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

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Dan Martell talks about how to deal with too many leads and how to make sure you re getting the most out of them. If you ve been in sales for a while and you ve noticed that you re running out of leads, this episode is for you!

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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. 0.83
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.