You Don't Need More Leads

Speaker: 00:00:06

>> Lani Dickinson: Hey, friends, welcome back to Freedom to Exit.

Speaker: 00:00:09

Today, I want to hit you with a truth bomb. You probably don't

Speaker: 00:00:12

need more leads. I know I said it. And in all

Speaker: 00:00:15

my years of experience working with people, they always say we need

Speaker: 00:00:18

more leads, but we actually need to follow up with the leads that

Speaker: 00:00:20

are already looking for us. You probably don't need to

Speaker: 00:00:23

spend another dime on ads right away. You

Speaker: 00:00:26

probably don't need to crank out one more reel or speak at

Speaker: 00:00:29

another event. What you really need to do is stop

Speaker: 00:00:32

ghosting the leads that you already have. And the truth

Speaker: 00:00:35

is, most of the time, we don't even appreciate how many people

Speaker: 00:00:38

are already looking for us. and I say that with love, but

Speaker: 00:00:41

I also say it with data. Right now, people are

Speaker: 00:00:44

googling for the thing you offer. In fact,

Speaker: 00:00:47

30% or more of inbound inquiries

Speaker: 00:00:49

happen after hours. That's while you and your competitors

Speaker: 00:00:52

are sleeping at night, in the early morning,

Speaker: 00:00:55

when your ideal client finally

Speaker: 00:00:58

starts to go to bed and the world slips away and all the stress of the

Speaker: 00:01:01

day is kind of quiet, their world gets

Speaker: 00:01:04

quiet. Then they start to focus on the 1, 2, 3 big

Speaker: 00:01:06

problems they have in their life or in their business, and they

Speaker: 00:01:09

start searching for solutions. I know I reach right

Speaker: 00:01:12

over here, get my phone, and I start scrolling in the

Speaker: 00:01:15

middle of the night. So here's the question. Are you the one they hear back

Speaker: 00:01:18

from first, or are you the business that responds

Speaker: 00:01:21

at the end of tomorrow or three days later after

Speaker: 00:01:24

they've already booked someone else? Because here's

Speaker: 00:01:27

where the stories that hurt come in. Let me paint a

Speaker: 00:01:30

couple scenarios for you. First, it's

Speaker: 00:01:32

9:01am your hot lead comes in. She's ready to talk,

Speaker: 00:01:35

maybe even ready to buy. She's making effort

Speaker: 00:01:38

to reach out to you. So that's a ready

Speaker: 00:01:41

to buy intent kind of approach. But your team's

Speaker: 00:01:44

in back to back meetings. The email sits, the voicemail

Speaker: 00:01:47

sits, and voicemail is where leads go to die. But no one gets back

Speaker: 00:01:50

to her until after lunch. But by then, she's already

Speaker: 00:01:53

booked a competitor who picked up the phone. In fact, there's

Speaker: 00:01:56

data that says people are willing to wait about five

Speaker: 00:01:59

minutes. And by the end of the five minutes, they're

Speaker: 00:02:01

googling three of your competitors. So after

Speaker: 00:02:04

lunch is too late most of the time. How

: 00:02:07

14am? M. Someone's in bed,

: 00:02:10

as I mentioned, spiraling through their life's

: 00:02:13

problems. They're googling. Best photographer near me.

: 00:02:16

Emergency tax help, weight loss coach. I used to own

: 00:02:19

a gym, so I definitely know that they are googling for

: 00:02:21

weight loss Solutions. At 2 o'clock in the morning, they land on

: 00:02:24

your site, they submit the form and then nothing

: 00:02:27

happens. That's if you even have a form. No reply, no

: 00:02:30

text back, no callack, no scheduling. If you don't have a chat

: 00:02:33

widget or a form, you don't even know that

: 00:02:36

they were there. And I hear this a lot. People say, oh, I don't think that there

: 00:02:39

are that many people looking for us. They are

: 00:02:42

looking for you. By the time your assistant sees the form

: 00:02:45

that might have gotten submitted tomorrow at 9am,

: 00:02:48

your buyer has already talked to someone else. And here's

: 00:02:50

the really painful truth. We all want to believe that

: 00:02:53

our team follows up fast. But the truth is your team

: 00:02:56

is not following up as fast as you would

: 00:02:59

and they're giving up much sooner than you would

: 00:03:02

too. I have a lot of statistics and data about that and it

: 00:03:05

is costing you money. It's costing you money now,

: 00:03:08

costing you revenue now, costing you reputation

: 00:03:11

now. But in terms of wanting to exit, whether that's

: 00:03:14

for time and location freedom now or to have a sale

: 00:03:17

later, it's costing you an exit multiple

: 00:03:20

and systems and process and all of these things that

: 00:03:23

drive your ability to exit for

: 00:03:25

either version of exit. So here's the stats that are going to

: 00:03:28

slap you right in the face. So let's go full nerd

: 00:03:31

for a minute. Here are the numbers that keep me up at night on

: 00:03:34

behalf of my clients and they should keep you motivated.

