Cold Leads Are Not The Same As Warm Leads or Referrals

One of the biggest problems is created when people/businesses do not understand the difference between converting cold leads and warm leads/referrals.

They expect cold leads to behave the same way as warm leads and referrals do, when that is simple not the case.

This is a big problem because if you expect this to be the case, you are going to think about it completely wrong and end up with a strategy that does not work.

If we go back to an earlier statement in the document, "only qualified leads can buy."

Remember the different types of leads:

1. Cold leads
2. Warm leads
3. Qualified leads

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Definitions

Lead: A lead is a general term for someone you can contact. That is it. If you have their email or phone number, then that is a lead. If someone signed up form a form for example and gave you their email, they have become a lead.

Cold Lead: A cold lead is someone who you can contact but has shown little to no interest in you or your offer or your business. When someone becomes a lead for the first time, this is where they will start out.

Warm Lead: A warm lead is someone who has shown interest in your offering.

Qualified Lead: A qualified lead is someone who has been "nurtured" and fits the profile of an ideal customer with the intent to buy now.

You Cannot Sell to Cold Leads. It is Not Possible.

Trying to sell services to cold leads is what 99% of businesses do and then they wonder why it never works.

We have to use our lead magnets, our content, our ads, etc. to "turn" cold leads into warm leads.

From there, we have to qualify our warm leads using our sales mechanisms.

Only then can we actively try to "sell" them anything. This is a process that cannot be rushed, avoided, changed, or anything else. It is a Law of Nature as permanent as the Law of Gravity. This process could happen at different speeds for different people/leads, but the process must happen.

Improving Your Offer

Before we brainstorm how we will convert Cold Leads Into Warm Leads and Warm Leads into Qualified Leads and Qualified Leads into Calls, we need to have an amazing offer.

There are great tools and resources and books such as Alex Hormozi's $100 Million Offers to help you with this, but I am going to help you improve your offer in a very specific way.

If you are reading this, you likely already have a service you sell and you have already sold it to someone, so you know that what you have is needed and sellable.

However, your "close rate" which is the percentage of calls or leads that turn into clients is one of the main leverage points in your business.

If you double your close rate, you will double your revenue, and improving your offer is one of the main ways to improve your close rate.

Identifying Objections

The first part of improving your offer is identify every single "objection" or "reason not to buy."

This is a very, very, very important step

Here's Why

1. Whether you want to admit it or not, there are very real, very logical objections as to why someone would not want to buy your service.
2. These objections exist, and if you do not address them, you will lose a lot of potential sales and you will not know why and think "well that's just life."
3. There will always be a few main/big objections that you will need to overcome to make the sale.
4. Many objections will not be logical. That doesn't mean that you don't have to overcome them and it doesn't make them any less "real" to the prospect.
5. You should write out a minimum of 100 objections or reasons why someone would not want to buy from you. Think as hard as you can. Don't get too bothered if some are similar or repetitive. Write down at least 100. Your business will thank you.

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What You Need To Do

1. You need to address and overcome the "biggest objections" during your sales call and in your sales deck/presentation/website, etc.
2. All remaining objections become the basis for your content strategy and in your lead magnets. Make content + lead magnets (paired with ads) to address and overcome each one.

Addressing Objections

There will always be a few Objections that are the biggest and most important. These should be addressed specifically by name in your sales material.

The rest are minor objections.

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You Still Have to Address Every Single Minor Objection

Any reason, no matter how small or irrational is enough to derail an entire sale.

The only difference is that you address these minor objections through content, lead magnets, ads, etc. so that these are addressed and "put to bed" earlier on in the funnel.

With each objection you address and overcome, you move them further and further down the funnel (that is why having lead magnets solve each and every one of their problems is so important. It is the same thing).

