It is amazing how many people are under the impression that they should chase every single possible lead to walk through their door. It might make sense at first thought, after all if you close 25% of all leads then more leads means more sales right? wrong…

That is making the number one assumption that all leads are created equal. Leads cost money to chase, either in the form of your own time or the waste of your employees time in following up, writing proposals, learning the prospects needs, etc, etc, etc. Instead if you can only focus on the people who are ABLE to say yes to your price, timeframe, and abilities you will work less and generate more revenue.

Think about it for a moment. If you cut out the time chasing leads that 90 times out of 100 will not convert, and instead focus on the other 10 — you will close more sales due to increased attention, and have more time to focus on finding more of those high quality leads.

The two biggest qualifiers for any prospect is can you do what they need you to do? and can they afford to pay you to do it?

When you make initial contact with a prospect your goal should be to find out these items, especially regarding price/budget. The common behavior is to avoid price like the plague hoping that some how the longer you keep them interested the more they are going to be willing to spend — wrong, doesn’t work that way.

The truth is the more comfortable you are discussing price, and the more confident you are in your prices the more your prospect is going to be willing to spend on you. If you avoid the price you are saying “oh I don’t think I am worth this much, so I am scared you will say no.”

Of course in order to know the price range you should find out exactly what the prospect is looking for, taking detailed notes to ensure that you don’t miss anything. Then assess if you can do it with in their specifications, and then give them a price range. Don’t feel comfortable giving a price range? Ask them their budget price range!

IE: “Are you looking to spend between $2,000 - $5,000 dollars? or $5,000 - $10,000 dollars?” - most of the time they will be honest with the price range.

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