170. How do you generate organic leads? (f. Yann Ilunga)
Tired of leaning on referrals for new business? 😵 Today's episode will give you new ideas! Hosts Phil and Lauren reconvene with long-time friend and lead generation consultant Yann Ilunga for his take on generating business contacts. With an emphasis on LinkedIn, Yann breaks down his process and tools for meaningfully connecting with potential clients and customers. For a dose of pure invigoration, check out this episode!
Episode transcription
Before we dive right into this episode listener, you picked a great episode to tune into today, you're gonna learn so much from Yan illunga, one of my greatest friends, and you'll well you'll hear our story in a second. He has so many great freebies on his website, you have to go check them out, young illunga.com/leads That yawn illunga.com/leads to get some of the juicy, helpful little tools that are going to totally help you generate leads, go check them out, and now dive into this episode. I know you're gonna love it
Well, hello there. Welcome to brand therapy. I'm Phil. And I'm Lauren. And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. I'm so glad you're here. You're going to be so happy you decided to pick this episode to listen to. We're talking about a topic that I wanted to tackle a long time. It's one that Lauren and I talk about a lot this concept of lead generation and it's not unique to any particular business or industry. This is something absolutely everyone needs. So not only is it a topic that I get excited about Lauren, you also get excited about this topic, correct.
Of course, anything related to the sales pipeline, I am in,
you're in you're a fan. Now not only is it a topic I love but it's a person that I love. You know, sometimes we have someone on the podcast that you've met in real life, or that I've met in real life. This is a person We both met in real life, not even in America. We happen to be in Finland when we met this guy who was on the call and I can't think of anyone better to have on brand therapy to talk about lead generation than Jani Lugo. Welcome brand therapy. Jana, I'm so happy to have you here.
Hi, feel Hi, Lauren, I have to make a clarification. I don't think the audience are going to be the happiest person here. I'm the happiest person. I'm so excited to be here, guys.
Okay, before we talk about the topic, I need to tell a short story that I don't even know if you've heard me tell this story. But I tell this story. When people asked me specifically about travel or the international element to my brand. People's How did this even begin? How did you begin speaking at conferences internationally? And guess what? I love to take credit for things but you get to take the credit for this. I was on your podcast in I think it was 2014. Because that was the year I started to travel more. At the end of the conversation, the podcast, you had found me online, we didn't know each other. The end of the podcast episode, you had said to me, Phil, why haven't you applied to conferences to speak in Finland? in Helsinki, I was like Finland, I don't even know where that is. And you said here are three conferences that are happening in the city, it'd be great if you could speak at one of them. I never thought about that. Like I never that it never occurred to me that I could reach out to these conferences and say, Hey, I'd love to speak. And so I reached out to all three of them. I didn't hear from two of them. But I did hear from one of them. And that became the first international speaking engagement that I did Arctic 15. And then you and I met and realize that year I spoke in England, I spoke in Japan twice. You planted the seed by the way, you planted the seed that I should be speaking at conferences internationally that year, I did a whole bunch all over the world, and then continued continue to continue. And I've been doing it ever since. How cool is that? How cool is that?
Well, I have to say, You're the cool guy here. And you know, I just shared two cents with you. And I have to like full disclosure, I'm a huge fan of yours feel. I actually here on my bookshelf, I should have brought it here. I still have my copy of Shut up in tweet from when we met. And you have been such an inspiration for me. And as you said, we've known each other for a few years now. And it's been just great for me to keep following you from afar and see your evolution. Now you're a Hall of Famer, congratulations about that. And yeah, I have to say that I have also some things I learned from you that I share really, really really often. For example, when it comes to branding, when it comes to Hey, before you go to a photoshoot just have a few photos of concepts you like and share them with the photographer ahead of time. If you need to get some photos done headshots, try to get them landscape mode and not portrait mode so that you can use them for banners or headers. And so yeah, so those are a couple of the things I learned from you and yeah, it has been so much fun I still remember like meeting you and your momager and then you and Lauren and going to eat some good food and yeah, I'm excited to be here also, your podcast. I've been following it every now and then since the start and it's great that you guys are here and that I'm here I'm really excited and lead generation Oh man.
