The Hurdle Method

There are three.

“Ah… a new lead.

Let’s dump them into the same old email sequence and see what happens. If they come out the other end with a 120 point lead score, we can pass them on to sales and we can score a point and finally get some rest. After all, it’s a numbers game.”

Have you heard or seen this before?

It’s incredibly common.

Mike Volpe @mvolpe

@twentworth12 I have been on a 5 year rampage against the "we give 10 points for VP title" method of lead scoring. Why not 11 or 9 pts?

Someone built a lead scoring system. A few people have tweaked it over time, and there’s a project to revamp the system that keeps getting pushed back another quarter.

Your company might even spend a lot of money for these scoring systems.

Could it be that this investment is wasted? In most case, yes.

Do you feel like you are getting value from lead scoring and elaborate trigger based waterfalls?

If so, great! You may not need to keep reading.

But if you've often felt like you spend more time adjusting to the systems, and not enough time creating value for the company... you might give yourself permission to read on.

How’d we get here again?

It is worth taking a step back to try to remember what these systems were trying to do in the first place.

They were designed to deliver the right kinds of leads to your sales team.

The intent behind them (one way or the other) is to answer these questions:

1. Does this lead have a problem I can solve?

2. Does this lead want the problem solved?

3. Does this lead want to pay to solve the problem?

It'd be better to ask them in that order, too.

Unfortunately, the software systems we use often invite us to over-complicate things.

We’ve been chasing the wrong intel

We instead find ourselves using them to ask the wrong questions first:

• Did we make sure they didn't give us a personal email address? (it better not be a personal address)

• How many employees do they have?

• Did they open at least 3 emails and have greater than or equal to 12 page views?

• Do they have a lead score of eleventy-hundred?

These questions may help you disqualify a lot of folks. But do they help you build a relationship with people in the market?

They filled out the form or gave you their email.

Why did they do that? Could it be that they are interested in hearing more?

In most cases, the answer is “Yes”.

So, what if we flipped it?

What if we went back to the original intent of all of this?

Twist my arm.

There are three hurdles.

The Three Hurdles

What if we helped EVERYONE answer these questions for themselves?

1. Does this lead have a problem I can solve?

2. Does this lead want the problem solved?

3. Does this lead want to pay us to solve the problem?

They ought to be able to voluntarily jump over each of these hurdles.

We ought to aim to help them jump over each of these three hurdles on their own:

1. I have a problem.

2. I want to solve the problem.

3. I want to pay this company (you) to solve the problem.

How can we redesign our messaging, our funnel, our workflows, our flywheel (or whatever we call it these days) to do that?

We have to help people jump the hurdles one by one. Think of them as literal hurdles. You have to pass over one to get to the next. If you miss one or fall down, you are out of the race. (but you may live to race another day!)

OK, so what now?

Take a peek in your CRM, Marketing Automation, or Email tool.

Do you currently have a clear picture of how to target these three hurdles?

1. Leads that have a problem you can solve.

2. Leads that want the problem solved.

3. Leads that want to pay you to solve the problem.

Up Next

On Thursday, we'll be going a over process I’ve used in the past to do just that.

We’ll review the segments you will need to set up and the takeaway triggers you will need to implement The Hurdle Method.

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