STEP 1 - Assess Your Lead Generation

When did you last take an strategic view of your lead generation. STEP ONE of my ANCHOR90 system which gives 6-steps to marketing success is assessing and taking stock of where you are right now. Here is a DIY guide to take you through the first step process. To summarise it covers looking at your current goals, numbers, your world and your resources. Let me know how you get on!

WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

Where is your business marketing and lead generation at right now? Right where you are is the only place to start. Don’t wish yourself in another place this is the time to be honest, real, direct and get really clear on how things are for you and your business.   Is there a familiar cycle to how your business runs, regular peaks and troughs, a rut that you are in, what has worked and what has flopped?  

If it feels too personal as your business is your baby that is fine, you have 5 minutes to blame everything you want to blame for why you are consistently generating quality leadsbut that’s it five minutes. Get over yourself, grab a cuppa, trust in the process and lets do the work that is going to see you generate leads and create strategies to convert leads to sales.  

What you will come to realise when working with the ANCHOR90 process is that your business is actually not about you at all.

 Where are you at with your Current Goals/KPIs

Lets assess your forecasted lead generation goals and what is the actual reality. It is good to create a 3 column table with the following headings

1. Forecast/Goal
2. Reality
3. Excuses v Reasons

Take a look at the wins and losses:

• Where are you strong - Where are you weak?
• What do you need to keep doing - What do you need to stop doing?

Now lets take a look at the third and my favourite column, Excuses v Reasons.  Have an open and honest discussion even just with yourself about why things went well, and more important what has not gone so well. Were you lacking resources (money, time, team, skills and knowledge). Be as frank and open as possible.   It is a common problem that companies set out to be really committed to their marketing and lead generation but it is the one thing that falls by the wayside when you are busy in the everydayness and then hey-ho you hit quiet times and the rollercoaster starts again.

Go to the uncomfortable places as that is where the gold is.  Growth and success and realising your potential comes from getting out of your comfort zone and being really honest with the work that needs doing consistently and competently to get you to where you want to go.

Where are you too comfortable and the next question on from this is where are you too comfortable with the discomfort and the excuses for that; to clarify, where are you accepting that you are not good in an area (and happy with all the excuses you trot out). Is there an opportunity you are missing to flip this around. for example, is conversion of leads low, what is the current journey from leads to sales?   Take the time now to ask the question, what would be the ideal approach to converting lead? Are you skipping an all important step in the sales journey that answering this question will uncover..

It is worth noting if you tend to accept the excuses rather than look for the wins and growth instead. Instead of accepting things, get curious, your next level of growth could just be a couple of questions away.

If you feel you are stuck operating in mediocrity when you know you can stand for so much more where is the lightbulb to find your superpower! Is it in your vision, your current skillsets or are you just trying to be everything to everyone.  

Getting known for something is really powerful and can create great ripples throughout your business. To get to that superpower you first have to stand for something, getting known for being an expert in one niche can raise your profile roof, which is surely far more exciting, interesting and stimularing than being generally good at lots of things. 

It is impossible to ignore, standing for something makes you memorable and people seek you out.  So what is your superpower? Get digging for your gold – you and your loved ones will thank you for it.

What is the world you operate in?

Do you have a clear identity of who your ideal core client is, when did you last have a good look at actually who is buying from you - are they the market you want or do you need to spread your net and think if there is maybe a better market out there. 

Where do your current core clients come from, can you pinpoint a sector, size or business type, how they found you, what they were looking for. 

Still struggling to get your thoughts going? Write down the 3 biggest strengths of your product/service and now decide on the prime, biggest problem or pain that your work solves. Now do some reverse engineering and research and identify all the people who have that problem (as a significant problem).

And another important assessment to get clarity on is what does your world look like in 5 years time and what skills will you need to compete.

The 5 Numbers of Lead Generation

You may well have seen these numbers before, I certainly did not invent them but they work really well for looking at marketing and lead generation, we can borrow them for our work here too as they really give you clarity:

The formula is:

Leads x Converstion(%) = Customers

Customers x Average value of sale x number of taansactions per customer = Revenue

Revenue x profit margin(%) = Profit

You can create a 4 column table with the following headings:

Current numbers

Areas of Possibility/Work

Increase in numbers

New Reality

You can only change the 3 numbers in italics by working on the black numbers (leads, conversion %, number of sales, average value of a sale, profit margins) . 

