How to sell more: Spend more time per leads
What luxury brands and philosophers teach us when it comes to selling
The curse of low conversion rate
Ultimately, in my accounting software company, I realized we didn’t have a lead generation problem—we had a conversion problem. Our marketing pipeline was performing well; we had a steady influx of leads. But we were failing at turning those leads into paying customers.
This is something I briefly touched on in a previous article, but only recently did I understand the core issue more deeply. It comes down to a principle I should have recognized earlier, since I've argued for it before: not all leads are equal, and not all leads represent the same opportunity.
Great companies—the ones that consistently sell—understand this. Yet, most businesses apply this logic post-sale, in customer success: the higher the revenue a client brings, the more attention they receive. But this prioritization should start before the sale, at the top of the funnel.
We only started improving our conversion rate once we stopped treating all leads the same. Instead of scaling effort evenly, we allocated disproportionate time and resources to the leads most likely to convert—and it worked.
Let me explain.
Be their personal shopper
This is something great brands already understand. Walk into a flagship store in Paris—say, one of the ultra-high-end luxury houses—and the treatment you receive depends entirely on your profile. If you’re a wealthy Chinese businessman, or walk in with a referral from someone who is, you’ll likely get a dedicated personal shopper. That may sound discriminatory, but it’s not arbitrary, it’s deliberate prioritization. The brand knows where the real purchasing power lies and adjusts its time and attention accordingly.
Most companies don’t apply that principle until after the sale. The bigger the client, the more customer success resources they get. But that same logic should be applied before the sale, during the lead qualification phase.
We had a full pipeline of inbound leads. Tons of potential. But we treated all of them the same. We used automation to follow up on every single one, often with the same sequence of messages. It was lazy, inefficient, and counterproductive.
Not all leads are equal. Not all leads are qualified. Not all leads want the same thing. And not all leads are worth your time.
Yet personalization in our process came late—right before closing—when the contract was nearly ready. That’s the wrong timing. Personalization should start as early as possible, right when the lead signals interest or asks their first question. That’s when qualification matters most.
Sales pipelines should have two qualification steps:
Negative filtering: ruthlessly discard the wrong fits. Leads who ask for something you don’t sell, who can’t afford your solution, or who are terrible persons.
Positive selection: Identify the the top 10 to 20% who are actually aligned with your offer, who have urgency, who match your ideal customer profile. Then spend real time on those.
This is the application of Pareto principles: a small number of leads will generate almost all your revenue.
Spend more time thinking about your lead
One of the most powerful habits I’ve developed recently is deceptively simple: spend more time thinking about your lead.
I picked this up not from a sales book, but from reading biographies and philosophy. What struck me was how rare it’s become to think in silence, whereas people in the past would spend great time just thinking. Not scrolling or typing, just sitting in a chair, a pen in hand, a notebook open, and thinking. In the modern world, we’ve lost that. And in sales, almost no one does it. There’s a rush to optimize the funnel, automate the follow-ups, copy-paste the pitch.
A few weeks ago, we started doing exactly that. We shut down everything—laptops, tabs, notifications—and entered the thinking mode. It’s a space for uninterrupted questioning. The goal is not to prepare a deck or edit a CRM note. It’s to sit with the lead in your mind and ask yourself: what would I do if this was the only lead I had?
Once you approach it like that, insights start to emerge. You begin to see the person behind the contact. You think about their frustrations, the software they’re currently using, the reason they haven’t switched yet. You wonder which of their team member actually influences them.
This kind of deep, focused thought gives you real leverage. It’s completely counter to the way we’re conditioned to operate online—where every platform is trying to train us to chase micro-validation through four-second meaningless videos.
So for any key lead, I now take time to ask myself: who is this person? Why is this lead unlike the others? What matters to them? If I had to choose just one argument, what would it be? How should I tell the story? And most importantly: what is the one task I can do for this person that I wouldn’t do for anyone else?
In my experience, that last question is the real turning point
Spend more time working for your lead
So then the question becomes: What does it mean to "spend more time on them"?
When we say “spend more time on the best leads”, it doesn’t just mean calling them more. It means removing as much friction as possible for them specifically. But there’s a nuance here: frictionless doesn’t always mean self-service onboarding. That’s where a lot of SaaS companies get it wrong, that’s where I got it wrong.
Most SaaS teams think onboarding success is about automation, emails, and tours. That might remove surface-level friction, but it ignores a deeper truth: the biggest blocker is client inertia. Not only clients don’t use the product because it’s hard to sign up, but also because there’s no momentum to use it.
This is the real conversion gap: companies don’t fail to close the sale, they fail to activate the user.
And the fix isn’t to use the product with the client—it’s to use the product for the client. Two examples from our own case:
Example 1: Migration as a sales accelerator
In our accounting software, onboarding was painful. Tons of documents, multiple systems, and a traumatic migration process. Instead of asking users to do it, we said: “Just give us access, and we’ll migrate everything for you.” We handled it ourselves.
Then we went one step further: we registered the first documents ourselves. In effect, we did the client’s job.
Why do I think this works?
It creates psychological debt: Once someone sees their own data flowing in a system, delivered by someone who took action for them, they’re much more likely to reciprocate.
It builds trust : The client doesn’t just believe your promise. they see the product working.
It makes you part of their team : You’re not a vendor anymore but a team member.
This isn’t scalable in the traditional SaaS sense. But that’s precisely the point: your best leads aren’t scalable. They’re worth it.
I like treating sales like team integration. Find the leads that have urgency, budget, and a high probability of real usage, then become part of their team. Do the first task. Show them the first success. That unlocks momentum better than any product tour.
Take another example. I'm working with a payment platform that automates invoice sending by connecting directly to the client’s accounting system. It retrieves the accounts receivable and starts dispatching invoices automatically. But here’s the twist: during onboarding, the CEO himself steps in and sends the first batch of invoices for the client. He’s basically acting as a recovery agent for their accounts receivable—before the client even uses the tool themselves.
Yes, it’s a small startup. But that’s precisely why this works. In the early stages, when usage isn’t yet habitual, you can’t afford to wait for clients to figure it out. If they don’t use the product early, they won’t stick. And if they don’t stick, it doesn’t matter how good your pipeline is—they won’t convert in any meaningful way.
This approach also gives you priceless information. By doing the work for the user, you gain direct insight into what blocks them: the hidden complexity, the unspoken assumptions, the moments of confusion. You begin to develop real empathy for your client.
Physical-world example: pizza and clothes
If you're selling a CRM, migrate the data. If you're selling accounting software, register the first transactions. This is especially vital in B2B SaaS, where success depends on recurring usage of a product with zero marginal cost. But it applies to physical products too.
When I work at the pizzeria, I notice something simple but telling: customers often order what they saw on the neighbour table. It’s the same in retail. Walk into a good clothing or food store and the staff won’t hard-sell you—they’ll hand you something to try. They let you use the product before you make a commitment.
All of this collapses into a single insight I’ve become obsessed with: selling, converting, onboarding, and retention are one step. Your job is to make that step as small, fast, and clear as possible.
Reduce to one, always reduce to one.