Quality Leads Aren't Magic: The Real Reason Your Marketing Isn’t Working (and How to Fix It)

I'm assuming that your business has no problem with leads because people are just beating down the door. Wait, no. They just drove in the side building.

Yes.

So you may have to go look for some leads.

Absolutely.

Especially quality ones. They don't just drive into your building.

No, I wish they did.

Yeah. No, that is what we'll talk about this week. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the business fix. What has you excited. That's. That's been going on. What's new?

So we're working on some initiatives in our organization with AI and hr. So that's been. I mean, it's fun for me.

Sure.

I love.

Sure. Yeah. No, I mean, with so many AI things like really coming to a head, it's. Yeah, that's a. It's a big thing. And knowing how you like to move things around and everything like that. No, I'm sure you're having a lot of fun with it. What about anything else? I mean, that. That can't be everything.

I mean, we're. We're avoiding the fact that we have a giant hole in our building. So hopefully we'll start dealing with that in the next couple of weeks. And then I have a kid who's getting ready to leave me for pre college, so I'm trying not to be depressed.

Yeah, no, I get that. I mean, it's kind of.

It's great for her.

It's depressed and happy.

It is. I'm very excited for her. I'm going to be staring at her on Live360 for probably at least the first four days, but we'll be fine.

Makes sense. Makes sense.

Is she where she's supposed to be? Where is she going? What is she doing? Yeah, it'll be fun.

I'll expect some text messages.

Yeah. We may have to record like extra podcasts and do. Yeah. Need things to do.

I'll be ready for that. I'm ready for that.

So what about you? I mean, it's. The sun is shining. Are we out on the bike we had.

We. I went for a good ride this past weekend. Went to the Outlook, which is difficult to get to. It's about 250ft above the Ohio river and only about a quarter mile away from the Ohio river.

So.

Yeah, difficult to get to. Very rocky, very ruddy. The bike may have fallen over a couple of times. It decided it was tired going up these hills. Needed a nap. Or maybe that was me. I don't know.

How does that Work. Do you have a conversation with the bike then like, hey, we need to get moving. Do you have to carry it yourself? Okay.

No, I just, it. It yells at me for running out of talent and then I try and try and figure out what I did wrong and get up the rest of the hill. We had someone message us and say, hey, look, when we ask for topics we want to cover, what people want to know, they're like, hey, how do you find quality leads? And I know that this person has quite a few connections, not only in terms of just the sales piece, but she also works in terms of recruiting and hiring. Okay, so I, as soon as I said that, you, you just smiled like huge, like, yes, please. So we're gonna find kind of some of the, the finding the landscape of quality sales leads, ideal employee candidates, stuff like that.

Yeah.

In that I'm going to put a stipulation on this starting out. I'm going to handicap you. No, I want to talk about this. Not that you're handicapped in marketing, but we're going to talk about this from the marketing standpoint, first off. Sure. Then we will talk about it from the people standpoint.

Okay, that's fine.

Okay, good.

What?

I mean, I see a lot of businesses that are like, we're doing marketing. Great.

What is it?

Right. What are they missing? I mean, they're like, we're doing marketing. Our door is not, I mean, getting beaten down. In your case, wall.

Yes. No one's driving through their building for insurance or hr.

Correct. What do you see is a lot of people missing with that?

Oh, I think that people often think that marketing is relationship building and they're not. They're completely different. So your website, your social channels, all those things might attract attention. You can do paid advertising, but rarely do those things close the right people. So you're targeting. When you're making a social media post, you may be thinking you're targeting Joe business owner, but you're targeting anybody and half of your friends who are connected with you on social media. So it's really important that you have the quality leads. They come from aligned messaging, human follow up. So we can't just make an announcement and never follow up or ask people about it. And then clarity around your brand. What about you?

It's funny you say that because I used an example the other night when I was teaching the podcast in class and I made the example with that, like, okay, look, no one is calling Tim Misney because they saw his billboard with him with his eye cocked up. That I can't do that. If you're in anywhere in northeast Ohio, you know exactly what we're talking about.

Gonna make them pay. Yes, right.

