Rehashing Old Leads, Yes or No?

There is the eternal question of what to do with old leads; that is, old dead leads? Should you bother hanging on to anything you did for that prospect? In short, yes, absolutely hold on to that information. You already paid once for that customer to contact you, and it is expensive in time and money to try get them again. They were interested in you enough to contact you initially and unless you really did something to make them mad or turn them off, they are still interested in you.

What do you do with that old information? Here’s a perfect example from one of my clients who was a real skeptic on rehashing old leads. He is the owner of a remodeling company. Now keep in mind that he figured if someone turns them down, it means they do not want to buy. Period. End of story. I said this is where the real selling begins, even if it is years later.

I suggested they go back 2 to 3 years, and pull up all the DEAD leads for remodels, send a letter and make a phone call to each one of those people. Who knows what the circumstances were back then? One of them had noted in the records that “these people think we’re higher than kites. Not interested.” (By the way, they meant high priced!).

My thought was that these very same people maybe had not expected the cost to be that high, and they probably heard the same thing from any remodeling contractor they called out. Maybe now over the course of a couple years, they have had time to save money and have a more realistic idea of the actual costs of remodeling.

To make a long story short, a phone call was made and within minutes an appointment was made to go out to their home to revisit the project because, no, they had not done anything and yes, they were still interested.

End result, a $99,000 remodeling job was sold.

Was it worth the few minutes to put notes in after the initial rejection, and then spend a couple more minutes picking up the phone to reconnect? Of course!

Statistics show that most people who call for an estimate do end up buying within about 18 months, whether they buy from you or not. Do you want to be the one who is front and center in their minds? How do you expect to be front and center if the last time you spoke was 18 months ago?

What are you doing with your old leads? Do you think rehashing leads pays?

P.S. Having a good lead tracking system in place so that all those “rehashes” show up on your calendar certainly makes rehashing old leads a breeze. See www.profitfinderpro.com.