You’ve Got Gold Sitting on Your Desk.

So Why Are You Looking for More Leads?

One of the first questions I ask business owners is a really simple one.

“How many enquiries did you have last month?”

Most people know the answer. Then I ask them another question.

“How many people are sitting in your CRM that didn’t buy?”

That’s usually when the room goes quiet.

Somebody says, “I don’t know.” or “I don’t have a CRM system” (really?) Somebody else shrugs their shoulders. And then someone usually says something along the lines of…

“We need more leads.”

Now don’t get me wrong. Every business needs a healthy flow of new enquiries. Without new people coming into the business, eventually the pipeline dries up. I’m not suggesting you stop marketing or stop looking for new opportunities.

What I am saying is this.

Before you spend another pound trying to find complete strangers, have you made the most of the people who already know who you are?

Because in my experience, most businesses haven’t. In fact, I’d go a step further. I think most businesses have gold sitting on their desk. They just don’t recognise it.

Over the years I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve looked at someone’s CRM and found hundreds of names that haven’t been spoken to for months, sometimes years.

People who asked for a quotation, or had a meeting, or downloaded a brochure.  People who basically said, “Not right now.”

And that’s the important bit right there.  They didn’t say no. They said, “Not yet.” And there’s a world of difference between those two answers.

Think about your own life for a moment.

How many times have you delayed buying something because the timing wasn’t right? Not because you didn’t want it or didn’t trust the company.

Simply because something else took priority.  Maybe you were moving house, or had cashflow issues or were coming up to a big holiday or a new project.  In other words - life got in the way. 

Businesses are exactly the same.

Yet what do most sales teams do? They hear “not yet” and record it as a lost opportunity. Then they spend the next six months trying to generate other leads to replace the ones they already had. That never made much sense to me.

Why spend thousands trying to attract another stranger when you’ve already earned the trust of someone who’s had a conversation with you? Surely that’s where your time should go first.

I’m not talking about chasing people. I’m certainly not talking about pestering them every week asking whether they’re ready to buy.

I’m talking about staying in touch and adding value - sharing ideas.  Basically - checking in because you genuinely want to help.

The funny thing is, when you stop treating follow-up as a sales activity and start treating it as a relationship activity, everything changes.

Why?  Because people remember you. And they built trust in you.  And then, when the timing is right, guess who they call?  The person that stayed in touch.  Not the one that disappeared the moment they didn’t place an order.

One of the biggest myths in sales is that the money is in finding the next customer.

I don’t believe that.

Very often, the money is sitting quietly in the conversations you’ve already had. Waiting. They weren’t quite ready.  But they are now. The businesses that consistently outperform everyone else understand this.

They don’t just build a ‘sales pipeline’, they build something far more valuable.  They build relationships.

They don’t measure success by how many leads they generate, they measure success by how many conversations they continue. Because every conversation is an opportunity to understand somebody better.

And as I’ve said before many times, people don’t buy because they were sold to. They buy because they felt understood.

So before you approve the next marketing campaign, increase your advertising budget or tell your marketing team they need to generate another hundred leads, do one thing for me.

Open your CRM and really look. Look at every opportunity that ended with “not now”, “give me a call next quarter”, “we’ve put the project on hold” or “the budget isn’t there yet.”

That’s your gold. It isn’t a list of failed sales. It’s a list of relationships that simply haven’t reached the right moment yet.

Treat them with care. Keep the conversation going. And serve before you sell.

You might be surprised to discover that the growth you’re looking for has been sitting on your desk all along.