Are you the wizard or the wand?

When I attended Infusioncon in March this year,  I was very impressed with one particular speaker, Jay Baer. He has published a book called Youtility, and essentially encourages us to generate marketing that is SO good, that people would  be prepared to pay for it. This fits really nicely into my philosophy of practising the value of generosity, and moving away from that old software adage of 'protect your IP', driven primarily from fear to 'freely share it', driven primarily from love. You can sometimes feel like you are giving too much away, but I do think that Karma is at play too, and that it will come back to you, in time, and not necessarily from that particular source.

The  video is below, and I recommend you watch it, but just in case you don't have the time, here are the key points; 

1. Better understand what customers need from you. Make it bigger than your products/services, think about the larger issue that they are trying to solve
2. Focus on helping better, not selling better; be the best teacher in your industry
3. Understand that the future of business is not creating customers for today, but for life. We want to nurture them long term (I know this sounds REALLY obvious, but actually it is something many of us are still forgetting to do)

Tools like Infusionsoft are brilliant, but they are simply the wand; it is what the wizard (you!) does with the wand that counts.

I was ignoring my own wand for a while.

For me personally, I know what that is all about. I have been working very hard to support my clients to use their wands, whether it is Infusionsoft or other clever lead generation strategies, but have been largely ignoring it myself. It has happened for me, more like an accident rather than by design. 

Take the lead in using generosity for lead generation in Australasia. 

This approach to sharing information freely is being embraced in the US, and we are talking about quality content here, not thinly veiled 'sell jobs'. In Australia and New Zealand we have such an opportunity to lead the way with this, so start having a think about  how you can do so, aside from the more traditional newsletter. 

For example, I now hold regular workshops, where I freely give away as much value as I can about how to create your own lead generation engine. I also happily provide what I call one hour 'brainstorming sessions'. This is entirely focused on the practice or business owned by the person I am catching up with, and I also follow up with a report where I document a number of suggested key actions. They  can then implement these actions if they choose and significantly increase their lead generation, nurture and conversion success. I will also shortly be releasing a micro series, where I go into each stage of the lead process in more detail. 

Maybe this sounds like a 'sell-job' sharing this! But the thing is, none of this is me  telling my client how they can engage me. It is all about giving THEM value, and getting them excited about what's possible, without any expectation from me. I genuinely love supporting others with this, and am so grateful I have discovered something in which I truly believe. 

What workshop, webinar, takeaway PDF can you create to add value? 

Have a look at the video, and see how it resonates for you. Focusing on helping rather than selling is definitely something to consider for your future lead generation.

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