Hello, hello, welcome to all of the new listeners who came here via Pod News.
Thanks so much for checking out the show.
I hope you enjoy it.
I am, I'll just say at the top of the show here that if you ever have any feedback, you
can always go to streamlinedfeedback.com.
That's streamlinedfeedback with a D. Streamlined with a D. Streamlinedfeedback.com.
So I am thinking about a question that my friend Courtney asked me about a month and
a half ago now.
Also, I'm sorry, I'm out of breath.
My daughter is in something at school called Dance Stars and today they had like a dancing
with the parents day and it was way more intense than I expected it to be.
So I am tired.
But I have been thinking about this question.
My friend Courtney asked me about a month and a half ago.
She asked me what my close rate is.
I was basically telling her how I am really good at starting conversations, great rapport
on discovery calls and other kind of top of funnel ways of getting people kind of into
my orbit and interested in my products and services, but I'm really bad at closing.
I am, I guess I'm like Clay Holmes.
If you're a New York sports fan, I close and get the save sometimes, but a lot of times
I blow it.
And I couldn't even tell her what my close rate was because I wasn't really tracking
that, which is in and of itself a problem.
So what I'm doing this month is there's an episode of my main show, the Streamline
Solopreneur out recently where I kind of talk about the CRM that I rolled myself inside
of Notion and I added a couple of views, tabs.
What are these called?
I think they're called views.
Yes, they're views.
So I added a chart view, a bar chart where I can look at all the entries in my CRM and
see the statuses.
Lost no show cold, one completed, lead prospect and lukewarm.
The difference between lead and prospect is pretty negligible.
Lead is someone who has filled out the form and prospect is somebody who at least showed
up to the discovery call.
You might've noticed that I also had a no show.
And so if somebody books a discovery call, doesn't tell me that they're not coming
to the call and just doesn't show up, they get marked as no show, which is like, you
know, if I hear like, Oh, something terrible happened.
Fine.
But usually this means that like, they're, they're not respectful of other people's time.
And I don't like that.
And again, like I get things happen.
I'm a dad of three kids.
And if I hear from them like at all in that window, then, then fine.
Like, you know, I will give grace and stuff like that.
But if they just like show up like a month later and they're like, Hey, want to talk
now?
No, I don't think this is a good fit.
But the, the things I'm most interested in are lost, cold, won and completed.
Because that shows me lost and cold, combine those and you get the, the clients I didn't
win and you get one and completed and you get the clients I did win.
And so that's at least kind of giving me some raw numbers.
I don't know what a good close rate is.
That's some research I'd want to do.
I'm sure it highly depends on the type of business I have in my reach and things like
that.
The other thing, the other two views I added are timeline.
And so this is, it's a timeline chart where the starting point is the day they're added
to the CRM and then the end point is the last contacted date.
And so this kind of gives me an idea of how long I was talking to somebody.
This is also sorted by status.
So you know, someone who's gone cold or, you know, like somebody who's completed for example.
It gives me a good idea of how, you know, how long it took them to buy or say no or,
or just never get back to me.
So these two things will help me understand, I'm sorry, the last one is recently added.
So I can kind of see how many leads are coming in at any given time.
This week is exceptional.
As I look at it, I've had four, five, six, seven, eight leads in the last five days.
Seven included.
So that's pretty good.
And actually one I can mark as one, which is great too.
So the other thing I'm doing here, right, is I have a proposal associated.
I marked them as one.
Something I want to do a little bit better.
This is something I'll have to do retroactively is review the proposal and then assign products.
Because I think part of my bad close rate is the disconnect between the products I'm
offering and what the person reaching out actually needs.
And I do have a form that hopefully filters out bad fits.
But even when I get on a call, I, for a while I was trying to pigeonhole them into something
I already offered.
And I'm seeing an uptick in wins lately, especially for a product I have called the podcast power
hour, which is a 90 minute call.
It's a terrible name.
I'm really bad at naming stuff.
It's a 90 minute call where if they are pre-launch, we go through their entire launch plan.
And if they are post launch, I audit their show.
And then we come up with a plan to improve their systems and processes for content production,
growth and discovery.
So that's been doing well.
I think it is clear and fits in for most people who are coming into my orbit.
So I think the things I'm thinking about this month are improving my close rate, improving
the language for my offers, and then just kind of like looking at the timeline, how
long it takes me to close something.
And more data is good.
If I close somebody on a coaching package or like a VIP day where I build an automation
system that's likely going to be a longer timeline than the power hour because it's
in order of magnitude cheaper.
So or in order of magnitude more expensive.
The VIP day is in order of magnitude more expensive than the power hour.
So this is stuff I'm thinking of.
I'd love to hear from you.
How are you tracking close rates if you do?
You know what kind of a lot of you are coming from pod news, so you probably have podcasts.
And so we know what's something that you're struggling with in your podcast.
I'd love to hear more because I am being more diligent about gathering data than I have
in the past.
And I'm already seeing improvements.
So I want to gather more and more data.
But that's it for this kind of rumination, what I'm thinking about.
Again if you have feedback you can go to streamlinedfeedback.com.
And thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, we'll see you out there.