“I Suck At Lead Generation” … Or Do You? | Episode 50

Speaker A: For years, I thought I was terrible at lead generation. Seriously, if you asked me, uh, to list my strengths as a business owner, lead Generation wouldn't have even cracked the top 10 sales. Sure. Relationship building, absolutely. Great client experiences, definitely. But lead generation didn't stand a chance because in my head, it looked like posting constantly on social media, running complicated funnels, sending endless emails to my list, and creating content calendars that would just turn drive traffic without even thinking about it. And that is not what I was doing. That was not what I was used to. Everything that everyone tells you online about lead generation feels like a have to for a steady stream of clients. And I honestly hated most of it. And that made me believe I was bad at it because I wasn't doing it the way everybody else was doing it. But recently, I had one of those moments that makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself. I was reviewing the numbers in my business. I was just looking at what was working without having a lens of trying to make it fit or make it look good, but just an honest assessment of what is producing results, what brings in clients, what creates opportunities. And I realized something. Every single month, thousands of people visit my website. Hundreds of people register for my lead magnets. My pipeline stays full. I have consistent conversations with people who are an amazing fit for my offers. And almost all of it can be traced back to one thing. My speed networking events. These are events that I've run now for years and something that I genuinely enjoy doing. I've never had to compromise on how I organize them or how I run them. And I have never even thought of these as lead generation until just a few months ago. And that was when it hit me. Maybe I don't suck at lead generation. Maybe I just suck at doing lead generation the way everyone told me I was supposed to be doing it. Welcome to why youy Hate Sales. I'm Justine Beauregard, and this is the show for entrepreneurs who love what they do, but hate how having to sell it. I hear a lot of entrepreneurs say that they're bad at lead generation. They're always talking about how inconsistent they are and how they're not visible enough and they're not disciplined enough. And I immediately wonder, what if none of those things are true? What if you're just generating leads in a way that doesn't fit what the mold of society and entrepreneurship tells you it needs to look like? What if you're maybe trying to generate leads in a way that doesn't fit who you are? So here's how I think about it. If someone told me the only way to be a healthy adult was to run marathons, I would probably come to the decision that I hate exercise. And I am never going to be a healthy adult because I hate running. I don't enjoy it. I don't look forward to it unless I'm running away from something. You're not going to catch me running on a good day. I'm not good at it, and I avoid it whenever possible. But if you put me in a dance class, oh, yeah, I'm there. I'm at the front of the class. I actually used to teach dance classes, and I took dance classes for two decades. It's a completely different story, right? Same outcome, but a different vehicle. The problem wasn't that I don't like to exercise or that I'm not a healthy person. The problem is that I'm being told there's only one method or way of doing it, and it doesn't suit me. And this is how I think about lead generation. It works the same way. Some people really love to create content. Some people are super creative and they love to design things, and they have a lot of fun in Adobe products. Other people love to just speak. They want other people to create all of the graphics and all of the promotional materials, and they want to think about more of the delivery and the emotion and how it feels to show up on stages. And they have this naturally magnetic, charismatic Persona. And then other people love partnerships. They love to not be the ones who sell their own services. They really love to sell other people's services and have other people sell their services. And they're really good at cultivating relationships with people and being able to communicate the value of their offers simply so that other people can speak well about them behind their back when they're not in the room. I've seen people who love events, who love building and running communities, who love having affiliate programs and building on referrals. But somewhere along the way, we started acting like there was a right way and a wrong way to generate leads. And if you didn't love the way that everybody else seemed to be doing it, then you were doing it wrong. And it's no wonder why so many people hate sales. Because lead generation is the front door to the sales house, right? If you don't like walking through your front door, you're probably not thrilled about what's gonna come behind it either. And you're not gonna take the step to walk through the threshold and be like, what is actually here? What's funny about my networking events is that they don't generate leads because I make them a lead gen engine. They generate leads for me because they're actually good. There's just enough of me showcased throughout it that the right people naturally reach out to me and ask me for my support. And alongside that, they're not even optimized yet. They're not perfectly marketed. I uh, spent probably 20 hours a week promoting these to get them off the ground and they were so good that the people who came kept coming back and those people invited friends. And I continue to market and sell these networking events, but in very short bursts of time because I have perfected my process for meeting the right people. And when people leave a networking event, they'll DM me and say, oh my gosh, I met a client on the call. I booked four discovery calls in my breakouts, I did follow ups and I met three incredible business partners that are sharing my socials and sharing my offers and talking about