Lead Generation-What The Heck Is Lead Generation Anyway…And How To Turn Prospects Into Cash Almost Magically!

So I got this email the other day from my good friend and marketing genius Craig Garber, ( If you have never read any of Craig’s stuff you’ll want to head over to  KingOfCopy.Com and check his stuff out!)

In Craig’s email he asked if you had to sell someone a pencil, how would you do it?

We’ll there are a lot of answers to this question, isn’t there?

You could talk to the person about how well it writes, how you can easily resharpen the pencil when the point becomes dull, how it feels in your hand, and how you can erase any mistakes you’ve made unlike a pen.

These all sound like good reasons to buy a pencil, don’t they?

Well here’s the thing, The first thing you need to do is find someone who already wants to buy a pencil!!

Make sense?

You see, this is what lead generation is all about. Finding someone who already wants what you are selling and then giving them the reason to buy from you rather than your competitor down the street or simply doing nothing at all.

Lead generation is basically when you’re not selling something right away but instead you’re interested in finding qualified people who may be interested in buying  at some point.

Lead generation is a system of identifying QUALIFIED prospects.

Now what I mean when I say “qualified prospects” I’m talking about people who have raised their hand and told you they were interested by giving you something ( Most like a name or email address) in exchange for some information you provide to them about your product or service.

Now, you really do not need to use lead generation  when you are selling low priced or one shot items. For example, you do not need to use lead generation when you are selling t-shirts, underwear or milk.

Lead generation is different than direct sales.

Direct sales is when you go to the grocery store. You walk in, your grocery store has products for you to buy, and you buy them.  The grocery store doesn’t really need to build rapport with you to buy orange juice and bread, make sense?

You’re trying to get the name of a valid prospect you can market to and capture their information so you can build a relationship with your prospect.

So why do you want to do this instead of trying to sell them right away?

Because people will not buy from you until they establish trust with you. This is especially true online where there are a ton of scams and unscrupulous players ripping people off.

See,  it’s very tough to build a relationship or rapport with your prospect from a magazine ad, a newspaper ad or a post card. Online it’s very difficult to establish a relationship with someone at their first visit to your website.

Craig Garber uses a phrase I believe he got from the late great Gary Halbert, ” People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

This is why it’s so important to have some sort of lead generation capture system on your website.  As I have stated before, only 1-2 people out of 100 will buy from you on their first visit to your website. What you MUST do is capture those other 98-99 prospects so you can build that relationship with them so they buy from you in the future.

Think about this for a second, suppose you are waiting to catch a train. You’re sitting in the train station patiently… watching the time, maybe you’re drinking a hot cup of coffee and reading the paper. Suddenly a stranger sits next to you and start chatting.  What type of trust or relationship do you have with this person?

But here’s the thing, now  the two of you are sitting next to each other on the train for the next four hours. You share stories about your job, hobbies and family.  Now, you have built a relationship and a rapport haven’t you?

You see, this why lead generation is so powerful.  Lead generation allows you to establish rapport with your prospects so you can build a relationship with them in order to gain their trust so they buy from you later down the road.

So now you know what lead generation is. In my next few posts I will share with you the four selling situations when you MUST use lead generation.  So check back often to discover if your business falls into one of these four categories.

Oh by the way, I almost forgot, and this is important…There’s a pretty good chance your business falls into ALL four selling situations where you MUST be using lead generation.  And here’s the thing, if you are in one of these businesses, NOT using lead generation could be costing you thousands of dollars .

Now go make money!

Bill Parlaman

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