The Most Effective Way To Do Lead Generation
“I think when we start out in business, we want to do all of the things.
We want to create blog posts, we want to post on social, we want to do everything we can to attract people to us.
But in doing all of that stuff, I found that really only one thing worked.
And the one thing that worked was connecting with people that I was already connected with.”
Amanda Dahler
Recently, I got to speak with Amanda Dahler on the No BS Agency Podcast, and I was so excited to interview her.
She is a student of mine in the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
I worked with her in a previous program (Make 6 Figures Your Bitch) which was a program I launched in response to the COVID epidemic.
As a star student in Mastery, and has had so much success implementing this process and has just levelled up her game so much that she is now actually helping me scale Mastery. So she's actually working with me on Mastery at this point.
She's also a killer when it comes to lead gen and finding new business. And she's got too many amazing skills to count.
But for this episode (and as you’ll read), I just wanted to invite her on to have a little chat with me about lead generation.
Amanda's company is called Outspoke Design and you can go check it out if you want to see what she's all about outspokedesign.com.
The one thing that works
PS: So, Amanda, this month's theme is about generating leads, which is the thing everybody needs help with all the time, even when they're doing well. I decided I'm gonna bring in somebody who's amazing at generating leads, and does it so effortlessly. And I just kind of want to see what you think how you think about this and how you do it. Does that sound fair?
AD: That sounds like a fun Deep Dive.
PS: Okay, perfect. I guess I just want to understand a little bit about how you think about looking for leads and how you started with this because it seems to come pretty naturally to you.
AD: Well, I started my business about eight years ago. And when I was really trying to close sales and meet my monthly goals, I focused on bringing work in through all of the means.
I think when we start out in business, we want to do all of the things. We want to create blog posts, we want to post on social, we want to do everything we can to attract people to us.
But in doing all of that stuff, I found that really only one thing worked. And the one thing that worked was connecting with people that I was already connected with, who already knew, liked and trusted me and it made sales a lot easier.
And that's where I always focused on going.
When I needed to supplement that with additional work, I would turn to Craigslist, LinkedIn, Twitter, and I would look for people who were posting about the kinds of projects that I wanted to be working on.
And then I would reach out to them and try to have a direct conversation. Not like DMs back and forth, but actually get them onto the phone, find out what was going on for them and how I could help.
So that has been my strategy from a year into my business because that's what I figured out works and I haven't looked back.
Building networks and being helpful
PS: Okay, so talking to people that know you, and already have some sort of affinity for you.
A lot of people don't like talking to people. A lot of people get nervous. They're afraid that they're going to come off as salesy.
You were pretty new in your business, so how did you see those conversations going? What was your intention, when you would get on the phone with people that you knew?
AD: Every time I would get onto the phone with people, it was never a conversation about “I need to sell this person something, I'm gonna sell this person something”. It was always a conversation around “How can I be helpful to you?” “What is it that you're struggling with that I might know something about?”
I was really just coming at it from a place of “I genuinely want to help this person.”
And there's probably a way that I can do it because I've done lots of things, and I know lots of people and so no sales conversation was ever a sales conversation.
And I also think maybe in the early days, I was worried that they would reject me or not want to work with me.
But I knew that if I came to the conversation just trying to be as helpful as possible that I wouldn't actually leave feeling rejected, because there could be just, you know, it's not a right fit or I'm not the one for your path.
PS: It sounds like one of the keys was to come without expectations, to just come kind of more open-ended and knowing that all you were there to do was be of service and helpful in any way that you could, and being okay with whatever came out of that.
Does that sound fair?
AD: Yeah, that's totally fair. Part of being able to do that, though, was also building up some financial security so that I didn't have to be in a place of desperation.
Because I also learned that trick really early on to that when you're having conversations with people, and they detect that you want something out of them. It makes it very difficult to just connect on a human level.
PS: Yeah, they shut down.
AD: Yeah, they shut down. And so I think I learned that through experience by being maybe a little overeager in some cases.
PS: Oh, God, I was so overeager the beginning. Yes, you gotta be a little cool, guys. Gotta be cool. Keep it cool. Yes. Okay. But you said something that I think a lot of people wish they had. You said, “I knew a lot of people.” How did you know a lot of people?
AD: I think people are the most endlessly fascinating thing on this earth.
