Summary: Pursuing unqualified prospects is a waste of time. Lately, I've also been on a bit of a kick in terms of commitment versus interest. If you're interested in the possibility of working with us, that's very different than if you're committed to getting the results you want in your business and working with us to do it.<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the pursuit of unqualified prospects. Welcome, Jay!<br> <br> <br> <br> Jay: Hey, it's so great to be here again, David, and I always love the topics that we get into. I think usually, or mostly, especially in my case, I'm in pursuit of just any prospect and I don't give a lot of thought to are they qualified, are they not?<br> <br> It's like, just send me all the leads and all sort through it, and I'm sure that I'm wasting a lot of time doing that.<br> <br> David: It's funny, isn't it? It's like just looking for warm bodies. Anybody who can fog a mirror, right? And to some extent, that's part of every process. Because we really don't know who's qualified and who's not until and unless we have a qualification procedure in place to figure that out, or if we just sort of get good at it from having conversations and hearing what people say.<br> <br> So I think you're right. I think no one really sets out to pursue unqualified prospects, and yet, to some extent, we all do it every day.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah, exactly. I will tell you that as a company, we've done some things. when we first started using Google ads, it was crazy. I mean, we were getting so many responses. And then after taking all of these leads and calls, we realized that 90% of them were not good.<br> <br> Because, our key words that we were using for Google were bringing us the wrong type of client that we couldn't help and that we couldn't close. So once we just did something as simple as figure out our keywords, wow, that saved us a lot of time and money.<br> <br> David: It really helps to dial it in, doesn't it? When you're more specific and it, you're right. It could be the difference of one additional parameter, one additional thing that you're saying in the messaging that you're putting out there. Because all of that's going to contribute to the type of people who respond to your ads when we're talking about leading with advertising.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah, exactly. The other thing we found is a seasonality to it, and you and I have talked about seasonality a lot when it comes to sales. But we've found that the same keywords don't work the same all year long, that there's different motivations that things change. And so, we're kind of starting to keep track of that now for the first time, and I'm excited.<br> <br> You know, we probably won't reap the benefits of that until next year, but that's how far ahead we have to be, to know when and how to start pivoting and adjusting.<br> <br> David: Yeah, I can see exactly how that could be the case. And it's something that you discover through doing it, right? Through iterations. You try different things and you say, Hey, this isn't working. This used to work. What's the reason for that? So a lot of it too is sometimes talking to people.<br> <br> One of the things that we've done for a long time is when people make a decision not to work with us, or sometimes, if someone expresses interest in working with us, but then doesn't follow through, we'll reach out to those people and find out.<br> <br> "Hey, it looks like you were thinking about contacting us. Looks like you were maybe thinking about scheduling a strategy session with us. You didn't do it. What was it that held you back?<br> <br> And the answers you get from that can be extremely helpful in terms of finding out what might also be holding other people back.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah. That is so powerful and I think sometimes people...