Addressing The Biggest Objections

There will always be a group of the "biggest" or "most common" objections. As a rule of thumb, whenever you hear an objection more than once, it is likely one of the Biggest Objections (most people just don't tell you, but they will be thinking it)

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What You Need To Do

1. The "Biggest Objections" are what you will need to overcome during the sales cycle whether that be in your presentation or on a sales call, etc.
2. Any one of these can torpedo the entire deal. You need to address all of them.
3. Try to think of at least three ways you can address and solve each. If it makes sense, implement all three of them.
4. You can quite literally show this to the client during the presentation. Show them the main reasons why it might not be a good fit and then show them what you are doing to address these. They will appreciate the transparency.
5. You should pre-emptively address these during your pitch, call, etc. Don't wait for them to be brought up if you can help it.
6. You can and should be consistently updating and refining this list over time. If you hear the same objection more than once, you should likely add it to the list.

The Pros & Cons of Your Offer

During your sales pitches, presentations, etc., I always recommend adding a "Pros & Cons" section that explains the pros and cons of your offer.

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What You Have To Do

1. List out every pro and every con for your service. Don't be naïve or delusional. There are always cons. The pros must simply outweigh the cons. Don't worry about "putting negative thoughts in their head" by addressing the cons. They were already thinking about these anyways. You both know they exist. It is better to address it.
2. Regardless of the specifics, always make sure there are at least 2.5x as many pros as cons.
3. It is very, very strong to address the cons. That builds trust and is extremely disarming to a prospect.
4. Bonus points if you can frame the con as being their "fault." Once you start disqualifying them, they start chasing. Don't force it though. It should be natural and genuine.
5. This is a great visual to show in sales assets and on sales calls.
6. Always address the con after separately as a "throwaway line" on a sales call. (Example: If you are selling a program and the con is "the program won't work unless you do the work," you can address it by saying "but you can cancel after the first month if you want with no penalty."

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Before vs. After

In addition to the pros and cons section, I always recommend added a Before vs. After section.

This is extremely powerful. Part of creating a great offer is correctly identifying their "desired result."

If you do not correctly (or even talk about) their desired result, the chances of you closing the deal go way down.

You should correctly identify their overall desired result but you should also break it down into "sub-desired results." This makes it exponentially more powerful when you use it in your marketing and/or sales assets.

You can quite literally show them this chart on a sales call or you can break it up and touch on all of these points throughout one-at-a-time.

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The Power of Contrast

This is so powerful because of the contrast.

Not a single thing in life is good or bad in a vacuum.

The concept of light exists only because the concept of dark exists.

The actual definition of the word "dark" is "the absence of light in a place."

Good only exists because evil exists.

Up only exists because down exists.

Without the contrast, none of these things would exist or even make sense.

That is why you need to touch on both before and after.

Don't just talk about the results they are going to get. Talk about where they are now.

This makes the desired result much more powerful because they can see what they will get if they accept, and if they don't accept, they will be stuck with what they have now.

Although not a "textbook' form of scarcity or urgency, this demonstration of contrast provides the same effect.

Nurturing Leads At Scale

Now that we have all of these leads and a strong offer, we need to nurture the leads from the very top of the funnel (cold leads) all the way to paying customers.

We have taken care of the following:

1. Turning our target market into cold leads through content, outreach, ads, etc.
2. Turning cold leads into warm leads through our lead magnets.

Now we are at the part where we need to turn Warm Leads Into Qualified Leads.

This presents a serious problem for us.

We are no longer a sad, small business.

We could be generating as many as 1,000 new leads per day.

We Need to Automate/Systemize This Process

We cannot simply reach out and talk to them all and go back and forth like we did when we were a small business that only got one new lead every few days.

It is simply a different game now.

Back when we were small, we could give everybody individual attention. We could go back and forth and answer any question they had and we could follow up, etc.

Now, we are simply too big for that.

We need to have a system that automates this entire process.

We need to be able to systematically nurture leads…at scale.

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The Three Ways We Nurture Leads at Scale

There are three tools that we will use to nurture leads at this level. When we do it like this, we can nurture an unlimited number of leads simultaneously. It could be 1. It could be 10. It could be 100. It could be 1,000. It could be 1,000,000.

It doesn't matter.

1. Sales Mechanisms (Webinar, Case Study, Training, Etc.)
2. Appointment Setters
3. Newsletter

Your sales mechanism, appointment setter and newsletter serve as three essential tools to bring people from the Warm Lead stage to either the Qualified Lead or Booked Call stage.

