The #1 problem that B2B companies face is that they do generate enough leads.

Lots of people misdiagnose this problem.

They will say they have a "sales" problem but that is not quite true. For the most part, if you get someone on a call, you can sell your service to them.

If you've got even a single client before in your life, that is proof that you can sell your service.

It's a Leads Problem. Not a Sales Problem.

Most businesses do not generate leads and rely too heavily on referrals and repeat business. There is nothing wrong with referrals or repeat business, but you don't control them. They are unpredictable.

Do you really want to stake your future on something you don't control?

You need to generate more leads!

What Is a Lead?

If we are going to solve this problem and generate more leads, we must first become clear on what a lead is and what the different types of leads are.

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.

These are the different "levels" of leads.

How This Plays Out in Reality

The thing that trips a lot of people up is that they just lump all leads into one bucket.

If you do this, you will fail to understand how this plays out when converting cold traffic and as such, you will likely use the wrong overall strategy.

For all intents and purposes, you should view each of these steps as entirely different "things" or "goals" or "processes."

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The Questions Your Should Be Asking

Instead of "how do I get clients?" you should be asking the following:

1. How do I generate cold leads?
2. How do I nurture cold leads and turn them into warm leads?
3. How do I determine which warm leads are actually qualified leads?
4. How do I get qualified leads to book a call with me?
5. How do I convert sales calls into paying clients?

Once you understand that this is a multi-step process and each should be viewed as its own objective, you are actually 25% of the way to success.

Once you truly understand this, in many ways you are already in the top 5-10% of business owners, and all you have to do is incorporate a system to automatically take care of each of these steps.

That is what I will show you in the following slides.

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The Four Main Ways of Generating Leads

There are four main ways of generating leads (and no, referrals does not count).

1. Content
2. Outreach
3. Paid Ads
4. Partnerships

Most people do not master a single one of these, let alone all four.

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You Need To Do All Four

The thing is, we have to do all of these things, because these four things work together.

Let's say we only did outreach.

We cold email people, we cold message people, etc.

This works, and a great way to get clients, but it has its problems too.

In most cases, they have no idea who you are. They don't know, like or trust you.

Even if you are the best at what you do, you often won't seem any different from anyone else cold emailing them with a similar offer.

Now, let's say we added Content into the mix as well. Now we have two ways of getting clients, but by adding content to our system, we are actually making our Outreach more effective as well.

An Example In The Real World

Let's consider two scenarios here:

The first scenario is when someone has seen your content before. They've seen you post on LinkedIn or Twitter. They are subscribed to your newsletter. They have seen some of your YouTube videos. They say you on a podcast or an interview. These are all forms of content. Now when you cold email them (even though you don't realize it), they are going to be a bit "warmer" of a lead than the would be otherwise. This makes them more likely to reply to you.

The second scenario is when someone hasn't seen your content before, but after you cold email them, they do a Google Search for you and see you have a large number of followers, subscribers, etc. Now instead of you being "some idiot" who cold emails them, you are retaining a portion of your "authority" and you are leveraging a form of "social proof" (you must know what you are doing or you wouldn't have so many followers, etc.) that makes them trust you a little bit more than the would otherwise and this makes them more likely to reply.

This is a good example of how adding Content into the Mix will actually make Outreach more effective, even if they seemingly have nothing to do with each other. The reverse is also true as well.

If you start out by creating Content and you generate a following, they will recognize your name if you cold email them or cold message them and they will be more open than they would be otherwise.

Let's Keep Going

Let's not stop with just Content and Outreach though.

Now, let's add Paid Ads into the mix!

This will be Content and Outreach even more effective again.

In this scenario, someone has been watching your YouTube videos (Content) for a while. They think you are smart. They appreciate your knowledge and advice.

Then, one day, they receive a cold email from you.

They read it and learn more about you and what you do, but they are quite interested enough to reply.

They open it, read it, delete it, and move on with their life.

But, now they see your ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and even on banners when they visit other sites.

They like your content. They got your cold email and learned a bit about you. Now they see you are promoting some sort of lead magnet or offer inside an ad.

Now, they can't help themselves.

They click on it, go to the link, fill out their name and email and now you have them in your system.

Now, a couple times per week, they are getting automated emails from you that give them more information and more value, nurturing them even further.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, they are being pushed from the Cold Lead Stage to the Warm Lead Stage. It is only a matter of time before they cross the threshold.

Let's Round It Out

But what about partnerships? How does that play into it?

Partnerships are some of the most profitable things you can do. You can partner with other businesses to whitelabel your services for their clients. You can partner with them to get referrals. You can partner with them to get media and attention. You can partner with them on joint ventures.

Any one of these types of partnerships can generate a lot of money for you.

Ask yourself one question:

Who is someone more likely to partner with:

Someone who they have never heard of before…

OR

Someone whose content they've consumed and received some cold emails from and someone whose ads they see all the time?

That is a rhetorical question.

You Need to Do All Four. It is Not Optional.

To generate leads and systematically convert cold traffic into clients, you need to do all of these things. There is simply no way around it.

Once you get this into your head and accept is as a fact of life, implementing this strategy will naturally become a lot easier.

It is the self-limiting beliefs that will hold you back such as:

"I can't post that much content."

"I don't want to be public."

"Cold email doesn't work."

"My customers are not on Facebook or Instagram so ads are pointless."

None of these things are actually true. But they don't have to be. If someone believes them to be true, they are true to them.

Accept the fact that all of these things work. It is a matter of "to what degree" do they work for you, and what skills or knowledge you are currently missing that you need to acquire to make them work. The skills and knowledge can be learned and acquired, just like anything else in life.

Talk to you next week!

-Matt