Lead Acquisition: Transforming Strangers into High-Value Clients

The key to maintaining your business, your sanity and a sense of command at the helm is having a continuous flow of high-quality clients you enjoy.

Most business wisdom refers to this as a pipeline, painting a picture that developing a client stream should be as simple as turning on the faucet and letting infrastructure bring new prospects into your system.

Easier said than done.

In reality, getting enough interaction with leads who are completely new to you is more like an incremental game of darts. The more clients who end up in the bullseye, the more you win.

And the biggest win is that while strategic lead nurture is not an effortless marketing plan, it still saves you from the feast-or-famine cycle that often plagues solo consultants or small consultancies.

In other words, if you can master the lead acquisition game, your days of trying to see-saw between doing your best work and aggressively drumming up ideal clients is over.

Hitting the Bullseye

Cultivating new clients is a process that draws people close to your business. As they have more interaction with you, ask for more of your expertise, and finally pay for your services, they move from the outside of the dartboard closer to the bullseye in the center.

The Bullseye Model

In the outer rings are people who have never heard of you or your business but might benefit from your services.

When you have some level of contact from these people, they become leads. This can happen when they offer you contact information, like an email address to receive your newsletter, or they receive some expert content from you, like an e-book or drip email campaign.

After multiple contacts, this person becomes a prospect, and they move closer to the inner circle. Since they continue to interact and express respect for the knowledge and mastery you possess, they’re most likely to pay money for access to you, either very soon or later down the road. Clients are people who are paying for special access to your support, knowledge base, and mad skills. You invest personal time with them for a consulting fee.

Design your business’ services with varying levels of commitment and value. If your only rings are “unknown prospect” and “5-figure-plus paying client”, you’re in trouble. You want clients to feel comfortable easing into interactions with you, and the best way to do that is to offer more value as prospects gradually move toward the bullseye.

Guide Clients to the Bullseye–Gently

Remember that this is a gradual process. While we’d all love to meet new contacts who immediately sign up for our top consulting packages, that’s just not the way business (usually) works.

It requires some patience and a cool hand, but whatever you do, do not try to chase clients to the bullseye. Hounding new clients with used car salesman tactics will lower their perception of your value immediately and drastically. Even worse, you won’t be attracting the high-value clients that make business enjoyable and profitable.

Instead, your marketing content and prospect interaction has to convey the idea that you’re a highly valued expert and they would be lucky to have a slot in the schedule for them.

Think of it this way: A renowned medical specialist has a waiting list. When he has a cancellation, people are thrilled to flip their schedules around to make that appointment just so they get a slice of his time.

Does this doctor cold call potential clients? No.

Does she buy customer lists and blast them with ads? Hell, no.

Will you find coupons for her practice on your windshield after you’ve picked up groceries? Unthinkable.

Protect your reputation with the same care so your perceived value is sterling. Here’s how to make that happen.

Creating Attraction Toward the Bullseye

Shouting louder or rushing to meet potential clients doesn’t work for businesses that charge premium rates, but there are many marketing approaches that do.

Create opportunities for prospects to come directly to you. This is your high-value marketing plan, which includes expert appearances like a panelist at a conference or podcast. When you deliver in-depth information instead of superficial advertisements, you gain respect.

Finish presentations with a strong call to action (CTA). This isn’t a high-pressure, hard-sell pitch, but a compelling and helpful link to the next step clients can take to acquire your solution.

Do not underestimate a good call to action. If you deliver content that really solves an expensive problem for a lead, don’t walk away from the interaction with a wave and a smile.

Offer potential clients a quick and simple way to move closer to the “bullseye” in your business.

Here are some ways to construct successful CTAs:

In writing (guest blog posts, your own web page, monthly columns, editorials, articles)

• For your own website, you have free reign to write whatever you like at the end of blog articles and link to landing pages where you invite prospects to become leads and then take an action that moves them closer to the bullseye. Do it.
• For articles where strong CTAs aren’t allowed (like guest posts or quotes in mainstream news), find a way to increase readers’ curiosity or position yourself as an expert with your job title or author bio information.

Speaking opportunities (podcasts, panel discussions)

• When you can’t hand prospects a card or a link to your website, use a custom bitly link that brings them to a special web page you’ve prepared for the event attendees. Include a special offer (like a report or other relevant giveaway) to entice them to visit your site.
• Use smartphones to your advantage and give an SMS opt-in code to a page on your website that consistently has a great conversion rate. Call Loop and an upcoming feature in LeadPages makes this a snap while you look like a techno superstar.

Drawing clients into the center of your business is a steady, ongoing process, without a doubt. But using high-value content lead acquisition gives you a break from the pressure of making a big sales pitch while keeping you in front of ideal clients all the time.