Correct. This dude buys every billboard. I. It's my understanding there's a deal that he has where if a billboard's not. Not being used, it is. So I get it. No one's calling because of that. But when they have an accident, they think of that.

Yeah. Top of mind.

Right? So it. They stay the top of mind. They do. They. They look at those types of things and like, okay, that. This is. I remember that guy. I've seen that guy. So I'm, I'm going to call him. But the marketing piece of it is. So it, it's a great way for you to get your information for your brand, for those other things out there. And then when people see it or when they hear from you directly.

Yeah.

They're like, oh, I'm somewhat familiar with that. Or they hear from you directly and then they see your brand constantly in their Facebook, their LinkedIn, their Instagram, whatever. Tick tock, wherever it is. That is the thing that finally says, ah. Okay, now. Now we've gotten this. What? I loved your piece too, about the relationship building. Yeah, you're. You're building. I always like to say, you can build the know, like, and trust, but you're not actually there. I make a lot of references in business to, like, dating.

Yeah. It's fair.

It's a relationship. It is. It's a relationship. Once again, people are swiping you until they eventually say, ah. Okay. Yeah. But then they got to start to text you.

Yes.

And then you go out for coffee.

And you got to text them back. And don't be creepy. It's really important. Don't ghost your leads.

No. And I mean, that's the, that's the piece of it. So to me, the, the relationship piece of it. The other thing that I see with it is people put information out there and they don't appro. They approach groups, but they don't approach individuals.

Yes. That's a really good point.

They, they, when they look for leads, they're like, okay, I like, who needs my services? Well, think of who should need your services and then go out there and get them. I mean, 10, 12 years ago, you post something on social media, you could get visibility with it. Social media. Now, I heard someone say this the other day, it's no longer social media, it's media.

Yeah.

It is flat media. And you are competing with so many people that it is tough to get found once again. It's. It's great reassurance, it's great supporting. It's great doing all those things. But to get a good lead, you kind of need to go out and do some of that work yourself.

Yeah. And it's a recipe. It's not just I post on social media, it's I post on social media. I did a blog post. I went and did this speaking event. I called this person, I showed up at their door, I sent them a card like it. We talk about 24 touches. Those 24 touches aren't all electronic. So it's. How do you build the right cadence within your marketing to cultivate those leads? Because you. You want someone who's coming to you that is the right type of consumer that actually wants your product. If you're marketing and you're like, if you're selling insurance, but we're doing all these videos about, I mean, selling hamburgers or doing something that has nothing to do with insurance or hr, people are going to come to us confused, and we don't want. I mean, it's one thing to educate your prospective client. It's another thing when they think that you sell hamburgers and actually you sell insurance and it's a problem.

It's funny because someone made a comment about when you referenced barber and hamburgers in a previous episode. You're. Are you hungry?

I usually am. When. When we're filming, it's either lunchtime or almost dinner time.

Good to know.

I need snacks.

I say we need to keep snacks in the studio for Chrissy is just. Just keep that in mind, people, when. If she says something that you don't like, it's.

She just hangry.

Yeah, she's just hungry. So, yeah, to me, it's that human touch. And the thing that we've even found is like. Like we're doing a ton of outreach to people, but it's direct outreach.

Yes.

We're. You're able to cultivate lead list. There's thousands of ways to cultivate lead lists anymore. And the further you can drill down, the better. But it still takes that final touch to make sure that this lead can actually go somewhere.

Yes.

How many, how many emails a day do you get saying, hey, use us for our stuff?

I mean, the ones that don't go to my spam filter, I would say I Get probably about 150 emails an hour at this point in time in my inbox.

And then how many calls a day do you get saying, hey, we're gonna give you a big Loan for your business.

Well, my voicemail is full and I don't answer it, so I don't know how many I get anymore.

Right. So a lot.

Poor Manny. My assistant hates. Yeah, she's the phone person now. Right.

No, and I get it. 100 that. Manny, go ahead and clean these out for me. It's because they're, they're just so generic that. But if someone approached you and said, hey, Chrissy, I know that you guys are doing like on the HR side of things, we have a tool that will help you do this, this and this. That is a pain point for you guys. That's something that's different because they approached you specifically about it. That's going to get to one of my next point. And have we ever talked about AI tools on this show?

