Transcript from our video shared below
Hi guys, Amy Parvaneh here from Select Advisors Institute. For those of you not familiar with who we are, we are a sales management, sales coaching, leadership development and outsource chief marketing officer platform working with the service industries, specifically financial, legal and accounting.
In this video, I wanted to talk further about a topic I've spoken about in my sales manual, which you could find in the link below, you could buy it on Amazon. And what that sales manual talks about is actually how to calculate the size of your weighted average pipeline. So the calculation is very simple, what's the size of the opportunity multiplied by what's the size of percentage of close of that opportunity. And you multiply that per lead and then you sum it up and you find out your weighted average pipeline size.
So we all know the lead size revenue potential, the lead, assets under management, but the part that's subjective is the actual percentage of close. How can you calculate to know what are the chances of someone closing with you or working with you? And in this video, I wanted to talk about signs to look for that will show if someone is actually really not a good prospect. So why are they even on your list? Or maybe the chances of closing are much lower than you expect. But alternatively, those same signs, if they are the opposite, they could increase your percentage of close, those are really good signs to look for.
So in this video, I'm going to talk about the five signs I look for in a prospect to know if either I should remove them from my list or completely lower it down. Let's say, if it's from a hundred percent being definitely closing, remove it 10% lower each time, depending on how many of these signs they show.
So again, you could learn more about this in my sales manual or you could further talk about this by speaking using the link below with me, but between then watch this video and look for these five signs. And if you don't agree with some of them, if I am completely wrong or if someone has defied these rules that I'm going to be talking about, look, there's exceptions to every rule. But I think in general, these rules, if they are broken they mean that someone is a bad prospect. And if they actually are the opposite, it means someone's a very good prospect. So let's talk about them and let me know what you think, let's start.
Okay guys, here is the number one way to know if someone is going to be not a good prospect for you. And again, like I said, you may have had someone who's an exception to this, but it should, if you started with a hundred, a hundred percent being someone who is a really good prospect, each one of these brings it down lower and lower. So the number one thing I look for that gives me an indication that someone's a waste of my time is if they won't fill out my calendar scheduling app or if they won't fill out my form.
What do I mean by that? If you have a system in setting up meetings, let's say you're using LinkedIn or you do cold calling, or you're doing email blast. If you have someone that's shown, "Okay, fine, I'll set up a call with you." If you send them your form to get some more background color on them but they refuse to fill that out, it's already a really bad warning sign and you're going to be going into that meeting potentially with the person not even showing up because they don't even have the wherewithal or the confidence or the manners for lack of a better term to give you the time of day to fill out the calendar link or the form that could give you some more background about them. But if someone does fill it out, that's a really great sign. That means they've gone out of their way to want to talk to you and that will bring up the percentage of the waiting for how much someone's worth your time to talk to.
Okay, here's the number two way to find out if someone is a bad prospect or if they are not doing this to show that someone is a good prospect. So the number two sign I look for in a prospect is seeing how many times they have switched from one service to another in your line of work. So if you for example, are a financial advisor and the person starts talking and he says, "Yeah, I used to be at Raymond James. And then I went to Edward Jones and then I'm at Merrill Lynch. And now I'm interested in talking to you."
What's going on there that they keep switching firms one after the next, is there so much hatred or so much expectations on each person that you may also not be able to meet? So it'd be great to close this opportunity, but if this person is going to bounce around right after they start working with you, that's not a good sign.
The number three sign I look for is if someone is already utilizing some of your services, but with all parts of it being compartmentalized into multiple different avenues. And what that means to me is that this person is a micromanager and that they are not able to give up enough control for you to move the dial. So again, for example, if you are a bank manager and this person is doing their equities at one firm, they're doing your alternative somewhere else. It just means that this person is really looking to see what you've got. And we all know it's very hard to move the dial when you've only got a piece of the action, for lack of a better term again.
So again, it's not a good sign when someone is throwing darts here and there, to me it's a bad sign. So when I first started talking to someone, if I find out that they're doing this here, they're doing that there. I actually let them know, "You're not a good fit for what we do." Because I don't want to be talking to someone who is playing the game or playing the field and going from one firm to another. It's just not a good sign and you should be on the lookout for that too.
So if someone is interested in what you do, let's say you're a CPA and they are doing one type here, one type there, one type of form here, one type of form there, again, do you want to be one of many or do you want to have a holistic view of what this person does? So that's the number three thing that I look for in a prospect. Okay guys, now let's talk about the fourth way I look for a prospect sign to see if they are a complete waste of my time. And if they show the opposite, then that means they're a really good prospect for me to pursue and one to work with.
And the number four thing I look for, and I've written about this, I'll hyperlink the article here is after I have the meeting, after I speak with them, if I write them a thank you email, and I always try to do that within 24 hours even if I have it on a Friday, I write them that same day saying that I'm going to be writing them back on Monday. You really don't want more than 24 hours of communication gap right after you have the call. In fact, I have gone on meetings and right from the airport, I write them that email. There's no excuse for you to not write within 24 hours.
But if I write that and they don't reply, that is a massive warning sign. And if they do reply, that is a very positive sign. If you go too long and the person doesn't write within a day or two after your thank you email or follow up email, we could reduce that percentage of likelihood that this person will work with you.
Okay, and now I want to talk about the number five sign that I look for in a prospect to see if they're a good use of my time or if they're complete waste of my time. And that is if the person on the meeting does not engage in any long conversation. If they're sitting just like this or if they don't want to give any details about themselves. Again, if you're doing all the talking, that's not a good sign. That will be something that you should be looking for.
And you can really judge yourself on that too. You could say, "Was this person talking, did I learned a lot?" If they talk too long, that's another bad side, but if they don't talk enough and they don't answer your questions, that's problematic. And if you don't know what questions to ask, again, that's where the sales coaching could come in.
So a lot of this is covered in my sales manual which you could see on the link below. You can find that on Amazon. It's a really great deal for all of my ideas written down. And if you want it to talk about our coaching program, fill out the link below. Thank you guys, talk to you soon.
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