Why More Leads May Be the Last Thing You Need

0:01Ethan Caldwell:Hello, this is Mark Satterfield, and welcome to the Velvet Rope Playbook, tonight's chapter, Why More Leads May Be the Last Thing You Actually Need. Ethan Caldwell had more leads than he had in a year, and he was miserable. Ethan was 49 and owned Caldwell Private Aviation, a boutique aircraft brokerage based in Scottsdale, Arizona. He hadn't grown up anywhere near private airplanes. His father taught high school chemistry in Ohio, his mother was a librarian, and the closest Ethan came to aviation as a kid was building model airplanes on the dining room table. After college, he took a sales job with an aircraft manufacturer and discovered two things.

0:45Ethan Caldwell:He loved airplanes, and he had an unusual ability to make extremely successful people feel comfortable talking with him. 25 years later, Ethan had built a respected little firm, helping entrepreneurs, executives, and wealthy families buy and sell private aircraft. He didn't want hundreds of clients. He wanted perhaps 10 or 12 exceptional transactions a year. But somewhere along the way, Ethan forgot that. Ethan hired a marketing firm that promised to generate more leads. They rebuilt his website, created advertising campaigns, published content, and developed several downloadable guides. Within six months, website traffic had nearly tripled.

1:27Ethan Caldwell:Inquiries doubled. His calendar was packed with introductory calls. Everyone was thrilled with the numbers except Ethan, because Ethan was spending an enormous amount of time talking with people who were never going to become good clients. Some were simply curious about private aviation. Others wanted endless free advice. A few wanted Ethan's expertise but planned to handle the transaction themselves. And then there were the bargain hunters. Ethan's business development director, Natalie Brooks, finally pointed out what was happening. Natalie was 37 and had spent the first decade of her career working in guest relationships for two luxury hotel groups.

2:07Ethan Caldwell:She learned early that the customer who demanded the most attention wasn't necessarily the customer who spent the most money. One Friday afternoon, she walked into Ethan's office carrying a spreadsheet. She said, I think we have a problem. Ethan looked at the numbers. We've never had this many leads. Natalie smiled. That's the problem. Natalie had gone through their previous 100 inquiries. Fewer than 10 were the kind of prospects Ethan really wanted. Then she looked at Ethan's best clients from the previous five years. Those people were very different. They weren't primarily looking for the cheapest aircraft or the lowest brokerage fee.

2:46Ethan Caldwell:They wanted judgment. They wanted someone who could tell them when not to buy. They valued discretion. They wanted access to opportunities that might never appear publicly. And they wanted someone who understood that purchasing a$12 million aircraft wasn't simply a transaction. It affected their family, their business, their time, and sometimes their security. But almost none of that appeared in Ethan's marketing. Instead, the website talked about things almost every aircraft broker could say. Personalized service, extensive industry experience, exceptional results, and access to inventory. In other words, Ethan's marketing wasn't attracting the wrong people by accident.

3:26Ethan Caldwell:It wasn't giving the right people any particular reason to recognize themselves. This happens in all kinds of businesses. Someone says, I need more clients. So they try to increase website traffic, followers, inquiries, downloads, and appointments. And those numbers go up and everybody assumes that marketing is improving. But there's another question that has really much more importance. Are you attracting more of the people that you actually want? If you sell an expensive professional service, you probably don't need 1 ,000 prospects. You may need 20 exceptionally good ones. And that requires a different kind of marketing.

4:04Ethan Caldwell:Ethan and Natalie made a decision that initially made their marketing firm nervous. They were going to make the website more selective. Instead of trying to appeal to anyone interested in buying an aircraft, they became very specific about who they were best suited to help. They explained that their best clients valued independent judgment over simply finding inventory. They talked about situations where they advised clients not to complete a purchase. Data described the complexity of choosing an aircraft based on how someone actually traveled rather than simply what they could afford. And they made it clear that they weren't trying to be the lowest cost broker.

4:42Something predictable happened. The number of inquiries dropped. But something else happened too. The quality of those inquiries went up. The conversations changed. Prospects arrived understanding more about how Ethan thought and why someone might choose him instead of another broker. He was spending less time explaining what made his firm different because his marketing had already started doing that job. So here's an exercise I'd encourage you to do. Pull up your website, Instagram profile, or LinkedIn page and pretend your name and photo aren't on it. Now ask yourself, could three of my competitors say essentially the same things?

5:22If the answer is yes, you've found a problem. Exceptional service, customized solutions, put our clients first, decades of experience. Look, those statements may all be true, but they're not helping the right prospect recognize why you are particularly right for them. Instead, your marketing needs to answer three questions. Who do you solve your best work with? What particular problems are you unusually good at solving? And what do you believe or do differently that matters to those people? The clearer you become about those answers, the easier it becomes for the right prospect to think, this person understands exactly what I'm dealing with.

5:59And there's an interesting side effect. The wrong prospects may decide you're not for them. That's not necessarily a marketing failure. It can be a marketing success. If you're selling a premium service, your marketing shouldn't just simply generate interest. It should perform some of the qualification for you. By the time someone contacts you, I'd like them to understand who you help, what makes your approach different, and why working with you might make sense. That changes the sales conversation dramatically. Instead of spending the first 30 minutes trying to convince someone you're different, you can start talking about whether you can actually help them.

6:36That's what Ethan eventually discovered. His calendar became less crowded. He had fewer introductory conversations. But a much higher percentage of those conversations were with the people he actually wanted to work with. And ultimately, that's the number that matters. So if you're frustrated with the quality of the leads you're getting, don't automatically assume you need more marketing. you may need more selective marketing so go back to your website your social media your emails and the way people describe you when they refer someone ask yourself whether your marketing is designed to attract anybody who might conceivably need what you sell or whether it's specifically focused on the people you most want to work with because there's an enormous difference between generating more leads and attracting better clients and if you're selling an expensive of service, better almost always beats more.

7:28If you'd like more ideas for attracting affluent clients, positioning yourself more effectively, and creating marketing that brings you better opportunities, go visit GetWealthyClients.com. You'll find information there about my books, my programs, all my resources, and the different ways that you can actually work with me personally. That's GetWealthyClients.com. And if you're enjoying the Velvet Rope playbook, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And of course, if you know someone who would benefit from these ideas, please pass the podcast along to them. The goal isn't to help you attract everybody.

8:02It's to help more of the right people find you. This is Mark Satterfield. I hope you enjoyed this chapter of the Velvet Roke Playbook. I'll be back at you soon with something new. And until then, bye for now.