Week 50: I want more leads
One of the reasons last week’s loss hurt so bad is that I’ve been ignoring my sales pipeline.
I’ve been super heads down with existing customers and improving the product—so much so that I couldn’t do both at the same time.
But now that my new customers have stabilized, it’s time to confront the sales pipeline head on.
I spent some of this week reading $100M Leads, Alex Hormozi’s system for generating new business. It’s an easy read and I highly recommend at least skimming it.
This week’s edition is a quick summary of the book and my experience with its techniques.
The short overview
Leads are people who might want to buy your product.
Especially in B2B, where sales cycles are slow, you need a lot of leads to nurture through the sales process. Lots of them are going to lose interest, change projects, change priorities, leave the company.
A huge point in the book is that no matter what you sell, getting leads is very hard work! It doesn’t just happen, no matter how it might look from the outside.
As my friend Daniel Glauser recently mentioned, getting and converting leads is often harder than building the tech itself.
So how do we solve that problem?
Lead magnets
Lead magnets are offers—either your core product, or something related to it—that are so good, your target market has a hard time refusing.
Hormozi says there are three kinds of lead magnets:
Something that reveals how bad of a problem you have. Think a script that shows you how slow your website loads, and how fast it could be with your core solution.
Something that gives you a taste of the core offer—your standard 2 week free trial.
Something that takes you part way to solving your problem. Screen Studio’s free trial lets you access the entire product, except that you can’t export your video. It gives you the first steps for free, but you need to pay to finish the job.
When you make a lead magnet, you need to deliver it. Hormozi breaks it down into 4 approaches:
To date, I’ve used two lead magnets, and I’m starting to think of even more:
Limited free licenses (free trial, software)
Free help with demos (free step, services)
Free pre-built data sets (free trial, information)
Distribution
Last, you need to get your lead magnet into the hands of your audience. Again, Hormozi details four ways you can do it:
Warm outreach
1:1, privately message people you know. When I started my company, I thought I did a huge amount of this, but I was blown away at what Hormozi recommends: 100 warm messages per day for 100 days.
In his book, he describes this as an input/output approach. If you have a good product and you put in more input, you’ll get more output. I love view because the work is so taxing. You need to believe it’s worth it to slog through.
Cold outreach
1:1, privately message people you don’t know. I flirt with this on and off, but it hasn’t paid off much for me. If I pick it up again, there’s a lot I’d change based on advice in the book (automation and volume).
Free content
Create value for free in a 1:many setting. Hey, you’re reading some of my free content right now!
I focus primarily on growing my LinkedIn audience, where I sometimes distribute my lead magnets.
Paid ads
I don’t run paid ads, but he make a great case for how to do it without bleeding cash.
There’s a lot more to the book, but hopefully this gave you some ideas to think on.