12.540 First problem we had to solve was getting more leads.
00:01:14.640 Once we got him to a couple hundred a month of qualified
00:01:17.800 leads, then the challenge was his calendar was just
00:01:20.420 overflowing that he didn't have time to manage the product,
00:01:23.120 manages customer success team and he was just getting
00:01:26.860 overwhelmed with the amount of new opportunities.
00:01:29.100 So what we did is we added a few things into the mix
00:01:31.920 that I'm going to teach you today that not only allowed him
00:01:34.660 to get clarity into his process but also give him like
00:01:38.940 three quarters of his time back and only spend time with
00:01:42.880 customers that were higher value, higher revenue potential
00:01:48.880 and brought a lot of energy to his day.
00:01:51.520 I'm gonna share with you guys the five ways you can do that
00:01:55.400 in your business today.
00:01:57.200 Number one, lead scoring.
00:01:59.120 Now, I'm not gonna talk about the technology or the tool.
00:02:01.300 You can check the comments below to see which ones others are
00:02:04.700 recommending but there is marketing technology out there
00:02:07.240 that allow you to do lead scoring.
00:02:08.740 Essentially, when somebody converts on a newsletter, an
00:02:11.240 opt-in or even signs up for a demo,
00:02:13.880 you can score their activity based on did they visit the
00:02:17.080 website, any information about their company.
00:02:21.380 There's so much data available to you if you implement lead
00:02:24.760 scoring but all of that will allow you to then qualify those
00:02:28.560 new opportunities and kind of rank order and prioritize them
00:02:31.800 in your business so you don't spend time with folks that
00:02:34.300 aren't as high value.
00:02:36.040 Number two, funnel filter.
00:02:38.100 So when I think of building out a sales funnel, I always think
00:02:41.880 of the top of the funnel and adding a filter, a form that
00:02:46.780 ask a few questions of the prospect so that I know if I
00:02:50.480 can best serve them.
00:02:51.960 You see this very often in an opt-in forum where they'll ask,
00:02:54.720 you know, organizational size, monthly budget, team size,
00:03:00.360 industry, et cetera because what's happening is the sales
00:03:03.960 team knows that they only have a product that works best for
00:03:06.800 certain types of clients and they want to essentially add a
00:03:10.180 filter so that they don't get any of that noise into their
00:03:13.980 sales process.
00:03:14.980 So that's number two is just adding a funnel filter
00:03:17.620 to any kind of opt-in form.
00:03:19.420 Now some of you guys might be worried because you're like,
00:03:21.080 well if I do that then not as many people are gonna convert.
00:03:23.880 That may be true but the trade-off is worth it
00:03:27.200 where you get the data to make a better assessment.
00:03:30.100 Yes, you'll have an impact on your conversions
00:03:32.340 but you'll be able to make better assessment
00:03:34.440 and have better conversations with those prospects.
00:03:37.740 Number three, a two-step sales process.
00:03:40.800 One of my favorite things to do and I've seen many of my clients
00:03:43.400 do one step, meaning somebody fills out an application,
00:03:45.740 they get to a product demo, they close the person on that
00:03:48.640 first demo, credit card, purchase, sign up, going,
00:03:51.700 good to go but if you've got the issue that Tom had where he
00:03:55.440 had hundreds of demos per month then you might want to
00:03:58.580 consider adding, after you've done the lead scoring and a
00:04:01.120 funnel filter, a two step process.
00:04:03.620 This is where you add a discovery call, a 15 minute
00:04:05.920 call with the prospect to really understand if you can
00:04:10.160 even serve them and it's in that call that you want
00:04:13.400 to kind of guide them to the vision and what they want
00:04:15.840 to accomplish and some of the big challenges they're looking
00:04:17.640 to overcome with your solution.
00:04:19.140 But at the same time, ask questions that are going to allow
00:04:22.080 you to know if they're going to be the best type of customers
00:04:25.280 for, for the most part, a more hands-on approach
00:04:28.880 to activation and deploying of the customer, right?
00:04:31.420 So if they're not a fit, you politely say,
00:04:33.480 hey, I appreciate your time but unfortunately,
00:04:35.780 our product is actually best suited for companies like X
00:04:38.420 and I would recommend checking out this solution,
00:04:40.460 et cetera, for your problem.
00:04:42.060 which sounds crazy to a lot of founders,
00:04:43.660 but that's a really great way of being clear
00:04:46.000 on who we serve and who we don't serve
00:04:47.360 so that your customer success team
00:04:48.700 doesn't get inundated with trying to serve
00:04:50.940 a ton of people that have been sold
00:04:53.040 and really get clear on the customer avatar.
00:04:56.880 Number four, improve your MQL or SQL definition.
00:05:01.280 So an MQL is a marketing qualified lead
00:05:03.920 and SQL is a sales qualified lead.
00:05:06.380 What that means typically is you have a marketing person
00:05:09.020 driving leads that are marketing qualified,
00:05:13.860 meaning that they're potentially the role that you focus on,
00:05:17.400 they have the budget, et cetera.
00:05:18.400 So the MQL is saying this person could buy,
00:05:22.640 they just may not be in the market yet.
