That time I chased a $50 client lead for 2 weeks and it taught me about qualifying

Last month I was in my home office in Austin staring at a spreadsheet of 40 leads I'd been nursing for weeks. I was so desperate for any new business I spent 14 days emailing back and forth with this one guy who kept asking for more proposals and revisions. Finally he says his budget is $50 total, not per month, but total. I laughed out loud because I had already put in like 6 hours on his requests. That's when it clicked for me - I need to ask about budget on the very first call before I do anything else. Now I have a three question script I use before I even open a proposal template. Has anyone else found a good way to weed out time wasters without being rude about it?

2 comments

2 Comments

diana_moore7516d ago

Oh man, $50 TOTAL after 6 hours? That's basically paying yourself less than minimum wage to do free consulting work. I bet that guy thinks he's a GENIUS negotiator too.

wren_thomas1616d ago

Started telling people upfront I charge a minimum of 2 hours just to talk. Weeds out the time wasters real fast, saved me from so many of those $50 days.