Topic.
Let's just dive into it. So, Yan, just for our listeners, I would love for you to start off by explaining what lead generation is and why it's important.
Yeah, for sure, try to change your mindset, try to focus on the value you provide. Every time I speak with somebody who says, I don't like to sell, I don't want to promote my content, I don't want to be pushy, I say, remember that what you're doing with that mindset is you're actually making a disservice to those who could benefit from whatever your course your book your consulting services would help them with. So by you're not sharing that with people around you, you're actually making them a disservice, as I said, so that's the first thing, I would say start to have a mindset shift from, like, I like sales to hey, I want to help people. So that's the first thing I'd say. Second thing, why lead generation? I think most people are like, I want clients. I think everybody does. But the reason why I focus on lead generation, instead of obsessing over clients is very deliberate, and is a bit of strategic thinking as well. And is the fact that when we obsess over getting clients, sometimes we develop tunnel vision, so then what may happen is, I'm having a call with the two of you. And in my head, I'm like, yeah, they're not a good fit client wise. So what happens is, I tune out, and I'm just thinking about the next target. So to say, Well, in reality, sure, you may not be good fit client wise, but you may have a community that is filled with my ideal clients. Or maybe you may be great sources of referrals, you may have a podcast that would enable me to be in front of an audience filled with my ideal customers. And that's why I always tried to teach the focus on lead generation versus saying, I want new clients. Because when you focus on lead generation, what happens is you create business opportunities, and sometimes you get clients directly, sometimes you get them through referrals from inbound or outbound lead generation. So in terms of the actual definition, to keep things simple, and there is a ton of definitions. But basically, lead generation is the process the action of collecting some information. And typically, for example, in my business, that's typically somebody's first and last name, and their email address. But in some other business cases, maybe the phone number, the physical address, and so forth.
Amazing. God, there's so much there. First of all, I love how your approach to sales and lead generation is actually quite positive. I like that you choose to see opportunities to help people instead of just Am I making this particular sale? Yes or no? Get out of the way. I'm going to the next person, I think that's awesome. I'm curious to know, where should someone begin? Like, let's say they know they've got names, they have email addresses, and then why do you need to figure out what you're selling? Before you even get that lead? What does Getting Started look like?
Yeah, that's a good question. So I would say this, if somebody's here with the three of us, and they already have a business that already selling something, I would look at whatever it is that you sell, and try to focus on one, especially if you have more than a single thing you sell, try to focus on either a product or service, that is the high ticket one. So the one that has the highest price tag, or look at the one that is the best seller, so the one that maybe isn't necessarily the most expensive, but is the one that sells the most quantity wise, then the next step after that is map out the journey. So before somebody makes a transaction, what does that step look like? So for example, in my business, of course, there are different strategies I use. But typically, when it comes to lead generation, the step that precedes somebody purchasing something I sell, is we are on a call, like on a zoom call. And basically what I do I reverse engineer the steps. So what happens before that, I invite them on the call, how do I invite them, I shared the link to my scheduling tool. So that's a resource that enables me to avoid going back and forth trying to find a date and time that works. Well for them. What do I do before that I actually engage them in conversation in the span of a few days or a couple of weeks? What happens before that I connect with them. So this is the approach I would have. If you already sell something, if you're maybe in the process of starting a business, or maybe you have pivot or you're entering a new space and you don't have product or service yet, then I would put having conversations as the main goal. So at the end, if in the first example I made the end was the sale in your case, I would make that the call you have with people and you can use that call as a market tool. So that you can learn more about your target market, you can find about the wordings they use when they address in refer to particular pain points. What is that pain point to start with and so forth. So then what I would do is I would do the same thing how would reverse engineer the steps. So what happens before you're on the call, you actually invite them on the call and book it, what happens before that, and so forth? So that's what I would start with whether you have a business and you're already selling something, or you're in the process of starting one.
What tools do you use to track? Your pipeline?
