What to Do if Someone is Not a Qualified Prospect?

Hi there!

Welcome back!

For this week’s blog, I’ll go over a very interesting coaching call I had 🙂

Last week, I told you that I finally had my first sales with the free traffic strategy for Facebook, but I still wasn’t completely happy with the conversations that lead to those sales…

Feedback on successful FB conversation

I had learned that the best way to have a conversation with someone is to make it as personal as you can. That way, the person that you’re talking to can better know, like and trust you which, in turn, leads to a better relationship and thus a higher chance that that person will take you up on your offer to help them 🙂

However, some of my conversations that lead to a sale weren’t really personal at all… They were actually very business-like and to the point (but I at least applied ARQ correctly!). So I wanted to know what I could have done differently to make such a conversation more personal.

It turns out that I can still easily turn those conversations around and make it more personal! After all, the conversation doesn’t end after someone bought the product you’re offering! You should always follow up!

For example, my conversation from Facebook challenge I wrote about in my previous blog. During this conversation I sold a copy of the Iceberg Effect book. Of course I’m interested what the person who bought it thinks of the book, so my follow up is to first ask whether that person has had a chance to read it yet. Once that person has read the book, I can continue the conversation and make it more personal. For example, I asked something like “Once you have that clarity, what do you want to achieve?”

Asking that question can really open up the conversation and will hopefully also allow your customer to open up to you!

Btw, I can ask this because I already knew that this person lacked clarity on what exactly affiliate marketing is. The Iceberg Effect book should have given him complete clarity on what he needs to do to become successful 🙂

What to do if people aren’t a qualified prospect?

It can, of course, happen that you’re having a conversation with someone and quickly realise that this person will not be someone you can help with your product. If that’s the case, you don’t want to “waste” your precious time by keeping up a long conversation with them.

When that happens you need a nice and polite way to end that conversation.

So far, there have been three different cases for which I needed to end the conversation:
1. The person already has lots and lots of experience
2. The person wants to sell me something
3. The person has just joined another program

It has happened to me multiple times that I started a conversation with someone, asking them if they are an affiliate marketer as well, and that the first response I got was “Yes I am, how can I help you?”. This already pretty much implies that they are experienced and wouldn’t benefit from what I’m offering.

To politely say that I don’t need their help I usually say something like this: “Nice to hear! And thanks for your offer :-). However, I was just going to ask you the same thing!”

Some people I message will offer me their own products or programs right from the very first reply they give. These are also usually people who don’t need your help and sometimes will even really push their product on you. Not really the kind of people you should spend your time on.

When I want to end such a conversation I usually say this: “Thanks for the offer, but I’m very content and satisfied with what I’m currently doing online. However, it’s been great to connect with you and I wish you all the best”.

In the last case (when someone has just joined another program) you don’t necessarily have to end the conversation in the sense that you should never talk to that person again. Usually, these conversations are great, but it’s just not the right time for me to offer my product to that person because you should always give them a chance to try whatever they’ve already bought first.

I usually just wish them luck and say that it would be great if we could keep in touch and keep each other posted on how things are going. The idea is that you can then touch base with them again at a later time (maybe in 3 months or so) and see how they’re doing. After all, it might be the case that the program they’ve joined has not been working for them at all. This means that they could have suddenly turned in a qualified prospect 🙂

Tracker sheet

The call ended with something that I thought was really great! James gave everyone on the call the tracker sheet he was using. In this tracker sheet you can keep track of (1) how many people you contact, (2) how many of those people message you back, (3) how many of them are qualified prospects, (4) how many book links you’ve given, (5) how many books have been bought, and (7) in which Facebook groups you found them.

This all gives great insights into which Facebook groups are, for example, very good sources and which ones are not useful at all. Once you have this information you can search for more groups which are similar to your good sources and leave the groups which don’t bring you any sales.

It’s great to be able to see that data and see how you will have approved as well, so I’m very excited to start using the tracker!

What would you do if you come across someone on Messenger who is not a qualified prospect for you?

Until next time!

Sandra