Road to Revenue: How to get More (and Better) Leads and Customers

Hi there and welcome to this on-demand class all about how to get more and better leads and customers for your business.

Before we get started, I just want to spend a super short amount of time telling you a little bit about why I'm here, why I want to share what I know with you, um, and hopefully it will be helpful. I am an award-winning technologist. I have been in the tech space working for big tech companies pretty much my entire career, the last 25 years. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've launched multiple startups, um, very successful startups. I also was an early member of the Amazon Alexa team, for any of you who know that product. I've influenced over a billion dollars in revenue my career through my sales roles. I'm also a podcast host, YouTuber, livestreamer, you name it.

I'm a mom to 4.

I do take care of my dad, um, and I'm an all-around nice person. So hopefully you'll find the next couple of minutes that we spend together worthwhile. But here's the sad news: no one actually cares who I am, right? Like, no, that's not why you're here. You probably don't even care who I am. Um, we rarely care who we're listening to too much about who they are or what they do. And the real reason, of course, that you're here is you're here for you to figure out how you can get this problem solved. And it's the number one problem my customers have, most business owners have. Um, but you're here for you. You're here to get what you need. And guess what? Your prospects are exactly the same. They are no different.

Than that they want.

Whatever they're coming to you for is to solve their own personal need. So really something to think about. Now the first thing I wanna share with you is how do you find the right customers, right? Your dream customers. How do you make sure that you're serving them? And I always like to remind every business owner that I work with that it's important that every single thing you do be about them. I remember during my time at Amazon Alexa as well as at Microsoft, I would always be that kind of product owner or manager that would, you would build my roadmap, right? Build out the list of features that I was gonna launch with this software, but I would only build that roadmap based on actual feedback I got from customers, and it set those projects apart. So we need to be vigilant and focused on the customer. People become our clients because they believe that we can help them. And guess what? The best way to help them and to, to make them think and realize that we can actually help them is to help them, right? It's not rocket science here. So people will become our clients if they know that we can help them. And the best way to convince them of that is to actually help them, give them what they need to do something, to see some results. So therefore, everything we're going to talk about today— our marketing conversations, everything— needs to be about them, not about you. So that's why I did spend a little bit of time so you know a little bit about me, um, and who I am. But this class that we are going to go through over the next few minutes here, this is all about you and your biggest problem. And I sincerely hope that I'm right about it. So we're going to go through, you know, what your customers and really you need to be successful, and we're going to specifically identify what we need to do and how we need to do it.