Thank you for the question. Tracking is key. I think there are different ways one can go about it. My recommendation would be to use a CRM tool, which stands for customer relationship management tool. And if I'm not mistaken, you guys use Pipedrive? Am I correct?
You are correct.
Good. Okay, ovation. Good. You're just impressing me in every way today on
a floss for this student yet again? Yes,
because I've been watching your video guys. So that's where I remember it from. So why using a CRM tool instead of something like a project management tool, or something like a Google spreadsheet, is because project management tools or Google Spreadsheet, they lack some features that may be helpful. So with a CRM tool, you can do a wide variety of things. My recommendation, if you're thinking about picking one, definitely go for Pipedrive. And I'm sure you'll feel have an affiliate link. So go for that, I think there is a free trial. So it's perfect, you can get started immediately without spending a penny. If you're considering a few options, the features I would recommend making sure your option has is one gives you the ability of building a database of contacts. So basically, you have a centralized place to store all the information because maybe you have conversations on LinkedIn, and then by email, and then on Facebook, and then on Instagram. So the CRM tool is the place that enables you to build your business address book. So to say, that's one. The second one is to have the pipeline, a visual pipeline, so that you can have a snapshot of what's happening in your business as far as lead generation and sales are concerned. And with that pipeline, you can see what steps need to be taken to have people go through the different stages of the funnel for the pipeline. And then after that integrations, I think often it's sort of plus but nowadays, I think it's a must to make sure the tool you pick has integrations. And then if possible, have a tool that has a mobile app so that you can work on the go. And last but not least two additional things. One is having the ability to create tasks and have notifications. So that technology removes the guesswork sends you reminders when you need to take those important steps. And then the answer to your question, Laura needs to make sure that the CRM tool has some kind of tracking analytics or reporting feature so that you can see, for example, how many calls have I had this month? And then you can see how many sales? Did those calls lead to? How many invitations? Did I send out? How many people or how many pieces of datasets did I add to my business address book?
Do you have a favorite metric? In the pipeline?
Yeah, I think for me, probably the most, when you're thinking about KPIs, I think the one that I consider probably the most important one for my business, and I dare to say for most businesses, would be the basically the appointment invite per appointment scheduled ratio, because for me, those conversations are very, very key. So oftentimes, conversations, as I was saying earlier, they may lead to like referrals to podcast guest interviews, to actually get in clients. So I personally think that having appointments is important. And actually I was talking with somebody about this. Some weeks ago, I was at an online networking event. And this person was saying, well, we don't need clients. We don't need lead generation because our business is doing well. And I said, You know what, actually what I do with my businesses, I look at the lessons other industries learn the hard way, think about the event industry, tourism industry, with the pandemic, because I organized the first edition of my virtual summit, I believe it was in 2016. And had I reached out to a music festival all the time and said, Hey, guys, have you ever thought of doing something online? They'll be like, are you nuts, and then with the pandemic, they were forced to do that. So I told this person, if I were you, my advice to you would be try to have some lead generation always on going in the background, have some conversations, you may not have as an aggressive so to say lead generation campaign as our businesses because you already have plenty of clients. But I will have it constantly in the background so that you have a safety net. And if one day you were to need it, it's already there versus trying to build it as you're falling down. So to say,
Yeah, you're so right.
We've talked about that. Yeah, it's almost like you should be doing late. What's the quote Lauren, but this idea that you should be doing lead generation at your busiest time. if ya don't wait until there is no business to try and find business, but keep it running in the background all the time to your point.