There's a couple times, but I think we should talk about them again because they're great in marketing and outreach.

100%. I mean, if you aren't using AI to generate leads, there's ways to use AI to re for outreach. It's a huge part of what we do. There are ways to use it just to cultivate lists. There are ways that if you get a list, I mean, heck, libraries still have like so many libraries, especially like college libraries. The Kent Library, I forget the woman's name there, but oh my goodness, if you work with her, she could. They have subscriptions to list that will like give you every business owner.

Yeah, the Akron Summit Library, same thing. They have a research assistant who will help cultivate those things for you.

Yes. So take those. I mean, those lists can be golden. Because from there you can find, okay, who is a business that may need our services? What I think the problem is that so many people get with. With leads is they're like, I got a list. And they spam the hell out of. And suddenly they're like, what? That didn't work.

I don't understand why I can't get any of my emails penetrated. Because everybody's flagged you as spam, right? Yeah.

Right. Every single person is like, punt. Yes, punt, punt. And yeah, because it's, it's, it's not directed. In today's day and age, there is no excuse to spam the hell out of people. No, it's gotta be directed, it's gotta be solid. And once again, it's gotta fit the niche because there, there's no reason that we can't drill down who is your ideal business. Don't email everyone.

No. And get really specific in who that business is. And I think oftentimes, especially as small business owners, we, we think everybody needs our service. And that may be true, but not everybody's going to want to work with you either. So who do you like working with? And say, okay, I like small business owners that are in Northeast Ohio that are probably between the ages of 50 and 35. I'd prefer to work with someone who's in this industry and has this many employees. It's okay to drill down and be specific because you're looking for your ideal client and your ideal fit because you want to work with them and they probably are going to want to work with you.

We talk about it all the time in the podcast class. I mean, people are like, hey, I'm ready to talk to everyone. And someone has a pot, right. They have a podcast that, where they are going to be interviewing like female, like dance instructors and people like that. And they're like, I'd really like to get more men involved. And I'm like, okay, you're a woman interviewing women about dance. This is just not. I mean, you're going to get the men that are interested in that. Yes, but you're, if the, if he's.

Into football, are they your right audience?

Right. He's probably not. I mean, there, it's the, the joke that I made the other day is there's, there's a reason why they do not advertise Tampax during motocross.

Yeah. Tried it once, didn't work. Moving on.

Right. And I mean, this goes back to the marketing thing. It does when we talked about that. I mean, it'. It's not that, it's not, it's not excluding people. It is making sure that you are going after the people that have a chance to be engaged with you and do the other things.

Well, I'm thinking, like, your time is a resource. I think oftentimes with marketing, we think, oh, it's no big, it's, it's free. I'll just take all my time to do it. Your time is money as well. I think a lot of times as small business owners, we forget about that.

Yeah.

And we're doing social media posts at 2, 3 in the morning. Like, oh, it's okay. No, it's not. Target the right way.

When I send you some of the posts for this at Sunday afternoon, like, here you go.

Can you get those posted by Monday? Sure.

Here you go. Sorry, sorry, it's a little late. No, it's 10 o' clock at night on a Sunday night. In order to avoid moments like that where you're getting something at 10 o' clock at night on a Sunday night, you should probably hire the right people.

Yeah.

Like I said, delegate effectively. Right, right. Delegate effectively. Hire the right people. When it comes to leads on hiring the right people, this is one that I love.

Yeah.

Because I had this conversation with someone the other day. They're in law enforcement and they're like, HR is like, we posted the job. And what's interesting is, is like HR refuses to talk to marketing. Oh, right.

Yeah.

Right. And I, I've seen this in so many businesses where HR is like, nope, we posted it. Well, right, but how are you going to market this? It's on indeed.

How are you going to market it on indeed? Right. Because that's where everybody posts. Everybody posts on indeed. LinkedIn and then ZipRecruiter. Those are the three big ones.

