How to Generate a Weekly Flow of Inbound Client Leads with Tom Poland: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down how to generate a weekly flow of inbound client leads. To drop these value bombs, I brought Tom Poland into EO Fire Studios. Tom is a multiple best-selling author who has spent 39 years as a sales and marketing professional. He is a specialist in generating the highest quality inbound new client inquiries.

0:39He lives in Australia and is voluntarily married. And today, Foundation, we'll talk about how marketing is where you generate leads, selling is where you convert the leads, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Tom and our sponsors. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

1:14Did you know that most leaders waste up to 70 % of their time on tasks they shouldn't be doing in the first place? It's time to delegate those routine tasks to a Belay VA. Learn how to make the most of your time and maximize your results today. Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to download your free guide to a productive work week. Tom, say what's up to FIRE Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know. Hey, what's up, FIRE Nation? Something that's kind of interesting that most people don't know is that in September 2016, I had a brain hemorrhage and 50 % of the people who have this particular type of brain hemorrhage died.

2:01And there was another 41 % that are permanently brain damaged. And I had three of the suckers over 10 days. And I not only survived, but I'm thriving. Wow. That is something I definitely did not know. And you are thriving, Tom and Fire Nation. That's exactly why we brought him on the mic today. because as I shared during the intro, we're going to talk about generating a weekly flow of inbound new client leads. And Tom, you've written a trilogy of bestsellers on Leadsology. So let's start with you sharing the benefits of Leadsology. Best way I can do that is to paint a picture. So let's paint the picture.

2:40What changes in your life when someone puts this into place? It's pretty simple. Let's take Monday morning. You wake up, you're sipping your coffee, You open your laptop or tablet or whatever you're using, and you see bookings that have come in from people who are highly qualified who want to know more about working with you. That's the scenario. And you haven't had to chase them. You haven't had to leave messages. You haven't had to follow up with emails. They have booked a time to have a talk with you about becoming a client. And when you have that meeting with them, there's not going to be any convincing.

3:11there's only going to be confirming because they've already pre-educated, pre-motivated, pre-qualified in terms of working with you. They just want you to tell them that it's the right thing to do. That's the outcome. That's the benefit of Leadology. I mean, Fire Nation, that's the dream. I mean, you want to create a business. You want to create a system. You want to have the tools in place where you're waking up and having qualified people that want to know more about you, that want to consume your content, that want to work with you. Now, you've made quite a distinction Tom between marketing and selling so first define the two and then break down this distinction marketing is where we generate a lead and selling is where we convert it and as someone quite rightly said nothing happens in a business until something is sold so until you've got a prospect and you've converted that person to a client and they pay you some money we don't have anything we can't do anything we can't do our research development We can't buy supplies.

4:05We can't even buy ourselves. So true, nothing happens in a business until something is sold, but nothing is sold until a lead is generated. So lead gen is at the pointiest of the pointy end of any business. If you are not generating leads and if you don't have predictive control over the generation of not only the quantity but the quality of those leads, then your future is precarious to say the least. So let's make that distinction between marketing and selling. I mean, you just went ahead and kind of defined the two and what the differences are. But what exactly do you want to make sure Fire Nation gets when it comes to their marketing and then when it comes to their selling?

4:46Like, what's that process look like? So what I want people to get is that essentially what Peter Drucker said, the great management guru, he said, you know, the goal of marketing is to make selling redundant. The way I say it is that selling is what you have to do when your marketing sucks. And I cut my teeth selling life insurance. As a 21-year-old over 40 years ago, I was selling life insurance. I would wake up every Monday morning and call people who didn't want to hear from me. I had to be incredibly good at selling because my marketing absolutely sucked. so all the people going to the sales conversion courses and the sales training courses and the whatever type of latest and greatest you know arm-twisting ways to close the sale today they all become redundant and irrelevant if you get really really good your marketing because marketing is going to set it up so that effective marketing will set it up so that people want to actually work with you before you've actually spoken with them one-on-one at all and that that's the big distinction is uh first of all unless you've got lead gen under control selling is completely pointless because you've got no one to convert, right?

