How To Quickly Separate Real Prospects From Time-Draining Opportunities

Interest does not equal opportunity. Sometimes interest simply reflects interest. There are certain tale-tell signs you should look out for regarding which opportunities not to pursue.

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What Is A Mirage Opportunity?

It’s an opportunity which was never really there

Two years ago, I was approached by the founder of a new organisation to build a definitive online community for a sector exploding in popularity. He spoke at length about the connections he had, the investors he had backing him, and the quality of sponsors who were signing up to be involved in what he had planned. He even introduced me to a couple of contacts.

After 2 to 3 calls we agreed on a fee and I sent over the SOW. He signed it that same day and I went to work.

Two weeks later I noticed we hadn’t received the initial 50% deposit. I chased him up, he promised it was coming, and I continued with the project.

3 weeks became 4 weeks and then 5, 6, 7 weeks went by…he came up with all the excuses and none of the deposit.

Eventually, he mentioned he needed his investors to come through before he could pay me.

I was stunned.

He didn’t once mention that paying us was depended on a third party paying him. Worse yet, he was shifting the risk of his investors not coming through onto us.

I ceased work, spent months chasing him up for the money he was legally obliged to pay, and then eventually gave up. As best as I can tell, none of the plans he spoke about ever materialised.

This is an extreme example of a mirage opportunity.

Mirage opportunities seem like real, genuine, opportunities to pursue. But the reality is the opportunity was never really there. This is why they’re the most painful to reflect on later. There is nothing you could have done better during the process because the opportunity was never really there.

The only real lesson you can learn is to do a better job qualifying the opportunity in the first place and noticing the amber flags.

Amber Flags To Watch Out For

The word ‘new’ is probably the biggest amber flag to watch out for.

As a general rule, whenever something is new you should be on high alert. New people, new roles, and new companies are all amber flags.

Here’s a common scenario. An existing contact will join a new company and reach out to you about getting some consultancy support. This feels like a genuine opportunity. You know the person won’t intentionally waste their time.

Your contact has the best of intentions. But, more often than not, they don’t have the internal clout or understanding of the organisation yet to bring in a consultant.

It’s not impossible - and has happened in the past - but the percentage of times where this turns out to be a mirage opportunity tends to be closer to 90% than 30%.

(Aside: Be very careful about approaches from people you consider personal friends. There are a range of interpersonal dynamics at play in those situations).

Of course, unique circumstances and situations matter. But over time I’ve tended to think about this similarly to banks guessing whether people will default on a mortgage. The more amber flags there are, the less likely I am to pursue the project.

I’ve wasted far too much time and resources chasing after projects that would never happen. Over time you develop an intuitive sense about these things - but it’s clearly not as robust as I thought.

One mistake I’ve made plenty of times in my career is confusing interest with an opportunity. Just because someone expresses an interest in your services doesn’t mean it’s a real opportunity. It’s better to imagine it as people glancing at something through a shop window.

Quickly Qualifying Opportunities From The Expression of Interest

When we receive the initial expression of interest, here are the first things we consider:

• Do we know the person? If we recognise the person contacting us, we almost always reply. The best case (and most common scenario) is it’s someone we’ve met and interacted with at events in the past. We know they know us and our services well. When this happens, we can skip several steps of the sales process.

• Do we know their company? There are rare occasions when people might use a personal email address - but it’s not typically a good sign. People using a personal email address are rarely serious prospects. If someone is using their personal email we typically put their name into a search engine and see if anything interesting comes up. If we don’t find an organisation we recognise, we tend to send a polite message back. If someone is serious about consultancy support, they do it from your work email address. 

  If they do use the work address, we check out the company. If we recognise the organisation, that’s great. If not, we look at Crunchbase, Wikipedia, and other sites to see if they show up. Sometimes we dig around for any financial statements and visit their website to determine if they are an industry giant or a small business. 

  Don’t be too hasty here. There are thousands of industry giants we’ve never heard of. Always do the research first. However, of the prospects we disqualify, 90% of them we disqualified at this stage. 

• The job position. In the early days, I was often ecstatic when the CEO of an organisation contacted me looking for support. Now I tend to quickly write a quick, polite, email declining the approach. This might sound nuts, but trust me on this. 

  The problem is the CEO of a huge international organisation isn’t going to be contacting individual consultants for support. If the CEO of an organisation is contacting us, it’s usually a sign s/he runs a really small organisation (often consisting of just themselves). Can you even imagine the CEO of Microsoft, Apple, Meta etc…looking for consultants themselves? 

  It varies by industry, but our sweet spot is usually ‘head of [community’], ‘director of [marketing]’ or ‘VP of [xyz]’. We occasionally get a C-level contact,  but the director and VP are ideal. This is also a good indication that the organisation is big enough to have these kinds of roles. 

• The length of the email. Contrary to what you might think, the shorter the email the better. It might seem like a real prospect would take the time to describe their situation in detail so you can evaluate the situation and see if you’re a good match. And that does sometimes happen - so treat this as an indicator rather than a rigid rule. 

  But the reality is real prospects tend to be too busy to write 500+ word emails. They want to get on a call as quickly as possible and describe their situation so you can see if you’re a match. 

  Longer emails tend to reflect one of two things. Either the prospect has a lack of buying power (but likes to feel important). Or, more commonly, this is an RFP and they’re copying and pasting a detailed list of requirements to respond to.

• The message itself. The content of the email obviously matters too. There are some red flags we notice often. 

  • “We’re in the early stages of…”. This usually suggests you’re being used to gather information rather than they’re looking to get support in the near term. You can qualify this before setting up a call or ask outright when they would be looking to get started. 

  • “I want to get an idea of costs”. I wouldn’t disqualify someone for saying this, but it’s an amber warning that they’re not serious about buying. You can send these people to your pricing / contact us page for details. 

  • “I want to bring you in on..”. This again suggests there isn’t a defined project. They’re going to pitch you as part of something bigger. You can invest a huge amount of work on proposals like these and later find yourself disappointed. We tend to reject these out of hand. 

  • “I want to suggest you to my boss”. This suggests someone with very low buying power. If you charge what we do, the idea that a stranger is going to sign off on that budget without knowing a lot more about it is slim. The best response here is to make sure you can speak directly to the boss. 

Again, our processes seem harsh, but we mean them with love. We don’t want to waste the time of people who aren’t a good match for us.

We also tend to use this as a psychological scoring system rather than a binary yes/no system. If they trip too many amber flags, we write a polite rejection. If they don’t, then we have the time to give a quality response and give them our full attention.