When I was in college, my friend and I ran a painting company.
But in order to get leads, we started another company called Name Droppers. And through this other company, we’d hire college girls to go out and do surveys in the neighborhoods in the evenings and weekends.
The girls would have clipboards with checklists... and their task was to find people who were planning on doing any home improvement projects over the summer.
What my friend and I were interested in were painting jobs. But we didn’t limit our surveys to just that. We also wanted to know who was looking to do roofing, siding, doors, pools, driveways, decks… all of that.
In short, anything that sounded like a home improvement project over the summer, we wanted to know about it.
Why?
In short, to maximize our profit.
You see, these people owned homes. If all we asked was, “Hey, are you planning any painting…?”
We’d miss out on the, “No, but we need a new roof...” or, “No, but we’re thinking about putting in a pool…” or, “No, but our driveway needs some fixing…”
And guess what? All these other projects... while not directly valuable to us… were valuable to somebody else.
In other words, if we were only looking for people who wanted painting done, we’d miss out on a lot of opportunities… and a lot of profit.
Because here’s the thing...
Every target market is a subset of a larger group of people. And while you’re out there, looking for your 5-star prospects…
You come across leads who don’t really need what you’re offering right now… but could be valuable leads for somebody else. And they’d be happy to pay you a referral fee for them.
So think like a chess master…
If you’re already doing lead generation… if you’re already allocating money and resources to get people in...
It doesn’t take much extra effort to turn that activity into another profit center for you.