: 00:03:37

If you respond to a lead within five minutes, you

: 00:03:40

are 21 more times likely

: 00:03:43

to qualify that lead than if you wait 30

: 00:03:46

minutes. So the ale ll get back to you after

: 00:03:48

lunch doesn't work. You've got literally five minutes because

: 00:03:51

after five minutes your chances drop by

: 00:03:54

80%. And just so you know,

: 00:03:56

78%, of customers go with the first

: 00:03:59

responder. But the average business takes 47 hours

: 00:04:02

to follow up and respond. Now yours, you might say,

: 00:04:04

oh, that doesn't happen to us. I'm saying that's the average

: 00:04:07

business. But are you responding in five minutes?

: 00:04:10

The answer is probably no. And Even worse,

: 00:04:14

only 27% of leads ever get

: 00:04:17

contacted at all. But wait, it gets more painful and

: 00:04:20

more personal. 44% of

: 00:04:22

salespeople give up after only one follow

: 00:04:25

up. But 80% of sales

: 00:04:27

take place and actually have success after

: 00:04:30

5 to 12 follow ups. In an online

: 00:04:33

world, that gets more and more because it's less and less

: 00:04:36

tangible. 60% of customers say

: 00:04:38

no four times before they can ever get to

: 00:04:41

yes. But 44% of salespeople are giving

: 00:04:44

up after one follow up. Humans are not

: 00:04:47

designed to want to hear no 5, 6,

: 00:04:50

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 times. So

: 00:04:52

your staff is stopping. So let me ask you a

: 00:04:55

tough love question. Does your team actually follow up all

: 00:04:58

those times with every single lead or are

: 00:05:01

they moving your people over to voicemail and leaving

: 00:05:04

one voicemail, which is where we know leads go to die. That's

: 00:05:07

not just a sales issue that will harm you now, but

: 00:05:10

that's a valuation issue later when you wanna sell.

: 00:05:13

Here's why this matters to you and to a buyer. Here's what

: 00:05:16

most people miss. Every time you lose the lead due

: 00:05:19

to slow follow up or no follow up, you're not just

: 00:05:22

missing today's cash, you're shrinking the value

: 00:05:25

of your business because your bottom line profits.

: 00:05:28

I'm wearing my EBITDA whisperer T shirt today. So we

: 00:05:31

are all about bottom line profits today. Your bottom line

: 00:05:34

profit is what determines your exit multiple,

: 00:05:37

not your revenue you could make. They do wantna

: 00:05:40

know that they can grow sales, but they're gonna give you

: 00:05:43

bottom line exit valuation based

: 00:05:45

upon what is your EBITDA or your seller

: 00:05:48

discretionary expense? How much do you actually

: 00:05:51

keep? And this part is huge. When a buyer looks

: 00:05:54

at your business and sees that you're already

: 00:05:57

maximizing your existing inbound

: 00:05:59

traffic, they're pretty excited

: 00:06:02

because that means if they layer on a little bit of ad

: 00:06:05

spend, the thing can scale fast.

: 00:06:07

It's plug and play growth for them. And

: 00:06:10

every buyer wants continued

: 00:06:13

growth after the sale because they're buying cash

: 00:06:16

flow, they're not buying a job. But if you're leaking leads

: 00:06:19

left and right, that's risk, that's cost, and at

: 00:06:22

best, that's a discounted sales price.

: 00:06:25

But it's probably more like you're gonna join the four out of

: 00:06:28

five businesses that never sell. So let's talk about the

: 00:06:31

buyer's lens. What are they really evaluating?

: 00:06:33

When someone's thinking about buying your business, they're asking, how do the

: 00:06:36

leads come in? How fast are they contacted? Who's doing the follow up?

: 00:06:40

what happens if the owner takes a week off? What happens if we take the

: 00:06:43

owner's face off of the ads? If the answer is we

: 00:06:46

usually get to them by the next day, guess what? Your

: 00:06:49

value just took a nosedime. If you, the founder,

: 00:06:52

are still the sales department or your wife is still

: 00:06:54

the sales department, that's not a business, it's a job. And

: 00:06:57

there are no buyers today looking for jobs. Whether it's

: 00:07:00

private equity. They want a management team to keep running

: 00:07:03

the business. The army of buyers that are being trained

: 00:07:06

to buy with seller financing, no money down,

: 00:07:09

keep you in and ear out. Those people were born in

: 00:07:12

a different generation than the one where you built your business

: 00:07:15

and they are not looking for jobs, they are looking for cash flow.

