Shownotes
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Gone are the days of sitting back and waiting for clients to roll in; taking proactive steps in lead generation is now crucial for success. As we approach 2025, it's essential to recognize that a passive approach to business will only hinder your growth. This episode emphasizes the importance of taking action and being strategic in your marketing efforts. From leveraging referral partners to engaging in coffee chats, the key is to stay top of mind and actively connect with potential clients. Tune in for some tough love and practical tips that will ignite your motivation to seek out new opportunities and build meaningful relationships in your business.
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Related Episodes:
Ep. 214: Relationship and Attraction Marketing for Lead Generation and Conversion
Ep. 229: Nurturing vs. Follow-Up: Key Differences for Effective Lead Generation
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Transcripts
Remember the days during COVID especially during COVID when clients would just, like, magically appear in your inbox?
Speaker A:Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but those days of sitting back and just waiting for business to roll in are over.
Speaker A:And if you've been hoping that your ideal clients will just somehow find you while you're kind of passively showing up in your business, I hope that this episode is a little bit of a wake up call for you today.
Speaker A: fastest way to fall behind in: Speaker A:All right, you ready for a little tough love?
Speaker A:Let's dive in.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:I'm starting this episode so calm and quiet because quite honestly, this one's going to be a bit of a tough one love episode, all right?
Speaker A:A little bit of tough love, a little bit of a push, but also one that I hope just, like, lights a fire under your butt and gets you moving.
Speaker A:And it's really all about getting out there and taking action.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:If you have big goals this year and you want to really sign on a bunch of new clients, I am here to tell you that gone are the days of clients coming to us, right?
Speaker A:We can just kind of sit back and passively do things and show up when we feel like it.
Speaker A:And clients rolled in.
Speaker A:And I will be honest, there was like, during the COVID times, that is what happened, right?
Speaker A:Like, you literally could just kind of sit back, show up, and clients were coming to us, right?
Speaker A:Because there was just.
Speaker A:It was a completely different economic time.
Speaker A:It was a completely different environment.
Speaker A:And so we got kind of used to that, right?
Speaker A: And then: Speaker A: Well, I'm here to tell you,: Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:So I am seeing a lot again as I'm diving into and working with the.
Speaker A:The members in the Focus Visionary Accelerator.
Speaker A:Lead generation is lead generation and marketing activities are.
Speaker A:Are one of those things that kind of falls to the wayside.
Speaker A:And I'm here to tell you, like, you gotta step it up.
Speaker A:You have to step up your lead generation.
Speaker A:We, for some people, they have been very lucky and very blessed with getting referrals, right?
Speaker A:And referrals.
Speaker A:We will never discredit the power of referral I think if you can hone in on referral marketing, right?
Speaker A:Like, if you know you've got a lot of really great referral partners, then I'm telling you, like, the action that you should be taking.
Speaker A:I hate the word should, is like.
Speaker A:But in reality, like, figuring out how you can do more with those referral partners.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So it's not necessarily about posting more content.
Speaker A:It's not necessarily about, you know, being in all the places and doing all the things and getting overwhelmed and getting burnt out.
Speaker A:It's not that at all.
Speaker A:It's about being strategic and mindful, but then also, like, making sure that you have a system and a process to move your leads through your pipeline.
Speaker A:I talked about this a couple episodes ago.
Speaker A:I'll make sure I link that one in the show notes.
Speaker A:But really, you've got to get out there and take action.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:This whole, like, build it, enable calm mindset, it just doesn't work, Right?
Speaker A:The market is competitive.
Speaker A:We talked about buyer discernment.
Speaker A:It's there.
Speaker A:So you can't just sit back.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:You cannot just sit back and hope that clients are going to come to you.
Speaker A:It's just not going to happen anymore.
Speaker A:Okay, so what can you do?
Speaker A:What can you do to be proactive?
Speaker A:Well, first and foremost, I highly recommend, like, looking back and understanding, like, what has worked in the past.
Speaker A:You don't need to start over.
Speaker A:You don't need to start from scratch.
Speaker A:You don't need to try something new, right?
Speaker A:Like, go back and look and see what has worked in the past.
Speaker A:And for me, I've.
Speaker A:You've heard me talk about this before, is it's first and foremost, always and forever will be coffee chats.
Speaker A:Like, having conversations always grows my business, right?
Speaker A:When I am low on my coffee chats, when I'm not doing as many of them, when I've got my calendar blocked off, I see a huge decline.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:But it's not just about having the coffee chat.