5:46You've got no leads coming, you've got no prospects. And secondly, when you get really good at your marketing, you don't need to do any selling anyhow. If I've done the marketing right, people aren't going to say to me, well, I need to think about it. If I've done my marketing right, people won't say, well, I can't really afford it. If I've done my marketing right, people are going to be motivated and want it to go. So the consults I have with clients is not about convincing because convincing is selling. it's about confirming because I've done, hopefully I've done the marketing right in the first place.

6:14Yeah. It's basically, where do I sign on the dotted line? I mean, that's when you'd know you've done your marketing correct, Fire Nation. And Tom, your last book, you really focus on inbound marketing. So let's kind of break down the difference between inbound and outbound, like we did for marketing and selling. Okay. Well, let's, first of all, let's clear up a bit of a misconception. A lot of people think that if you're doing outbound marketing, that must be like direct mail because you're reaching out to people and so on with an offer, whereas inbound must be like you're setting up pay-per-click or whatever.

6:45The reality is that the medium has absolutely nothing to do whether a type of marketing is inbound or whether it's outbound. It's all about the sequence. So let's look at that. So outbound marketing invites someone, you know, maybe you're a consultant, maybe you're not selling things online, or maybe you are, It doesn't really matter. But outbound marketing invites someone to make an inquiry or to buy something before that prospect has indicated any interest in your type of service. For example, you're advertising golf clubs. It's half price. Come into the store. Get them, folks. That's outbound marketing.

7:18We don't know if the readers of that newspaper or the listeners of that radio show or TV show or whatever, we don't know if they have any interest in golf clubs. That's outbound marketing. Here's the offer. Come get it. Act on it now. Now, inbound marketing, by contrast, invites someone to make an inquiry after you know that they have an interest in your type of service. For example, this interview would be a classic example of inbound marketing. People listening to this interview are interested in growing their business. The most important way to grow your business is to get effective inbound marketing systems in place.

7:52So I know that there is a much higher probability that listeners to this podcast will be interested in inbound marketing and therefore will likely respond and make an inquiry when I give them a call to action at the end of the interview than if I was to send, say, a million direct mail pieces out. Fire Nation, inbound marketing, outbound marketing. This is what Tom's breaking down for us right now because guess what? This is the decisions that you're going to have to make on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-over-month basis on, hey, how do I want my business to be run? What kind of people do I want to be interacting?

8:24Where do I want to be spending my time, my advertising dollars, my paid marketing funnel, where I want that directed? And as Tom said, he's decided that, you know, he wants to focus at least his time today with us here on Entrepreneurs on Fire because of this very fact that he was just breaking down over the last little part. Now, one thing that I'm pretty fascinated by personally, Tom, is your three-part marketing model. And I really wanted to bring you on here today so you could break that model down for Fire Nation. So take it away. So whether it's outbound marketing or inbound marketing, and we'll need to definitely talk about which style of marketing, outbound or inbound, is best for different folk.

9:05But regardless of which one you're choosing, each marketing campaign has three elements to it. One is an audience. You've got to have listeners, viewers. You've got to have people to get your offer to, to get your message about your magic out to. So you've got a new audience. The second one is the asset. You've got to have a means through which to get the asset out, a medium if you like, whether it's a podcast, a blog, a TV show, radio show, a billboard, radio ad. there's multitudinous different ways you can find audiences there's multitudinous different assets you can use i've mentioned a few of them books conferences workshops webinars and so on and finally in addition to the audience and the asset you've got to have a call to action so the other three a's of every single marketing campaign got to have audiences got to have an asset and you've got to have a call to action strategically that's what all marketing consists of those three things Before we move on to the next parts, let's just kind of focus on these three things.

10:04And I know we're going to kind of break them down a little bit here, but what exactly do you think people need to focus on within this three-part marketing model when it comes to audience, when it comes to asset, when it comes to call to action? Give us one quick takeaway for each, and then we'll kind of move into a more in-depth when each of the three. Depends if you're going to do inbound or outbound. And if you're marketing physical products, then you can do outbound marketing. So therefore, your audience could be newspaper readers or radio listeners. It's an advertisement, and there's the product.