(The aim is to bring them from Warm Lead to Qualified Lead and then get them to book a call, but a certain percentage of Warm Leads will just book calls when they engage with your Sales Mechanism, Appointment Setter, or newsletter. They essentially identify themselves as qualified and do two steps in one.)

The Purpose of Your Sales Mechanism

The best/standard Sales Mechanisms are one of the following:

1. A Webinar
2. A Case Study
3. Some Form of In-Depth Training

If we think of lead magnets as solving all of the problems or steps associated with what we do, we can think of our sales mechanism as the tool or point we say "hey, we can do this for you."

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A Sales Mechanism Is Required For Several Reasons

1. When we have 1,000+ leads per day, we will need something automated to say "hey, we can do this for you" to massive amounts of people. We cannot do it individually at this scale.
2. Saying "we can do this for you" is not good enough on its own. We have to prove that we can do it for them. A webinar or case study or some form of training all communicate that we know what we are doing and that we can fulfill our promises.
3. Without a Webinar or a Case Study or some Training, there is nothing to really incentivize people to go from Warm Lead to Qualified Lead/Call Booked. Our lead magnets are solving their problems and that is great, but unless we offer something to them, there isn't much to push them to go deeper into the funnel.

Sales Mechanism = Introduction of Offer

You can think of the Sales Mechanism as the point where we offer to do it for them, and then back it up with proof that we can accomplish it.

Proving we can do it is not enough without actually offering to do so. Offering to do so is not enough without providing proof.

Both elements are necessary and that is why we need a Sales Mechanism.

Three Main Types of Sales Mechanism

The three main types of Sales Mechanisms are:

1. Webinars
2. Case Studies
3. Training

In almost all cases, one of these things will be the best option for our offer, and it will usually be quite obvious.

Although we can make all three of these things, we usually won't need to.

In most cases, it is better to choose the best fit and then continually optimize that one over time and make it better and better than it is to split your time and focus between three different ones.

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A Description of Each

Webinar: Webinars are virtual seminars or presentations. The funnel typically starts with a sign-up page for the webinar, includes the webinar content itself, and ends with a sales pitch or a call-to-action.

Case Study: This type of funnel is primarily used to showcase a specific result or success story to potential clients or customers. A case study provides tangible evidence of the efficacy of a product, service, or solution.

Training: This is a more in-depth funnel focused on providing instructional content. It's not just about selling but imparting knowledge and skills to your audience. Often, the training itself might be free, but there could be upsells for advanced training or related products or services.

Examples of Which to Choose

The one you should choose will usually be obvious.

For example, if your service can provide a very repeatable result for clients and the service for every client is pretty much the same, a case study funnel reviewing the results with metrics and data will be a very good choice. A good example would be if you had a program or a consulting offer to agencies that all followed the exact same system to get an identical result.

On the other hand, if your service is customized to every client and no two clients are the same, you would probably use a webinar instead of a case study funnel because the exact details of what worked for one client might not be super relevant. A good example here is an ad agency who makes creatives and video ads for clients. The results for a client selling supplements might not be 100% relevant to a client selling T-Shirts.

Finally, you might use training in the event that someone really needs to see some examples or "get a taste" in order to fully trust you. A good example would be if you had a sales training offer. You could give a free training that gives them some tips and some structure to try out in the real world. After it works, you can sell the advanced sales training or consulting and so on.

Webinar/Training/Case Study Funnel

Although they are all different things, the funnel for each of these will look pretty much identical.

1. Your warm leads will sign up for your Sales Mechanism. It will be linked in your emails, in your lead magnets, on your site, in your content, etc. This will happen auaomtically 24/7/365.
2. When they sign up to receive/access your Sales Mechanism, they will be redirect to where they can instantly access it on the Thank You Page. A percentage of people won't be able to watch it "right now" or they will only have time to watch some of it, etc., and have to come back later. To account for this, we will also send them the link to where they can access it with an automated SMS flow and an automated email flow. We may send it multiple times to ensure they don't miss it.
3. After they have signed up and have received your sales mechanism, we need to do everything in our power to get them to actually watch it. The number of people who actually watch it and how much of it they watch will be directly proportionate to how many of them book calls. To ensure they watch it, we should send them email flows, SMS flows and run retargeting ads to remind them to watch it.
4. All of this is done with the intention of getting Warm Leads/Qualified Leads to book calls where you can sell them.

