You immediately walk away.
There must be a pony in here somewhere.
A lead is either a brilliant fit or it is horse shit. There is no gray area when it comes to what is a quality lead. When you see a bad lead, you must leave it right where you found it. Never dig through horse shit to make a lead viable.
There was a time when everything was an opportunity to me. I told myself stories like, "I am an opportunist... There is opportunity everywhere! We need the revenue." As a management consultant, there was a time when we did it all. It was exhausting to try to cover it all well and not harm our brand in the process. My team was confused and so were our Clients.
Those days are long gone. There is life before this realization and life after.
Never try to make a bad lead into a mediocre lead. It is not worth your time. It is not worth your brand sacrifice.
Feel free to disagree. If you disagree, you may be fooling only yourself.
Get clear about what you are best-of-breed at.
Where is your intersection of passion, purpose, and profit for your company? Identify this powerful intersection and then get there immediately.
Only do what you are best-of-breed at.
Get crystal clear about who you will sell to.
If you have not taken the time to identify the ideal target persona(s) to market to as well as what your ideal lead looks like, you and your sales team are wasting valuable time engaging leads who should not be engaged.
Get crystal clear about who you sell to. Only sell to them.
Identify wolf class partners.
Who are those out there who offer complementary offerings to yours who are "wolf class"- the best-of-the-best?
Identify what their quality lead looks like.
Only refer quality leads to wolf-class partners.
Being nice is for losers. If you want to be nice, refer a quality lead to a wolf partner. That is being nice.
When you refer a quality lead to a moron, the moron's shittiness rubs off on you.
- Never send a shitty lead to a wolf class partner.
- Never send anyone to a moron.
Identify wolf partners that are "wolf class" in their respective areas and only refer quality leads to them. If you cannot identify a wolf class partner then simply say, "I am sorry. I am unable to help you." Then you walk away.
Decide.
If you are a "get it" there is a pretty good chance that this post struck a chord with you. Right now you are likely thinking, "I need to get my company re-aligned. I need to do this now dammit... But I have people to feed. I have responsibilities. I can't make any serious changes to my business model right now."
Only if you say so.
I said that very same thing in the summer of 2013. Yet I knew I needed to refocus my company to do what we were passionate about, we could be excited to be a part of, and we could do profitably. We had to make some changes along the way that were painful. Today we are far better off for it.
You will be better off as well.
