It's the conversations, stupid!

Author

Philip Morgan
February 25, 2024

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

My friend Brad Farris — coach to agency owners — recently published a really interesting article: https://anchoradvisors.com/all-sales-come-from-conversations/. Here’s a summary of it:

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:

- Successful sales hinge on engaging in meaningful conversations with potential clients.

MAIN POINTS:

- Every successful sale involves an engaging conversation with the prospective client.

- Initiating more conversations increases sales opportunities.

- Effective engagement involves tailor-made outreach that prompts a dialogue.

TAKEAWAYS:

- Focus marketing on sparking conversations.

- Use questions to transition quick interactions into fuller conversations.

- Personalized outreach can re-engage past prospects.

And then last week a client of mine shared with me a lead generation experiment they’re running. Here’s what they’re doing:

Visit the websites of competing organizations that support similar goals as my business or provide similar services. Make a list of organizations they identify as clients. Then, each day:

  1. See who from their client base is on my newsletter list

  2. Send email in Pipedrive inviting one person to a research chat about their experience with the org

  3. Little drops in this bucket are already adding up to valuable conversations

I love the smart, efficient way my client is combining several information sources in order to guide their outreach and make it very focused and relevant.

I love the idea that my expertise would radiate such brilliance that everybody in my market would have to wear sunglasses when looking it. And I love the idea that my expertise would generate such a gravitational field that everyone in my market begins to orbit around it.

For me though, that idea hasn’t become a reality. I think Brad and my client, unbeknownst to each other, are together pointing towards a more realistic business development approach for those of us in this bucket. To paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the conversations, stupid!” 🙂 And to paraphrase Wayne Gretzky: “Connect with those who are already buying, not those who have no record of buying“. OK, that' was a pretty tortured paraphrase. Anyway! I hope these two ideas combine in your mind to give you some ideas/motivations for executing proactive, thoughtful business development.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If you've never done any form of marketing, for how long have you continuously been in business for yourself?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ >1 year (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 year to 3 years (1)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ >3 years to 7 years (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 >7 years (3)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (0)

6 Votes

I got one explainer comment from someone in the >7 years bucket: “All word of mouth. Started by partnering as a contractor to folks who had more work”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

One way to simplistically organize the world of marketing is two buckets: inbound, or attraction-based activities, and outbound, or outreach-based activities. We’ll go with this imperfect taxonomy for now.

If marketing works for you, what activities have a track record of success for you?

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As usual, I appreciate any comments you feel like leaving to enrich your answer (the comment field shows up after you click your response).

I hope the coming week is a good one for you!
-P