Yeah. I mean, and you're in the same. How do you differentiate yourself? Oh, well, we post that we have pizza on Fridays.

No, I mean you can, you can. Right?

If. And that is exactly who you're going to get. The people that just want pizza on Fridays.

Yeah. So couple things I would say with marketing. A physician having communication with the marketing team, making sure that you're on brand for who you want to attract is really important. Polished job posting isn't enough. So you've got to make sure that you're marketing your company. Almost like a movement. Like, we want people to work here. How do we get people excited? How do we create raving fans within our organization so that they're posting to social media of, hey, come work for us, don't look like a hostage. There are a few things that you have to post for sure. If you want to make sure somebody gets your job, post like will actually look at it. Pay rate, Put the pay rate in. Because oftentimes people are like, it's a management position or it's a, it's a general open position. It's like if people don't know how much they're going to make, either no one is going to apply for it or everyone is going to apply for it and you're going to have a problem trying to filter those things out. And then let's say you have a highly qualified candidate you're interviewing and you're like, this is a $40,000 an hour or like a year position. And they're like, I make $80,000 now. You wasted my time. It's really important that you post those types of things. I mean, making sure you know what the Organization stands for. And I mean, but the other part is making sure that you can sell in the posting why someone wants to work there.

That's the biggest thing that I see.

Yeah. What? And it's not, we're going to have pizza on Fridays. It's like, this is the potential to get engaged in the community. This is what we do as an organization. Like, talk about what you would say to your customers. Say those things to your, to your potential employees too.

It's so funny because when I was at the truck dealership, yes, HR kind of answered to me in some ways as the operations and marketing guy. But that enabled me to put the marketing spin on job postings. And it wasn't marketing spin like, hey, come work for us. We're amazing. Everything we do is awesome. Your life is going to be amazing the day. No, there was none of that. It was like, look, here's what the job actually is. But we put that in a way that's like, you should be excited to work here. If you're not excited about this job posting, I don't want to talk to you.

No, no. You can answer a lot of questions in the pre interview process and the application process by having a good job posting. And you can tell as you're interviewing people if they even read your job posting, if they follow up in the questions or you're saying, hey, did you know, like this is a job where 90% of it's outside? What do you mean it's posted in the job posting? I didn't, I didn't see that. Like, oh, it's the third thing. So it's important to make sure that you're clear. And again, we've talked about it in the past. Brene Brown says to be clear is to be kind. Be kind to yourself in this situation as you're recruiting and you're interviewing, make it clear at the very beginning so you know what people are with, so they know what they're getting into and you know who you're interviewing.

Yeah, it's, it's funny because the other thing that I look at too, with the leads on that is one of the first things that I did is I told all of our like, let's say service managers, I'm like, you are to go get on the board of the local vocational school of their truck and diesel program. You want quality leads. Go to a school where you can go to the teacher and be like, who's your best student? I want them exactly get involved with things like that. The more involved you get with things outside of the business.

Yes.

The more quality leads you are going to find. It's tough to get out of the office sometimes. That's why you, I believe, enjoy coming into the podcast studio. It is a padded room that is safe for you. Everyone told me I'd end up in a padded room when I got older, and yeah, that's come true. Is. But, yeah, to me, it's getting out of the office to actually go find people rather than thinking that, hey, they're gonna hit the wrong pedal at Starbucks and drive into the side.

Yeah.

I don't know why I'm still stuck on that.

I. Probably because it's been since March and I still have a hole in my building.

And yeah, I drove past the other day and I'm like, that still looks.

Like it's going to be November and we're still going to have a hole in our bill. I mean, it's.

It's decorative.

That's it. Keep telling myself that. I'm like, commercial insurance. This is. We don't do commercial insurance. But eventually I'm going to wind up doing it because no one does it well. It's annoying. It's okay. I'll be fine. How about we shift to talking about marketing and leads and operations perspective?

Yeah, no, I. It's. It's interesting from an operational perspective. I mean, to me, it. It is. And I think you really covered it. But I kind of want to sum it up. Yeah, it's intention. Leads are not going to happen. They have to be cultivated, they have to be found. And what's difficult is, is if you're not finding them, you need to look someplace else. So there's some changes happening in the business world. I don't know.

