The Rotten Opportunities Checklist: How To Tell If Someone Is Wasting Your Time
The Rotten Opportunities Checklist: How To Tell If Someone Is Wasting Your Time
Any time you spend pursuing bad opportunities is time you can't spend attracting better opportunities. Use our checklist to evaluate your opportunities.
Hi, I’m Richard Millington. Please subscribe to my newsletter to discover our systems for scaling your consultancy practice to $1m+ in revenue.
How Many Red Flags Can You Spot?
I’ve been thinking about this post a lot recently.
It’s painful to read this. There are so many red flags. The communication is poor, the last-minute changes are disturbing, the attempt to change the role is a serious concern, the negative past relationship is problematic, and even communicating by SMS isn’t normal.
It would be a terrible project even if he had gotten the contract. There wasn’t even a courteous relationship or assumption of good intent.
The problem isn’t that the poster didn’t know this was a problematic relationship but that his mentality was, ‘I really need the client, so I’ll overlook all the warning signs’.
I suspect this is an extreme example of a widespread problem: chasing rotten opportunities.
What Is A Rotten Opportunity?
I’ve shared a lot of the warning signs of rotten opportunities before.
In short, a rotten opportunity is when you smell something is wrong. This typically takes two forms.
You’re unsure about the contact. This is where you sense something is off about the person contacting you. Do they seem vague about their ability to have the budget? Are they non-committal on the time frame? Do they refuse to introduce you to others on the team? Are they promising too much? Is there some hostility in the initial discussions? Are they serious or curious? If it doesn’t smell right, it usually isn’t right.
You’re unsure about the work. Does the scope of work not align with what you usually do? Does it feel more like employment? Are there constant unilateral changes to the work you discussed? Do they know enough about what you do? It usually isn't if it doesn’t feel like the right match.
The problem is that it’s very hard to separate real opportunities from mirage opportunities when you start. You don’t have the intuition to know what’s a natural part of a healthy sales process and what’s a red flag about the project.
I honestly can’t remember any negativity or conflict in a sales process we’ve been through. There can be frank and direct conversations; that’s natural, but there shouldn’t be hostility, sneaky changes in a contract, or a sudden misunderstanding about your role.
But you will quickly get a feel for rotten opportunities.
Chasing Rotten Opportunities Is Expensive
Every second you spend chasing rotten opportunities is time you aren’t attracting better expressions of interest from your ICPs.
Instead of pursuing rotten opportunities, you should focus on the activities that really matter.
You should be running your marketing campaigns to generate demand and building your systems to stay engaged with past clients. You should be staying consistent in habits which lead to long-term success.
The Rotten Opportunities Checklist
Here’s a simple checklist to help guide you on whether the opportunity you’re pursuing is a ripe or rotten. Feel free to adapt it to how you need.
There are two critical goals of this checklist.
To avoid wasting your valuable time. Don’t jump ahead to writing a proposal if you aren’t scoring well in the steps beforehand. The further down the process you go, the more time it consumes.
To diagnose where you might need to spend more time. You can specifically check where there might be issues and work to fix them for you. For example, if you’re not introduced to colleagues, that can be something you can request in the sales process.
Why We Chase Rotten Opportunities
Be mindful of your own biases to pursue rotten opportunities
It’s tough to turn down opportunities - even if we suspect they’re bad. Like bad relationships, sometimes we pursue them for reasons which are more emotive than logical.
There are two reasons for this.
We need the money. If you launched your consultancy before building demand, you’re likely worried about running out of money. This means you need to pursue any potential opportunity harder.
Misguided beliefs about sales. Some sales professionals believe in the ‘rule of seven', which states that you must relentlessly pursue anyone interested in your services. This is also a surefire way to become the person prospects avoid.
The problem is that chasing anyone up seven times is the easiest way to become the person prospects want to avoid. Do you think that person is going to want to speak to you at an event? Can you think of something more off-putting than receiving seven follow-up messages?
In my early days, I’d relentlessly chase anyone who gave me a whiff of interest.
These days, I don’t chase. I make sure I add as much value to any interaction with them as possible - but otherwise, I want them to know I’m happy to help when the timing works for us both.
If someone doesn’t show the same interest in working with me as I do in working with them, I might try to understand why, but otherwise, I let it go. I’m not going to push them if they’re not ready. I will be there when the time is right for us.
Good luck!