10:35Come get it. If you're doing inbound, then you need a completely different type of medium. You need something with physical products. You can get away with what's called broadcasting. With services or ideas that are costing on average thousands of dollars or more, you need narrow casting. So those mediums, those audiences, the radio listeners, TV listeners, fine for outbound, not so good for inbound. So that's the first sort of step to break down the audiences. In terms of assets, if we look at an advertisement in a radio paper, sorry, in a radio or newspaper or TV or whatever, that's fine for outbound for the physical commodity style products.

11:16But again, not much good for inbound because it's not focused enough. but we can talk about more detail what would be best of course for inbound people and the call to action call to action can be anything from go buy this product to reach out and book a conversation with me so fire nation as promised we are going to be delving deeper into each one of these three parts of this marketing model but first we're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors we all want the same things for our business more leads faster sales and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level.

11:52One thing we all don't want to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize. Sounds too good to be true, right? But this CRM exists and it's called HubSpot. What sets HubSpot apart is it's easy to use and integrate instead of wasting days or even months trying to figure everything out. HubSpot gives you tools like their AI content assistant, which helps you save time on tedious manual tasks right away. Looking to step up your game with email broadcasts and landing pages. HubSpot's drag and drop builder makes it easy to create attention grabbing emails and pages in minutes.

12:24And that's only the beginning. HubSpot has 1300 plus integrations that you can add for customization like you've never seen before. HubSpot CRM's powerful tools will help marketers wow prospects. Sales teams lock in deals and service teams improve response times and overall service. Get started for free at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. Did you know that most leaders waste up to 70 % of their time on tasks they shouldn't be doing in the first place? You know, like managing routine details, scheduling meetings, replying to emails, and processing reports. If this sounds familiar, then I have the solution for you.

13:02It's time to delegate those routine tasks to a Belay VA. It's time to take back your time and spend your days casting vision, growing revenue, and scaling your business instead. Belay has been helping entrepreneurs scale and succeed for over a decade through fractional, highly vetted US-based virtual assistants, bookkeepers, and social media managers. It's time to give away the administrative tasks so you can start accomplishing more and juggling less with Belay. And to help you get started, Belay is offering Fire Nation, their resource, your personal guide to a productive work week for free. Learn how to make the most of your time and maximize your results today.

13:38Just text FIRE. That's F-I-R-E-2-5-5-1-2-3 to download your free guide to a productive work week. So Tom, we're back and we've gone through your three-part marketing model. You've given us a nice little taste of audience, of assets, of call to action. But now let's go deeper. Let's really dive into this because as Fire Nation knows, as you know, we need an audience, which is also known as a pool of prospects. so where can we find a source of prospects that's both high quality and low cost yeah great question high quality low cost why wouldn't you want that so let me let me just put this in the context of inbound marketing so these are because i have to do that to be more to be more specific to be more helpful so inbound marketing people that are selling ideas services perhaps software as a service but the business coaches their consultants are training the sass developers financial planners people marketing programs courses etc when you look at your audience options there's you can buy a list not a great idea for inbound fine for outbound you can use social media but social media the problem with that is it's terrific for keeping the brand of the brain until people are in Dubai but it's not so good for that call to action which is come book time to have a chat with me you could put up a billboard and the radio you know people people driving on the freeboard were looking at the billboard, that there's an audience there.

15:10But the very best audience, and there's two of them, by the way, that are almost neck and neck, but the very best audience is what I call OPN, other people's networks. And if you want to drill this down, there are, particularly in North America, there are probably tens of thousands, certainly thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who have email lists, tribes, if you like, networks or followers who listen to the owner of that email list. And that is a completely free source of higher quality prospects that's completely inexhaustible. If you put those three things together for an audience characteristics, completely free, high quality, rinse and repeatable and exhaustible, there isn't a better source of prospects than anything that ticks those three boxes.

15:53So the best audience is OPN, other people's networks. You have to figure out, of course, how to establish such a high-level rapport and respect with the owner of those emailers that they would want to promote your asset. But that is the ultimate source of prospects. So now that we've gotten a good handle of where these high-quality but at the same time low-cost prospects are, we've got this pool of prospects, and we feel good about them. What do you think the best way to get our message out to this audience is? Great question again. So the best asset, and again, we've got lots of options here.

