Creatives Grab Coffee - 4 Red Flags in New Business Leads | Creatives Grab Coffee 37

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

There are many red flags that can come up in business. When it comes to new leads, this is what we found to be big deal breakers. Check it out!To learn more about the show, visit: https://lnkd.in/g4mK_zH6Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://lnkd.in/duVS8QNBInstagram:@lapseproductionshttps://lnkd.in/eNmgu3MY#videography #videographer

Welcome everybody, we're here on a completely new type of episode that we're doing for Creatives Grab Coffee, where we're going to be talking about very specific topics. And today's topic, four red flags to look for when a lead approaches you. So Dario, what would you say is probably the first of these red flags? Let me get my notes out. I don't know if I memorized. I guess we should preface it with the fact that we're not really going to go over like very minor stuff it's like something as simple as someone contacts you and their email handle is all messed up and you kind of get the understanding that they're not really a legit company or whatever it's just someone starting out we're not really gonna hotmail email yeah we're not if it's a hotmail email we're not really gonna focus on stuff like that but you know going

over everything we didn't really come up with too stuff like that but you know going over everything we didn't really come up with too many i think we just came up with like four main ones i think everyone else you should all the other ones like if there's like more than that you should already know it by now or it's or it's very very technical stuff yeah and not only are we going to go over these particular red flags but we're also going to talk about how you can actually turn them almost into green ones in a way, right? Where you can use it to your advantage. So for example, one of the very first red flags that a lot of companies encounter is that these leads, they don't know exactly what they want. And sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes this is a bad thing. But the place where it becomes bad is where they don't know what they want.

They know they need video, but they don't know what the goals are. They don't know who they're targeting. They don't know what the point of the video is or anything like that. And this can be frustrating for a lot of organizations when the lead doesn't know what they want, right? It becomes a big problem when that extends well into the production process all the way to the end. That's not really a big issue if at the beginning of the conversation,

they're a little lost in that because you can kind of guide them towards it and say, listen, I need you to figure that out before we continue this. But if you kind of take them on and they still don't know that stuff and you guys go through the whole production and by the time they see the first cut, they still don't know what they want, you guys go through the whole production, and by the time they see the first cut,

they still don't know what they want, but they know it's not what you gave them, that's where it becomes a big problem, right? Yeah, and this is why it's so key to have these discussions earlier on in pre-production. And I feel like we haven't really experienced this issue so much because of the different types of budget ranges that we typically work with.

This happens occasionally here and there. But the one thing we notice is that organizations, when they're starting to pour a lot of money into their marketing, they already know what their goals are and what they're looking to do. So when they reach out for video, a lot of the time,

they already know what they need at that point. Not always, because we still have had that happen recently too, but you kind of again you have to stop them and say i need you to know this information and even recently we had a lead where we just straight up said look you guys need to figure this out then get us involved in this because it seems like you guys don't have this figured out right now so figure it out then let us know and then we can help you help you to the next step but until you don't know that like i can't i can't i can't do it it's like

going to the doctor and saying i have a pain where i don't know okay so i can't help you like is it in your head no exactly no okay so where is it and you nailed it right on the head like essentially with these situations you have like the good thing is that if they don't know what they want and you start to ask these very key questions to get them to start thinking about things, they will actually value you a lot more because you're getting them to think about what the key purposes are for the video content that they want to do. There's nothing more of a disservice than saying, yes, yes, yes, let's make a video.

Let's start and move right forward without even you or they knowing what they want. Because like you said, what will happen later on in the later stages is exactly as you said, no one will be happy and everyone has a bad experience. Yeah, I can see this also being a great way for bigger companies to vet leads because we're at the stage where we can take on more capacity. And we're even fine-tuning our sales process. So a lot of the times, we'll actually just test out different sales method with these types of leads. But if you're a bigger company and someone just comes to you like that, I guess it's way easier to just say, okay, I have five other leads to go through.

This one, I'm just going to do a hard pass. Yeah, exactly. And as we mentioned before, once you start asking these questions, asking them what the goals are, who their target market is, and all these questions get answered, they will value you more. And then later down the road, that relationship will flourish even better. But I will say that's also another thing to keep in mind with that type of lead is that sometimes the amount of time you'll need to put into those those sales calls is a lot more than with a client that has that stuff figured out so just keep that in mind going into it because again like we're testing stuff out techniques out so we might take those on just to like better our process but if you're at a stage where you can't your time is valuable and you really can't afford something like that,

or you have other people on those, on those calls that you're mentoring, you might have to tell them, Hey, you know what? This type of person just pass on it. Because like going back to, to my previous example,

it took at least three more calls to be able to three more calls. In addition to like my typical amount of calls, like a total, like maybe five calls or something to be able to close that client now we have them but like it was like the total of five calls and there were a couple where like we had to do eventually like a hard step and say listen you guys need to figure it out so just keep that in mind yes you could turn this into a green flag but it will be more time consuming and And the rate wise, I don't know what that is, but it's probably not as high as you think it would be. So it might be more of a sunk