Put the current set of numbers down the column on the left and work out the formula

The middle column (areas of possible work) is for brainstorming ideas on how we can improve the each of the 5 numbers. Questions you might address are Where can we generate leads? How can we increase conversion Rates? How can we increase the number of sales to our current clients? How can we increase the average value of a sale? What is our profit margin and how does increasing it affect the numbers?

You don’t have to work on all 5 areas at once but this formula shows how you can look at each of the areas that we can work on to grow the business profitably. Go on play with some numbers (using the third column - increase in numbers) to see how the 4th column (new reality) will look For example, raise conversions by 10% and see what a different it makes to your bottom line – it is a great way to see how quickly you can move your numbers when you focus on even just one of the 5 Numbers of Lead Generation.

On-line Assets – website/social media profiles

Depending on how upto date your current web and social media platforms are will obviously dictate how much information you can get from these 2 areas. But analysis of this data will give you insight into how visitors interact with your sites: The most popular topics, where they have come from, search terms, where they drop off and their general behaviour towards your online content. 

Is there a particular behaviour you can map that leads exhibit when they convert to sales? Do they initiate a quote, view certain pages, interact with certain content, have indepth sales talks, take up introductory offers? 

Social media will also give you information on what is being discussed in your industry, what is hot and what is not, the problems your ideal core client are talking about etc. And crucial to creating great content that connects is that it will also give you insight into the language used, what the most popular platforms are and how they use them and where they hang out.

Oh and don’t forget if you still feel in the dark you can go and have a quick spy on your competitors (yes you need to know who they are too) and see what they are doing, do they have a particular free lead magnet aimed at a certain target market or can you ascertain who are they writing to with their content. 

How do you show up in the world to your market, are you visible and can they find you? How do your ideal core clients or your current clients perceive you? What has worked and what has flopped before?

What Resources have you got to invest ?

There is no point building a top drawer plan but never have the resource to implement it so it is important to look at where you at with your team, time and money now and what could be immediately made available.

Questions you might ask:

• Do you feel like the business is running you and there isn’t the time?
• How many hours are dedicated to lead generation at the moment?
• Is there time (including yours) to invest in the project for it to actually come alive?
• How big is the team?
• Will any of the team be involved in working on the project or are you looking for a “Done For You” campaign?
• What money have you to invest in the marketing project?
• What way of implementation would get you the quickest return?
• How is your culture – how do you do things around here? Will the new plans be a shock? Do you need to do some preliminary work with the team too to get buy in and full value from this work.
• How doable and implementable is extra growth work in your current set up? 
• Would the work be better outsourced so it does not affeect current operations and a done system then implemented.
• If you could get up and running asap what is the reward to your business – why are you waiting?
• Are you limited by your inhouse skills?
• Is there a reason you have not done this work before?`

So that is where you are at! You have looked at your world, your resources and your numbers.  Now where is it that you are trying to get to?  Step 2 and beyond of my ANCHOR90 6-step system to marketing success is the guide to get you there.

Anchor90 is a system for business owners to bring marketing into their business at a level and speed suitable to their needs.  The speed, movement, degree of depth and intensity is entirely in your control.  How quick do you want results? What human resources and skills are available to get your plans into action? What resources in time and money do you have to invest to get you the results you want?

ANCHOR90 is a practical process to get focus on who you are and what you stand for. Benefit from being clear on your ideal core clients and create the magic of building the know like and trust so they turn to you when they are looking for what you offer. The result for your business is that you start generating warm leads to convert to sales and when this is consistently and competently done you finally build a business that serves you, giving you the life you dreamt of.

Is this the time to add an extra cog and bring in some marketing effort to get to that next million? I am Laura Greenwood and I have created my company Your Lead Generation so I can be the plug in marketing person I wanted to find for the 20 years I ran our family business! I am here to support you with my years of marketing experience & building and running our family business, Whether you choose a “done with you” or “done for you” contract my enthusiasm, immense energy, discipline & determination are all yours.

Message me here on LinkedIn, call 07703 520490 or email

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