And so like, just getting to know people, what they do, is something that I've always loved, followed my curiosity into the things that interested me, that led me to interesting people.
And, you know, whenever I could choose between doing the more interesting thing or doing the more conventional thing, I always chose more interesting.
I had a random college major, I worked in a foreign country, and I was always seeking these fringe experiences in order to just kind of live life more fully.
And that has led me to really interesting and amazing people, I think that I do relationships well and so I like staying in touch.
And I love being able to celebrate milestones with people when they achieve new things. And I feel like I have a natural affinity for people and building relationships.
And I think what, as business owners, we don't see in terms of business development is that it's not just about sales, but 80% of the relationship is actually outside of the sale.
And when you nurture that, there's always opportunities in the future on the other side.
PS: Okay, so you like people, and it comes naturally to you to build relationships with them.
What are some things that that leads you to do, that for people for whom it might not come so naturally, could also emulate in order to build their network?
Because that's essentially what you're saying.
You've built a strong network naturally over the years, because of how you are.
And so when you started your business, you had a lot of people to talk to, but some people don't, don't have that some people are a little more introverted, or even if they're extroverted, all of their friends are in are not in a position to be that helpful to them, maybe?
What kind of things do you do to nurture those relationships that that other people could emulate?
AD: I think approaching conversations and new experiences with an openness and curiosity of what it's going to be instead of just being afraid and then not doing it.
I think that that's very important.
In order to take the next step, I would also regularly check in with myself and remind myself why I'm doing this.
What is it all for, you know, the value of having a really great network pays dividends well into the future, and it's worth it to constantly invest and cultivate the people that you're connected to.
So, you know, continue to remind yourself that this is part of the asset or the value that you're building in your business, and what you want to see for it in the long term.
And then in terms of nurturing the relationship, I would think about how do I want to feel like when I’m looked after and cared for, and doing the same kinds of things for people.
I love birthday surprises.
I love just regular surprises. I have a database of surprise and delight things that I can do for people over time.
And I think that just really makes it nicer to be a human being.
In our world, there's lots of things with technology, right?
Like you log into Facebook, you see the list of your friends birthdays.
I don't care about that. What I care about is that you know that I remembered your birthday in this special way, not because I posted on your wall but because you got a card from me or I invited you to lunch or something like that.
PS: I love that so much. You said you have a list of surprise and delight. Do you mean like when you find things that are cool, you would have an Excel sheet? You seem like you would have an Excel sheet.
AD: I have Notion and I have an Excel sheet.
Having a clear focus
PS: Okay, so let me ask you this because something you said a while back reminded me. You told me a story once about how you used to have the amount of money that you needed to make every month on like a Post-It or a dry erase board or something?
How did that motivate you?
What did you do with that information every month? This was in the beginning of your business, right? Can you tell me a little bit about that process?
AD: In the beginning of my business, when I left my corporate job, I felt I knew that I needed to make $8k a month in order for me to feel good about having left my corporate job, because that's basically breakeven from where I was in corporate.
So that's what I needed to make.
So every month, the beginning of the month, I would put $8k at the top of the whiteboard.
And every time I would sell a project, I would deduct the expected amount of that project from the $8k.
And I wouldn't stop outreaching or connecting with people, or having conversations until that $8k was met.
And I would just start the process over the following month. So sometimes it took until the 12th, sometimes it took until the 20th.
But every month without fail, I always hit at least that $8k number in a month.
So for example, we sold a really big project was a $32k project that involves a whole event and video production, and a ton of things that I don't offer now, thankfully.
But it still wouldn't matter. The next month, I would still start at $8k, because whatever I had made extra in that month, that was just going towards the growth of the business, and I was still focused on $8k a month.
I had started my business with quite a substantial nest egg saved, because we had sold our first house at a pretty large gain. And so I could have easily pulled from that money if I had been in a different mindset.
But to me, it was untouchable. And I still needed to be generating income, because I thought that that was my value at the time, if that makes sense.
PS: Okay, so let me just highlight a couple of things I really liked about this, I really like that you had this clear goal every month, and that it was very visible to you.
And that you would deduct the amount you would bring in so that you could kind of see your progress.
And also that it motivated you to do consistent outreach, with enthusiasm from the beginning of the month, because you needed to hit this goal every month.
I love all of that.
What I don't love is thinking on a monthly basis.
It makes complete sense and everybody listening is going to not get this, but I get it.
