Valu-First Leads Trap - It's all about the HUMANS!

Good morning, LinkedIn friends. Welcome back to the Value First 10 Day Series. I'm Chris. Carolyn and today we are helping you break free from the leads trap with George B. Thomas, OG HubSpot helper. George, always great to be with you, Chris.

I, I love hanging out. We've done this multiple times. S force helping to create content, have valuable conversations. I gotta be honest, I'm super pumped to be here today. You know, and probably many of the people watching know that I have thoughts on this topic around humans and leads and, and I'm glad that we have this vehicle in this 10 days that we can be talking about this. I won't be here for the 10 days, but other smart humans will be. In other words, I'm excited about this series that you're creating and just being a small part of it because the, the hot take. Right. If I'm being honest for a second, this world that we live in, where we call humans leads, it's kind of like calling your spouse a roommate. Now, now, in some cases that might be technically accurate, maybe, but it's emotionally like not even a good like it should be. Absolutely not. At least I hope for many of you humans out there, like that's not the world that you live in. But, but we have to stop thinking of humans as data points, Chris, and start treating them like the humans they are. That's, that's my point for this conversation today.

Yeah. And backing up just a little bit like how we got here. I've always had this disdain for the word leads and what it does to seemingly smart human beings that are around me. And all of a sudden we start talking about lead generation and we just start making some interesting decisions. I'll say that in terms of business processes, how we set up complete systems, and so much to the point that I did some research back in December about where leads actually came from.

I love it.

But what got me there, like into value first in general is you've built a great superhuman framework.

Yeah.

And we spend a lot of time delivering that, delivering that message. And at the end of it I'm like, okay, here's another like no brainer framework that leaders should jump on and could be just a ready made roadmap to change your organizations. And I don't think they're going to do it. And I started digging into that. And so much of it is because this organizational lockdown that we're in from the information from the industrial age about how we just got to optimize and process everything and it's Worked on the operation side of the wall for years. Lean manufacturing and things like that have been in place for a long time. Even now we are just getting to things like the revenue architecture that Winning by Design has created. But even that is based on factory processes and assembly line. And you know what? Humans, humans don't work that way. Like customer behavior, buyer behavior, internal team behavior is not this nice little assembly line. So today we're going to help you recognize if you're trapped there. I guarantee are first of all, and just know that it's okay. Everybody else is too. And we got to work together as a community to help break free from that. And we're going to give you some practical steps to help you break free. Sound good, George?

Sounds great to me. I'm again, I'm excited to open these doors. And the only thing I'd ask as we get started, Chris, is that anybody who watches or listens to this in the future, that right here, right now, you say make a conscious decision. I'm gonna watch or listen to the rest of this with an open mindset.

Yes, thank you for that. Uh, it's important. Cause I'm going to use all these words that all of our systems and processes are built around and I'm going to tell you, throw them out the window. Right? Because the language we use, and that's what I mean when I'm in conversation and we talk about lead flow and lead quality, MQLs, SQLs, and what. How do we measure those things, conversion rates, Right. This is me getting a little bit closer to like what I thought, how else could we do it, Chris? Well, what did this like on the surface and we might get into it, but this is dehumanizing, like the process so that we can manage the process and measure it effectively. But what does that reveal, George?

