Welcome back - had an interesting conversation with a prospect a while back, and we got a message from them recently that reminded me about something really important, and I want to share it with you today. If you can shift your thinking around this type of "auto response" - your business will thank you for it. 

I was talking with this particular prospect about a paid traffic channel that I was sure would help them grow their inbound lead flow significantly. We had done it for other clients in the same market many times and had the results to back up this recommendation. 

Their immediate response was: "I tried that before, and it didn't work". I paused for a moment to really consider their statement - and dug in a little more.

"What do you mean it "didn't work", I asked.

And they said, they had hired an agency in the past to run ads using this tool, and the results were terrible.

So I said - "Ok... how long were they running the campaigns? Where were they driving traffic? What was your average cost per appointment, and what percent converted into new business - what was that business worth?"

Sadly, they couldn't answer any of those questions directly. Seems the agency that was running things didn't actually set up real time tracking (which is just terrible marketing - but that's neither here nor there) - and the prospect said basically: "Well, we paid them like $500, and we didn't see any significant uptick in new business".

Now I'm pretty well known for telling it like it is - so I said:

"First, you can't run any real, significant, and meaningful test on an ad platform if you're only investing $500 between ad spend and someone to run it - that's just not enough budget to get any meaningful results. Second, you should never make marketing decisions based on a "feeling" or a "sense" that it "wasn't working". Everything needs to be tracked so you can know (with certainty), whether it's working or not. And third: you need to set objectives, and targets right out of the gate so you know what success will look like even before you start"

We had a bit of a longer conversation that led to this particular business giving it another go. After running for a couple of weeks they immediately started seeing productive lead flow - and after the first month - they were blown away that they could have been so wrong. 

I basically explain it in a sense that you can give the same exact toolbox to an apprentice carpenter, and to a master woodworker - and ask them both to remodel your kitchen - the results you get from them will be drastically different. It's the same with online tools and advertising campaigns. It's rarely ever the "tools" fault that something didn't work (if it were, the "tool" wouldn't exist very long) - it's more often how the tool was used. 

Now the point here isn't necessarily to reinforce the importance of vetting who you choose to work with - although that's important - but more so to not get set in the "that doesn't work for my business" mentality - because if you do - you're likely to be missing out on some powerful ways to improve and scale lead flow for your business.

Next time you catch yourself saying "that doesn't work for my business" - dig a little deeper and ask yourself: "Is that really true?". 

One of the fastest ways to maximize bottom line revenue for your business, is to maximize lead flow by using as many different channels as possible - and you can't do that if you're ruling them out based on previous poor performance for reasons that have nothing to do with the tool itself. 

Hope this helps!