STOP the Revolving Door Business! Follow this 6-Step Process

Ever on board a new client, do a ton of work for them, and three months down the road, they bounce on you? Yeah, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It's not fun. Sometimes it's the fact that, you know, circumstances don't allow for that client to stick around. It could be something outside of their control, but oftentimes it's something that's in your control. And the last thing you and I want is to have a revolving door business. So there's six key questions, six steps you have to make sure you include in the process of qualifying in terms of vetting prospects. See, there's suspects and there's prospects, and I believe most of you have more suspects in your pipeline than actual prospects. These six questions are the ones you need to be asking every time you have a discovery call with a prospect to ensure this is the kind of person I should be adding to my pipeline. And when you do this, you'll minimize the revolving door business. It won't stop it completely because, again, there's always factors outside of your control where somebody decides they want their cousin, who's going to do the work half price. They want to work with somebody local, like it is what it is. So what are the key six steps that you need to follow? Number one, you have to ask the question, are you serious about growing your business now, or are you more curious about what I had to talk about? Right? Sometimes they're just curious. You got to find out, are they seriously looking to grow their business? That's like the first thing. And that's something I've added more recently. It's always something in the back of my mind, but it's not something that I've actually asked first. So first question, are you serious about growing your business now? Are you curious? Number two, what's your lead follow-up process look like? So when a lead comes in, how long before you follow the lead? It should be within an hour. If they tell you four hours that night, the next day, they're a suspect, right? You want somebody who's super responsive. Number three, what is your ongoing follow-up process look like? So they'll say, well, I just leave a voicemail. Well, the average sale takes seven to nine touches to close. And with contractors and stuff, it happens a lot faster. But they should be following up within an hour. They should be following up the next day with a text message and a phone call, and they should be following up every single week for the next six to eight weeks, right? If they don't do that, they're probably a suspect. You can coach them to become a prospect, but people are creatures of habit, and they may not always listen, right? So be mindful of that, okay? Number four, what is their average job size, right? They should know their numbers, right? They should know what their average job size is. So if they're a fence company, they should know off the top of their head, my average fence job is $7,000, right? They don't know their numbers, I would probably think they're more of a suspect than they are a prospect, okay? Number five, what's their closing ratio? They should know their closing ratio, right? And you can use a scenario, hey, if I was to work with you and I was able to get you, let's say, 10 leads, how many are you closing, right? If they say 20%, they're probably not good at closing business. If they tell you 60, 70%, probably a better chance that they're a good fit. Now, they're not going to always close 60, 70%, but the point is, if they know they're closing 60, 70% of good quality leads, then that's a good potential partner, okay? And number six, do they have the systems and the processes in place to scale their business? So they can say, yeah, I'm serious about growing my business, but if they don't have somebody answering the phones following up, if they don't have a follow-up process in place, if they don't have the extra crew or crews in place, all the work that you do for them is not going to benefit anybody because it's going to provide that customer service. So the six key questions, the six key points that you want to make sure that are included in your process will definitely help you minimize having a revolving door business. Got questions? Hit me up. Have a great day. God bless.