What Happens When You Treat Every Lead Like You're Responsible for Helping Them

Good morning. Here's a great quote to start the day. Don't let the way you do business handicap your ability to write cash copy. And as I was looking through my journals, u as I was wrapping up journal number two and into journal number three, I realized that the seed of something that's been a huge throughine for me has been this idea of being outwardly focused on exactly what your best prospects want and need to get the benefit that you're able to provide.

And I say that very specifically. To get the benefit, not the features, not the information, not the thing that you're offering, but to take people by the hand and march them to the benefit that they really want. The point of running ads is not to get leads. It's to get introduced to people that could potentially be clients.

And the way that you approach that is is very um is going to have an amazing outcome or amazing effect on the outcome that you get. Couple of examples like one of the things if you think through what is actually happening with the people who are asking for your information. So, since I've been using the guide to Halton Hills as the uh example and that it's a proxy in your business, any kind of information piece that you're using to generate leads, it's not about just getting the guide. You have to take the stance that the person that's asking for this information is doing it because not because they want the information but because they want the end result of what the information is going to do to them.

It's just a nice on-ramp to that. And uh so I look at when you look at every element of your um the process that people go through when you're running ads and you're generating leads. It can make a difference in how you uh engage with them. So the first example that I had of this was after reading this and thinking about being crystal clear and speaking to exactly who you uh the the assuming that everybody wants to uh buy a home in Halton Hills.

I was running ads in the beginning that had a free recorded message where people could call and the recorded message would basically say, "Thanks for calling for the guide to Halton Hills. At the end of this message, leave your name, your uh address." And then towards, you know, in this period of time in the early 90s, I said, "And email address if you have one," which was so it's so funny, right? because not everybody had an email address and we'll send out your guide right away.

That was it. And the messages that we would get would be people saying, "It's John Jones. My address is this. My phone number is this.

And here's my email address." Or, "I don't have an email address. Thank you. Goodbye."

But when I took a an approach of now leading per leading people offering them information, I changed one thing about the message and I said at the end of the message, leave your name, email, address, whatever we said, and tell me a little about the kinds of houses you're most interested ed in and I'll send you information on the most recent listings. And that immediately had an impact because the very next person that called and left the message left all the regular stuff and said, "We're living in Missaga right now. We're moving out to Georgetown. We need a four bedroomedroom house and we'd like to have a pool."

I mean, it was just like it was just so funny that how perfectly something works out when you take it with intention. And the reason that I think this is so important is it shows that you are assuming the best. Assume that the people who are asking for your information, the people who are downloading your book or asking for your catalog or your guide or whatever lead generator you're using, assume that they definitely want and have an intention of getting whatever the benefit is at the end of that path. You got to assume that they're the ones.

And you're absolutely the odds are when you look at it that if we take a hundred people that ask for your guide, there's going to be a complete spectrum of people. There are going to be people who are so super excited about getting the result and are friendly and they want to work with you and they'll be happy that you've offered to assist them. And then there are people on the other end that will get mad at you for even assuming that they want something like they'll get mad at you, leave an angry message for you even though they voluntarily asked for this. It's not, you know, so you look at it that on that spectrum, there's going to be people that are super excited.

There's going to be people that are never ever ever going to do business with you. even though they would be better off for doing it. And somewhere in the middle is everybody else. They're going to be people that are very likely to do what it is.

And later on in future journals, you know, I really started, this was around the time that I really started going deep into lead conversion cuz I was already seeing that we could generate leads forever and lots of them. But people were not outwardly focused. They were not they were looking for people who were going to just call them up and come and buy a house right now. And if they didn't do that, they were bad leads.

And I love this because one of the things that Jeffrey Lant says in Cash Copy chapter 2 was learn to talk about providing your prospects with the benefit they desire, not the information you're sending. And that whole attitude of letting people know ahead of time what you have to offer them and getting to the business of offering it to them to help them. If you would treat everybody like they definitely want to buy and you're making it easy by kind of going out of your way for them, that's going to be reciprocated. It's one of Robert Chaldini's ideas of reciprocity.

If I'm doing nice things for you, even if you didn't ask me to, there's this sense of now obligation that they are drawn to do something because of the way that you're treating them. And I I like years later I I've uh read Jordan Peterson's uh great book 12 rules for life. And one of his rules is to treat yourself like you're responsible for like like you're someone you're responsible for helping. And I just love that idea of this detachment and attachment to it.

So, I'd like to think about what if we treated these leads like you're responsible for helping them. Remember I mentioned Gary Halbert's provocation of what would you do if you had to get a response or you were going to be beheaded? We take that same provocation is what would you do if you were responsible for helping the people who ask for your ebike catalog find and get the perfect ebike for them or their family. That's a great place to come from.

And if you orient your whole business around that, that's where the biggest lead conversion advantage is going to come. not just sitting there on the island waiting for people to come ashore and beg you to help them. Go out there and usher people across the river. Bring them on to the island where you're going to be able to help them make all their wildest dreams come true.

But it starts with this outwardly focused serviceoriented mindset. And that was one of the things that was planted and uh enhanced by my readings of uh cash copy and other things.