Speaker A:It's about making sure, like, hey, I'm going to follow up with this person.
Speaker A:I had two coffee chats today.
Speaker A:They were both really great conversations.
Speaker A:And at the end of them, it was, we definitely need to stay in touch.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:How are we going to do that?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Like, are you going to put a reminder in your phone to stay in touch?
Speaker A:Because time is going to fly by.
Speaker A:It does.
Speaker A:We've.
Speaker A:You've seen that, right?
Speaker A:And before you know it, it's going to be June, and you will have not reached back out to that person.
Speaker A:And they may Have a new referral for you.
Speaker A:They may not realize that you have a new.
Speaker A:You have openings in your client roster.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:They may not realize that you're ex.
Speaker A:That you have a new affiliate program that launched.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Whatever it is.
Speaker A:But, like, you need to be staying in touch with the connections that are, like, really amazing connections.
Speaker A:And the ones that you said, like, yeah, we definitely need to stay in touch or, hey, let's collaborate on something.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And so you need to, like, look at that.
Speaker A:The other thing that you can do is, like, do you want to do guest speaking?
Speaker A:Do you want to.
Speaker A:How do you want to show up?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:It's really about staying top of mind and continuing to drive people into you and getting to experience you, to warming them up.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Like, having a conversation is great, but, like, even in one of the conversations, she was like, I think I have a client that might really benefit from having a conversation with you.
Speaker A:Or, like, but what's the best way for me to, like, should I just have her go to your website?
Speaker A:And I was like, you know what?
Speaker A:You can have her go to my website or you can have her binge my podcast.
Speaker A:Because my podcast is where I keep it real.
Speaker A:Is where you're going to get a dose of, like, you're going to really get a good feeling of, like, my mindset, how strategically I work, my frameworks, the way I think, the way I present, right?
Speaker A:Like, if you really want to stalk me and get to know me, like, send her to my podcast.
Speaker A:She was like, perfect, right?
Speaker A:So, like, again, what is the next step?
Speaker A:Here's this person saying, I think I have somebody for you, but now it's also on me to follow up with her and say, hey, you mentioned that so and so might be interested.
Speaker A:I just want to know, like, do you think I should try to reach out to her?
Speaker A:Should I set up a time?
Speaker A:Where did you have a conversation with her?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Like, it's on me to follow up.
Speaker A:It's on me to take that action.
Speaker A:Like, do not sit around and wait for those people.
Speaker A:This is what I mean by, like, sitting back and waiting for people to come back to you.
Speaker A:Like, I could just assume that she's going to send that person to me, right?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:But I'm going to have a million other conversations, and that's going to go out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker A:Or I could immediately set a reminder to follow up with her if I haven't heard from her in however long, like, a month or whatever it is.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So it's proactive outreach you know, if you have leads that have told you, like, hey, I'm interested, go and follow up with them, put yourself back in front of them.
Speaker A:Like, even if it's just dming to say, hey, how's it going?
Speaker A:What's new?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Like, it's not always about asking for the sale.
Speaker A:Or I mean, I could go on and on about that.
Speaker A:I think that's a totally different episode.
Speaker A:But my point here is that you've got to be the one taking action.
Speaker A:You cannot rely on everybody else to take the action for you.
Speaker A:If you do, your growth is going to be much slower, okay?
Speaker A:Because everybody is busy.
Speaker A:People forget they're just moving from one thing to the next to the next to the next.
Speaker A:And like, they don't.
Speaker A:They may have good intentions of following up with you or like, oh, I should reach back out to her, but they don't, okay?
Speaker A:Because life just lives, all right?
Speaker A:And so you have got to figure out what are the actions that you are going to commit to.
Speaker A:And again, this is not about doing all the things.
Speaker A:If you have really great referral partners, like how can you, do you meet with them once a month?
Speaker A:Do you meet with them every other month?
Speaker A:Do you have an email list specific to those that send referrals to you and do you share with them some tidbits of like, hey, here's something.
Speaker A:Like, here's a client story.
Speaker A:I don't know if you have any clients that maybe this would resonate with.
Speaker A:This is something that I just experienced.
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:Like, get.
Speaker A:Think outside the box.
Speaker A:Like, how can you really stay top of mind with people?
Speaker A:Because that's what you need is like their decision.
Speaker A:You can't necessarily speed up somebody's decision making process, right?
Speaker A:If they're not ready to make a decision, you can't speed that up.
Speaker A:But what you can do is keep yourself top of mind.