Just in the long term. I hate losing on a monthly basis.
And you know this now, Amanda, now that we've been working together for years, I'm curious where you're looking back on that process now, what would you keep? What would you toss? How do you think about it differently now?
AD: I would have one number at the beginning of the year.
And I would deduct from it.
As I made projects, and I did this actually, when I was implementing No BS, I had my financial goals and I put them into a spreadsheet.
I still have a whiteboard, but I use it for kind of long term strategy things now, bigger picture thinking and not just the revenue goal.
Because I'm more focused on the things that drive the number instead of the number itself.
And so I would definitely trade a monthly number for a yearly number.
And I would have three levels of goals.
So once I hit this one, there's a next one, and there's a next one.
And I would enjoy the process more.
I think that it's really. You know, when you're doing things on a monthly basis, I lived a pretty high intensity life to begin with, but it was also high intensity business.
And that is only sustainable up to a point.
You know, after you've been in business for a long time, you kind of naturally build a referral network. Not that you want to rely on it, but it does make the business development easier.
And at the same time, you know, you establish like the minimum viable outreach habit that you need to have, like the ways you connect with people and form new relationships.
And you find that balance, you create a kind of support network around you for continuing to develop the business and, and grow in new ways.
PS: Oh my god, it's so good.
Okay, this was just a taste of Amanda Dahler!
Amanda is going to come back very, very soon, so we can actually talk about all the things that you've done in your business over the years and how you've grown such a substantial business that think it's doubled and then doubled again in the last two years, something like that.
And I think our listeners are going to want to hear how you went from working all the time, making a quarter of the amount of money a couple years ago to where you are now.
But I don't even want to give any of that away. Let's have a true conversation about that.
I'm glad you were able to just pop on here really quickly and share some of your lead gen thoughts and strategies.
To recap some of the biggest things that I think you can take away from this are, again, how strong the relationships are coming to them with an open mind and coming to them with the intention of being helpful.
Now you aren't being attached to an outcome, doing whatever you can to not be in a place of scarcity when you're coming on those conversations, because we can all tell you, the person on the other end of the phone can tell if you are desperately trying to figure out how to sell them something, it's not gonna go well.
And then also this idea of just having real clarity around what you're working towards, and why you're working towards that so that you are motivated to get up every day and do that connecting and do that outreach and building that network.
Because that network, Amanda was lucky enough that she had been building that network for years.
So she was able to hit the ground running much earlier in her business. If you are early in your business, and you don't have that network, your job right now is to make all of those connections to build those relationships, and they will pay you back in spades and they will snowball over time, but you're going to have to do it with a little bit of genuine curiosity and enthusiasm.
And that sounds like, Amanda, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like being connected to why you're doing this, especially if it doesn't feel like you want to do it every day - that was a big part of that motivation.
Is that right?
AD: 100%.
PS: Okay, amazing. Thank you so much, Amanda. We'll have you back very shortly. So we can dissect all of the other amazing ways you've been growing your business, especially how you've implemented the No BS strategy with so much success.
For those of you who are listening who are like, “Yes, I want to do that and I know I need to do that. But gosh, what do I say when I get on the phone call? And what if they are a good fit? What do I say then? And how do I close them? And how do I upsell them and all those big questions?” you might be a perfect candidate to join us in the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
Agency Mastery is for one to two person branding agencies looking to scale to $30 to $50k months without employees, working with fewer clients at higher prices, more profitability.
So you have more profit, ease and freedom in your life.
If that sounds like something that might be on the table for you this year, because you're looking to scale, because you're excited to make that next level up in your business, go to nobsagencies.com/apply.
Tell us a little bit about your business hop on a call with our team and let's see if now is the time for you to take that next step in your business.
What do they say about investments? The best time to invest in the stock market was 10 years ago, the next best time is today.
I would say the same thing about your business right? Like the best time to have gotten started and building your skills and up levelling your value was before and the next best time is right now.
So the longer you wait to level up your skills, the longer it's going to take you to get the results and have the business that you that you've always dreamed up.
So go to nobsagencies.com/apply, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Here’s what you need to get…
From speaking with Amanda, it was clear that even though it’s tempting to do ‘all the things’, the simplest things like genuinely connecting with people are often what work the best. Combine that with a clear focus on your financial goals, and you can be unstoppable.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your lead generation, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!