: 00:07:18

But if there's a system that runs without you, that's a

: 00:07:21

machine. And machines get premium offers. This is

: 00:07:24

where automation steps in and saves the day and

: 00:07:27

your valuation. Imagine this. The lead that comes

: 00:07:30

in at 2:14 in the morning. Your AI assistant

: 00:07:32

answers immediately. She asks the qualifying

: 00:07:35

questions. You can make yours a boy. Mine is a girl. Her name

: 00:07:38

is ava. She answers FAQs.

: 00:07:41

She books them directly on your calendar and she follows

: 00:07:44

up 7, 8, 9, 10 times if

: 00:07:46

they go quiet. She doesn't call in sick. She doesn't have Moody

: 00:07:49

Monday. She doesn't ghost the hot leads. She doesn't wait

: 00:07:52

until some other administrative task is done.

: 00:07:55

She just closes the deals. That's what an

: 00:07:58

AI employee really can do for you. And that's why it's

: 00:08:01

such a powerful revenue driver and a value

: 00:08:04

multiplier. But does it sound like a robot? I know that's what

: 00:08:07

you're thinking. I know that's a serious concern for people. But

: 00:08:10

is it gonna sound robotic? It has come a long

: 00:08:13

way. We're not talking awkward. Please press 1 to

: 00:08:16

continue. That's the thing of the past. We're talking

: 00:08:18

about natural, human, empathetic and smooth. Even

: 00:08:21

tell you a joke, even remember something about you.

: 00:08:24

In fact, when I play the demo of

: 00:08:27

our AI assistant on live calls, people are shocked.

: 00:08:30

They can't believe wait, that was AI.

: 00:08:33

That's not a human. You'll get to hear it yourself when you download the

: 00:08:36

free guide we have to offer at the end of this podcast because

: 00:08:39

I've included a sample call in the bonus

: 00:08:41

resources. So go listen to that. It'll blow your mind. So you've

: 00:08:44

heard a million times in your career while you're running your business, it's time

: 00:08:47

to get off the hamster. Whee. If your business depends on you

: 00:08:50

to respond to inquiries, deliver service. If you are

: 00:08:53

the face of the business, you're never going to get off

: 00:08:56

the treadmill and you're never going to sell your business.

: 00:08:59

But if you install any amount of AI and

: 00:09:02

automation that catches every lead, books, appointments,

: 00:09:05

follows up endlessly, that frees you up to be the

: 00:09:08

CEO and it creates more cash

: 00:09:10

to pay for either lifestyle now

: 00:09:13

or the other things that we need to put into the business to

: 00:09:16

make it more sellable and get you a higher exit

: 00:09:18

valuation. This is what I call freedom. Many people

: 00:09:21

started their business for freedom, but they're on the hamster wheel.

: 00:09:24

Which, yeah, maybe it's better than the corporate job, but it

: 00:09:27

is not freedom. AI and automation allow us

: 00:09:30

to create scale and exit readiness.

: 00:09:33

No matter which version of exit you want, you don't build

: 00:09:36

a business to stay stuck in it forever. You build it

: 00:09:39

to be worth something, to mean something. Whether that's

: 00:09:41

time or peace or legacy or

: 00:09:44

a big fat check when you exit. So here's your next

: 00:09:47

move. Download My free guide 7 Ways

: 00:09:50

to Incorporate AI into your Business Today. The

: 00:09:53

link will be in the show notes. You'll learn the specific ways to

: 00:09:56

start automating, your follow up and bookings and reviews

: 00:09:59

and so much more. And yes, you'll hear that AI

: 00:10:02

live call and you will say, oh my gosh, I can't believe

: 00:10:05

that's a robot. Also, you can take the changes assessment. It

: 00:10:08

will show you exactly where you're leaking money,

: 00:10:11

missing leads and holding your business back from

: 00:10:14

real freedom. Both links are in the show notes. Here's the

: 00:10:16

truth. You don't need to hustle harder. You need to

: 00:10:19

respond smarter. But the level of response people

: 00:10:22

expect is not humanly possible, even

: 00:10:25

while you're awake. That's where you need AI

: 00:10:28

and automation. Your leads are searching for

: 00:10:31

solutions at 2:00 in the morning, your competitors are

: 00:10:34

sleeping, or the ones that have AI are

: 00:10:37

closing. And your AI assistant, soon as you hire that

: 00:10:40

one, it's ready to go. She's already booked the

: 00:10:42

job without moody Mondays, without rolling her eyes

: 00:10:45

about the 7,000 times she's had to answer an

: 00:10:48

FAQ for a lead. So as always, thanks for joining

: 00:10:51

today and I'd love for you to subscribe to the

: 00:10:54

show and share this with friend or someone you know

: 00:10:57

who needs to hear this.