Most businesses don’t have a lead-generation problem.
They have a lead-abandonment problem.
Back in 1997, when I was learning how to generate leads, I came across a study that changed the way I looked at everything.
The company conducting the study handled millions of inquiries across many different industries.
They took groups of people who had requested information 18 months earlier and called them with one simple question:
“Did you buy?”
Did you buy the refrigerator you requested the catalog about?
Did you buy the faucets you looked at at the home show?
Did you eventually do the thing you raised your hand about?
What they discovered was fascinating.
Just over half of the people who inquired about something eventually bought it within 18 months.
But only 15% of those buyers bought within the first 90 days.
Think about what that means.
When you generate a bundle of leads today, 85% of its potential value may still be more than 90 days in the future.
Yet 90 days is exactly when most people start getting impatient.
They’ve called the leads.
Nobody seems ready right now.
The leads aren’t emotionally exciting anymore.
So they conclude the leads were “no good,” stop the ads, and move on to something else.
But the leads weren’t bad.
They were simply early.
That’s why I like to think in terms of 100 leads over 100 weeks.
If you generate 100 people who have voluntarily told you they’re thinking about selling their house…building a deck…getting a fence…or solving whatever problem you help people solve…
It’s reasonable to expect that 50 of them may do something over the next 100 weeks.
Now do the math.
What is one new client worth to you?
What would 50 of them be worth?
That’s the real value of the asset you’ve created.
Of course, we want to identify and help the people who are ready right now. We never want to slow them down.
But we also don’t want to abandon the other 85% simply because their clock is running more slowly than ours.
Profit Activator 2 gets your future prospects to raise their hands.
Profit Activator 3 makes sure you’re still there when they’re ready.
The fortune isn’t always in generating more leads.
Sometimes it’s in patiently protecting the value of the leads you’ve already paid to find.