Your Lead Generation BluePrint

Allan Dib, a serial entrepreneur, rebellious marketer, and best-selling author of The 1‑Page Marketing Plan, addresses how to capture and convert leads to prospects in this presentation filmed for the Amazon Business Small Business Summit.

Download Your Lead Generation Blueprint Worksheet (PDF) and Your Lead Generation Blueprint Presentation (PDF)

Your Lead Generation Blueprint Summary 

Below is a summary of the Your Lead Generation Blueprint video transcript. 

The Total Addressable Target Market for your Product or Service 

This is a rule of thumb, on average for most industries, about 3% of your addressable target market are hot prospects who are ready to buy today. Everybody is fighting for those 3% hot prospects, running ads for them and trying to get them in the door and convert them. Now, here's the thing, and this is the exciting part. There are a further 7% that are really warm prospects. These are people who are ready and open to buying, but maybe need a little bit of help in the process. Maybe they need some questions answered, or need to know a little bit more about your product or service or how you work. And then there are a further 30% cool prospects. They’re prospects who are interested in what you have to offer, but they're not ready to buy right now. Here's the thing. Everybody knows how to deal with the hot prospects. A hot prospect is ready to buy. Great, sign on the dotted line, or click the "buy now" button, or whatever. But it's the more sophisticated businesses and more sophisticated marketers that know how to properly deal with the 7% warm prospects and the 30% cool prospects. And it's a very important part of building your sales and marketing pipeline.   

Differentiate how you treat your prospects  

A lot of people treat all of their prospects the same way. They treat their 3% hot prospects the same as they treat their warm prospects and their cool prospects. That’s a big mistake in my opinion, because you're really reducing your total addressable market to only those 3% of hot prospects. If you don't have a process to deal with your warm prospects and your cool prospects, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. 

Value-based lead nurturing framework 

This presentation covers a lead generation blueprint that's going to help you use this process to massively increase your addressable target market. So, as we mentioned, there's a massive missed opportunity if you're only focusing on the 3%, because that's where the most competition is. It's only a tiny proportion of your real addressable target market, and they're the most expensive to advertise to. Now, if you go from a 3% addressable target market to a 40% addressable target market by incorporating those 7% warm prospects and those 30% cool prospects, you're increasing your advertising effectiveness by over 1200%, which is incredibly exciting. For most businesses, that would be an absolute game changer.   

Here’s the value-based lead nurturing framework that I want you to use to increase our addressable target market and build that pipeline of future leads and prospects. There are four major stages. 

1) Attract with a value-based offer   

First, we want to attract hot, warm, and cool prospects with a value-based offer that focuses on the problem that they're experiencing. Notice we're talking about the problem that the prospect is experiencing. So, we're not talking about ourselves, our product, how good we are…all of those sorts of things.  We're very much focused on the problem of the prospect, because that's how they're going to pay attention to our advertising and our lead generation model. 

2) Capture leads  

Next, we want to capture those leads. We want to ask them to opt-into our database, our CRM, or our email marketing system so that we can capture those leads to keep in touch with them and build a relationship. We're going to talk about lead nurturing in just a moment, but a question that often comes up is "When should I capture people into just an email marketing system "versus a full-blown CRM?" My answer to that is you need a fully blown CRM when your requirements get a little bit more complex, when you're running automations, or when you want to do something that's slightly more complex than just sending a weekly email to your list. 

3) Nurture leads   

Then, once we've captured those leads, the next thing we want to do is nurture those leads with value-based education and information that helps them solve their problem. Remember, we attracted them by talking about their problem. Now, during the nurturing phase, we're talking about how we can help them solve a problem. And one of the things I really love to do in the nurture phase is show people we can help them by actually helping them. That feels like a novel concept for a lot of businesses because so many people are just going for the jugular. They're trying to get the sale over the line as quickly as possible. And there's nothing wrong with selling to hot prospects, but if you're only selling to hot prospects, you're missing a very large percentage of your addressable market. So, what we want to do in the nurturing phase is to really build trust with them, give them a lot of value, and show them that we can actually help them by actually helping them. We’ll show you a few examples of how to do that in just a moment. 

4) Lead conversion  

Once we've nurtured them, we naturally move into the conversion phase. We convert these leads to paying clients when they mature and become ready to buy. Notice how we're waiting for them to become ready to buy. We're not pushing, we're not trying to cajole them into buying or anything like that. We're just there when they're ready to buy, and it becomes a really natural part of the sales process. We don't have to be pushy. We don't have to be needy. We don't have to do weird sales closes and things like that. It's just a natural process that comes as part of our lead nurturing. 

Examples of the value-based lead nurturing framework 

So, this is the value-based lead nurturing framework. We're going to attract prospects, capture them in an email database or a CRM system, nurture them with value-based content, and then finally, convert them to paying clients. Let’s look at a couple of practical examples of this. 

Example: Fabian’s Fast Fitness 

John is a consultant with a large consulting firm. He's got a very rewarding career, but he works long hours. And lately, he's noticed his fitness isn't where it used to be. He used to keep active by playing sports with his friends. But unfortunately, he's got a really busy schedule, and getting together with his friends is becoming a much rarer event. This is how John moves through the attract, capture, nurture, and convert phases. 

