Lead Conversion (Sales Process) For a Small Business -September Roundup

Patrick McFadden • September 28, 2022

Let's kick off the month of September focused on lead conversion (sales) for your small business.

You know what I say,
“once a prospect has expressed interest in buying from you, it’s important to have a structured sales process to keep moving toward a decision.”

When it comes to lead conversion, too many CEOs or business owners
lack any process or systematic approach to turning interest into revenue.

The focus of marketing is almost always on making the phone ring, increasing website traffic and generating more leads. While leads are certainly important, the infatuation with generating them eats up a significant amount of resources:
energy, attention, time and money.

Installing a sales process, one that is educational, consultative and collaborative, is the fastest way to improve overall marketing results. I’m assuming you’ve also:


These posts aim to help you, your team, and your marketing service providers better understand how to build a lead conversion (sales) process that serves a strategic and business objective in route to growth.


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The Ultimate Guide to Small Business Lead Conversion (Sales)


The Best Way to Sell is to Solve

Recently while speaking to client I mentioned how my marketing firm likes to solve business problems with marketing, whether those problems are 🍯attracting talent, ⚙️ streamlining operations, 💸generating leads or 🎯 improving sales conversations. That's because I’m a problem solver at heart. I love doing a "marketing diagnosis before offering any marketing prescriptions" to see what the real problems are and what's the best way to solve them.


Best Way to Rev Up Your B2B Sales Efforts

B2B sales seems to be a mystery to many business owners and CEOs. Just do a search on the topic and you’ll find little that’s helpful. In my opinion, there are two reasons for this. ⭐ One — people are searching for that one killer sales tactic that will close all deals ⭐⭐ Two — people fail to realize that successful B2B sales is made up of timing triggers which are by nature very hard to quantify and pin down without a real understanding of ideal clients.


Reducing Your Need For Follow Up Is The Secret Follow Up Strategy

This was the advice I gave to a client recently. Reducing the need for follow up is the secret follow up strategy. I know, this sounds confusing. But read it again. You’ll get it… Not needing to follow up is the secret because it gets the result you want.


Stop Chasing Proposal and Do This Instead

A lot of people want to grow their sales and business. This advice is super key 🔑 for people with proposal-based businesses or services. This is what my marketing firm executes during our sales process and has allowed us to establish a high closing rate.


Why You Lose Sales

Selling for most small businesses isn’t about high pressure tactics or manipulation so if that’s what you’re doing this may be why you lose sales. Instead what you need to be doing is building rapport, getting to know your client and spending time educating them.


All The Magic Is In Treating Your Prospect Like a Client

All the magic 🔮 is in treating a prospect like a client from the beginning. The way you treat a prospect 🤝 - especially in a service-based business or professional service - says a lot about what they can expect if they were to become a client.


Get Out Of The Convincing Business

"Get out of the convincing business." That's my advice to the CEO of a small professional service firm that reached out to me last week via LinkedIn.


3 Things You Must Know Before Every Engagement

Recently I had a prospective client meeting with a very successful behavioral health agency. During this time I made certain to gain conceptual agreement. The worst thing that could happen for a service business is that you win the engagement, but you don’t have any ability to deliver results because you haven’t established what results look like or how you’re going to actually track them.


How to Eliminate The Need to Sell

If the idea of virtually eliminating the need to sell (in the traditional sense) is attractive to you – all you need to do is develop and implement effective marketing.


Sales Is Leadership

Let me explain: Sales is not about 'getting' someone to buy what they don't need or want. Sales is LEADING your ideal client to see that you can help them get from where they are to where they want to be. But I'm noticing owners and CEOs of small businesses struggle when it comes to their sales conversations.

The Real Difference Between Marketing and Sales

I find that the words marketing and sales are burdened with a tremendous amount of confusion. For some, marketing is branding, while others view marketing merely as sales or advertising. I don’t guess it really matters that entrepreneurs or business owners agree on the definition of marketing and sales, but I do think it’s important that you understand the difference.

Get Paid To Convert Leads

Nothing is more frustrating than not closing the deal on a proposal or prospective meeting you spend a lot of time and effort on. Time is money, and there is no reason that you need to spend hours on developing a proposal or in a meeting for free.


Marketing Does Not Replace Selling

There’s a common problem we see far too often among business owners. I’m going to use a client as an example. For this client, we’ve employed several different marketing tactics to fit his marketing strategy.


Put Sales Time In Your Calendar

Put sales time in your calendar as a strict appointment you keep. Too often, people treat selling like an “I’ll get to it when I can” type of activity. This is a big mistake.


The Best Way to Sell a Service Is . . .

No amount of explaining, documenting and outlining can replicate the conditions of actually experiencing a service in action.


The Development and Installation of a "Marketing" Focused Sales Strategy

Recently I was speaking with the CEO of a 100 year old manufacturer and distributor in the South East part of the country. Our conversation revolved around the development and installation of a "marketing" focused sales strategy.


Lead Conversion (Sales) Examples

Referral Lead Conversion Example


Contact Your Marketing Consultant at Indispensable Marketing

If you’re a small service based business that needs help with lead conversion for your business or your business’s online presence on Google and other search engines, at Indispensable Marketing we can help. We offer marketing strategy consulting, marketing audits, monthly marketing packages, consultations, exploratory calls or monthly local SEO servicesContact us for more information.


By Patrick McFadden May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.
By Patrick McFadden May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.
By Patrick McFadden May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
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