Today’s episode is specifically for business owners who have people fill out a lead form or an application before deciding whether or not you’re going to work together. So if you’re a service based business or you have some sort of high end coaching or mastermind that you offer, this episode is for you. We are going to be talking about how to fix your lead forms so that they pre-qualify your leads.
Now one thing to note here is every field that you add to a form adds what I call friction and increases the form abandonment rate. That is the number of people who see the form but don’t actually fill it out. Friction is anything that increases the amount of time it takes to fill out the form or makes filling out the form feel either tedious or invasive.
The key here is that you need the right type of friction in lead forms. There’s good friction and there’s bad friction. Let’s talk about bad friction first because I think it will make the most sense. So bad friction on a lead form is requiring a phone number or a mailing address. Those are the most obvious examples and one study found that simply by putting a phone number field, not even making it required, just putting it on the form increased the form abandonment rate by almost 50%. We don’t even have statistics on what putting a mailing address field does to your form, but you better believe asking for an address is going to really severely reduce the amount of leads that you get.
This is what I call bad friction because you really aren’t getting any trade off for asking for this information. Yes, you have a phone number, you can call them. Yes, you have a mailing address and you can send them mail. But you’re not doing anything to increase the chances of being hired. So you’re losing a chance to potentially get on the phone or have a conversation with someone who is not quite so certain about what you offer. So those are examples of bad friction in lead forms.
Now good friction is when you ask a question that makes the prospect pre-sell themselves. And it is still friction though because there’s going to be people who see these questions and don’t want to fill them out and they’ll abandon the form. It’s going to reduce the amount of people who fill out the form, but the people who do fill it out are going to be much more likely to buy or to book.
And when you get to the conversation you’re going to have with them, they’re going to be pre-framed in a place where they’re more likely to buy from you. So let me give you a couple different examples. I have three examples on good friction in lead forms.
The first one is asking “Why is now a good time to get X result?” So let me give you an example here. If you were a VA who specialized in social media management, you could ask the question in your lead form, “Why is now a good time to delegate your social media to a VA and free up 10 hours of your time a week?” So when they answer this, they are giving you the answer to the most common objection of “it’s not a good time”. They’re crushing their own objection of “it’s not a good time to do this”.
And remember this is still friction because it requires effort to answer, but you’re going to get a payoff when people take the time to answer it because you’re going to understand why it is they really need your service right now and it’s going to be framed in their own words. And this is something that you can refer back to as you take them through the sales process.
Another good friction question to ask on a lead form is something like, “What about my service makes you feel this is the right approach for you?” So if you were like a keto weight loss coach, you could have a question, something like, “What about my Effortless Keto System makes you feel this is the right approach for you?” And when they answer that type of question, they’re pre-selling themselves on your unique selling proposition. And this really reinforces the “why choose me” in their mind. And it’s super important for sales. So this really is giving them an opportunity to talk about why they are wanting to choose you. Maybe they’ll talk about other things that they’ve tried. And all of that information is very useful in terms of guiding them through a sales conversation.
The third good friction question that you could ask on a lead form would be “What makes you different from other people who apply and why should I choose to help you get XYZ result?” So let me give you an example for maybe someone who helps people with Facebook ads “What makes you different from other business owners who apply and why should I choose to help you triple your Facebook ROI in the next two weeks?” So you can you see how that question is really clearly anchored in the big promise that a Facebook ad expert would make? Their promise is “I can triple your Facebook ad ROI in two weeks” and you’re having this potential prospect sell you on why they are a good fit. This is an amazing type of question. So this does two things for you. It introduces an element of scarcity. You’re reminding them that you can’t work with everyone who contacts you and people who do done for you services and coaching typically cannot. So that’s not fake scarcity, it’s real. It’s re-anchoring the big promise of your service or your program. So that’s a really strong strategy for lead forms.
Here’s the thing, you do not have to ask all three of these types of questions in your lead form. Maybe only one is a good fit for you. That’s totally fine. If you ask at least one of these good friction questions, you should get higher leads. You may get slightly less leads, but you’re going to get better quality leads and you’re going to be able to close them more easily. Because you can use the answers that they give in that form during your sales call or sales conversation. You’re going to refer back to them. You’re going to bring them up and basically all three of them are what I would call objection crushers. They’re things that you can go back and use to help the prospect understand why this is a good decision for them because they’ve already verbalized it in their own words.
So I hope this is helpful for you. If you switch up your lead forms, as always, I want to know about it. Send me a DM on Instagram, tell me which one you chose and how you phrased it. Even send me a link if you want to and if this changes the type of prospects that you get. I want to know. All right.
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