Important*

Please read this multiple times.

The ENTIRE GOAL with this entire process is to "sell" them BEFORE they ever get on a call with you.

Your ads, content, outreach, lead magnets and sales mechanism shoudl combine to have them make the DECISION to hire you before you even get on the call.

In an ideal world, all you would need to do on the call is sort out the details, payment, and get started.

If this is not the case, then your process up to this point is either not good enough or is missing something.

The Purpose of Your Appointment Setter(s)

An Appointment Setter is a professional who schedules consultations between sales staff and prospective clients, ensuring that important meetings are booked for the sales team.

An Appointment Setter is a professional who schedules consultations between sales staff and prospective clients, ensuring that important meetings are booked for the sales team.

Why You Need One

You need an appointment setter (either doing it yourself or hiring someone) because a sizeable percentage of your warm leads will simply never sign up for your webinar or case study or training. If you don't have an appointment setter reaching out and you just rely on people naturally signing up for your Sales Mechanism, you will simply be missing out on a large percentage of total calls.

Although the image above is just an example and hypothetical, it generally plays out something like this in the real world.

A small percentage of your Warm Leads and Qualified Leads will sign up for your Sales Mechanism on their own, but most people will not.

If we just rely on people to sign up on their own, we are typically missing out on 75%+ of leads and the potential calls from those leads.

We Cannot Rely on Leads Signing Up Passively

That is why we need an Appointment Setter and Newsletter (which we will talk about later) to manually email, text message and even call our leads to help manually push them down the funnel.

When you are at scale and generating 1,000+ leads per day, you may need multiple appointment setters as well as a good system for them to be as efficient as possible.

By adding in an Appointment Setter and Newsletter, we are essentially increasing the number of people who view our Sales Mechanism by up to 3x, which will also lead to 3x as many calls as well.

Without an appointment setter (or newsletter, which we will talk about shortly), you are only scheduling about 25% of warm leads into sales calls, which is about 1/3 of the calls you could get.

The Purpose of Your Newsletter

Your newsletter is the final piece of the puzzle in terms of converting Warm Leads into Qualified Leads and Calls Booked.

It works with your Sales Mechanism and Your Appointment Setter(s) to move the leads down the funnel.

For our purposes, we can use the terms Newsletter & Email List interchangably because in this case, they serve the same purpose in the funnel.

Email is The Only Audience You Own Personally

Your email list is so valuable for a few different reasons:

1. It is the only type of audience that you own personally. You don't "own" your Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or TikTok, etc. Your accounts are property of the company, not you. You don't "own" your SEO ranking in Google. Algorithm changes happen and can ruin you. You can think of anything other than email as a "rented" audience, and your email list as an "owned" audience.
2. It is the only type of audience that you can contact whenever you want. Even if you have a large social media following, you cannot simply contact them all whenever you want to. If you post a YouTube video for example, YouTube will only show it to a small percentage of your followers (and then more if it does well early on). Not everyone will see your Facebook or Instagram posts or TikTok videos, etc. But, this is not the case with your email list. You can send an email to 100% of your audience at any time of the day, any day of the week, whenever you want to, with just a few clicks.

Your Newsletter is An Extremely Valuable Tool

Our newsletter is so valuable because we can send it to our entire email list whenever want. This could be once per week or multiple times per week, or whatever we choose.

Each time we send it, we should provide more value to the reader.

When we provide more value to the reader, they will know, like and trust us even more.

When they know, like and trust us even more, it is more likely they will sign up for our Sales Mechanism or book a call.

Every time we contact them through email, they think of us, even if they don't open the email.

Every time we contact them through email is another chance for them to sign up for our Sales Mechanism or book a call and move further down the funnel.

Convert As Many Warm Leads As Possible

Combined with our appointment setter, our newsletter will push a percentage of our Warm Leads down the funnel towards our Sales Mechanism.

If we don't have a newsletter and email list, we will simply be missing out on a large percentage of sign ups and potential calls booked.

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That's all for today, I hope you enjoy your weekend and get some time to recover and crush the week ahead.

Talk to you next week!

-Matt