me in rooms that I can't be in. And it's so great. And they also leave with frames for their business where they're like going to other networking rooms and standing out more than they ever have. And they're leaving feeling energized because people are excited to hear more from them. They ask questions of them, they engage with them instead of just looking at them and nodding their head and saying, cool, that sounds good. And then moving on with their life. Which brings me to something I think we don't talk about enough when it comes to lead generation. Most lead gen strategies fail because they they're just okay. Not because you're lazy or you don't do your job promoting them. Not because the algorithm secretly has a vendetta against you, not because your market's saturated. That's actually proof of demand. It's that your lead generation materials aren't compelling enough for people to opt into and naturally share. And before you get pissed at me, I just want to say I've created a lot of mediocre things in my life. I have made lead magnets that nobody downloaded. I have written posts that nobody wanted to share. I've launched offers that had $0 in sales and nobody talked about all of that is part of the process we learn through doing. We fail all the time as entrepreneurs. It's kind of a prerequisite. It's kind of our thing. But when something is genuinely good, people will become your marketing department. They will talk about how much it helped them, they will thank you for it. They will Share it. They will be using it and benefiting from it and getting so much from it that they can't wait to see what paying you looks like or paying you more, even if you charge for lead magnets. So I want you to think about the last restaurant that you recommended, or a book that you couldn't stop talking about, or a TV series that you binged and you told all your friends about. Nobody's paying you to share those things. You share them because you love them, because they were great. And your lead generation should work in the same way. Not every piece, not every post, not every email needs to be a, uh, 10 out of 10. But somewhere in your business, something should be so useful, so enjoyable, so memorable that people literally can't help but talk about it. And that is the second thing that I realized. The systems in your business matter more than your personal motivation. Because even when you create something that's really spectacular, you still need a way to get it in front of people. And a lot of entrepreneurs accidentally build lead generation systems that require them to be on, require you to be in a good mood. Your visibility depends on how inspired you feel that day, or if you've done your hair, or if you feel creative, or if you're feeling confident in yourself, or if you happen to have the extra time or energy, or you're not stressed or busy, or life isn't lifeing. And that means lead generation is the first thing to go the minute things get hard or time consuming. And that's not a good system because my, uh, speed Networking Events, just as an example, has a system behind it. On days where I don't feel like marketing it, I don't have to. I have plug and play scripts. I have places I go. I know where I can outsource, delegate, and automate to. I can send out an email to my list of thousands of people and get a few dozen people registered within a day or two. Or sharing the event out to their people. Because I've built a community that shows up for me. They care about me, they love me, they appreciate the things that I've built for them. And it is easy for them to share it because I've built systems for them to use to share it. So they just have to drop a link and someone can register and they'll automatically get reminders and they're automatically invited to refer other people and then they all get a touch point after they come to an event. And these processes continue to function whether I wake up feeling good or feeling exhausted. And that's important because motivation isn't reliable. But you know what is? A calendar invite with built in notifications and automation sequences. A recurring event where people know what to expect when a habit. If your lead generation only works when you feel like it, uh, you're not really building a system, you're building dependency on your mood. And that can be really defeating when you are not seeing results and you're feeling defeated over and over again. And that's what used to happen to me in my business when I didn't have the systems and I wasn't feeling like it. Let's say I would miss a day of promotion and then I would notice that I would get behind and then I would feel discouraged and that would make me not want to share it more. And then I would be embarrassed and secretly not wanting to share it because I would wonder, what if enough people don't sign up? And then the people who do sign up are not as high volume and numbers as I thought they would be and I would spiral out of control, right? Even just sharing this example, I'm like, ooh, it's easy to go back there, right? Because it is very hard. It's a hard place to be. But when I know, ugh, uh, I'm not feeling like it, I can just pass my SOP to my team and say, can you please log into my profile and promote this on my behalf today? I'm not feeling it. And I know not every entrepreneur is fortunate enough to have an amazing team that can step in and do some of these things and take some of these things over. And that's why it's even more important for you if you don't have a team, to have a process, to have a system, to have automations, to have scripting and SOPs for everything that you do. Because we think that those are for entrepreneurs down the road, entrepreneurs with teams already. But actually that's how I've created such amazing onboarding for team members and for personal assistants of mine to come and step into the business and take over the things that I do right away because I don't have to sit down and explain things to them, they can just pick up right where I left off. And so, uh, if you treat lead generation like a chore, something