How much time are you spending on leads that go nowhere?

Question

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how much of the deal-finding process is actually spent on leads that never turn into real opportunities.

Not bad leads necessarily—just ones that:

• never pick up
• aren’t ready
• or don’t go anywhere after initial contact

Even with good filters and solid follow-up, it seems like a big portion of time still gets absorbed there.

I’m starting to think that improving who gets engaged first might be just as important as improving the overall list quality.

Curious how others are seeing it—

Do you feel like most of your time is spent on viable opportunities, or still a lot of “dead space” in the process?

Marcus Auerbach · Answer

Welcome to the big grind. It get's easier if you see it for what it is and you stop trying to generate a certain outcome. The more energy you put in follow ups, the sooner you burn out. Just mechanically going through the motions is way more efficient, takes much less mental energy and the good leads will raise their hand anyway. The order does not matter if you get to all of them quickly. There is a quality to quality, but you can't get there if you try too hard.

Chris Arnold · Answer

@Michael Galace

That makes sense — stalled leads are definitely where a lot of time gets lost.

I agree that VAs, automation, and clean CRM follow-up can make a big difference once the lead is already in motion.

Where I think the front-end still matters is before anyone touches the record. If the owner match is weak, the phone data is stale, or the contact path is unclear, even a good VA team can end up spending time organizing and following up on records that were never very workable to begin with.

So to me it is not really list quality vs automation. It is more:

better front-end prioritization + better first-touch process + better follow-up discipline.

The smoother that handoff is before the VA or caller starts working the lead, the less time gets wasted downstream.

Chris Arnold · Answer

@Marcus Auerbach

I get what you’re saying—especially on the burnout side. If you overanalyze every lead or try to force outcomes, it can definitely slow things down and wear you out.

And you’re right, if you’re moving through everything quickly, you’ll surface opportunities either way.

I think where I’ve been seeing a difference is more on the efficiency side—when volume gets high enough, even small shifts in who gets contacted first can change how many real conversations you get out of the same effort.

Not so much about overthinking it, but just making sure the time spent is a bit more weighted toward leads that are actually likely to engage.

Curious—when you’re running at higher volume, do you notice certain types of leads consistently producing more conversations, or does it all even out over time?