Speaker A:So when they keep seeing you, like, oh yeah, I gotta reach back out to her.
Speaker A:Yep, I gotta reach back out to her.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:Still like that.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:You know what I mean?
Speaker A:And so that's where you've got to do your own due diligence.
Speaker A:And so one of the other things that I'm really pushing back on a lot in the member with the members of the Focus Visionary is when they're setting their North Star, a lot of them, they're saying, like, I'm going to build a, a pipeline leads ready for XYZ program.
Speaker A:And here's the thing, like, that's, that sounds really great.
Speaker A:Like there's so much more that goes into the North Star.
Speaker A:We talked about that in the episode a couple weeks ago.
Speaker A:But here's the thing.
Speaker A:Like if you were could just build a pipeline full of warm leads, you would have already done it by now, right?
Speaker A:You would have already done it by now.
Speaker A:So like, what are the actions that it's going to take in order to build that pipeline?
Speaker A:What are the actions it's going to take to warm those leads up?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That is what I'm saying is like really being honest with yourself about what are the actions I need to take to get the outcomes I am trying to achieve, right?
Speaker A:You cannot just keep putting outcomes out there.
Speaker A:If you knew how to do it and you were taking the action, you will have already received those outcomes, right?
Speaker A:So you really need to be mindful of what that looks like.
Speaker A:How can you stay consistent?
Speaker A:How can you continue to follow up?
Speaker A:How can you continue to build strategic partnerships and referral partnerships?
Speaker A:How are you meeting new people, right?
Speaker A:Like, how are you having new conversations?
Speaker A:How are you bringing people into your world?
Speaker A:Is it through speaking?
Speaker A:Is it through guesting?
Speaker A:Is it through joining networking groups and reaching out and having coffee chats?
Speaker A:I just joined at the end of the year.
Speaker A:Last year I joined three new networking groups and they're all hosted on Circle, which is like so overwhelming to me.
Speaker A:And for a lot of time, like, I could use that as an excuse.
Speaker A:Like, oh, I hate Circle.
Speaker A:I hate the platform of it.
Speaker A:It's so overwhelming because it is.
Speaker A:There's like every so in all three groups.
Speaker A:There's like 15 spaces in each one of these Circle communities, which to me.
Speaker A:And then you get notifications for them all and you can turn the notifications on or off.
Speaker A:But even still, like when you get in there, it's like, oh my gosh, you could scroll through the feed.
Speaker A:You've got the group chat feed, you've got the In Search of feed, you've got the Ask and Give feed.
Speaker A:Like it's a lot.
Speaker A:It's a lot because now it's like I have to do this for three different groups and so I could just get super overwhelmed by that and never check it.
Speaker A:Or what I could do is go into those networking groups and look at the events that they host and not really necessarily engage in the or pick one feed, right?
Speaker A:Like, okay, I'm just going to participate and engage in the Ask and Give feed and I'm only going to commit to showing up to one one of their events a month and I could go in and they all have Member directories.
Speaker A:Because, again, I know for a fact that if I have coffee chats, you know, that my business is going to grow.
Speaker A:So if I go into the member directory and send messages and reach out and say, hey, Holly, we're in the entrepreneague together, and I would love to have a conversation with you and get to know the members of this, you know, whatever.
Speaker A:I've done this strategy in other groups.
Speaker A:Like, it's worked.
Speaker A:It works very well for me.
Speaker A:So, yes, I could get overwhelmed by all the things.
Speaker A:Like, there's a million things that all of these groups offer, and you could get overwhelmed by them, and you could shut it down and you could find yourself getting busy.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If I tried to keep up with the chats in all of those spaces, I literally would have nothing else to do but engage in that.
Speaker A:And it's like, that's not a lead generator.
Speaker A:It's only going to take you so far.
Speaker A:And so you have to pick and choose the actions and the activities, like, what actions are going to get you the best result with the amount of time that you have and getting very clear on that.
Speaker A:Okay, you have to get clear on the actions.
Speaker A:And I'm telling you, lead generation, audience list, like, list growth, all of those things are going to be crucial.
Speaker A:You have got to expand your audience, and I'm not saying you've got to expand it to 5,000 people.
Speaker A:You could do very well with a small audience.
Speaker A:I have done in eight years.
Speaker A:My audience is still ridiculously small compared to a lot of other people in my, you know, like, colleagues and stuff.
Speaker A:Like, I'm.
Speaker A:I have another colleague who's got a Facebook group of 8,500 people.
