Most NZ businesses over $1m get their leads from referrals, repeat clients and word of mouth, with no system behind any of it. Lead Flow is how enquiries reach you: how many come in, where from and how steadily. It’s the first flow I check because the other three depend on it.
What is Lead Flow?
Lead Flow is one of the Four Flows I use to find what’s holding a business back. The others are Sales Flow, Work Flow and Cash Flow. One of the four is always the constraint. Lead Flow covers volume, quality and consistency of enquiries. It also covers whether there’s a system behind them or it all depends on who happened to ring this month.
How many leads does a business over $1m need?
It depends on your average job value and your close rate, so there’s no single number worth quoting. Do the sum for your own business. Say your average job is $15k and you win half your leads. A $1.5m year needs 100 jobs. That means 200 leads, about four a week. If you’re getting two a week, that’s your gap. If you’re getting six and still short, the problem sits in Sales Flow.
Where should leads come from?
In the order I’d work them, fastest first:
Asking your own network for referrals: days
Past clients and warm prospects: days to weeks
Calling a list of your ideal clients directly: days to weeks
Referral partners like bookkeepers, accountants and business bankers: weeks
Google Ads: weeks to months, and only worth testing once referrals have some structure
Content on LinkedIn and email: months
Most owners start at the bottom of that list because it feels safer than picking up the phone. It’s also the slowest.
What breaks Lead Flow in an owner-operated business?
Four things show up again and again. Nobody asks for referrals, so they only arrive by accident. Past clients never hear from the business once the job’s done. Nobody records where an enquiry came from, so nobody knows which channel is working. And one channel carries everything, so when it goes quiet for a month, so does the pipeline.
Reactivating an old list works when the message is “I’m checking in”, not “I need clients”. Ask for referrals warm, never cold.
How do I know if leads are my constraint?
Ask yourself one thing. If ten leads came in today, could you service them? If the honest answer is no, Lead Flow isn’t the constraint and more marketing will only add pressure. If the answer is yes, write down where your last 20 leads came from. If you can’t, nobody’s tracking it. Fix that first.
What does a Lead Flow fix look like?
My client more than doubled turnover and moved from a 90/10 split to 60/40, residential to commercial. I start every engagement by finding which of the four flows is blocked, because fixing the wrong one costs months.
Where do I start?
The free Profit Consult is 45 minutes on Zoom. Bring your P&L and I’ll tell you which flow is blocked.
Book a free Profit Consult: https://calendly.com/jung-jung/profitconsult
Where did your last 20 leads come from?