Yeah, I think it was something like you should be selling when you don't think you need sales. Yeah. But yeah, fascinating. Yeah, I need to figure out how to measure that metric. You mentioned Pipedrive is great for basics, but it's certainly no HubSpot, there are some reporting kinks that I would love to be addressed. And Phil can't even log in to his pipe drive, it's a whole thing. So I don't know if I would whole how
we use it. And Lauren finds a way to track and I love the numbers, I love the output of it. But I'm not good at this stuff. And I don't like it. I like you. But I don't like it. Even though I know it's absolutely essential for our business. But the little lesson here is that I don't love it, and therefore I delegate it. And so and Lauren does like it because it's a bit more numbers driven, it's a bit,
it's like solving a puzzle, it's like, what I love about tracking these things is that I've got a dashboard set up in Pipedrive. And while it doesn't get as granular as I would love, it does give me the information that's important. So I know between whatever time period, I want to just looking at the beginning of 2021 to today, for example, I know that the average deal for us to close takes about 17 days, I also know the average value of all those deals, I know that to get a brand audit, which is the first thing that we sell to clients, it takes 24 days on average. And that includes every random inquiry that we get online, by the way from people who will never never convert. I also know that our average brand audit conversion, including all the randos, online is 23%. And then I also know that after we have the brand audit, our win rate of more client work is 70%. So with those figures, I can look at our forecast for the month and see. Okay, so we're starting to see a dip a few months from now, I would love to fill the hole with this much money, the average value of our deals is this much. So working backwards, I need to get this many leads in. And then we have this many calls and convert this many audits to then make the sales. Now, of course, it's not as easy as snapping your fingers. But I find it's just nice, because you're not flying blind. And you feel like you have a little more of a say, in your bizdev, which is always kind of a gray area.
Man make one quick comment because what you just shared Lauren, that's the argument towards people who say, You shouldn't tap into organic, you should tap into paid for advertising, for example, Facebook ads, because with Facebook ads, you have predictability after a while you know that you put in one buck and you make 10 bucks. And you can't have that with organic but what you just shared is actually an argument for that point. Because once you have your data, your numbers, it's actually serves as a compass. So as you said, you look at, for example, what is the monetary goal that you want to hit this week, this month, this quarter? And then you look at the other number. So what is the average deal size? What are the conversion rates for closing those deals? What are the conversion rates, when it comes to appointments to closing, and then when it comes to appointment invites to actual appointments happening. So then you're going to have the numbers where you say, All right, we need to send X number of messages, emails, whatever, so that we can get this number of appointments, which based on our number we can estimate that will lead to this many close deals that will generate this much money. So it is possible to have some degree of predictability when it comes to data. Even if you tap into organic.
Yes, I find there's more predictability and organic personally, I don't know, we've explored Facebook ads and really dislike them. I feel like you have to spend so much money to get to that level of predictability. And there's so much out of your control. It's also a lot harder selling to a stranger. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. But we love organic.
Yeah, we've been able to build our business exclusively on organic and when we've tried to do cold stuff, it's just not under No, just I think also at a higher level of sales, I think. And when I say that, I mean like the type of client that we serve in the personal branding space is more on this, you know, established professional, a little more upscale, then other businesses that might do what we do. And in that when you're looking at that kind of luxury experience, I think so much is wasted on referral so much is based on relationships, even a dynamic where someone's learning from me from a stage that's starting to build that trust and a referral. So an example of work that we've done that solid and trust build through education, actually leading back to the very first thing we talked about, which was me speaking from a stage and teaching someone and then they go, Oh, I'd like to hire him. Those two things. I don't think that cold outreach will ever achieve the results that can be achieved by those two things, at least in our type of business. And that doesn't apply to every business. But for ours, that's what we've discovered.
Yeah. And I think you feel just made another argument because sometimes people ask me, Should I go for outbound or inbound lead generation, which one is the best. And I personally have this opinion, that you can't really have one without the other in the sense that, of course, you can only create content and wait for people to gravitate toward that. So that's more on the inbound side of things. But I personally think that when you are proactive, so you go down the outbound side of things, you have more control over that, because it's more dependent on the actions you take. And when people say, Ah, but I don't like cold calling. I don't like cold emailing. I don't remember who said this. But I heard somebody say, it will share the concept of informed calling in form emailing, and I'm like, Yeah, that's exactly what I do. I would never contact somebody randomly. On LinkedIn, for example, without actually I've done some research about them and try to see, does this person or does this company seem to fit the traits of my ideal client? And if I were to only do that, so only outbound no inbound whatsoever? Let's say I use LinkedIn. If somebody goes on my LinkedIn profile, and there is nothing there, they'll be like, Okay, who is this guy? On the other hand, if I have some educational content, some resources, whatever that's inbound, supporting my outbound lead generation efforts. So that's why in my opinion, you can't really have one without the other. Of course, you may have more outbound and inbound, or vice versa. But I personally think that the best formula is when you have both, and one supports the other.