16:27I mean, you could write a book. I've got five books sitting in Amazon, and I get leads from that. But that's a lot of work, and it's a little bit of money involved as well. You can do the radio ads, et cetera, but they just flat out won't work for inbound marketing. Let's cut to the chase for the sake of time. The very best asset is having a group of people that you present to. Now, you can do that offline, a bit difficult right now with COVID-19. but the very best thought regardless of whether there's COVID-19 around or not is actually the webinar the online meeting because you can you can run them almost for completely free virtually you can reach to people out to people who are in the building next door on the other side of the world it's incredibly efficient I mean my commute to an online meeting is from my special machine down the hallway you know to my computer and you can have literally thousands of people on a webinar, although with people targeting execs, we train them how to do smaller Zoom-style meetings, what we call boardroom briefings.

17:29So there's so many boxes that the online meeting ticks, as I said, particularly with COVID-19. There's so many boxes that it ticks that it is insanely by far the best combination of efficiency and effectively in terms of getting a message out. Now, it's not like, say, a training webinar or something. The way we position ours is demonstration. because we're all sick of the free training webinar that turns out to be a half-hour sales pitch. So we don't want to do that to people. We want to have your audiences impressed with your brand that you gave some value, that you educated them. And the right ones, sure, were motivated to reach out and book a night to have a chat with you.

18:07So it's a demonstration of how you work with your clients because when you think about that, first of all, you set yourself apart from all the shysters and the hype people out there saying, hey, come along to a free training, blah, blah, blah, and it's just a sales pitch. No, this is a demonstration of how you work with your clients, and it's got to be done smart. There's eight objectives we want to achieve, including education, qualification, inspiration, and so on. So it's got to be done well, but let's just assume you've got a fantastic PowerPoint, people love your presentation, and you've got hundreds of people registered for your event.

18:42Then you can do all your marketing for the whole month in one hour. with that presentation. I love how you've shifted that to a demonstration or, you know, a shorthand version of a demo. I mean, to me, Fire Nation is just like, hey, come see how we use things. Come see how we work. Come see what's working for us. And let me just walk you through that process. And again, then it doesn't turn into this, you know, quote unquote, come check out this webinar that turns out to like, oh, here's two quick little strategies. And then here's 45 minutes of, you know, by the next step, which is going to get you all of the things.

19:17Go ahead, Tom. Yeah, it's just stupid. I mean, okay, the North America is a massive market, so you can literally do a whole lifetime and not run into the same person twice almost by doing that. But if you're a believer in, even if you're a believer in reaping what you sow or come or anything, do unto others, et cetera. If your audience's very first exposure to, let's say, They're not your audiences, but an audience's very first exposure to a brand is deceit, is what a marketing could potentially call bait and switch. I told you it was going to be a training webinar. I guess what? Surprise, it's actually a sales pitch.

19:50If that's the very first exposure to a brand, it's not going to get any better after that person buys from their brand owner, right? So by positioning it as a demonstration, it's a very clear, honest and transparent value proposition. And everyone feels comfortable with that. Everyone, you know, my financial planning clients, for example, are very conservative people. They're just not going to feel comfortable about anything else other than that's honest, direct, open and transparent. Second point is, in addition to establishing your brand as being different and reputable and reliable, you're actually getting the people there that are interested in how you work with your clients.

20:26That's really important. So maybe you have, you know, maybe you have three or four hundred revenue registrants instead of a thousand you could have got if you tried to BS everyone. But the ones that are there are the ones that are genuine. You want to know how you work with your clients. And Fire Nation, people buy and invest with others that they know, like, and trust. And so you want to start off that relationship with the know, like, and trust and see it all the way through. And Tom, I would love for you to take a step back now and share what you consider the biggest obstacle of that final buying decision.

20:59and then break down how the heck can we mitigate or even eliminate that obstacle? The biggest fear that almost everyone has, the biggest obstacle, is that you are going to be like the others. And what I mean by that is that our bits of dollars to donuts, that your audiences have had past experiences of people that are offering something similar to what you're offering, and that experience has resulted in disappointment because they've handed money over, and two months later, all they've got to show for it is an empty bank account balance. And, my God, if it's true anywhere, it's true with marketers.