So let's get started. Now let's think about, you know, think about what got you here, right? If you think about it from the customer's perspective, right, your same journey that got you onto this webinar, right? You saw an ad and it said something that made you think, I have that problem and maybe this could be an answer to that problem. And it got you to exactly this point watching this webinar. Your customers have the same intention. They go and they're cruising on social media. They want to find something that can solve their problems. And if they find it, they will buy it or they will look into it or they will have a conversation to see if it's the right fit for them. What they don't want to do though is see like Noelle's cool new video talking about Noelle's stuff, right? Why I do what I do, or my personal journey to the cinema with my family. They don't want that. They want, you know, as a customer, they're looking for solutions to their problems. So I find that I run into these roadblocks all the time with myself, with my business, with my clients. Right, number one, not having enough leads, right? This is one of the biggest problems that plagues businesses of all sizes, right, is getting enough leads to translate into business opportunities. Getting those leads though, right, I actually think traffic is relatively easy to get, and I'm going to show you a couple of tools that you can use today, um, to increase the amount of leads you have coming into your business. But then how qualified are those leads? Right? Like, how much time are you spending on the phone qualifying only to find out at the end most, most of the people you're talking to can't either afford your service or are just not interested? The other thing are objections. We often run into the same objections over and over and over again, like, oh, I need to think about it, or, oh, that's too expensive. And finally, the other thing that most people run into, most customers of ours run into, is I don't have time for that. I don't, you know, us as business owners don't have time to implement the things that we need to do to turn around our companies or massively grow our companies. And our customers often find that they're saying the same thing. I don't have time to go through more training. I don't have to, right? So how do we, how do we turn this around? These are the roadblocks to success for most business owners. And so the first thing we have to do is accept reality about the sales process, right? Our business, my business, you know, our business I say like you and me, we're both in the same business, right? We're both in the business of helping people. That's what entrepreneurs do, right? We problem solve for people. The first thing we do is we share with the world what problems we know how to solve. In order to get them to say, "Hey, I'd love to talk to you about that." So that's step 1, right? Share enough of myself so people can raise their hand and say, "Oh my gosh, I'm super interested in that. Can we talk?" The next step though is probably the most critical, which is during that conversation, I need to create a transaction. I need to create a trade for what I know in exchange for their money, right? So I need to sell them stuff. This part of the sales process, the conversation, the call, the strategy call, right? The sales call is the most important part. Most important, or one of the most important parts, because it's where the money is made. And then of course, once they say, great, this looks good, yes, I'm willing to, you know, give you this amount of money in exchange for what you know and what you can help me with. We go in, we deliver our services, you know, and my goal always is to over-deliver, right? I'm sure yours is as well, right? We're not of that, you know, that generation or that kind of collection of people who own businesses who over-promise and under-deliver, right? We know that that's not really the way to go to market. So we're going to market by presenting what we can do to the world, getting them to raise their hand and say they want to have a conversation, having that conversation, in a way that is not lame salesy, you know, cheesy sales kind of like hard pressured, like it's just different. And being able to actually execute a transaction in that conversation and then of course finally deliver our services. So it sounds pretty simple, right? Get them to raise their hand, have a conversation, sell them in the conversation, and deliver what we do. So why is it so hard? So many companies, almost every company struggles with this. I call it the vicious cycle, and it's complemented though by a virtuous cycle, which we'll talk about later. But the vicious cycle is that we end up spending lots of time on calls, right? We— our whole world is around get up, you know, getting people to schedule time with us And then what we want— what we find at the end of those calls is 4 out of 5 people saying, oh, I can't afford it, or I need to think about it. Oftentimes, the, you know, the world of marketers out there will say, oh, you need to build your authority, you need to get more leads, you need to build more appointments, you just need to fill your day with more conversations. But if your ratio is 4 out of 5 saying no for some common reasons, We need to actually improve that ratio, not necessarily by getting more appointments, though that would be great at one— at some point, but we actually need to make sure that all the work we're doing, right? This graphic is really, um, really useful in kind of imagining like you're going in all these directions, right? Branding, videos, podcasts, like all the things that you're being told you need to do. But if the conversations that these lead to are not translating into sales, it's going to be hard for you to be successful.

Right?

