Not Every Business Needs More Leads

Spending time in Texas reminded me of something I think marketing agencies, including mine, sometimes need to say more often.

Not every business needs more leads.

There, I said it.

Marketing companies love selling more traffic, more leads, more clicks and more exposure. Obviously, those things matter. It's a large part of what we do.

But sometimes I look at a business and think:

I could send you another thousand customers tomorrow and I'm not sure it would fix the actual problem.

Texas made me think about this because hospitality is such a visible business here.

Restaurants, hotels, steakhouses, entertainment venues, you can watch the entire customer journey happen right in front of you.

And sometimes the food isn't the thing you remember.

You remember the person at the front who made you feel like they were annoyed you showed up.

Or the server who remembered something you mentioned 30 minutes earlier.

You remember waiting forever when the restaurant wasn't even busy.

Or a manager walking over and fixing something before you even asked.

Tiny moments.

But those tiny moments are where an enormous amount of money is won and lost.

The crazy part is that the company may have already spent $50, $100 or considerably more getting that customer through the door.

Google Ads.

Facebook.

Instagram.

SEO.

Influencers.

Billboards.

Email.

A beautiful website.

Then the phone rings and nobody answers.

That's not a marketing problem anymore.

That's a leak.

And pouring more water into a leaking bucket doesn't make it a better bucket.

Restaurants make this incredibly easy to see.

Imagine spending $20,000 a month marketing a restaurant.

The ads work.

Reservations increase.

Then customers arrive and wait 15 minutes to be acknowledged.

Their table isn't ready.

Nobody explains why.

The server is overwhelmed.

The check takes forever.

Nobody asks whether they enjoyed themselves.

Nobody collects their information.

Nobody gives them a reason to return.

Management looks at the numbers next month and says:

“We need more advertising.”

Maybe.

But maybe you need to fix Tuesday night at 7:30.

That's a completely different conversation.

Car dealerships have the same problem.

A dealership can spend an incredible amount of money generating a lead.

Customer fills out the form.

They're interested in the vehicle.

They're expecting someone to contact them.

Twenty minutes passes.

Then an hour.

Maybe somebody calls tomorrow.

Meanwhile, three other dealerships called within ten minutes.

Who had the better marketing?

Technically, maybe the first dealership.

Who gets the customer?

Probably the one that responded.

Marketing created the opportunity. Operations decided who got paid.

That's a distinction every owner should understand.

Real estate agents should really pay attention to this.

You can buy Zillow leads, run Meta ads, cold call expireds, mail neighborhoods and spend thousands building a personal brand.

But pull your last 100 leads.

How many did you actually speak with?

How many received a second call?

A fifth?

A tenth?

How many were followed for six months?

How many received something valuable after saying, “We're probably going to wait”?

How many homeowners told you to call them in three months—and somebody actually remembered?

Before an agent tells me they need another 500 leads, I want to know what happened to the last 500.

Because there may be a commission check sitting inside a spreadsheet everybody forgot about.

Medical and dental offices have their own version.

A doctor can be phenomenal.

The practice can spend heavily on search advertising.

Beautiful facility.

Great reviews.

Patient calls.

Nobody answers.

They leave a voicemail.

Nobody calls until the next afternoon.

Or the patient comes in, has a great clinical experience and then spends three weeks confused about billing.

Guess which part they tell their friends about?

Probably not the clinical excellence.

That's the frustrating thing about customer experience.

Your weakest department can become the public reputation of your strongest one.

You can be the best dentist in the city and still lose a patient because somebody at the front desk made them feel like an inconvenience.

Contractors might have the most expensive version of this.

A homeowner requests a quote for a $40,000 project.

The contractor visits.

Great conversation.

Takes measurements.

Says they'll send an estimate.

Five days pass.

Nothing.

The homeowner follows up.

“Working on it.”

Another week.

Meanwhile, somebody else sent a professional estimate in 24 hours, explained the process and followed up two days later.

The first contractor might actually do better work.

It doesn't matter.

The customer never got far enough to discover that.

I've become fascinated with this idea:

Every company has a point where trust changes hands.

Marketing hands trust to sales.

Sales hands it to operations.

Operations hands it to customer service.

Customer service hands it back to marketing through reviews, referrals and reputation.

If any one of those people drops it, everybody before them did work that may never get paid for.

That's why I think owners need to stop looking at departments as separate businesses.

The customer doesn't.

The customer doesn't say:

“The marketing department was excellent, but operations was disappointing.”

They say:

“That company was disappointing.”

They don't care about your org chart.

Here's something I would actually do Monday morning.

Don't order another giant report.

Become your own customer.

Call your company from a number nobody recognizes.

Submit a website inquiry.

Send an email.

Ask for pricing.

Try to schedule.

Buy something.

Go through onboarding.

Try to get support.

See what happens.

And don't tell your team you're doing it beforehand.

You may learn more in 45 minutes than you learned in your last five management meetings.

How many rings before someone answered?

Was the person friendly?

Did they know what they were talking about?

Did the automated email make sense?

Did anyone follow up?

Did you know what happened next?

Did the company feel organized?

Most importantly:

At any point did you feel like giving up?

Because your customers probably feel it there too.

I've started thinking about this as the Last 10%.

Businesses obsess over the first 90%.

Get attention.

Generate the lead.

Close the customer.

Deliver the product.

But the final 10% is where a lot of lifetime value is created.

The thank-you.

The follow-up.

The review request.

The check-in six months later.

Remembering the customer's name.

Fixing a mistake without making them fight you.

Giving them something unexpected.

Asking for the referral.

Inviting them back.

That's where a transaction can become a relationship.

And relationships are where business gets interesting.

A customer who buys once gives you revenue.

A customer who returns gives you economics.

A customer who tells other people gives you distribution.

That's incredibly powerful.

So maybe don't increase the marketing budget yet.

This is coming from someone who owns a marketing firm.

Sometimes you absolutely should spend more.

If the machine works, put more fuel in it.

But first make sure you actually have a machine.

If you're a restaurant owner, eat at your own restaurant anonymously in your head and experience every step.

If you own a dealership, submit a lead.

If you're an agent, audit your old database.

If you're a contractor, measure quote turnaround.

If you run a medical practice, call your front desk.

If you're an attorney, see how long it takes someone to respond to a potential client.

If you're an e-commerce company, place an order and then try to return it.

Find the moment where doing business with you becomes harder than it should be.

Fix that.

Then advertise.

Because one of the best marketing strategies I've ever seen isn't really marketing at all.

It's building a company people are genuinely happy they chose.

Texas reminded me of that.

You can spend a fortune getting somebody through the door.

But eventually, advertising has to stop doing the work.

The people, systems and experience have to take over.

And when they do it exceptionally well, something beautiful happens.

The customer starts doing some of the marketing for you.

That's a business worth scaling.

Writing from Texas.

— Corey Flores
Founder, Flores Marketing Firm