I love that. Now, I have a question that might stir up some controversy. We've been exploring for quite a while using some of those automated services through that use LinkedIn navigator and basically send out of fields custom, but as actually a template message to a target audience that you choose on LinkedIn Navigator, and it goes through kind of four sets of messages, depending on the action, and then the goal is converting them into a call. Have you ever explored anything like that any type of automated service? And if so, how did it go? And if you haven't, why not?
Yeah, sure. So I do, I do use a couple of different tools, it's important for people to keep in mind that LinkedIn has some terms and conditions. So especially when you want to use third party tools, before you do use them, you want to make sure that they are kind of in line with those terms and conditions, because otherwise, you may even get like your account blocked or something like that. So just wanted to make that clear. And yeah, I used to one is called reply.io. And I've been using it for a couple of years. And that actually has a semi automated approach. So what happens there is I have some pre written templates, and so forth. And it works as a sort of CRM for LinkedIn. So it works inside LinkedIn. And basically, what it does is it doesn't send out everything automatically. But what it does is, let's say I have the two of you in my campaign, what happens is, it gives me a task that says, hey, connect with Lauren. So I just click the button, it goes to your LinkedIn profile, sends you a connection requests open up the message pastes it there. And I can still edit it, if I want. Maybe I want to talk maybe I just found out something hay field just became a Hall of Famer, I want to add that in my connection request. So I can still do it. Otherwise, just click on that. And then basically, if my next step is to send a message two days afterwards, what happens is when I go on LinkedIn, it tells me, Hey, you have to do and his message fields. So I just clicked that goes to feel, pulls up. His like DM has the pre written message, which I can still customize again. So it's not completely automated, but it definitely saves a lot of time. And it's been quite good. The other one that I've recently started working with is called the closely, I think the site is closely hq.com. And that is more of an automated tool. But the main reasons why I got closely is because it enables me to extract members from groups from events and so forth. So it creates least let's say out of a specific LinkedIn group versus a LinkedIn event. And I just want to say one thing in relation to finding leads and generating leads on LinkedIn. Most people think that in order for LinkedIn to work when it comes to lead generation, they need to use Sales Navigator, they need to use like a ton of fancy tools, and you don't necessarily need them. Of course, they can help you save time. They can help you scale your efforts, but you don't need them to raise One thing that not many people know that is really been a game changer for me, and is the fact that you can really refine your LinkedIn searches. Now, most people know that there are some filters you can use on LinkedIn. So you can use like the country, a person is in the degree connection you have with them and so forth. But there is another way of searching on LinkedIn that can help you really focus your searches and is to use the following Boolean search terms and, or not. So let's say you
want to, yeah, so literally, and you can,
yeah, so let's say you want to connect with somebody who is based in in New York City, and you say I want that person to be a business coach and a yoga instructor. So in your LinkedIn search bar, you would put in brackets, business coach, close the brackets, and, and then yoga structure. And it will filter out people who aren't business coaches, and yoga instructors. Or if you say, hey, I want to target coaches, but I don't want to work with business coaches, then you would put coach, and then not business coach. So it will filter out all the people who are business coaches. So now, something like that really empowers you, and enables you to make your LinkedIn searches very, very targeted, it's a great way to kind of polish up the lists you may get from LinkedIn when it comes to them, having them to work with and start to target those people and generate leads.
Wow, cool. That's so cool. I had no idea.
Awesome. And and it's something that I mean, it's relatively easy to do. So as I said, it's end or not, so you can use one of these, I believe that you can even use them in combination, I wouldn't try to get too complicated. If you start a search, try to do a simple one, maybe start with the end. Or maybe they're not a Boolean search term, and see kind of the quality. So to say of the list that comes as a result of your search with that term.
