Summary: Over the course of our recent podcast series, we've been discussing pandemic and post pandemic selling skills. We've discussed things like Facebook, social media, LinkedIn, YouTube, video, teleconferencing, and today we're going to be discussing generating leads online. Are you doing it? Do you know how to do it? Do you have the tools you need to do it? We'll hit all of that in today's podcast.<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today, cohost Chris Templeton and I are back, and we're going to be talking about generating leads online. Welcome back, Chris.<br> <br> Chris: Thank you David. Nice to be here. You know, when we talk about generating leads online, that can mean a whole lot of things to a whole lot of different people. Talk about what your definition is of that process.<br> <br> David: Okay. Well, as you indicated, it can happen a lot of different ways. You could post something on Facebook that someone sees and they reply to it and they say, "Ooh, that sounds great. I'd like to be a customer!" Of course that never happens.<br> <br> Chris: But they may say, "ah, you know, I'm willing to take a look."<br> <br> David: Exactly. So it could be that, but I'd like to get a little more specific on this, because as we move to these different methods of interacting with people and communicating with people, I think it's important to understand that online lead generation can mean more than just somebody finds you online and then you connect offline and you end up establishing a relationship. Online lead generation can actually be a situation where you put something out to the marketplace. It could be some sort of lure, some sort of lead magnet, that is designed to get their attention and to sort of pull them into your orbit. You then would need to have the technology in place to be able to capture that lead. In many cases that would be through some sort of opt-in form, and then you want to be able to nurture that communication, which often involves autoresponders or ongoing communication. And so this starts to sound very technical (and obviously we're not going to get into all the details in a podcast.) But this is exactly the type of stuff that we work with our existing clients on to help them to be able to increase their online presence, actually be able to generate leads online and to be able to replicate themselves -- to be able to automate some of the process -- so they don't have to physically be doing all of the work themselves. And I think as we look at the whole topic of this conversation -- sort of doing things in a post pandemic world -- we want to look at how we can better leverage ourselves, how we can better utilize technology to sort of clone ourselves so that we don't have to be all places at all times. We can actually utilize the technology to create an environment in which it appears that that's the case, where we can be hyper-responsive without actually having to do all the work ourselves.<br> <br> Chris: And you know, one of the things that I think a lot of people kind of default to when they think about this is, "Oh, it's going to be sales thing after another," this automated followup type of thing, and that simply, from my perspective, and I think yours, should not be the case, should it David? These autoresponders should be something that are of value, that show who I am, help to figure out fit, that sort of thing.<br> <br> David: Yes. Just as in every business communication that we ever have.<br> <br> Chris: What?<br> <br> David: It should all be geared like that. We had talked in a previous podcast about sort of the 80/20 aspect of that, making sure that roughly 80% of what you're saying to a client is just solid value and perhaps using the other 20% or so to sell. Maybe it's even 85/15 or 90/10. But it's about establishing those relationships. It's about nurturing those relationships and helping our clients to get the r...
