Skipping The Essentials = Bad Idea

essentials Are you really willing to do whatever it takes to make your business successful?

Hey Moguls, Cris Chico here, and I came to a startling realization while I was on a coaching call with a student...

My student wasn’t happy. He thought his leads were weak. As we talked, I realized that the problem wasn’t his leads. It was his belief about what would make his business a success.

See, he was focusing on his leads as the key to his success. But I realized he was missing the point—leads don’t equal success. Sticking to the essentials leads to success. You’ve got to do some hard, routine work in order to see your business succeed.

So, are you really willing to do whatever it takes—even if there’s no magic formula—to see your business succeed? Let’s find out what that really looks like.

The Truth about the Leads

Back to my client. I asked him whether he had called all his leads. He said yeah. I knew it was time for some accountability, so logged into his CRM right then. And in his CRM there was a long list of leads that hadn’t even been clicked on. So I tell him I don’t understand and ask him to walk me through his CRM.

He tells me about this crazy system he’s following where he clicks on a lead in the system, calls, and if he doesn’t get an answer he marks that lead as unread so he can come back to it another day.

That is crazy—I didn’t teach him that. I told him it didn’t make sense. And then he changed his story—he called most of the leads, but not all of them.

The Real Problem

So I explained to my client that he can’t say the leads are bad if he hasn’t called all of them. But he didn’t agree, and we got into this heated discussion. He argued that if the first leads he called were bad, why would he call any more leads? They’re probably all the same.

Now we were getting to the real issue: He didn’t understand what it means to call a lead.

So I told him that he and I didn’t think about calling leads the same way. The difference is that I call every lead 1, 2, 3, 4 times... I don’t try once and give up. So I told him, “If you were working for me and you were an acquisitions person, you would not be working for me much longer.”

The real problem isn’t the quality of the leads. It’s the effort put into each lead. When I compare how my team’s CRM software looks in terms of the amount of time and effort we put into each one of our leads, this client’s doesn’t even come close.

plan I know this client’s leads are golden; he has hundreds of leads in prime markets in this country. But all he was doing was complaining. He needed to take all the effort that he was putting into complaining and put it into the phone calls.

See, the reality is that there are leads that get you $10k, $15k, $50k or even $60,000 but you can’t get there if your mindset is that all your leads are terrible. And you can’t just call somebody 1 time.

It’s just not magic. It’s work.

Will You Do What it Takes?

At the end of the day, you have to be crystal clear about what it takes for your business to be a success. You need to get on the phone with buyers and sellers and stay on the phone until your business succeeds.

That is the most essential part of the business.

You also need to improve every day. Sometimes it may not be the most enjoyable work. Sometimes you just won’t feel like doing it. Eventually you will have the financial ability to hire some help. But until that day comes, it’s going to be you on the phones every day.

Accept that this is a requirement of the business. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re working the business and you’re doing everything you can, if in fact you’re not.

And remember, another key to your success is having an experienced mentor guide you, nudge you in the right direction and – super importantly – hold you accountable, just like I did with my coaching student.