Set prerequisites, raise lead quality and add friction

1. Selling to everybody

A big issue for many owners, believe it or not, is that they sell to anyone at all: whoever wants to come in, comes in. They are then surprised at how far apart their customers' results are. Sometimes it looks like this: some customers are amazing, and the rest just do nothing.

One picture for it: letting toddlers through the door and then giving them coding lessons. Naturally that fails. That is the reason standards exist, and the reason requisites matter so much. There is a reason a student has to pass Spanish one before taking Spanish two.

2. Decide what a customer must already have

For many of you, this is something you can probably write down today. Suppose you had to choose: which requirements, once in place, would give your customers the best chance of winning?

You can probably tell. Look over your full customer base and you probably know it already. Whether you sell by phone, in a consultation or some other way, there is probably a particular sign you recognize that says this one is going to crush it.

If you can tell that customer apart from one who leaves you feeling lukewarm, you probably should not let the second one in.

Then ask a second question. Suppose every single customer crushed it: what price could you then ask? Probably one higher by orders of magnitude. Maybe that is your right avatar.

Your selection has to get narrower, and narrowing it is how you raise your standards. The view here is that this is a huge issue for service businesses.

Narrowing who you sell to, and what that does to what you can charge, is also worked through on SOP 1 — Pick the market before the offer, section 4.

3. Set a bar before anyone reaches the calendar

Make sure you actually put prerequisites in place. Ask what is really required for a customer to succeed. Everyone is strongly encouraged to set at least some requisites.

The example given is a revenue bar: a business has to be making a set amount a year before it can come in. The reasons given for having a bar:

• What you sell will be more valuable with it, and better.
• The leads sort themselves automatically.
• Anyone under the bar cannot even get a slot on the calendar.

Someone under the bar has done nothing wrong. What they need is more tactics.

3.1 Keep a floor after entry, and raise it

A floor that rises. A bar at the door is not the only standard you can set. The view here is that prizes at the top end are one thing, and a minimum that keeps rising is a completely different one, in a lot of ways the stronger: it is one thing to win, and another to be put out for not being good enough, which is held here to be incredibly motivating. So set a minimum a customer must keep reaching to stay, and raise it over time.

Check it, rather than pricing for it. In one example, a high price was used as the filter at first, because there was no way yet to check whether entrants met the bar; some got in who could not take part, which made it a poor experience for them. Checking eligibility directly was added later and has been largely successful.

Split by stage. The view here is that it is more compelling to separate customers into groups by the stage they have reached, so that who is not in the room becomes both the reason to move up and part of a better experience for each group. Set the stages and the thresholds yourself; this page gives no figure for them.

What it did to churn. In one paid community, people let in through an open door left at 30 percent a month, while those who came in together as the first group left at 6 percent. With onboarding tightened, one group was brought under 5 percent within 90 days: a sixfold difference in lifetime value. What set the lasting members apart was that they had shown they met the entry bar, gone through onboarding and taken part. Letting everybody in, on this view, would obviously push the number back up. Finding the step that makes a customer stay is SOP 129 — Derive the activation point; reading churn group by group is SOP 158 — Diagnose churn by cohort.

4. You are the gatekeeper

Picture two people who have to cross a bridge made of a run of logs. One is big and athletic; the other is wobbly at the knees. Which of them is more likely to cross with confidence? Obviously the athletic one.

Your bridge is your product and your customer experience. When two people turn up and you get to be the gatekeeper, choosing which of them comes in, then when someone fails, the fault is to a large degree yours.

That does not mean you now have to educate everyone from kindergarten through twelfth grade; that might not be worth it. Instead you set the entry condition, for example:

• they must have graduated high school to do this;
• their e-commerce store must already bring in $10,000 a month;
• or whatever fits what you sell.

There are a couple of things that have to happen before someone can get the outcome. That is why prerequisites matter.

Drawing the line so that you do not teach everyone from the foundations up is also on SOP 193 — Treat hard as a skill you lack and chunk it down, section 5. The same page uses a bridge for learning itself.

5. The ethical case

The view here, firmly held, is that you carry an ethical responsibility: push your prerequisites as high as they will go, especially when what you sell is a service, above anything else. A self-serve product differs a little bit. Where services are concerned, especially, on this view, the duty runs past asking whether you can sell these people, to asking who you ought to be selling to.

The test for that exception. With a low-priced offer whose delivery scales, you can let more people in, on this view, as long as doing so does not break the promise you make. If part of the promise is who else is inside, as in a group that admits members by size of business, you have to gate entry. Either way, score people as they onboard, and spend sales time only on the likely ones.

6. Raise the quality of your leads

You might have the problem of so many leads, and so much junk among them. The answer then is more friction in the process. The ads themselves might also be failing to call out the right people.

An extreme example, a giveaway. Say you sell IT services and you give away a free vacation to bring in leads. That is probably not a good way to get leads: the trip is the draw, so you pull in everyone keen on a free holiday instead of buyers of IT services. Now suppose the big prize were a year of fully managed IT services. That is probably going to bring you a far better base of clients than chasing people who want a trip. The vacation would get you far cheaper leads, but it would not make you more money.