Yeah, yeah. So a couple things. One, I just want to throw this out here real quick. This is not your fault. You have been trained to think this way. Just like we had an educational system that got us ready to work in manufacturing organizations during the industrial age, you have been trained that this is the way that you should be doing business, this is the way that you should be doing sales. The unfortunate thing, if anybody has not paying attention, we are in a totally different world where it is about context and creation and curiosity and creativity. And like even the school system is starting to break down to what we actually need for the humans moving forward. But when I think about lead flow, conversion rates, lead quality, Chris, this is where things start to get messy. Like when you walk into a room and you hear phrases like lead flow or conversion optimization. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, you're not just hearing jargon. You're hearing a fundamental mindset of the organization that you're dealing with or that you're part of that. That language that they're using, it is factory talk. It is mechanical. Humans, by the way, are not mechanical. We are fluid beings. But, but this language, it treats humans like we're widgets. Like we're widgets moving down an assembly line in a straight line. And that's super dangerous for any modern organization wanting to flourish in this world that we currently live in. And I alluded to, it's changing in fundamental ways. And so when you're, when, when we say things like lead flow, lead scoring, conversion optimization, we're. We're not thinking about the human. Am I allowed to use the human? Can I, Can I use that? We're not thinking about the human on the other end of those words at all. We're thinking about numbers in a CRM. Customer Relationship Manager. We are thinking about numbers and not the relationship. Customer relationship manager. Anyway, and that's how relationships get reduced to just these simple checkboxes and these status updates and. Listen, let me back up a second before I get hate mail. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's like being done maliciously, but it's more of this case that I would say. It's business muscle memory. The way that you've trained, that we've done it, and the way that we'll always do it because it's the easy movement that we're used to. We have got to rewrite this muscle memory moving forward this business muscle memory, because people, humans don't want to be nurtured like crops or converted like currency. They want to be understood. Chris. Humans want to be respected. The big thing is the humans, especially in the pain points of their life or business, they want to be helped. And when our language, and you use this word, which I'm happy that you did, when our language dehumanizes the process, guess what? Our behavior follows. And that's why this matters so much. Not just for results, but also for reputation, for the relationships we're trying to build, and for what we all are looking for from a business use case. Real freaking impact.

So, so good. And this, how obvious this is. Like, I asked Claude for some, some satirical quotes of what's happening when we dehumanize, and it came back with just some, some hits. And I used them all like I used them all in our post and I just need to read them here because you can hear. I guarantee a lot of people feel this way inside. But just imagine like this is what would be like in practice. It would be like in practice if everybody was transparently communic everybody was transparently communicating with each other. Welcome. Welcome to the machine. Congratulations. You've been assigned a lead score of 47. Please proceed to marketing qualified lead status and come to the machine. Congratulations. You've been assigned a lead score of 7. Please proceed await further processing. Do not deviate from your assigned buyer journey. How about this from the customer service so Marketing qualified Lead status and department attention lead 4829, you have been automatically enrolled in our seven touch nurture sequence. Await further processing. Do not deviate from your assigned buyer journey. Please convert at your schedule. How about this from the customer service full time Failure to comply will result in additional follow up in automation on the sales side. Welcome to our department, attention sales funnel. Please move efficient lead 482 9. You have been automatically enrolled in through each stage awareness, consideration and decision. No stopping, no thinking outside your demographic profile. 7 touch nurture sequence file. Our KPIs depend on your cooperation.

Oh lord.

Dear prospect. Please convert at your schedule. Your recent behavior indicates you may not time. Failure to comply will result in additional follow up and be sales ready Automation. Please increase your website activity and download additional content until you achieve SQL status. Thank you for your compliance. Lead ID 2847. You are currently on the sales side. Welcome to our sales funnel. Please move efficiently through each Stage Awareness consecutue position 156 for sales outreach. Estimated conversion time 3 to 5 business days. Please remain consideration and decision. No stopping a qualified lead during this period. There's no thinking outside your demographic profile. Our KPIs depend some performance metrics. Congratulations. You've helped us attend on your cooperation achieve our monthly lead generation KPI. Your conversion is scheduled for Q3. Please do not become unqual oh Lord. Qualified Dear prospect, your recent behavior indicates you may not bore them.

My gosh.

Be sales ready. This is what assembly line thinking like creates in human relationships. And this is how we feel when we know. Please increase your website act that you're going through these motions activity and download additional content until you achieve SQL status. Thank you for your so when you use words like lead generation instead of recognizing signals of what I'm doing out here Lead compliance Nurturing instead of relationship development Lead scoring instead of understanding readiness lead ID 2847 you are currently and there I say can queue position 156 converting leads instead of supporting the decision process and journey. And here's what's been so for sales outreach Insightful as I've been working inside the HubSpot ecosystem as a consultant. Estimated conversion time 3 to 5 business days. Please remain a qualified lead during this period. Coming from industrial manufacturing, you've got sales veterans that have been closing deals for 30 years without touching a system at all because they know it's all about building the relationship. Performance metrics Congratulations. You've helped us achieve.