cost than a potential opportunity. Yeah, you have to really evaluate how much time you need to spend acquiring this client and if there is a potential for a long-term relationship. Because if, like you said, because of the amount of time that goes into acquiring this new client, if it's going to be a one-off, then it's maybe not worth your time. But if it's something that could potentially lead to monthly projects or consistent work here and there, then it can actually be beneficial. So it's all a matter of weighing your time versus the cost. Now, that being said, let's move on now to our second red flag. And this is when clients typically refuse to talk about their budget. We don't have that often now. Like right now, we fish it out pretty quickly out of them. Some people, I don't know why, some people think it's

taboo to talk about money, but I like to know what the budget is going into the first call. That's why on our contact form, we have the budget option because I need to know, like, are you even worth my time? And that's why we also select, we have to pre-select certain options for them just to vet them out from that stage, right? So if a client is not, or if a lead is not willing to tell you their budget, even after you're trying to fish it out of them, you have to just stop the conversation and just

say, I need to know this before we go forward. Because what if you get to the end of a, you keep going down your sales funnel and then they say, oh, I can't afford this. And they're just wasting your time. Like, what is this? They're wasting your time. Like, what is this? They're wasting your time. I know what their tactic is to hopefully get you so invested in them

that you'll kind of agree to what their price is. But that's BS. Listen, you need to know your numbers right away. Yeah, and this is actually a benefit also to them because it's not only your time that is gonna be wasted, but also theirs. Because imagine if you went through an entire one hour call or discussion with this lead, determining idea, discussing ideas, discussing other details, and then you find out what the

budget is, then you tell them how much it costs for your services, then they're like, great, I just wasted an hour of, they also wasted an hour of their time trying to figure out if this is a potentially good partnership. So there's a flip side to it, right? And you have to figure out ways to get that budget within the first few minutes of talking with this lead. And luckily for Dario and myself, what we're doing, as he mentioned, is having a baseline set on our website for when people are contacting us so that they know generally what to expect. That's stage one. Then stage two is when you do the intro call. Within two minutes, you say, okay, so I also saw that you selected the option of 75 to 10K

for your budget. Does that still hold? And you just wait for the answer. You don't talk. You could also flip it though and even say like, why did you select this particular budget? Why is this the budget that you've allocated, right? And see what their reasoning is. No, you just say like, what's the budget I'm working with? Like the way you got to phrase it is basically like, you need to know because then you can put in the right inputs for the project, right? So I need to know what kind of crew I can bring on for this. Like, what do of crew I can bring on for this. Like, what do you want?

Are you looking for this or that? And the more you ask about the budget, the more you will find out that that budget is flexible. And whatever they selected, it's always a couple of K less than what they actually have to work with. So always keep that in mind too. Whatever the budget is, there's always a little

bit more in the bank. Yeah. And sometimes when you get into earlier discussions and you find that there's more value that you could provide to them and you communicate that to them, clients, if they see the value, they will find more budget to work with for you because it all depends on what kind of return on investment they're going to get as well. Yeah. But again, if they just straight up just won't tell you what the budget is, that's it. Just move on. They'll have to tell you at some point anyways. If they're holding it hostage from you, then something's up. And I mean, if they're a legit lead or client, they'll tell you. If they're not legit, they're probably shady in some sense. Because why hide that information?

Yeah. And to be honest, them hiding that information can also lead back to the first red flag, whereas they still don't know what they want. And that's a good way to determine whether they do or do not know. So basically, if you have a client that says, oh, I don't know my budget, then you just say, you do like, okay, is it like a hundred thousand is it 75 000 no is it 50 no if you if this and then you kind of go down until they say you figure out what it is or if they still won't tell you at that point then you just say okay figure it out then give me a call back when you figure it out and you just end the call yeah that was actually a tidbit from one of our guests

in one of our previous episodes. And it's a very good way to kind of throw certain numbers out there. I think it was Doug Darling from Tripwire Media that actually said that. No, that was from the future, actually. Oh, yeah. But I mean, like from the episode, from the CGC episode that we discussed it,

I think it was there that we discussed it. I actually haven't used that method yet. I i used the other methods just like i mean they always they always tell me they always give me a range i need a range to work off of right so they'll either tell me the range and then we move forward or they just move on so and sometimes though if um now kind of like having said that as we move on to the third red flag, sometimes if they have all that stuff figured out and something might still not be sitting right with you, that's what we call your spidey sense going off essentially as a third red flag where there's something that's not adding up based on the information that they've given you or something that you feel based on the leads. And this is a skill that takes time to develop. So the very general, it's a very general red flag, like your gut is telling you something like you'll have this if you're in business. And if you don't, then you'll either develop it, or you might just not be good at this part of the sales process. Maybe just stick to like the other technical side of producing. Yeah, it really depends.