Few.

Small, small, small changes. You need to change with it. Some of the existing things don't work. And what's interesting is some of the old things are working better now. That personal touch. Holy cow.

Yeah.

It means a lot. It means so much. I mean, when we send outreach to people, they're like, wow, you watch the podcast. Thank you. I'm happy to talk to you. Because we send something personal to them. It's huge.

I think so. And I think also when you're cultivating those first leads, talking about it being relationship, it's even taking a few minutes to go on their social media or look and see if there's anything that they're doing that you can engage on. Hey, I noticed that you celebrated a work anniversary. Or I noticed that your company just celebrated 50 years in business. I noticed that you just went and did this wonderful work for a local nonprofit. Thank you for the time that you did that. Like, there's ways to engage. You don't have to be creepy about it. You really, you really should not. Don't have to. You shouldn't be creepy about it.

I saw your mom had a birthday two weeks ago.

Yeah, don't do that.

No, I totally get that too. And I mean, the. Once again, you can take those lists like we talked about, giant lists, parse those down into the 2 or 300 that you think, okay, fit. Go to their social media real quick. I mean, is it a cultural fit? Do you think they're open to it?

Yeah.

Spend that two minutes, enter that in. And I mean, look, once again, it's effort, but it's. You're going to be able to parse that list down and move forward with that.

Well, God forbid, if you have a meeting with that person, if you do not check their LinkedIn or their social media in some way before you meet with somebody, I mean, or go to their website. I can't tell you how many people are like, you know, it's really nice to see that you've got marketing rock stars on your website. I'm like, yes, we do. Those would be my children. It's nice when people are like that. Or they're like, oh, we like your mascot, your AUI mascot. She's really cute. I'm like, yeah, thanks, Ziva. The wonder dog's pretty awesome. Like, it's those moments as opposed to, we noticed that you do X. And I'm like, no, I don't do that.

Right.

Where'd you. You googled the wrong aui.

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I mean, the, it's tough, but it comes down to the more effort that you put in, the better leads you're going to get. The, the, the easy part about it is that I guess it would say it is easier than ever to make good outreach and to take a large list and to parse that down into a high quality list of people that they're your target.

Agreed.

I mean, it's easy to figure out, like, these people could possibly be interested with a little research because there is just so much information out there anymore.

Yeah. Because good leads comes with good lead qualification. If you can qualify your leads ahead of time, you're going to save time, money and freedom.

When you, when you're looking at something like that, how often do you hear, like, our best hires came from a job board.

Like, next to never the.

Fact that you thought about that, kind.

Of like, there may be one or two.

I mean, I was a little nervous there for a second.

Here's what I will say. There are some trades where they only a lot of times to get good leads, good individuals. They come from job boards, but we're not talking about. I mean, most people aren't talking about oil field workers in Texas. Like, that is. That's a little bit different. They do work. That industry works from job boards to some degree. But. No.

No.

Yeah. Northeast Ohio. Never.

No. And it's especially. I mean, when I look at some of the best people that I've worked with, that we've worked with as a company, they have come through other people.

Absolutely.

It's come through nurturing those relationships, and that's where those leads come from. Now, I realize some people are looking for a more extensive list. They. I mean, we have a long cycle in our business. Yours is kind of the same way. We are not looking to just say thank you for your 1995 for the widget.

No.

Come back in another six months when you've lost it in the couch cushions. That's not our business. But really, I mean, on these longer cycles to nurture those relationships, to make sure that you have a reputation to nurture that reputation. Same thing, obviously. I mean, there's people that know me that are like, yeah, Josh is great to work with. There's other people that are like, mm, no.

And those are not the right fit for you.

100%. I. I am fully aware that there are people that are not the right fit for me. I am not everyone's cup of tea.

That's fair. Just gonna let it go.

I was about to say the. The look of restraint on your face as you said. Oh, that's fair.

I was. See, this is why you. Chef's necks. It's all good.