Speaker A:Like, I'm not even close to that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And so it's not to say that you can't have success with a small list, but again, if you're going to keep your audience small, what are you going to do to make sure that you're continuing to grow with them?
Speaker A:Are you offering them new offers?
Speaker A:Are you offering them affiliate programs?
Speaker A:Are you partnering with them?
Speaker A:Are you doing referrals?
Speaker A:Are you doing swaps with them?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like, are you collaborating with them?
Speaker A:Like, you can use and have a small audience, but again, what actions are you taking with that small audience that are going to get you the clients, the revenue, the.
Speaker A:All the things that you're trying to achieve?
Speaker A:And so I'm just here to tell you, like, sitting back and waiting, you're going to fall behind.
Speaker A:You are going to fall behind.
Speaker A:So it's uncomfortable I get that there are things that are going to be uncomfortable.
Speaker A:If you find reaching out to people in a member directory uncomfortable.
Speaker A:I get it.
Speaker A:But start with one or go back to the marketing actions that are comfortable for you that, you know, work.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If you know they work, then stay in your comfort zone, but do more of it.
Speaker A:You have to just do it at scale at that point.
Speaker A:Like, and at some point you're going to outgrow your comfort zone.
Speaker A:So then you pick one small thing.
Speaker A:It could be one person that you follow up with.
Speaker A:It could be doing a guest expert swap with one of your really great referral partners who you love to have a conversation with, right?
Speaker A:So, like, you're gonna go live and you guys are just gonna hop on Zoom and forget the fact that it's even broadcasting live and you guys are gonna just chat like you normally would on a regular catch up sesh, right?
Speaker A:But you're gonna put it out there to your her audience and your audience and it's gonna help exist, create exposure, just to be mindful of the things that you're committing to and really looking at and understanding.
Speaker A:Like, is this action getting me closer to the outcome I am desiring?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's what you've got to really sit.
Speaker A:But the days of just sitting back, I'm telling you, are gone.
Speaker A:The, the money's not going to come rolling in.
Speaker A:And if you've got big revenue goals, then you need to take big action.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:It doesn't mean that you have to take a lot of it.
Speaker A:It doesn't mean you have to be busy all the time.
Speaker A:And again, it doesn't mean that you have to be doing all the things, but you have to actively go out there and seek the leads, seek the partnerships, seek the opportunities, and put yourself out there.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:One small step at a time.
Speaker A:And of course, if you need assistance with this or if you're like listening to this episode and thinking, ah, I don't even know where to start, or Michelle, you're talking directly to me like, I got you, I got you.
Speaker A:And that is exactly.
Speaker A:I'm telling you, I a hundred percent promise to you that you are not alone in those feelings.
Speaker A:I am seeing this.
Speaker A:This episode is stemming from conversations that I'm having inside of the Focus Visionary, because I'm having this conversation over and over and over again.
Speaker A:So that's why I'm putting it out here on the podcast.
Speaker A:So I'm telling you right now, you are not alone in those feelings.
Speaker A:And I know that it's uncomfortable and that's what the Focus Visionary Accelerator is there to do, is to help you get uncomfortable, but also to help you identify those actions that need to be taken and just eliminate the rest.
Speaker A:Okay, so click the link in the show notes if you want to check it out.
Speaker A:If you want to jump on a call with me, I'm going to put a link to a chat with me as well.
Speaker A:If you want to just talk about it and figure out like, is this really what do I need to do from here?
Speaker A:Okay, let's just talk about it and we'll see.
Speaker A:We'll go from there.
Speaker A:Again, no pressure, no sales.
Speaker A:You should know me by now.
Speaker A:That's not my jam.
Speaker A:All right, I love you.
Speaker A:I believe in you and I will talk to you soon.
Speaker A:Thanks so much for listening today, but remember, now it's time to take action.
Speaker A:My goal is to get you results.
Speaker A:So what is one action you can commit to taking this week?
Speaker A:Feel free to share it with me in my DMs or tag me on your socials.
Speaker A:Not sure what action to take?
Speaker A:Grab the link in the show notes and schedule a strategic power hour.
Speaker A:We can talk through it together and get you a strategic plan of action in just 60 short minutes.
Speaker A:Oh, and one last favor.
Speaker A:As with every podcast, guess reviews and ratings are what help us continue to show up and grow.
Speaker A:So if you wouldn't mind, please take a quick minute to leave a five star review on Apple or Spotify and share this episode with a friend.
Speaker A:Thanks.
Speaker A:Talk soon.