Our focus ends up being in the wrong place. So we, we are, we, we do all these things to get people to request a conversation, but in that conversation where we're actually selling them things, we're converting that conversation to a sale, that's where a lot of people fail. And so I want to talk to you about a few things that you can do to get better at this. And maybe how we can help. But don't worry, we're not going to turn you into some lame salespeople, you know, those cheesy people we see on social media. We're actually going to do it in a way that you can feel good about it. It's, it's something that I'm very— the process I use it, I'm very proud of because it allows me to offer what I do in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm selling and also is almost always beneficial to the person on that call, whether it ends in a transaction or not. So here's the cure, right? Here is how we get out of this vicious cycle of doing a bunch of stuff only to be in conversations that aren't converting to sales. And if you want help brainstorming ideas on how to implement what I'm about to show you, we are more than happy to help, right? So you might, you're, as you, and if you don't yet, you know, grab a pen and paper We're going to go through a couple of really interesting ideas, and you might want some help, like, figuring out how to implement them. And that's what we're here for. We're more than happy to have that conversation with you. Right about now, you'll see at the bottom of this, um, little window, there's an application. And the, the real reason behind this application is just to not waste your time or our time, right? Like, let's make sure we're on the same page, that we, we can help each other Um, and so you fill out the application. At the end of that application, you will get a message saying, you know, thank you, or you'll, you know, that we are processing your application. And it will give you the ability to help us help you, right, to set up a call. If you're a fit, you will have an ability to actually go to our calendar and set up a time to, to speak with myself or someone on my team. Now before we get there though, right, before we get to that brainstorming activity, we first need to talk about how you can build and massively scale your business, right? If you want to generate 30% more revenue than you did last quarter, if you want to 10x the number of leads that you're getting, there are 4 buckets that I often talk about. These are what I call the 4 Ps, right? The first one is people do have to know you, the promotion portion. It's not crazy, but it is necessary, right? It's not a bunch of stuff, but there are some things that you do need to do. The second is probably the most important, which is you do need to sell something that gives you profit. You have to make money. This is where that sales conversation is critical. We also need a process. We need a sales process. We need to document how we're marketing. We need to document how we're going to market with social media. We need to document this so that the last phase When we go to hire people, we have a very clearly defined set of expectations and even a checklist that they can follow. So let's take a look at just a couple of pieces within each one, right? So promotion, you have to do some because known beats best every time. And it's kind of unfortunate, right? Because oftentimes I'll be like, oh my gosh, how is that person doing so well? They don't have nearly the, you know, same experience I do. They don't have right? But they're known. They've spent their money on marketing and getting in front of the right audiences at the right time, and it's translating to converted sales. Other things— consistency. This is another thing that a lot of people struggle with. They get excited and they start posting on social media, and then they get tired and they don't have someone else to do it, so they end up really struggling to be consistent. There are 3 main ways that you can go to market with your promotion strategy. I don't encourage you to do all of them, though you can, and I can certainly help you with that. I encourage you to think about what your best vehicle is, right? So whether it's blogging, podcasting, YouTube, right? Whether you want to write, whether you want to talk, whether you want to be on camera, right? You get to choose and pick that platform to consistently show up on every day. The profit piece is probably my favorite. It's where we actually create offers that are irresistible to your market, right? We go through a process of creating what I— what is known as the value equation. I actually learned it from this really cool guy. He wrote this book, $100 Million Offers. His name is Alex Hormozi. Awesome guy. He ends up— he actually is focused on helping gym owners. So if you're a gym owner, I'm helping gym owners launch their gym business. Successfully. But he came up with this value equation, and I immediately adopted it when I saw it because it was— it resonated with exactly how I do business. But this value equation basically equates to, you know, how do we get the dream outcome for our clients in as little time and effort as possible, right? So it's a matter of kind of trading off and juggling different things to create the best possible experience in the least amount of time. We also have this concept, especially in Profit, of whales and minnows, and it really comes down to, you know, where are you fishing for customers? Where are you going to get your customers? If— and what are you using to attract them to your business? You want to be very, very careful about the bait that you use to attract a customer, because if you are using minnow bait, you won't get sharks or whales, right? You won't get those bigger opportunities, you'll get smaller opportunities. So we want to make sure that when you're thinking, that you're intentional when you're creating an offer, when you're creating the bait to bring people to your offer, that you're intentional about how that bait— who that bait will attract. And then finally, a little bit about paid ads. So, you know, you don't have to spend thousands, hundreds of thousands. I mean, I know people Some of my customers spend millions of dollars on advertising. They make tens of millions in return, so it works out, but they, they spend millions. Um, but it's not necessary. You know, I have what I, I have a process I call the MRP, Minimum Remarkable Process, and it's when we come into your organization, we find out what is the minimum thing we can do to get the biggest results. One of my, you know, really good mentors, Tim Ferriss, He, um, he, you know, a