Stop Letting New Business Slip Through Your Fingers

0:00Hello, this is Mark Satterfield, and welcome to the Velvet Rope Playbook. Tonight's chapter, Stop Letting New Business Slip Through Your Fingers. Caroline Lawson wanted more leads. This became clear approximately three minutes into our conversation. Caroline owned a successful interior design firm specializing in substantial residential projects. Her clients tended to own more than one home, and a typical engagement was worth enough that losing a good prospect was not something one wanted to make a habit of. We need more people coming in, she told me. Does seem reasonable. So I asked her how many inquiries she received during the previous six months.

0:46She wasn't sure. We found out. There were 83. How many of those became clients? She knew that number. Seven. What happened to the other 76? There was a pause. Some weren't right for us. Fair enough. What happened to the ones who were? Another pause. And this one lasted considerably longer. Caroline, as it turned out, didn't have a lead problem. She had a what happened to everybody problem. This is one of the more expensive problems in marketing because it's remarkably easy to overlook. We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about how to get people to show up. More traffic, more followers, more advertising, more referrals, more people visiting the website, more people downloading something, more people raising their hands.

1:39And then, having gone to all that trouble and expense to attract them, we seem surprised when most of them don't immediately do what we'd like them to do. But most people won't. Most people who visit your sales page won't contact you. Some who contact you won't schedule a conversation. Some whose schedule won't be ready to move forward. Some will tell you they're extremely interested and then disappear into whatever mysterious place extremely interested prospects go. None of this is particularly unusual. It's human behavior. People get distracted. They hesitate. They need to discuss it with someone.

2:18They decide they'll deal with it next week. They open your email while standing in line somewhere, think, I need to respond to that, and 30 seconds later become fascinated by something completely unrelated. This is why I think we make a mistake when we treat every person who doesn't take immediate action as a rejection. Frequently, they haven't said no. They've simply stopped moving. And those are two very different things. Caroline had plenty of those people. There was the couple who had a very good initial conversation with her and then disappeared. There was the prospect who requested a proposal but hadn't responded to it.

2:57There were several people who filled out part of the inquiry process but never completed it. There was one woman who actually told Caroline, We definitely want to do this. I just need to get through the next couple of weeks. That conversation had taken place four months earlier. Did you follow up with her, I asked? Caroline had. Once. This is where the economics get interesting. Caroline was preparing to spend considerably more money generating additional inquiries while sitting on a small collection of people who already knew who she was, had demonstrated interest in what she sold, and in several cases had actually spoken with her.

3:38She'd already paid to find them. Now she was preparing to pay to replace them. There's a peculiar logic to that, and it's not unique to Caroline. A great deal of marketing is built around acquiring attention, while surprisingly little is built around what happens after you've acquired it. But think about the difference between these two people. One has never heard of you. The other visited your website, read about what you do, perhaps downloaded something, requested information, or even had a conversation with you? Which one would you rather persuade? Personally, I'll take the second one. This doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue people indefinitely or send 17 emails asking whether they've quote-unquote had a chance to circle back.

4:24Please don't. Good follow-up isn't pestering people until they surrender. It's giving an interested person another reason to resume a decision they're already started to make. Sometimes that's simply a reminder. Sometimes it's answering the question they're probably wrestling with. Sometimes it's a useful piece of information that gives them a new reason to think about the problem. Sometimes it's a client story that lets them see themselves in the outcome. And sometimes it's nothing more sophisticated than you mentioned this was something you wanted to address. Is it still on your radar? The point is not to chase.

5:01The point is to remain present. This is particularly important when you're selling to affluent clients because expensive decisions frequently take time. Someone considering a $50 ,000 engagement doesn't necessarily wake up Tuesday morning, discover you at 917, and hire you by lunch. They investigate. They think. They compare. They get busy. They come back. And during that period, silence can be surprisingly expensive. There's another reason follow-up matters. Every additional prospect you generate costs you something. Maybe it's advertising dollars. Maybe it's the time you spend creating content.

5:41Maybe it's the effort required to build referral relationships or appear on podcasts or attend events. However you acquire them, you paid for their attention. Which means before spending more money finding the next hundred people, it might be worth asking what happened to the hundred you already found. Caroline and I eventually identified a relatively small group of previous inquiries who had been qualified and had shown real interest. We didn't invent a new marketing campaign. We didn't rebuild her website. We didn't decide she needed to become a TikTok sensation. We simply created a thoughtful reason to reconnect with these people, and several conversations restarted.

6:24That's the interesting thing about follow-up. You don't necessarily need dramatically more people entering your marketing system if you can become substantially better at converting the people already in it. If 100 prospects currently produce five clients, moving that number to six or seven can have an enormous impact when each client is worth tens of thousands of dollars. No viral video required. So before you decide you need more traffic, more followers, more leads, take a look behind you. Who visited but didn't inquire? Who inquired but didn't schedule? Who scheduled but didn't buy? Who said, not right now?

7:07Who seemed genuinely interested and simply disappeared? Now, some of those people are gone. Some were never right for you. But a few may be considerably closer to becoming clients than the strangers you're about to spend money trying to attract. And sometimes the difference between someone who almost buys and someone who does buy is simply being there a second time. This is something I spend a lot of time working on with my private coaching clients. Not simply how to generate more interest, but how to build a marketing system that turns more of the interest you're already generating into actual business.

7:44Because more leads aren't terribly useful if too many good ones keep slipping through the cracks. If you'd like my help looking at your entire client attraction process, where prospects are coming from, where they're disappearing, and what might get more of the right ones to move forward, go ahead and visit GetWealthyClients.com. There's information about working with me personally. That's also where you can find information about all my books and all my programs. That's GetWealthyClients.com. Caroline thought she needed more prospects. What she really needed was another conversation with some of the prospects she already had.

8:23And fortunately, those are considerably cheaper to find. And one last thing. If you're finding these ideas useful, make sure you subscribe to the Velvet Rope Playbook so you don't miss the next episode. And if you know someone who's very good at what they do but could be doing a much better job of attracting affluent clients, send them this episode. Don't make a big production out of it. just say, thought you might find this useful. That's how most good ideas and most introductions tend to travel. This is Mark Satterfield. Thanks for listening to this chapter of the Velvet Rope Playbook. I'll be back with you with something new.

9:01But until then, bye for now.