How Solopreneurs Can Generate Leads Like Successful Sales Organizations

I want to make it easier for you to close more deals and bring in more cashflow into your business.  

In this article I’m going to share with you my favorite way to get clients to ‘raise their hand’ and self-identify so you can help them with your offers.  

Many of you know that I’m a sales professional with a 10-year proven track record of closing an average of $3.6 million in deals every year. 

There have been times where I’ve been called an ‘anomaly’ in sales because I do things so differently, and by that, I mean I don’t cold prospect’. 

I'm not an anomaly though, I just use content marketing to attract clients instead of chasing them with cold outreach. 

Last week, one of the cringeworthy strategies that I talked about in my blog post '9 Sales Strategies To Avoid If You Want To Close More Deals' is the ‘stalker method’. 

Just to recap, the ‘stalker method’ is one that I learned about in a program that taught other coaches how to be coaches. 

I call it the ‘stalker method’ because its creepy AF and makes people feel sleazy.  

The gist of it was to find other influencers on Instagram and stalk their followers in the comments of their posts, and then try to slide into their DMs and start a conversation with them, then try to move them to a phone or zoom call where you ‘flesh out’ their pain points, rub salt in their wounds and then pitch your offer to them.  

I remember thinking it was an awkward strategy but as I got more involved with the online coaching space, I saw a huge lack of results for people who were paying good money to learn how to build businesses and told to do this strategy.  

I could write an entire email about why this doesn’t work for most people, but I’ll skip it for now. 

After I sent out that newsletter, I had someone who was in that type of a program ask me a great question: what do I do instead? 

If you look at any big sales organization that has been around for a while, they usually have a big database of contacts for their sales reps to make cold calls to.  

The people on this list aren’t random people, some how they got on that list by buying something, responding to an ad, booking an appointment, entering a contest, etc.  

When they’ve taken whatever action it was to get onto that organizations ‘list’, they self-selected or self-identified in some way with whatever that sales organization sells. In other words, they've raised their hand as a potential client.

This is a lead, and people underestimate the power of generating leads or following up on a lead. 

Stabbing in the dark, randomly reaching out to people on social media or stalking them in the comments of other influencers…those aren’t leads.  

A solopreneur such as a coach or a consultant can make sales so much easier just by understanding leads and lead flow.  

If you are like me and hate cold outreach, then you must create a systematic way to not only create leads but a flow that gets them onto a sales call, and when done right, this shouldn’t be scary or intimidating.  

Your lead flow can do much of the heavy lifting for you, and by the time they get on a call, they WANT to buy from you.  

Here’s what this could look like:  

Self-selection #1: Creating value driven content on your platform of choice or get in front of someone else’s audience. Social media, podcasting, blogging, YouTube, live or virtual events.   

Creating content IS selling. You must provide enough value around a given topic to get someone to like your content, engage with it, follow you, share it, etc. 

How can you sell your offers if you can’t first sell your content?  

Creating content teaches you what resonates with people, and it also helps you ‘rehearse’ anything you would be discussing on a call. 

You can be sharing stories of client wins to create social proof. 

You can be sharing small slices of what you teach people if they do business with you. 

Best of all, you can ASK your audience what it is they want, then sell it to them! 

Do you remember 2 weeks ago, I sent out an email with a quick survey asking you what you want more of when it comes to this newsletter?  

If you have a good following, you can literally post a question about an offer you want to create and everyone that responds is a lead!  

Self-selection #2: Build your email or contact list, just like every successful sales organization out there does.  

I’m surprised that a lot of solopreneurs don’t work on building out an email list. Its an art and a skill, and one that when you get good at, will pay you over and over. 

An email list can be built in a number of ways (preferably a combination of several of these): 

• Lead generators (something you offer in exchange for your contact info). Most often people do some type of checklist, PDF, summary, template, etc. Its easy to create, can be automated, and used over and over. Also called Lead magnets, these can be exchanged via DM’s too, but collect their contact info.
• Coffee chats or meet and greets scheduled on apps like Calendly.
• Registering to an online event. I started my email list by doing a monthly ‘jam session’ on a range of personal development topics.
• Selling low or mid ticket offers.
• Replays of past events

Where people are really missing out is the ability to automate this entire process and generate leads while you sleep. 

I’ve got several lead generators that consistently build my email list, you can see some of them here. I use them as CTA’s in posts, and also they sit on the profile page of LinkedIn, IG, FB, YouTube and Podcast episodes.

My contact list is constantly growing on its own without me needing to do any chasing.  

Any of those ‘doorways’ to your email list can be set up in a way that works automatically by creating an ‘opt in’ page where a potential client can exchange their email for your lead generator. 

There are a lot of great apps to do this including Convert Kit, Active Campaign, Mail Chimp.  

My favorite app is Kajabi because you can use it for far more than just email marketing, you can also build courses, set up events, sell courses, build a community and all have it wrapped up in one tidy ecosystem.  

Your lead generator:  

Most of you have probably heard it called a ‘freebie’ or a ‘lead magnet’. Donald Miller, author of ‘Storybrand’ likes to call it a ‘lead generator’. 

I like that because that’s literally what it does, generates leads that you can convert into clients. I wish people understood the power of this process.  

I also like ‘lead magnet’ because they literally attract clients if they are done well.  

The best way to create a kick ass lead magnet is to put yourself in your clients’ shoes and ask, ‘what’s in it for me’? Why should I opt in for this? 

Make it juicy and enticing. This is a way to put your best foot forward and make a great first impression.  

Sometimes you’ll have to experiment with different lead magnets as well as the messaging on your opt-in page to get it dialed in, but when you do, you’ve got lead flow coming in! 

Lead magnets are too big of a topic to go into here (I could literally build a course on this topic) but one rule of thumb is to make sure your lead magnet clearly helps self-identify a pain point for a very specific type of client.   

The lead magnet should also move that potential client a step closer to being a client. It can make them more aware of their problems and potential solutions, and if you can also help them create a ‘quick win’ so you can position yourself to help them further.  

It’s all in the follow up.  

Once a lead comes into your system, its time to reach out. It pays to have a good follow up strategy and move them to the next step in your sales funnel. 

Every morning I have my sales associate reach out to new leads that have come in and offer a 30-minute strategy session.  

If they don’t respond, he’ll reach out at least 3 more times. I get at least 1-3 inbound calendar appointments every week through this process.

Once the calendar session is booked, the client also gets a few emails & text messages, these aren’t just ‘reminders’ to show up for the call but they are dropping more value and resources.  

I’m also using the calendar link as a ‘virtual gatekeeper’ to screen out those who would not be a good fit for my services.  

Once on the call, its easy to figure out what they want, why they want it and then prescribe the solution on how to make that happen. You can find my $36 million sales script here.  

One last thing, remember you can grab my free course called How To Build Your Online Empire With Kajabi as well as a free 30 trial of the app. I go into depth on how to actually build your email list, create lead magnets, sales pages, check out pages; plus share with you my templates of my highest converting opt in pages that you can customize for yourself.

And don't forget to sign up for my Digital Entrepreneur Newsletter if you'd like weekly value packed strategies on sales, digital marketing and entrepreneurship sent straight to your inbox! 

Simon