How Much Does Missing One Sale Cost You?
A Lot More Than You May Think...
You have a successful business. You sell something people want. You attract customers, make sales, and compete. But are you getting everything you should from what you've built?
When each new customer represents thousands, tens of thousands, or considerably more, the gap between the sales you make and the sales you should make adds up fast.
Maybe you need more leads. Maybe you need better prospects. Maybe you need a more convincing sales message, one that engages, educates, tells your story, answers questions, and gets people excited about contacting you.
Maybe the greater opportunity lies with the prospects you already reach. The ones who show interest but hesitate. The ones who compare you to a competitor. The ones who don't fully understand your value. The ones who could and should buy—but don't.
Before you spend another dollar to get more attention, wouldn't it be good to know what may stand between your business as it is now and your business with a 20- to 50% increase in sales?
You May Be Losing More Business Than You Realize
Consider this.
How many good prospects come through your business in a month? I don't mean every lead, every inquiry, or every person who fills out a form. I mean people you would like to have as customers. They need what you sell. They can afford it. They're the kind of people you know you can help.
You probably have a pretty good idea.
Now, how many of them buy?
Another question: How many good potential customers or clients who find you, visit your website, read your sales materials, and move on without a word each month?
If you were to guess, what would the number be?
Now, if instead of moving on, only 10% contacted you and did business, how many additional customers or clients would that be per week or per month? How much revenue would that generate?
The Prospect Who Hesitates
They like what you offer. Then price enters the conversation, and something changes.
The Deal That Goes Quiet
Everything looks good. They're ready to move forward. Then… nothing.
The Sale That Drags
Weeks become months while everyone waits for a decision.
The Competitor Who Shouldn't Have Won
You've probably looked at one of those deals and thought: How did they get that sale!?
Have You Ever Asked How Many Sales You Should Be Making?
The prospects you know you lose are only part of what you miss.
What about the ones you don't know you lose because you never hear from them?
The Website Visitor
A good prospect visits your website but never calls.
The Referral
Someone hears your name, checks you out, compares you with two other companies and chooses one of them without ever talking to you.
The Buyer Who Never Sees The Difference
They like what you offer but never see enough reason to justify your price.
You don't know their names. You don't know what stopped them.
Most of the time, you don't even know you lost them.
And that's where this gets expensive.
You know what you spend on generating business. You can pull up those numbers whenever you want.
But can you pull out a report that tells you how much profit you don't make because good prospects don't become customers or clients?
Of course not. That money never hits the books.
If a new customer or client is worth a substantial amount to your business, and you miss making that sale, no one sends you a bill for $25,000 or $50,000 or the lifetime value that that relationship may have brought you. The money simply never arrives.
Lose another and the same thing happens. And another.
You can have a very successful business while a surprising amount of money you could have made quietly slips past you right into a competitor's bank account. I call that Revenue Leakage.
Revenue Leakage
The sales and profit you could reasonably capture, but don't.
When you add up all the business you could reasonably have won, but didn't, you begin to see something much bigger:
The Fortune Not Made on Business Not Done.
How big is yours?
Why Don't More Buy?
There's never just one answer. Some aren't as qualified. Some aren't ready. Some choose someone else.
But if you sell a high-value product or service, there's something else you have to account for.
You're Asking Your Prospect to Make a Big Decision, One That Matters.
So Your Prospect Thinks About It
They compare you with other options. They question the price. They look for reasons to trust you—and reasons not to. They weigh what they stand to gain against what could go wrong.
Even when they want what you sell, they may still hesitate before they make the decision.
You probably recognize that kind of buyer.
Because that's the kind of sale you make.
When your prospect has meaningful money, risk, or consequence attached to the decision that will make a difference in their life, getting their attention isn't enough.
You have to give them enough reasons to believe you, to trust that you can and will deliver as promised, to see your solution as superior, and to believe you are the best person to provide it. In other words, you have to manage the customer journey in a way that they decide for themselves that doing business with you is strongly in their best interest.
And much of that needs to happen before you ever speak to them.
The more your prospect has to consider before they buy, the more your sales and marketing strategy has to accomplish before you ask them to decide.
Before You Try to Solve a Problem, It's Good to Know What Causes It.
You may need more leads. You may need a stronger sales argument. You may need better follow-up, stronger positioning, or an entirely different way to reach the prospects you want. We don't know yet.
And nobody can know until they understand the sale.
That's where we start.
Why would anyone want what you sell? What would have to be going on in their lives for them to be interested in what you sell? What problems, fears, concerns, wishes, or wants would motivate them?
Who is your ideal prospect? Describe them. What is the lifetime value of that customer or client? Why do your best customers choose you now? Why do good prospects hesitate, stall, or disappear? What questions do you get asked repeatedly? What objections come up routinely? What must a prospect believe before they will do business with you?
We look at where the opportunity is and what has to change to capture more of it.
Then we decide how to do exactly that.
Message
Are you making the strongest possible case for why the right prospect should choose you?
Market
Are you putting that case in front of the people most able and likely to buy?
Media
Are you reaching them in the places—and in the ways—that give your argument the best chance to work?
Find the Real Sales Problem First.
Everything Else Is Easier After That.
We Don't Sell Tactics. We Sell What It Takes to Spot Opportunity, Solve Problems, and Turn 'Potential' into Sales, Cash Flow, and Money in the Bank.
Whether it's a shorter sales cycle, a higher closing rate, new streams of qualified prospects contacting you, or anything we can handle…
We Build What the Need Requires.
Once we know where the opportunity sits, the question changes. It's no longer, "Should you do direct mail?" or "Do you need a new website?" or "Should you write a book?"
Those Are Tools. And a tool is only valuable when it solves the right problem.
If your best prospects don't understand why you're different, getting more of them to your website won't fix that.
If they understand the difference but don't believe your claims, you may need proof strong enough to overcome their skepticism. If they believe you but aren't ready to act, the opportunity may be in follow-up—staying in front of them with the right argument until the timing changes.
If you're reaching the wrong people, the problem isn't persuasion. It's the market.
And sometimes the opportunity isn't buried in one place. Your message, market, media, and sales process must all work together to move the prospect from interested to convinced.
That's Why We Don't List Things We Can Sell. We Begin With the Sale.
Then we ask:
What Has to Happen Next to Move More of the Right Prospects Toward the Sale?
Once we determine what needs to change to capture the opportunity, we determine what to build, strengthen, tweak, or put into motion to make it happen.
Sometimes that's one thing. More often, it's several pieces working together, each doing a specific job in connecting with the prospect, deepening their interest, and moving them closer to the sale.
What Does Your Sale Require?
You may need several of these. You may need one. You may need something entirely different.
The point is that we don't decide that first.
The sale tells us what needs to happen. The strategy tells us what to build and how to deliver it.
And every piece has the same job:
Move More of the Right Prospects Closer to Yes.
Give Them a Better Reason to Choose You.
You probably already have a sense of where the sale gets harder than it should.
Maybe your closing percentage is far too low. Maybe price objections come up too often. Maybe the sales cycle drags on forever. Maybe you're spending a lot on marketing, but getting a poor return for the effort.
Or maybe you can't put your finger on what's wrong; you just know something is off, and you want it fixed.
That's okay.
You don't have to diagnose the problem before you bring it to us.
Tell us what you sell.
Tell us what you're seeing.
Tell us where you think the opportunity is—or where things seem to be getting stuck.
We'll start there.