Why your leads aren't coming in (and what to fix first)

Someone wrote in with a question. She is trying to move up to the next level in her career, she is sending out as much communication as she possibly can, she is making leads, and she feels like she is getting nowhere with them. All that effort going out, and the reward coming back does not match it. What should she do?

The first thing I wanted to know back: what exactly is wrong with the leads? Are you getting a small quantity of leads, or a poor quality of leads? Those are two different problems, and I would normally need the answer before I could really help.

But you know what? The starting point is the same no matter which camp you are in. So let me give you the principle first, and then we will take the two problems one at a time.

Life is one big survey

You cause something, and you get an effect back. You put something out into the world, and something comes back to you. That is the whole game.

So if you do not like the quality or the quantity of what is coming back, one thing is certain: it has to do with what you are putting out there. Most people never turn around and inspect their own outflow. They stare at the disappointing results and forget that the results are answers to a question they asked. But that is exactly where the fix lives, and the good news is that it is the one part you completely control.

Coach me, evaluate me

Here is one of the things we tell ourselves we do not do: we do not evaluate people. Nonsense. I will evaluate all day long, because I do not do it from an evil heart. It is meant to be helpful. People need advice, and believe me, so do I. Just today I was with somebody saying, look, this is what I am thinking, help me here, I need help. And they evaluated for me, and that is exactly how it should work.

So take the communication you are putting out to people in your environment whose judgment you respect, business minded people you admire, and say: coach me. Evaluate this for me. If you saw this video, what would you think? What would you want to see different?

Ask four, five, six, seven, eight people. Then maintain your own counsel. Gather up everything they said, sit with it, and decide for yourself what you are going to change in the next round.

Keep hitting it

Now, the small quantity problem. Here is the beautiful thing about making videos and putting them out on social media. You can shoot one today and have it out in the world in front of billions of people in five minutes. Five minutes. And it is going to hit or it is not. It did not hit? Fine. Do another one. Put it out there. Still nothing? Try another one. Bam, that one hits.

I will tell you something honestly. I have a whole machine of people who put my social media out there, because I am not a social media guy. I do not even know how to log into my own Facebook account. And there are times we get a few thousand views, a few thousand more, and then all of a sudden one video takes off and I could not tell you why. When I can figure out why, I try to emulate it and repeat it. You hit a vein of gold, you mine the gold.

And even when the numbers are small, five hundred here, two thousand there, you are still building. This is not an overnight thing. You increase the quantity going out to increase the quantity coming in, you keep mixing it up, you keep trying new things, and you never let yourself get stuck in a rut. That is how the quantity problem gets solved.

When the wrong people answer

Now the other camp. What is coming back to you is poor quality. The responses come from people with some other intention entirely, people who are hitting on you instead of asking about your business. Then you have to look at your videos again and ask a harder question: what is the message I am actually putting out? How am I pulling this in?

You have to take responsibility for your communication. You are making a cause out there, and you are going to get an effect back here. If you do not desire the effect you are getting, take a look at the cause you are putting out. It works that way in a relationship. It works that way in everything. It is life.

So do not sit there frustrated at the leads. Go back to the source, which is you. Have the people you trust look at what you are sending out, listen to all of them, keep your own counsel, and then put the next version into the world. The survey never stops running, and that is the good news, because every single time you put something out, you get another answer back.