How to Chase the Right Digital Leads
- Jack Klinefelter
- May 21
- 6 min read
WHAT LEADS SHOULD I CONCENTRATE ON?
There are bottom feeders, entry level and intermediate buyers, whales and people online just wasting everybody's time. Wouldn’t it be great to know how best to cherry pick leads and only spend time on the ones who will pay off? Time is money, right? I need balance in my life, you say, I don’t have time to chase all these prospects and imposters around, sometimes for months or years before they buy! Plus you never really know who will buy before they actually do, right? Whoops, I think we just stumbled on the purpose of this article. I am starting to feel a looming stark reality descending upon us…
oh, that’s right, we never really do know who will buy before they do, do we?
Before the internet was where most relationships start, there was a man who walked into a piano gallery in his bib overalls. He was a farmer. He looked like he was more likely to know how to play a gutbucket or a washboard than a piano. The sales staff looked at one another and the one who's “up” was next looked at the others like, ”You gotta be kidding me, this is my up?” He received a snicker and a pat on the back and headed toward the front of the gallery to introduce himself. He was bummed out because foot traffic had been slow and this looked like a dead end visitor.
After an introduction, the farmer looking man asked him to take him to the largest handmade grand piano they had because his wife had a landmark birthday coming and he wanted to make it special for her. The sales rep was getting ready to play the piano when the man said, "That won’t be necessary, young fellow” and sat down on the bench to play. He played a couple minutes of Chopin’s “Minute Waltz”, stopped, looked up at the sales associate and said, "nice powerful sound but it's a little stiff for some of the faster moving compositions. What else may I try?”
The others in the gallery that Saturday morning shared looks of surprise and amazement. He then was ushered over to a different European handmade instrument and played the same composition for the same amount of time, stopped, smiled and said,” This is the one. I’ll take this one home.” He then asked, ”10% off of MSRP sound fair?” to which without skipping a beat the sales person responded, ”Yes Sir.” Ned the Farmer then reached deep into a pocket on the right side of his overalls and pulled out a roll of $100 bills.”
He gave the salesman instructions to accept his cash deposit after the 10% had been deducted, the tax added and the delivery comped. He said he would wire the balance the next day and shook the young man’s hand and said they could decide on a delivery date after he had wired the money. All in all it took about 20 minutes. As the farmer got exited, the sales associates looked at one another in disbelief. Who would have ever thought that the old farmer would be capable of purchasing the most expensive grand piano on the showroom floor? None of them, obviously. What was that old elementary school piece of wisdom the teacher used to share about judging a book by its cover?
The same paradox can be true of seemingly wealthy people who are often pretentious and over-extended. It can be true about a young person who doesn't look like they are old enough to be successful, but started building a gaming company empire as a teenager. The mental quicksand many sales associates fall into is putting their curiosity on the shelf. Instead of being open minded and treating each lead as a puzzle to be understood, they tack their predisposition to make fast judgement on the back of their prospecting activities and make it harder to carry. They don’t look for a connection between this prospect and all their potential value, including all the music lovers that the prospect may know. Preconceived notions and openminded discovery are diametric opposites. Please understand that every prospect is a human with relationships, some more important than you know, and until you have disqualified them, they may be a whale in hiding, or one relationship step away from becoming one.
Your job as an evangelist of the benefits of music in people’s lives is to educate, inspire, promote and advise. If you keep that mindset, the group of leads in your possession triple or quadruple in evangelist value, subsequently future sales volume. The attitude that every connection is an opportunity until disqualified is the lifestyle mindset that will double your productions and income. The only way that happens is if you are organized, and in the habit of nurturing until the timing and need intersect.
OK, let me crystalize the message behind this article: Premature disqualification of a lead IS the epidemic we are in the midst of. Far too many leads are not getting the love they need because sales individuals NEED A SALE and are not warming the egg throughout the incubation period. If you don’t have a series of messages to provide “value added” information to a lead over a long period of time, you are leaving two-thirds of the dollars to random chance in the buying ether. You are leaving people who buy in 6 months to 3 years unattended sufficiently and they will rely on their own discovery, and eventually land somewhere and buy from someone else. It is a shame; you had first crack to be their concierge but because they didn’t engage or respond like a person willing to engage and pull the trigger soon, you left them to make decision without being directly involved.
LET ME BE CLEAR: Continually trying to convince them to come in for a selection process, paints the clear picture that you are more concerned with selling them than being their friend and making sure they get exactly what they need when the timing and need intersect. Unfortunately (80/20 rule ass-backwards) most sales representatives concentrate solely on the relationships they can sell ASAP, AND LET two-thirds of their sales dry up and become swayed by other influences. Bottom line in their minds: These leads aren't that good. So off they go, ignoring the possibility of tripling their income because a lead isn’t responsive or immediate enough.
TAKE THIS TO HEART: My GM sold 15% of his day to day leads and 20% of his sales event leads because HE NEVER GAVE UP ON A LEAD. He communicated with them through their silence and to this day, two years later, has people calling him up and saying, "OK Clyde, I’m ready” after which he gives it to his friends where he used to sell, as a “lay down.”
So the answer to the title question:
Which leads do I concentrate on? ALL OF THEM. Here is a graph based upon real sales activity that illustrates when people buy, The “gold in them there hills" is in the 50% where Clyde “made his hay.” Sorry for the back to back cliche's but you get the picture.
Desperation and giving up on leads is the malady. Being organized, present with social content and nurturing quiet leads is the cure. Just because a lead doesn’t want to talk to the “dreaded sales person” doesn’t mean they’re done shopping or they're not listening. It means they’ll get communicative when they are ready and they’ll do it with the most helpful resource they believe will assist them best. If they are ignored, other than a sales person or company trying to sell them, it may be that they make a bad personal choice without a specialist and without “meeting” the pianos on the internet.
Your job is to evangelize and bring as many as possible to the altar of more and better music and the best choice they can make. Even if you give up on them, they, in that 50% of the pie chart, will buy. Just not from you.
“The word “listen” contains the same letters as the word “silent” - unknown
“The deepest rivers make the least noise” - Native American Wisdom
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