21:33That's for sure. And I'm a marketer. You know, Seth Godin wrote that book, All Marketers Are Liars. Thanks, Seth. Not helping my brand. But it's true. You know, people have, and I'll just focus on me for a moment, but people can make the leap to your own, whether you're a coach or a financial planner. People hire coaches, got no result. People hire financials, got poor result, lost money, whatever. So people have in their unconscious mind this fear of losing, this risk. So what we have to do at some point in that presentation, we have to take that obstacle away. So in my case, what are most people used to?

22:08They're used to people saying, trust me, marketers, online courses, whatever. Trust me. Give me your money, and I'll show you how to get new clients on board. And I've handed money over for a course or a program or coaching or whatever. and as I said, two months later, that will have had to show, for example, your bank account balance. So what you need to do is you need to remove the obstacle. The way we do that is we say, look, don't trust me. And that gets a reaction, right? They go, huh? What do you mean if we're going to work together? Don't have to trust you. I say, well, let me ask you a question.

22:34Have you trusted people before giving your money who said, give me your money and I'll show you how it all works? Yeah, I have. And well, what happened? He said, well, I lost my money. Okay, how many times did you do that? And they often go five, six, seven times. So I've got audiences members who have literally paid to other marketers like more than six figures. And if I'm just another guy in a long queue of guys that are saying, trust me, give me your money, I'll show you. Guess what? They're going to, their unconscious is going to go, I don't think I want to do this. And even if they don't rationally know why they don't trust me, it's, they're not going to move forward because they're paralyzed with the threat of risk of losing their money.

23:06So when I say, don't trust me, don't give me your money. They say, huh? What do you mean? I say, well, look, here's what we'll do. We'll work together for 30 days. I'll meet with you every single week personally in small, Zoom groups. I'll give you full access to all of our intellectual property, all of our modules, all of our methodology. I will hold nothing back, but don't pay me any money because I don't want you to have to trust me. And if at the end of 30 days, you think I'm the real deal and that this is going to be terrific for your business and your service and your prospects, then yes, I'd like to start paying me, please.

23:36But right now, I don't want you to have to trust me. So in other words, you've got to remove the obstacles. So what are the obstacles in the minds of your audiences? is it paying money up front? We'll eliminate it. And people say to me, Tom, aren't you going to get ripped off? And I say, well, look, if I was doing another sort of marketing medium, if I was just doing maybe Facebook ads, say, hey, dive into my methodology for 30 days, completely free, then yeah, I'd get ripped off. But my people, my prospects, think about this. If you're marketing through my system, you're marketing through other people's email list, and you're running online meetings, then you have a call to action where people say, you know, okay, reach out and have a book consult with me.

24:15Your prospects have been on someone else's email list, having registered, registering an interest in a similar subject. They've registered for your online meeting. They've turned up to your online meeting, which are two different things. They've stayed to the end. Most people will, if you've got a great presentation, but not everyone. They've reached out and booked a consult. They've turned up to the consult. We're talking about people who want this to work. Now, whether you're a financial planner or a consultant, if your prospect goes through exactly the same series of filters, then you're only going to be talking to people who, A, want you to confirm that moving ahead is the right thing, and B, want to actually implement everything you've got, not just download it and rip you off.

24:56Fire Nation, you have just received a demonstration of what works. And again, it goes to the core. It really cuts at the wick of what is your biggest pain point, your biggest obstacle, your biggest challenge that your ideal customer or client faces? And how can you remove that? How can you take that away so that they can move forward with you? And then you can prove yourself that you've earned and you deserve that know, like, and trust. And Tom, you've dropped so many value bombs throughout this episode. So let's do this. Give us what you consider the key takeaway that you want to make sure that Fire Nation really gets from everything that we talked about today.

25:38Then take a second, tell us more about you, what you have going on, how we can connect with your content and anything that you have for us here today. And then we'll say goodbye. What great marketing does is it puts an offer in front of someone who's already looking for that offer. And what selling does is it try to convince everyone that that offer is a really good idea. And so let me give you a little metaphor to illustrate this. You imagine a forest and there's a hundred sleeping bears in the forest. They're grizzly bears so that they can be mean buggers. And we magically know somehow three of them are hungry for honey.