SOP 61 — Run a giveaway as an acquisition offer, section 3, makes the same choice from the prize's side: make the prize the thing you most want every entrant to buy, and keep prizes from outside what you sell off the list unless that is your business.

Ways to introduce friction into the funnel, as named:

• add a video sales letter;
• add proof;
• run ads that speak to the right avatar, the better-quality one.

How to build one is SOP 207 — Build a video sales letter. Writing an ad's call-out is SOP 32 — Call out the audience four ways. Friction placed before someone can book, to cut down bad appointments, is SOP 85, section 8.

One practice here adds a fourth. Where deals are being lost to shock at the price, put the price, or who the offer is and is not for, in the ad itself, and send anyone under the bar to your free content. In that practice, ads that signal the price up front have performed best, though the approach does not work for every kind of buyer. Whether your video should state the price is section 6 of SOP 248.

Where to add it. If leads arrive unqualified, add friction before they can book: more qualifying questions on the application, and a longer video with more in it, placed ahead of the booking. If they are qualified but not buying, keep the front end as it is and add friction just before the call, or whatever event converts them.

7. Budget, authority, need and timing

If you want, you can also add a test of four things:

Ask about	The question
Budget	Do they have the money to spend?
Authority	Can they say yes?
Need	Do they need the thing? It is first put as needing it right now, then as needing it at all
Timing	Is now the right time?

These are the four things to put to a prospect if your process includes an application of any kind, whatever service you sell.

SOP 98 — Qualify with the four-letter test carries its own four-part test, with some of the same words: situation, timing, authority and resources, established one by one on a call. The same four words as this section's, added to an application with your own customer's specifics, appear on SOP 149, section 4.

8. Add friction even when leads cost more

The experience behind this covers the sales processes of many kinds of business: teeth whitening, marketing agencies, plumbing, whatever else. It is first put as happening rarely, then as no remembered case of adding friction leaving less money.

The interesting part, on this view, is that this is the very thing people fear. They fear raising prices, they fear a narrower avatar, and they fear putting friction into how they sell. Almost always, though, doing it and making quality the focus is where the edge lies, since nobody else will.

You are encouraged to be bold here: be willing to do what other people will not do. Most owners, on this view, are average; average people stay on the beaten path and place no bets.

So accept the move that pushes up what each lead costs you. Given the choice, take the lead that costs $500 and is worth $10,000 rather than the one costing $100 and worth $500. Your spend goes up, and so could what you make. Oftentimes, in the experience here, it has come out that way more times than not, and by a wide margin.

SOP 197 — Solve a leads, sales or profit-per-customer problem, section 2.3, sets the same four figures out as the cost to win a customer and what that customer brings in, and works out the return.

These are summed up as the moves used to fix sales problems when you cannot afford leads.

Judge it by the sale, not the call. When the cost per call goes up after a video goes in, that is not the number that matters. Look at the cost of each sale, whether a higher share of calls close, whether fewer calls are taken, and whether selling has become more efficient.

9. Flag: letting in someone below the bar

• This page: set prerequisites, so that anyone under the bar cannot get on the calendar; if you can tell who will not do well, you probably should keep them out; in services especially, ask who you should be selling to.
• SOP 98, section 4: try to close anyone who has the problem you solve: people lie, the time is already blocked, and it is practice; and you might make some money too.

The two give different instructions for a prospect who has the problem and falls short of your prerequisites. This page does not settle which reading is right.

10. What this page does not decide for you

• Where to set your bar. This page gives no figure for your own bar; the ones in section 4 are examples.
• How much friction to add. Where to add it is in section 6; how much: Not established on this page.
• The minimum to stay, and how fast it rises. This page gives no figure for either; section 3.1's churn figures are one community's own.

11. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Write down what a customer must already have for the best chance of winning
2	If you can tell who will crush it, you probably should not let the others in
3	Ask how much more you could charge if every customer succeeded
4	Set at least some requisites, so that anyone under the bar cannot book
5	Treat your product as the bridge and yourself as the gatekeeper, at fault to a large degree when someone you let in fails
6	In a giveaway, the thing you sell will probably bring better clients than an unrelated prize
7	With too much junk among your leads, add friction: a video sales letter, proof, ads that call out the better avatar
8	If you run an application, ask about budget, authority, need and timing
9	Be willing to pay more per lead for leads that are worth far more
10	Set a minimum customers must keep reaching to stay, raise it, check it directly, and split customers by stage
11	Self-serve: let more in only as long as it keeps the promise; score people as they onboard
12	Unqualified leads: add friction before booking; qualified but not buying: add it just before the call
13	Judge added friction by cost per sale, close rate, calls taken and sales efficiency, not cost per call

12. What this page does not cover

Lead scoring is SOP 84 — Score and route inbound leads. Closing on the call is SOP 101 — Run the general closes.