Given how little time there is in a day, it obviously makes sense to prioritise those opportunities and deals that actually stand a chance of happening.
But that’s where entrepreneurs often go wrong, wearing happy-ears:
"These people have a need, and they have a real urgency. And they even have a budget – let’s follow up and try to get another meeting!"
Ah yes, but:
The fact that a buyer has the money… does that mean they’re also going to spend that money?
Because no matter how much of a budget there is, it’s no use to you if they’re not going to spend that budget.
And while I haven’t checked, I think that even companies with Apple-kinds of money don’t buy all the proposals that providers have in their pipeline, but let me verify and get back to you on that.
And so you might end up spending hours upon hours trying to get a deal over the line, talking to a stakeholder who is truly in love with your proposal, but who doesn’t control the decision or the budget, only to end up frustrated and dejected because once again you wasted a whole bunch of time talking to someone who ultimately didn’t buy from you.
And very often, that’s because you chose to believe that they’re going to buy, when the signals were clear enough:
No alignment in the team, conflicting priorities, internal battling over who gets to invest which budget where…
All while you waste your time trying to push a rope.
Remember though, that there are thousands of buyers out there, and there’s only one you, and that means that you are the prize.
And if someone doesn’t see you as the prize, as a must-have, then to them you are a nice-to-have.
And where it comes to high-impact knowledge work like coaching and consulting, people usually don’t buy things that are nice to have.
But people sure do buy things that they must have.
So if in your sales process and your conversations you get the signals that you’re not a must-have, maybe get rid of the deal, or at the very least: deprioritise it.
That way you can focus your very scarce time and attention on engaging with those people who must have your solution, who, surprise, happen to be the ones who are actually far more likely to spend the money that they might have.
But if you constantly fall prey to the belief that ‘they have the money’ equals ‘they’re going to spend the money’, you’re negotiating yourself into the crappy kind of sales process that you truly don’t need to be in and that makes finding strangers and turning them into clients such a massive headache for so many people.
It shouldn’t be like that, it doesn’t have to be like that, and if you get yourself a Wingman, it very likely won’t be like that.