Reading Time: 3 minutes

Let’s face it.  You already know the answer to the question below.  

Why are so many people overweight?   

If you’re like most people, hearing the word “exercise” brings an immediate pang of guilt. To amplify the problem, many of us try to make up for not exercising by eating too much! 👀  

Regardless of their current situation, most people would benefit by “filtering” their eating and time management to ensure that they are doing the right things with diet/exercise that will get them the results they want.  We all know the answer to the “Why are people overweight?” question, but we don’t live it…. 

Internal thoughts: “Maybe if I read enough weight loss quotes, the pounds will fall off; or maybe if I eat nothing but lemons for the next 6 months, I’ll be in perfect shape…no exercise required.” For nearly all people, losing weight without having to put in considerable effort is about as useless as Captain Hook’s second glove.  We ALL want results.  But what if you could get results with the least amount of effort as possible? 

The same problem faces countless companies across the country and the world. They are metaphorically overweight.  The answer to the next question may not come as easily as the first question.  

Why are so many companies overweight?

 In most companies the focus is heavy on effort instead of outcome.   

Similar to humans, businesses can often do a terrible job at filtering out “potential” leads who in reality have no potential at all.  In a previous article I described strategies we used to dramatically increase online meeting counts for a sales-based company called Macro (company name changed for privacy reasons).  Today I’ll describe how we shifted the company’s focus from asking “Who’s a potential customer?” to asking “Who’s the RIGHT Customer”.  Not only did we increase meeting counts for Macro…but we simultaneously helped them collect data and focus on the right metric:  booking the right type of meetings.   

Before our engagement with them, Macro was casting a wide net, trying to get more online meetings on all deal sizes.  Macro was getting fat.  As meeting counts were increasing at Macro, it was critical to implement a counterbalance that would weed out unqualified leads and leads which won’t move the needle for the company.  For simplicity, this process of finding the right type of prospective leads will be called “Funnel Filtering”.  

Although having tons of sales meetings sounds like a great problem to have, there may be certain sizes/types of deals that have a more positive impact on KPI’s of your company than others.  Filtering your sales funnel is a critical part of keeping your company from becoming fat.  ALL companies want results.  What if your company could get results with the least amount of effort as possible?  

This “Filtering the Funnel” concept may sound trivial, but can be especially hard for small to medium sized businesses.  When you “filter your funnel”, your funnel goes from this \  /  to this | |.    

In the case of Macro, we utilized the following funnel filtering concepts: 

1. Critical Questions: Who are the Right Customers?  Who are the Wrong Customers? 

Carefully and correctly answering these questions is worth considerable time and resources. Every company’s answers to this question will be unique.  Large strides can be made, especially for small to medium-sized companies by digging deep to uncover this information. Don’t get fat by taking in any and all deal sizes.  

2. Choose your desired outcomes

Picking the right outcome to filter is harder than it sounds.  How do you know when you find the right metric?  What’s the process? You may want to start by creating a chart showing the goals of your company in conjunction with the specific phases of your Customer’s Journey.  Who has a “touch” with your potential lead at each phase?  How can information be gathered and shared to increase the likelihood of getting the right lead—even across departments at each phase of the journey. 

3. Refine the Qualifying Process 

Instead of casting a wide net, we helped Macro book the right meetings by creating qualification process utilizing a chatbot. Site visitors were asked 3-4 qualifying questions before booking a sales meeting.  

 What was the result? The stricter qualifying process yielded a higher meeting to opportunity ratio of 48% when compared to the previous ratio of 38%. The stricter qualifying requirements filtered through to candidates who were, in general, more qualified than before the changes were made. 

 As  you work on filtering your funnel for your sales team, please heed this caution:  Carefully consider that it is possible this new process is over-qualifying leads and filtering out possible opportunities. It’s critical to consider whether it’s better to have the sales team take more total meetings or fewer meetings which are more qualified. Adjust qualification questions and parameters as needed. 

 In order for a business to succeed in the long-term, the funnel HAS to evolve. Don’t let your company get fat. Filter your sales funnel.