lot of his— all of his books, really, most of it, I guess I should say. But like The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, I think it was called, The 4-Hour Workweek, was all about doing— getting the maximum amount of efficiency in the least amount of time. Paid ads have the ability to do that for you if you use them correctly. So we can end up spending $5 per campaign in order to generate massive results for you And it, I mean, it really is magical how it works. But all of that to say, once we've got a promotion system going and we're in front of our customers all the time, we've got our profit system down where we've created offers that are selling, we then need to document all of it. We need to write it down. We need to figure out what are we going to measure, how are we going to measure it, document it, and put it into what I call SOPs or standard operating procedures. And these are critical because they lead to the final step, the people step, which is how are you going to hire people and/or, you know, if it's not a good cultural fit, maybe even have to let them go. How do you do that without really understanding exactly what each job needs to do, having a checklist really, and then also making sure that you're very clear about the mission and vision of your company, that everyone who's hired is in alignment with that vision, and that you create a culture that establishes and reinforces that vision every single day. These are the 4 Ps that make every business I know— the more they can align to these 4 Ps, the more successful they are. It is exactly the work we do every single day. So oftentimes, right, we go through this, and there's a lot of pieces in there, right? I mentioned blogging, podcasting, right, getting being consistent with getting out in the marketplace. We call that kind of the marketing phase, right? The promotion phase. But equally as important and just as big of an effort is offer creation, right? And being able to build an offer that people say yes to. So, and then of course documenting it and then hiring people to do it, right? This is a lot, um, especially for businesses in a specific stage of growth like you might be in. So I don't know, maybe you'd want some help with this, right? To help you diagnose what's going on, like figure out where the bottlenecks are, maybe even fix them, right? Help you fix them so you can move faster, that you can increase the amount of effective conversations you're having and close more opportunities. We can help you clearly define your offer, right? Clearly define what you have. And that offer is very rarely one thing, right? Oh, I have a class that I sell, or I have a book, or I have a service, right? An offer is creating a symphony of experiences for your customer that make it impossible for them to say no. They look at your offer, they look at the collection of things you've pulled together, and they say, I mean, you are a monopoly. You stand apart. You are completely independent in the market because no one offers this collection of services in the way that you have. This is something we can help you do. We can help dial in your closing conversation. As a matter of fact, I spend a couple hours every day with my customers building and talking and role-playing with them the closing conversation. And I can be a pretty tough customer, right? But we dial in that closing conversation. We have live role-plays with you so that you can get to the point where you are, you know, you know what to say, how to say it, in a way that you feel good about. We can help dial in your bait, right? I talked about like, let's make sure you have the right bait for the right customer, the right size customer. You don't want to be baiting minnows when you really want whales. So we can help you identify that. We can also help you scale and grow. That's really the documentation and hiring process. I've hired hundreds of people at Microsoft, Amazon, IBM. I've, I've been involved in building some of the biggest, most influential technical teams in the world. NPR, National Public Radio. I— this, this is something that I have helped big companies do at scale, and I now realize that companies of your size need this too. Um, actually probably need it even more critically. Uh, so helping you scale and grow, helping you figure out how to hire, how to create these checklists that ensure success of your new hired resources, this is where you can really start to see an acceleration of revenue, an acceleration of productivity throughout your organization. But there are two slight catches that I have to tell you about, and hopefully, I don't know, hopefully it'll be okay. The first one is we're really bad at newbie. We don't do the make your first dollar. There's actually some great people out there, so if you're a like trying to make your first dollar, this isn't really for you. However, there's this guy, his name's Ed Dale. He wrote a book called The First Dollar Book. Like, he is awesome. I used it. Oh gosh, back then it wasn't a book. Back then it was an online challenge. It was called the 30-Day Challenge. It was maybe a decade, 15, 20 years ago. I can't even remember, a long time ago. Um, but it's how I made my first dollar. It's how I realized that an online business was not only possible but extremely profitable. So there are people that focus on newbies. Um, I don't, my team doesn't. So that's the first thing is, is that you really do need to have a business that's up and running and getting customers so we can have something to work with and help you scale. The second is that there's only 2 people on my team who are qualified to help you, which means that we can't take a bunch of people. We can't bring in every single person who sees this video. Um, but we can bring in a few, and that's why at the bottom down below you'll see an application, and that's why an application is required, because we can only have certain number of people and we want to be very selective in who actually comes into the program. So fill out the application below, see if it's something that you want to work with. We can brainstorm with you. It is a free call that we can set up. Um, it takes about half an hour to 45 minutes. And we, at the end of that call, you will have a strategy. You can implement it with or without me, um, with or without my team, but it all starts with you first deciding to look down below and fill out that application and get to see if there's an opportunity for us to maybe work together. Thank you so much for this. I hope it was helpful. I hope you learned a few things, and I really look forward to seeing you on the next on-demand training.