Dying Leads--how to monetize?

It's totally dependent on the TOS they agreed to when they signed up with you, but if possible, I'd sell the leads to a related but non-competing business.

Coming from a "dealer" environment I know the old "buy or die" mentality. But to me that is a problem. Either they buy or you piss them off so they never buy.

You need to keep them lukewarm but calling them and trying to sell them isn't the best way. Take a page from the IM play book and create some content to send them. A few direct mail pieces with value could keep them in play if painting is something they seriously were thinking about. If you have birth dates you can also send cards. hell even if you don't you can send them. Maybe they will call you to fix your mistake since you got their birthday wrong.

There are loads of things you can do. But doing the old "buy or die" isn't IMO very good use of time as it could alienate them. So either give up or have a better follow up plan that isn't just dial for dollars.

Separate the services into separate campaigns. Send marketing material and follow up with phone calls on the first campaign, as you say painting. If they don't buy the first service, send another round of direct mail about the second service. Do this once a quarter for five or six separate services, and then start over.

I was in a job where my old company would pull out there dead leads list like this once a year, and I can tell you that all of us sales people just dreaded making these calls.

Because we knew they were a waste of time to call, and 90% of the time the person was pissed off, because they'd already said they weren't interested.

It affected our motivation to go to work, we weren't as excited about making sales with these calls, and because we were forced to do something we didn't like and knew was a waste of time, anger and resentment towards management and the head office increased. This then caused a wave of people jumping ship to work for other companies.

The only people who thought it was worth it was the people who weren't making those calls.

What I have learned is usually when companies focus on leads that are dead like this is because they don't have systems set up to bring in fresh leads. And because they are running out of fresh leads they try and milk these dead leads.

There is a sweet book called Get Clients Now. It is all about different lead generation strategies. You should check it out and figure out how to increase the amount of fresh leads so you don't have to turn to these dead leads.

Another great book is by Bob Burg called Endless Referrals, you can look him up on YouTube.

He has some of the most amazing strategies on generating referrals.

Another person to check is Steve Hochman.

Now he is entirely focused on personal training but you can take his lead gen strategies and apply them to your business.