I was about to say. I don't know if that was a look of restraint or a grimace or. Or what that was. No, no, that's. So. I mean, some key takeaways from this, to me, don't rely solely on someone driving into the side of your. But I mean, hey, driving. I'm not even going to be able to say this. Don't rely solely on inbound marketing.

No.

Go find people.

Yes.

They're not coming to you. Go find them. Define who you want to find.

Specifically. Very specifically.

Yeah.

The more specific, the better.

I always tell people, you need to picture a person.

Yes.

One person. And they can be adjacent to that person, but you have to pick a person to start with. I know so many people talk about the avatars now. I think some people take it a little far. They can like when they name them.

I'm like, hey, we name ours. It's okay, we'll talk about it later.

To me, it's just weird because like we're only looking for Alice now. And I'm like, well, we don't talk.

About it that way.

Okay, okay. I, because I've heard that utilize some AI tools. Do you have an instance where you've used that that you can talk about?

I have. So I, in looking at qualifying some of the sales leads that we have, some of the meetings that we're having, it's going to a LinkedIn profile, downloading that LinkedIn profile, dumping it into ChatGPT, asking a couple questions and going, this is ideally, how do I target this person to get them to position or see the value in AUI or clarity, hr. And I think that teaching the sales team to do that has been super impactful in our organization. We have much better meetings, we close faster.

Yeah, we do the same thing. It's the, it's that outreach of hey, let's make this personal. How, how can we best approach this person to make them feel like, hey, look, this, this, this is directly for them. Because it is. Yes, it is directly for them. Develop a strong follow up process. We briefly touched on this. This is one that, I mean to me, I've been at companies where CRM systems have failed.

Yes.

Because there's no incentive. It is presented to salespeople as, hey, this is how we're going to track your everyday activities. And not, this is a tool for you to use to make sure that when you called on Bob last week that you don't forget to call on Bob in three more weeks to say, hey, Bob, did you make up your mind?

Well, and realizing too sometimes with your CRM systems they have to be flexible and nimble. You can change the cadence of follow up. Maybe it is every three weeks, but every three weeks does not mean an email. This three weeks we're going to send an email. In three more weeks, we're going to send a letter, we're going to write something, we're going to send donuts, we're going to do something that isn't necessarily the same thing every time. Be flexible in your process.

I've never gotten donuts.

You're not our target client, Josh.

Good point.

Sorry.

Once again, this talks about cultivating good leads and this is the prime example the other part. Part that say key takeaway. Focus on your culture to attract the quality employee.

Yeah.

What's one common mistake you see businesses make when trying to sell their company to a potential employee?

Oh, gosh.

As a quick. This is our quick shot closer topic, we're going to try and end things this way now. So you've got a sentence, sentence and a half. To answer this.

They don't know how to define what their company does that makes them special.

Oh, good one. I like it. Yeah, I like it. That's an interesting one.

Yeah. Are you ready for my question?

Sure. Let's hit it.

What's the most surprising place you found a great sales lead or a fantastic employee?

Interestingly enough, it was. It was an employee that we had found that just came through a friend of a friend.

Oh, those are nice. And it.

So this is like two connections removed.

Yeah.

And this person just ended up. They're like, yeah. Not real. Not real happy where I'm at. Would like to talk about changing. And you hear someone like that, they're like. And I mean, it just worked out beautifully. Worked out wonderfully so. Yeah. I took longer.

That's okay.

Okay.

I didn't have your clear defined.

Thanks for the mulligan on that one.

You're welcome.

That being said, thank you again, Chrissy. These are always fun. I want to encourage everyone to go to businessfixpodcast.com go visit the website. Chrissy's team actually put that together and it looks fantastic. The. The border up top is amazing.

Thank you. Lem did a good job.

It's. Yeah, it's all very good stuff. Find us on socials at the business fix. Leave a review, make sure that you subscribe all those other things that every other annoying YouTube. YouTube and podcast person asks about. Next week we're talking about meetings. Yay. Buckle up.

It's our 10th episode, so we're gonna have a meeting about it.

You're welcome. So excited about that.

I am. I love meetings.

Do me a favor, Take care of yourself. If you can take care of someone else and don't have a. Sam.