Show notes
It's one of those nuances that when you're transforming the leverage points in your business, the prequalification follow up is different than the post qualification follow up, but they are both very important leverage points.
David: Hi. Welcome back in today's episode, cohost. Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss transforming the leverage points in your business. Welcome back, Kevin.
Kevin: Hey, David. Great to see you. I'm excited to find out what you mean by this. So can you just start by sort of talking about what you mean when you refer to leverage points in a business?
David: Yeah. I think particularly for salespeople and business owners, there are certain specific leverage points that make a huge difference when you're interacting with clients, and a lot of it starts with who you're going after. You know, just the targeting aspect of it.
And a lot of people will take anyone who can fog a mirror, you know, they'll take anybody who stumbles in the door. And if you want to be a little more proactive about things, and if you want to really leverage that aspect of it, just the targeting part of it, that's one of those small hinges that swings big doors.
And so. When we look at leverage points, that's a really good solid first one. Because you could spend time going after a certain group of people in a particular niche or a particular market location and get to a lot of the wrong people and waste an enormous amount of time just by doing that.
So one of the things that we do with our clients is we look at, okay, what are the biggest leverage points that we can go after? Tackle those upfront so that our clients are able to get more done in less time and earn more money while they're doing it.
Kevin: Okay. So I'm guessing there's multiple leverage points that you might refer to.
How could a business owner identify where they need help? What leverage points are being underutilized or need to be transformed?
David: A lot of it, you can figure it out based on what problems you're having. If you are interacting with a lot of poor quality prospects or clients, that's a pretty good indication that it has to do with your targeting.
If you're getting to the right people --in other words, if you're getting to people who have the ability to spend a lot of money with you --and they're not converting, then you have to look at it and say, okay, well what am I doing wrong?
What am I saying to these people that is getting them not to buy? And a lot of times, salespeople go into sales situations and they're just winging it. They're just saying the things that they normally say, or they're saying things that they think are likely to work.
And if it works for you consistently, then that's great. You've probably got something that works. But if you find that you're interacting with a lot of the right people, but you're not closing those sales or you're not able to move the sales process forward fast enough.
Like if it takes a lot longer to close your clients than it should, that's an indication that it's probably not related to the prospects at that point. It's probably related to what you're saying to them or the ways that you're saying it to them.
Kevin: Can you share an example of a leverage point that when improved can have a dramatic effect on sales?
David: Yeah. Well, it's really the things that we're talking about and things that we've talked about in previous podcasts. If you think in terms of the MVPs that we've discussed in the past, the MVPs of marketing and sales, what's the message that I'm communicating?
If you've got an okay marketing message and you're communicating it to a high value prospect, you could really be wasting an opportunity.
If you are reaching those high quality prospects using a combination of marketing vehicles that they're not happy with. If you just keep calling them on the phone and they don't want to take phone calls, then again, you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's a big leverage point when you're able to identify how they are willing to interact with you, and then gear your approach accordingly.
And then of course, as we discussed first, the people. The people that you're going after. Those three things are the first three that always leap to mind, because it's probably the thing that we talk about most, but the reason we talk about it most is because there are so many important ways that you can mess things up if you don't do it right.
And of course there are more.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. And so is it fair to say that leverage points need to be, it's not something you can do quickly to change 'em. You kind of have to work on 'em over time to figure out where it works. Like to your point about how do people like to be contacted. You need to kind of do a little bit of trial and error AB testing to figure out where you can alter or improve your leverage points.
David: Exactly, but you can do it quickly if you recognize that there are these very specific leverage points that you want to focus on. And so if you are concerned that you might have a marketing message, you can test out a couple of various approaches and see how they work.
Of course. When you've got good clients, if you're able to interact with them and just ask them questions directly, a lot of them will tell you what they like and what they don't like.
Very often, if you're interacting with a client for the first time or a prospect for the first time, you can find out how do they like to interact, how do they prefer to communicate? And it's very direct, but it also saves both of you a lot of time, so that you're not communicating with them in a way that they don't like.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. Okay. Are these leverage points pretty universal across industries, or do they vary from industry to industry?
David: Well, I think there's nuance within different industries, but in addition to the MVPs, things like how do you qualify your prospects in or out as quickly as possible? Do you have a qualification procedure in place where you could ask them a couple of simple direct questions to determine if they are a good qualified prospect for you?
If the answer is yes, then you follow up with them. If the answer is no, then you don't waste that time with a prospect who is not a good fit for you.
Kevin: Okay. And we've talked in previous episodes about shifting mindset. It's always about, for a lot of times for business owners, they might be stuck in their ways. They might not have time, they might not be good at delegating, whatever that is.
Is it another mindset shift here and what kind of recommendations or advice might you give to someone to help them get to a better mindset?
David: Yeah, the mindset component is pretty big with everything, because if you don't buy into it, you're not going to take the necessary actions.
But I think this one is relatively easy in the sense that if you just recognize that there are very specific things that you can focus on to change the results you're getting for the better, then it becomes a lot easier to get yourself in the mindset of, okay, I just need to do this. Right? It's not like I have to motivate myself to do something I don't want to do.
When you're able to identify these leverage points and fix them so that they perform better for you, it's exciting. You want to do it so you don't have to sort of overcome any sort of hesitation or anything like that.
Kevin: Yeah. Especially if you seeing results when you see, when you kind of, or even just when you see some areas that you could really improve on.
Like if you're like, man. I keep doing this, but this is going to be a better way. It kind of can get you a little jazzed up, get you a little excited.
David: Yeah. And if you look at things like follow up. Follow up is such a small amount of words for such a big concept, but the way that you follow up is an incredible leverage point for your business.
And when you do it strategically, instead of just haphazardly, the results just change like that. And those are the types of things that I'm referring to when I talk about these leverage points.
I'm talking about things where you can make a very small change and create a very big result in your business.
Kevin: Any other ones that we haven't talked about yet that you feel that businesses often overlook?
David: There are a number of them, but it's not like it's unlimited. A lot of things are sort of subcategories of other things, the problems that you have with whatever, your targeting, which is something we did talk about.
There are specific ways to get to that so that it's fixed. And so once you've got that stuff dialed in, you don't really have that problem anymore.
Same thing with the qualification procedure that I mentioned. When you've got that sort of thing in place, you can use it each time. Now you can continue to tweak it and adapt it and test it and see what's working well and what's working not as well.
And you can make tweaks to it. But when you've got these things in place and you know that they're working, you know that you've got them dialed in, then you don't have to really focus on a lot of other things.
Because once again, most sales experiences are communications between a couple of people. If you and I are talking, we're having a sales experience, there's a limited finite number of things that need to happen.
A lot of it is related to conversation and the way those conversations happen, but also making sure that I know what I'm doing enough to be able to respect your time, get you qualified in or out as quickly as possible, focus on those things so that I'm not wasting your time or mine.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We have so many ways to communicate now.,We've talked about this on other podcasts, it is crazy how many different places you can communicate with someone.