you have to do, something that's standing between you and doing the work you actually want to do, people feel that we do that energy is like really, really, really clear. It's the difference between, ugh, uh, I have to post something today online and oh my gosh, I Can't wait to share this with people. Could even be the same piece of content, but one feels forced and the other one feels alive. One feels like an obligation and the other one feels like a contribution. And this is part of the reason why I didn't do a lot on social media, and I still kind of shy away from it because social media is not really my thing. It's not something that lights me up and that I look forward to. I kind of dread it because I know that if I'm gonna go on my social channels, I'm probably gonna see content that brings me down or kills my mood or distracts me, and I don't love that. And I see certain people who just glow and light up and they love being on social media. They're like, I can't wait to share this with all my followers on Instagram. And, um, I'm like, that is so great for you. But that is not my experience. And that's why I love hosting speed networking and talking about it. Because I'm like, you're gonna meet so many great people at this event. Like, I genuinely believe and feel that. I see it every time I run these events. Not everything is gonna be easy or even fun, but if there's something that you're willing to work at because you genuinely like it, then you'll usually keep doing it long enough to get really good at it. You need to find your version of how networking events feel to me or how social media feels to an influencer. Because if you dread or hate doing something, no amount of strategy is going to save you. Eventually it's going to stop working. And that's what happens with most lead gen strategies. People don't fail because they don't know what to do from a logical standpoint. They fail because they don't want to do it. That's a huge distinction. Like, this podcast is something I really enjoy putting together for you. I love sharing thoughts and ideas and thinking through things. Honestly, it's cathartic. For me, coming on here and talking to you is like, wait, am I good at lead gen? Oh my God, I'm good at lead gen. It's like one of those things where I have realizations and I go, wow, I didn't even realize that. Or, like, as I'm talking more about the topic, I start to teach myself new ways of thinking and I'm like, huh, huh? Why do people not do well with Legion? It's because they build processes that other people would do, then they try to do it themselves. And they don't enjoy it, so they kind of give up on it. While the other person is showing up at 100% energy and enjoyment, they're showing up at 10%, they're skipping days, they're not enjoying the process, they're phoning it in, they're asking AI to support them. And that's not sustainable. So if you've been thinking to yourself, I actually hate lead generation, I want you to ask yourself a different question for a second. What do I enjoy doing? How do I enjoy interacting with clients? And that answer might completely change the way you think about lead gen. Because you might say to yourself, I really like speaking, but I don't like speaking on my own stages. I like speaking on other people's stages. Or I love being a podcast guest, or I love hosting events or running workshops. Maybe it's I love networking, but I don't really like going to other people's networking events because they're usually full of crappy people and like long winded sales pitches and awkward conversations and I can't control who comes and who doesn't come. That's actually what started me creating my networking event, is that I was tired of going to events that were just the same people all the time. Not good energy, the host wasn't good, the prompts were really boring. I could never control who was coming in and if they were an ideal client for me or not. And then maybe it's writing, maybe it's designing. So you love doing social media or you love having your substack. Maybe it's something nobody's even talking about yet. Maybe it's an in person thing. Maybe it's like this totally cool way of teaching something that's super different and unique and you just love running it or doing it, or you've been thinking about it or dreaming about it and you've maybe tried some things that you really enjoyed and then never went back to them. That is the thing that I want you to think. How can I mold this into a, uh, lead generation opportunity? Look at every client you've signed in the past six months. Ask yourself, where did I actually meet them? How did they even become aware of or interested in my offers and me and my brand? You'll probably start to notice patterns when you do this, and those patterns might reveal the strengths that you've been overlooking about yourself this whole time. That's what happened for me. I kept thinking I suck at lead gen. And then I looked at my patterns and realized every great client that I've met has come from a networking or a, uh, community type of event. And so I built my own networking and community type of event. So maybe you're low key, better than you think you are, uh, at lead generation. Maybe you just haven't recognized what your version of it looks like yet. But once you do, selling gets so much easier. It's a lot easier to put yourself out there and be seen and get your business in front of the right types of people with the right energy and intention and process. And the more you fix aspects of your sales process like lead generation, to feel more like you and to fit you and to be enjoyable for you and something that you can do even when you're not in the m mood to do it, you might just find yourself hating sales a little bit less. And that is ultimately my goal in hosting this podcast and speaking to you week after week about sales. So I encourage you to go take a look at all of those beautiful patterns inside of your business and all the things that you naturally just do well and enjoy and start to cultivate some lead generation strategies that honor that side of you.