00:05:24.400 So that's an MQL.
00:05:25.400 The SQL is when a prospect or lead turns into an opportunity.
00:05:30.000 And for something to become an opportunity,
00:05:31.840 there needs to be certain characteristics.
00:05:33.440 One is they have a need identified and they want your
00:05:35.940 solution and that's usually what an SDR or a BDR,
00:05:38.520 a business development rep or a sales development rep,
00:05:40.580 they focus on creating these opportunities.
00:05:42.820 All I'm saying is that you can increase the filter
00:05:46.920 and the kind of the limit of what's required
00:05:50.800 for something to be qualified.
00:05:52.600 And by doing that, you're gonna reduce the amount of noise
00:05:55.200 in your sales pipeline.
00:05:57.000 Again, it's a tough decision because you're like,
00:05:58.880 well, I need more leads and you're saying
00:06:01.000 that I increased the filter and all of a sudden now,
00:06:03.140 or the qualification, all of a sudden now
00:06:05.540 I have less leads in my funnel.
00:06:07.340 Yes, I'm saying that because they're going to be higher
00:06:09.840 quality, higher converting, higher value so that you get
00:06:13.780 people that you can actually add a ton of value.
00:06:15.920 There's no point in converting somebody into a customer and
00:06:18.980 then having them churn after 30 days, right?
00:06:21.320 And that's what happens when you get the wrong prospects and
00:06:23.760 the wrong customers into your product.
00:06:25.860 Especially if you have a big upfront investment in customer
00:06:29.960 success and activating their accounts and migrating the data
00:06:32.900 and doing all this stuff only to have them not stick around.
00:06:35.460 So you wanna make sure that you increase your definitions
00:06:38.460 for your MQLs and your SQLs.
00:06:40.300 And number five, create a self-service plan.
00:06:43.400 What this means is that if currently you have a kind of
00:06:46.940 an application to a demo process and you realize you have way
00:06:51.140 too many demos and you don't wanna hire a bunch of sales
00:06:53.940 people, you just wanna hire, you wanna qualify and have a
00:06:56.380 higher quality of conversation, then what you could do is in
00:07:00.260 those applications if you had a self-service version that might
00:07:04.760 be priced differently or not, but you just say,
00:07:07.100 hey, I appreciate you reaching out.
00:07:09.300 Here's a link to sign up for a product to try it out.
00:07:12.540 You know, based on this free plan,
00:07:14.740 you get access to email support and you essentially reduce
00:07:18.840 the burden on your customer success team by letting the
00:07:22.540 customer self-activate.
00:07:23.940 Yes, you're going to have higher churn.
00:07:25.180 Yes, you're going to have lower activation,
00:07:26.980 but that way you're not losing the lead,
00:07:29.560 but you're not having it impact your team in regards to the
00:07:33.560 overhead and the bandwidth that's gonna be required
00:07:35.560 to service that customer.
00:07:36.860 So that's a really great way to essentially downsell
00:07:41.600 a customer that isn't as far along in the maturity
00:07:44.600 of maybe their organization that they would need to be
00:07:46.440 to be able to invest in a more higher tier plan,
00:07:49.680 but without losing them a customer
00:07:51.040 so they could eventually grow with you.
00:07:53.580 So five changes you can make to deal
00:07:55.640 when you have too many leads coming in to your startup.
00:07:59.360 Number one, lead scoring so that you can really understand
00:08:02.460 360 view of who that person is before they came in to your
00:08:05.760 pipeline.
00:08:06.540 Number two, a funnel filter so you can ask one or two questions.
00:08:10.040 They're really gonna get you clear if that person is a great
00:08:13.140 candidate for your product.
00:08:14.500 Number three, two-step sales process so you can add a
00:08:18.140 discovery call to really qualify them so you don't take up your
00:08:21.340 account exec's time.
00:08:22.940 Number four, improve your MQL and SQL definitions so that you
00:08:28.080 raise the stakes on what's required to be a marketing or
00:08:31.620 sales qualified lead and five, create a self-service plan so
00:08:35.460 you can essentially down sell gracefully in an automated way
00:08:39.300 folks that would never be able to be profitable for you to serve
00:08:43.860 as it is in your business today.
00:08:46.500 So as I mentioned beginning this video I want to share with you
00:08:48.380 an incredible resource called the Discovery Call Builder.
00:08:51.780 You can click the link below to get access to your copy.
00:08:54.400 Today essentially it's a nine box model.
00:08:56.940 It's a flow conversation structure for you to be able to do
00:09:00.780 a quick 10 to 15 minute discovery call with a new prospect.
00:09:04.780 Most importantly, for you to qualify them to make sure
00:09:07.860 they're the right fit for your solution so you don't clog up
00:09:11.560 your account exec's calendar with unqualified leads.
00:09:15.160 So be sure to click the link below to download your copy.
00:09:17.740 And as per usual, if you like this video,
00:09:19.540 be sure to smash that like button.
00:09:21.640 Subscribe to my channel if there's anybody you care about
00:09:23.780 that you think this would really serve.
00:09:25.380 Feel free to share with them directly.
00:09:27.540 And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
00:09:29.640 life and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.