Like as you go through your career and you do more and more of these kinds of calls and you start talking to different kinds of leads, you will start to kind of see a pattern of situations where things are accurate and things aren't. Whereas like, say for example, a client wants to do this, this and this, where it probably won't be that big of a project, but then they're saying that their budget

is something completely astronomical that makes no sense. Or if they're, it's like an over-promise and under-deliver kind of situation even. Something just simply doesn't add up. That's just one example. I don't know. Like for me, I mean, look, if you're a producer,

you have to know how to read people pretty well. Then you kind of get a general, you'll get a general sense when you're talking to someone of how that person is and roughly what this project is going to be like. That just comes from experience. teach a gut feeling that's why it's called a gut feeling it's just an instinct that's what it is so you get something you either develop with time or if you just don't have it at all you'll you'll run into problems because you won't be able to figure out things exactly it's like your last it's like your last filter almost like after you've gotten through every other part of the process and just if there's something that still doesn't sit right with you, then nine times out of 10, that feeling is right. Because at the end of the day, you don't want a bad experience.

Your client doesn't want a bad experience. And you want to create, you want to do good work too, right? Let's move on to the last one, which is your services, your video services are literally just a checklist item for them. So sure, this is fine, fine i guess in a way but you just get like the only thing that would suck about that

is that there there's no like they're just doing the the the service just because they know they need to but there probably won't be any strategy involved with that you'll face this i mean we're not we're not hard on veterans so i don't know how common this is but we've we've had it happen once or twice um it sucks because they don't care about it and you want them to care about your work i actually i don't even know if we face this to be honest with you have we faced this at all i mean it's more so i think i think the biggest differentiating thing that we're kind of like trying to identify is if they value you and your service offering at the same time. Because sometimes people might need something where, yes, it is just a checklist item, but

they still also know the value of it. I'm going to revise this one. This is what this point should have been. They don't have a strategy in place for your video content that i like that one better because basically what that means is like you're going to do all this work for them it's going to be great that's why they're coming to you but then when you deliver it to them there's going to be no strategy in terms of how it's going to be sent out to the wild and like the the the roi on that is going to be

low as hell because you know they'll they'll post it randomly in the middle of the night on a friday no one's going to watch it and then you just look at it and you're like yeah boy it looks great but marketing wise it's not doing too well or they're not putting any money into it or anything like that that's that's where it really like that's the only thing I think of where it sucked for us. And the other thing that sucks about that is that anytime we've had clients that do that, it's normally like a one-off or like we might see them every other year

for something minor. So there's no, because there was no strategy involved with it, they didn't get any return on their investment. And because of that, they didn't see the need to pursue future video content because of it. Well, basically, that that's one of those situations where they didn't get the ROI that they were hoping for, even though they didn't have a plan in place. And in their mind, they're going to associate that with you. But it also depends on what obviously what kind

of video that you're producing for them. If it's an internal video, there's a very specific purpose and goal in there, right? It's a matter of like of like if they if they uh in that situation that you just talked about dario that's an example of where they don't really really value the video as much as they might have indicated and that actually goes back to the previous point where they don't see they just see it as a checklist item and there's no they don't have a value behind i don't even think it's that i think sometimes it's lack of leadership in those situations because we've like the people we've been involved with where that's happened it's like they they loved it they were for it but you could tell that there was no one else past them that was going to really push it

out or maybe they didn't have budget for it enough to do that because again like once you come to us and you're spending like 10 000 on a video you got to remember that you still got to do that because again like once you come to us and you're spending like 10 000 on a video you got to remember that you still got to push that out into the wild especially if it's an external video so like sure you you spend 10 000 on the asset but the marketing's got to reflect that somehow the marketing budget is definitely going to have to be higher than 10 g's to be able to push it and then again it depends for how long right so that's why we always we always try to like see like what the purpose of the video is what the strategy is behind it because again like there's a lot of determining factors in there but there's no sometimes like we've we've had situations at times where it's like it was supposed to be a really important video for them but they weren't gonna they didn't set any marketing budgets aside and

i was like look if you're not gonna do anything with it on that don't expect miracles you know it's not gonna go viral on its own nothing goes viral on its own. Nothing goes viral on its own. Exactly. There's nothing that makes me happier more when we create a video series for a client. And then, you know, one day I'm just scrolling through YouTube and then I just see on one of the YouTube ads, one of the videos that we produced and even like sent the screenshots from people that we've worked with. It's like, hey, I just saw the video on YouTube and sends us a screenshot. That's strategy. That is a clear purpose behind that project.

As you said, you can't just post it on YouTube and just expect the views to roll in. Oh, and maybe that's another red flag. Actually, if somebody comes to you and says, I want to go viral, I feel like that could be another red flag. Well, no, that's when you kind of tailor their expectations and you say,

what does that mean and they say okay well how viral do you want it to go yeah a million views it's like so how are you going to do that what is your plan it all depends on the type of clients and the types of leads that you're targeting and honestly like the kind of opportunities to start to roll in as the longer you are in the industry, if you're doing something right, you will grow and you will start to attract more quality leads. And that's usually due to the fact that you come up with your own process of filtering them through. Right. And it's a grind. It's a grind. covered all of the four red flags that we or main red flags that we kind of look out for in our leads if you have any other ones that we didn't mention please feel free to comment them at the bottom of this video or to the side if it's on instagram or tiktok let us know what topics you want to hear about in the future that are along these lines that you want to know about the video production process or the industry itself. So we're always open to topic ideas.

Cool. All right. Thanks for tuning in, guys.