Yan, you've given us such good staffs in this conversation. I think this is a tough topic. But I maybe I've changed my opinion on that, because you've totally rocked it, you've given us some tools to check out, you've even reminded us that tools are not even that important. Like just start with the basics. I always say that whenever I'm talking about content ideas, like just start in a Google search bar, type of keyword and see what autofill suggests, see, you know, and you're giving us the lead gen version of that. And it's been so helpful. And to your point at the beginning like it even if it's not the most exciting topic in the world, you've made it exciting. I think you've done a really good job. We appreciate you.
Thank you. Yeah. And I think that the reason why I shared things, the way I share them is because I think that it's very easy for us to come up with excuses and be like, Ah, well, it's too technical, it's too expensive. So many tools are needed, there is a book, I would highly recommend everybody reads it. I think it's called stretch. And he basically talks about the idea of the fact that when our back is against the wall, we find ways to be creative to get things done. So for example, let's say if somebody says, Oh, I can't afford the fee of a CRM, the monthly or yearly fee. All right, then you're gonna find a different way to make that happen. But don't use that as an excuse for not actually taking the lead generation steps we discussed and may just throw one more thing out there, guys. Yes. Okay. So this is another thing I've used in my lead generation efforts. And I've gotten very good feedback. And I've started to see it more and more, but most people still don't do it. And is to use personalized video messages. And there are a couple of platforms. Do you guys use them as well?
They'll does. Yeah, I've used them with people who've purchased my courses. And it's just it's such a quick, fun way for me to get a message out even faster than having to type it and people appreciate it.
Yeah, it has a personal touch. And there's starting to be more and more platforms that do that. Driss, bonjour. Oh, I use two different ones. One is called sense Park. And the other one is called hippo video. And you can use them in different ways. So if you want to really be as personal as possible, then you would send a personalized video message to each person. However, sometimes that can be really time consuming. So what I typically do is I create, let's say, for example, I want to use video to suggest to a prospect who I've been having conversations with for a few days or a couple of weeks, I want to suggest having a call. So what I would do in that case, which is actually something I do is I recorded a video where I don't make any time references. I don't mention anybody's name so that they can be used pretty much with everybody. But what I do is truth things one is with sense Park. And also he provided this kind of tools. Whenever you create a video, it creates a small web page that goes along with the video. And basically on this page, you have the video embedded. And you can also add some text and things like that. The one thing I really like is that you can add a button below the video. So what I typically do is I have that button, link to my scheduling tool. And in the video, I actually point down and say, Hey, I'd love to chat with you, blah, blah, blah, let's make it happen. Just click the button you see below the video, and pick a date and time that works for you. So I really remove the friction. So that's the first thing. The second thing, the personalization. How do I make that happen? What I do is I have this templated video, I simply add the personalization in two ways. The first one is I add, basically, the tool creates an animated thumbnail, which is a GIF. And I add the caption word you may say I usually say child since Italian is my mother tongue. So I may say like child Lauren, and then I send it to Lauren by email. So the personalization comes from the fact that is sent to Lauren by email, she sees her name child Lauren. And when she clicks on the video, like thumbnail, she gets redirected to the page. Then if I wanted to share the same video with Phil, what I would do is I just duplicate the one, I change Lauren's name to feel. And I embed that in fields email. So I've heard people say, Oh, that was was so nice, nice personal touch. I haven't seen anybody do like that, or it really made my day. I really felt as if you were talking to me versus just getting a text only email or something like that. And you can use it with email some of those tools, you can even use the videos in inside LinkedIn as well. So I would highly recommend.
It's so cool. You've given us honestly this episode, people can listen back, listen multiple times to get some of these amazing actionable takeaways. Jonnie lunga. You're one of my favorite people. I want people to go connect with you on LinkedIn. People should go check out your website. You're big into podcasts that you're just so you're a genius. That's what you are. We're gonna link to all of your sites and where people can find you on the show notes. And a huge thank you to us for hanging out with us on brand therapy. We appreciate you My pleasure,
guys. I like the two of you so much, and I hope we get to meet in person soon. Hopefully,
likewise. Oh, too. I hope so too. Thank you. Yawn.
Thank you guys.