Attract  

Fabian runs Fast Fitness. Fabian's Fast Fitness has a solution to John's problem. First of all, here's how it goes in the attract phase. John is browsing social media while he's waiting for his Uber to arrive. He sees an ad for a free video series on how to get fit with high intensity interval training in less than 15 minutes per day. That's attractive to John because that's an easy button, and it's really speaking to the problem that he's got. 

Capture  

Fabian captures his lead because John clicks on the ad. John likes the idea of staying fit without having to commit a lot of time, so he clicks on the ad, enters his email address, and requests the free video training series. His details are now captured. 

Nurture  

Fabian then sends him an automated series of emails and videos over a period of two weeks showing him how to perform high intensity interval training exercises at home. He starts doing the exercises at home. John starts seeing results. He starts feeling better. He's looking at how he should be training and the form that he needs to be doing. And he's now feeling really good about this, and he's feeling really good about Fabian's Fast Fitness, because now he's getting a result. Prior to this, he was feeling bad because he had no fitness program, and now he's got some sort of fitness program going. 

Convert  

Finally, we move into the convert phase. Fabian calls John to ask about his progress with high intensity interval training, and he explains to John how he can achieve his fitness goals faster by joining his CrossFit gym.  And so, Fabian's gym is conveniently located to John, and John signs up for a four-week trial. 

This is how we've moved, in this example, from someone not knowing that Fabian's Fast Fitness even existed to becoming a paying client and buying for the very first time. 

Example: Betty's Better Bookkeeping

Jenny runs a successful retail business in three locations. Her days are very busy. She manages staff, deals with suppliers, and ensures that customers have a great experience. She used to really keep on top of her books when she only had one location, but as the business has expanded, she's really struggling to keep track of inventory. So Jenny's got a real problem that she needs solved. Betty's Better Bookkeeping has a solution. Again, we're going to work through the attract, capture, nurture, and convert phases. 

Attract  

Jenny is sorting her mail one day. She opens a letter inviting her to a local lunch and learn event. There will be three presentations, but Jenny's most interested in a presentation that really captures her eye. It's called "Effective Inventory Management." She’s now got something that's attracted her to her problem. Remember, we're always talking about the prospect problem. We're not talking about us and our solution just yet. 

Capture  

Then we move into the capture phase. Jenny RSVPs for the event, and she goes to the lunch and learn. She’s looking forward to networking with other local business owners as well as the possibility of finding a solution to her inventory problems. So, she attends the event, and that's when we move into the nurture phase.

Nurture  

Betty delivers an amazing presentation about effective inventory management, which is really hitting on Jenny's problem. Afterwards, Jenny and Betty talk about the issues that she's having with inventory management, and Betty promises to send her a free report helping her compare three different inventory management software solutions, which is really helpful, because if you need to implement an inventory management system, trying to figure out which software to use is a major part of it. If there's a report that can easily help you do that, that's helping her get a result in advance. So Betty's been really, really helpful in this case. 

Convert  

Finally, we move into the convert phase. Jenny is really impressed by Betty's knowledge and expertise, and she hires Betty to help her migrate her business from her current manual and error-prone system to a fully automated inventory management system. Again, you can see we've moved through the four phases:  attract, capture, nurture, and convert. 

In Summary  

These are a couple of examples. What’s more important is, how are you going to implement this in your business? A lot of small businesses are doing what I call “sell and yell.” They’re yelling to try to sell more. They're talking about themselves. And if you've ever been to a party or an event and you get stuck with that person who's just talking about themselves the whole night, how interesting is that? Not very interesting, right? So, what we want to do is always talk about the prospect's problem. We want to capture their lead, capture their details. We want to nurture them with value-based content to help them get a result in advance of them ever doing business with us. And finally, we naturally move into that convert phase. 

Tools  

You’ll need a few tools to do this effectively. You'll either need a CRM system, an email capture system, or an email marketing system. You'll need a website if you're directing website traffic to that site. 

The Best Marketer Wins  

One thing I want to emphasize that I've learned through my own extensive experience and my own work with , many businesses all over the world is the best marketer wins every time. Very often, we're told that the best product or best service is what will win in the marketplace. Unfortunately, the marketplace is not a meritocracy. Really, the best marketer wins every time, because no one knows how good your products or services are before they buy. Before they buy, they only know how good your marketing is. It’s essential to become an excellent marketer. So my exaltation to you is: resolve to become the best marketer in your niche, in whatever market you serve, because it's a very important part of generating new leads, new prospects, and new clients. 

Download Your Lead Generation Blueprint Worksheet (PDF) where you can work through the four phases and figure out how to generate your leads.  

Attract  

How are you planning to attract the attention of your target market? Are you going to use paid ads? Are you going to use social media? Are you going to use direct mail? 

Capture  

Then, how are you going to capture their details? Will you capture their details to a CRM system an email marketing database? So, you need to figure out how you're going to do that. 

Nurture  

Then, how are you going to nurture those leads? Are you going to send them an email newsletter? Are you going to have a podcast? Are you going to have a video series? What valuable content can you create that's going to nurture those leads and lead them naturally through the buying cycle? 

Covert  

Finally, what strategy will convert those nurtured leads to paid clients? Will you have in-person sales? Will you sell over the internet, through an eCommerce store, or via webinar? Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing, so I really encourage you to implement this in your business, figure out these four major phases for you, and identify how you're going to attract, capture, nurture, and convert leads. 

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