Opportunity #1:
Fix Your Lead Flow

Does lead flow in your business come down to relying on a person?

Whether there is a public face of the company who creates content & builds relationships or if you rely on referrals from some key partner(s) or existing clients….

…your business is built upon a house of cards. 

Why?

Because there is over-reliance on something that is hard to replace if it were to go away (fully or even just partially). 

If one person is responsible for a significant percent of your lead flow and revenue — how would your business make up for it if that person was no longer able to generate value for the company anymore?

If the company wasn’t able to replace the value they generated, would it be able to survive? For how long?

Fixing this problem doesn’t happen over night and many people give up too quickly when they create a marketing funnel because the conversion rate is too low or the lead quality is weak or the cost per lead is too high from the initial attempts. 

The fastest path to improving results?

Most people are attracted to building marketing funnels because they are seduced by the automated potential of it.

But that means they either need to have incredibly strong positioning, copy, and offers in order to have a lead come in and end up buying without any further action or intervention. 

Most of us do not have that at the start. It takes time to really zero in on those things. 

But you will get there faster and you will generate more sales along the way if your business makes it a point to engage leads for feedback and conversations.

The path of increased connection and intimacy does require time and energy but for most businesses it should be feasible to give ownership of this to someone on the marketing or sales team. 

At “worst”, it can be given to a lower cost setter or admin or assistant of some sort at the beginning of the process and then hand off to a higher cost person when leads engage.

Once you have set up paths to lead flow that don’t rely on any specific person, you can go deeper into the business to fix issues in other departments.

Opportunity #2:
Fix Your Sales Process

If you haven’t fixed your lead flow, it is going to be difficult to fix your sales process.

Not only will there be less leads and sales calls coming through to slow down the pace that you’ll gain valuable learnings & insights….

….but your sales closing rates will suffer and you will be tempted to take on “bad fit” clients.

If the marketing process doesn’t help leads see your business as the ideal solution to help them, you’re going to get a lot more tire kickers and price comparers and people who have multiple options that delay their decision or end with them choosing someone else.

And if you don’t have an abundance of leads, you are going to make offers and make deals that are doomed to fail because you feel like you “need” to close this lead seeing as you don’t know when or where the next one is coming.

Regardless of the current state of your lead flow, take a look at your sales process.

Do you have a clear process or a script of some sort that gets followed every single time? 

If not, here is a quick outline for a process. We’ll do a full breakdown of this in a future issue but for now there are 3 main phases:

(1) Qualify the prospect
(2) Establish the “gap” between desired results & current reality
(3) Present the solution and the offer

You wouldn’t go see a doctor only to immediately demand a diagnosis & a prescription. Hold that same frame for your business on your sales calls.

Ask questions to understand their situation, their pains, and their desires before you go into anything around the solution or the offer or the price.

The answers they give to your questions will help you know whether or not you can actually help them and how to best frame the offer so it connects to their situation and what they want.

Opportunity #3:
Fix Your Delivery & Operations

Similar to your lead flow, if delivering for clients and operating the business depends on a person instead of a system, the company is in a fragile and vulnerable position.

Ask yourself the same question here about what would happen if the key person was no longer able to work within the business?

How much knowledge would be lost? How hard would it be to replace them if they weren’t there to teach and train someone else to take it over?

Without a system, it isn’t a business. It is a hustle that relies on some specific person(s) in order to keep the hustle going.

Even if it is crude to start, some video overviews or step by step write ups for each key process can help reduce the risks associated with reliance on some key person(s). 

The ultimate goal is to create processes that even low skill workers could understand and execute. You may never actually get there but it is what you should be aiming for.

Even if “all” you do is unburden your most talented and valuable team members from low value tasks, the capacity and potential of the business will grow significantly as a result of those people concentrating on more valuable activities. 

Looking for a solid template for an Operations Playbook to get started & be organized as you grow your database of processes?

Download this pack of resources for free from Dan Martell & SaaS Academy.

Note that this playbook can easily be adapted for any business model, not just for SaaS businesses.