Ep 32: Maximizing Your ROI: Identifying Hidden Opportunities For Easy Lead Gen
EPISODE 32
Maximizing Your ROI: Identifying Hidden Opportunities For Easy Lead Gen
Prospecting is essential for lead generation, but it can be anxiety-inducing for so many nonprofits and social entrepreneurs. In this episode, you'll hear the ultimate metaphor about how so many organizations view their prospect list as a single tree with limited fruit... instead of expanding your prospect list and reaching out to more people in your network.
You'll hear the depth of how to look beyond your current best donors and customers and where other warm leads are hiding out (it's easier to find them than you think)!
If you're a solopreneur looking for new clients, an ambitious nonprofit, or work in fundraising this is a must-listen episode.
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives, and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing here. Ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready? Let's go. Okay. We're gonna deepen this theme of lead generation and prospecting and.
I talked about how you can anxiety proof your lead generation, and today we're gonna talk about the prospecting process. I use prospecting and lead gen interchangeably, so getting more leads for your organization, your business, getting more people into your world who learn about you, and then develop that.
No, like trust factor, right? Because through that process is how you get more sales, more donations, so, I'm running this live cohort about breach Genius and I had this visualization kind of pop into my head as I were going through prospecting week, and prospecting is one of those tricky things where a lot of organizations will come to me, a lot of founders, a lot of people who are in charge of lead gen, so that might be development or something like that where they're trying to get new donors.
And they feel like the well is dry. They feel like they've literally reached out to everyone. If you also are a founder, so you're, you're the founding ed ceo, you know this feeling well, you're like, I've literally, I'm tapped out. We've, we've reached out to everyone ever. They all know what I do. And first and foremost, I understand that that inclination, that's normal.
And secondly, what if. You haven't even scratched a service. So today I'm gonna specifically talk about people already in your world. So you may have heard like your sphere of influence. You may have heard this idea of like warm versus cold leads, um, contacts, right? People already in your world. That's who we're gonna focus on today.
Maybe in another episode we'll talk about. People, not in your world yet, but I wanna think about this idea of prospecting. And I was going for a rock recently in my neighborhood and it's kind of funny because I grew up in Georgia. I live in Georgia and we are the peach state. But I don't remember growing up and seeing like peach trees.
We have a lot of streets named Peach Tree, but I don't remember them being around. I don't remember seeing peach trees. I. Live in the city-ish when I, or grew up in the city-ish. Now I live in the city. And so anyway, I didn't remember seeing them much. But now, so I live in the city and I was going for a walk and I was just thinking about how many peach trees there are in my neighborhood.
So peach trees are sort of short and, um, they're not like tall, they're like short and squatty and there's, I can think of the closest Peachtree to me is probably like, A three minute walk. It's very, very close by. And each year in, I'd say late spring, early summer, it blooms and there's tons of right peaches on this peach tree.
And the, that peach tree is the same as your prospects. So many of us think about our prospect list, our prospect bank. The people in our network as a single peach tree with fruit on it. And there's just that one tree, and that's the tree you go back to and it's got little bits of fruit on it. And furthermore, I think we actually think about it this way where we're only going to the, the, the peaches that we can reach.
So depending on where the peach is facing, like certain. Aspects of the tree are, are literally going to become griper first, right? If it's more sun, sunny, getting that like morning sun, right, and then the back of the tree isn't going to ripen as fast, may not even produce as much fruit, but there is fruit back there.
And then the top of the tree versus the bottom of the tree. You with me? And so, Inevitably, like a city peached tree like this will probably see a lot of action in the bottom half of the tree, like that kind of lower third of the tree, because that's as high as people can get. Even though it is a short squatty little tree, it's still taller than me.
It's still taller than my arm can reach by, by a bit, and that's how we think of our prospects. We're like Christina, I've, I've, I've, I've literally keep going back to the tree. This is as far as I can reach. This is as far as my colleague can reach. We gotta figure something out to grow our organization.
And there's a couple ways I wanna use this analogy. The first is, have you even gotten a ladder? Like have you even gotten a ladder to get to the top of the tree? To get to the back of the tree? To get to the side of the tree? Why are you going to the front of the tree at the exact same time of year putting your hand out, waiting for ripe peaches, right?
That's the first piece that's like, Prospect prospecting in lead generation at its core of like, it's not one dimensional. It's, it's a glass of water that you can see through and see different sides. And one single prospect is not just one single sale or donation. One single prospect has depth, has connection, right.
Has other aligned relationships. So I go on my walk, there's this first peach tree, that's the closest one to me. And then if I wanna go see another peach tree, I gotta go out my door. I gotta go in a different direction and just go up a hill. That's actually probably eco distant. It's another four minute walk, but it's in the other direction.
And I'm actually thinking about that now. And it's sort of at the top of the hill, this peach tree, but actually there's another peach tree between my house and this one that's a little more tucked away. It doesn't produce as much fruit. It's a little bit smaller, but it exists and it is worth noting, like how many times are we walking by a perfectly right ripe.
Perfectly awesome peach tree and walking by it and going and just missing it. Like not even realizing, not even saying anything or just going, well, they already donated. Well, they already gave, well, they already did their thing. Right. We're not getting a ladder. We're not getting a closer look. We're not even engaging with that tree.
Okay, so I've now thought of three within like. You know, a four, a four minute walk radius. And as I'm thinking about this, I'm like, I haven't even head headed. What would that be? West? Right? I haven't even thought about the, the trees that are over there. So here's what's interesting. Years ago I actually wanted a fruit tree.
I was like, oh, it would be fun to fi plant a fruit fruit tree in my yard. And one of the things I realized very quickly, or learned very quickly, Is that a lot of fruit trees need a male female, they need a, a male female for pollination. So you can't just get one fruit tree, you actually have to get two.
Otherwise, it, it may or may not produce fruit. It may or may not be like, Great ripe fruit. And so very quickly I was like, okay, we don't have space for two fruit trees. This is a no. So I just tabled that idea and then years later I came to find out that there are some fruit trees that that pollinate fine on their own.
And this is the cool part. Many times if. One tree is near another tree, but in a different yard further away, it's close enough to pollinate, right? It's close enough to get that connection that it needed to produce great fruit. And that's another way around it. And I was thinking about this idea of like, What I call these sort of tangential connections, these aligned connections that are just one piece removed.
Um, I'm gonna date myself, but it's worth doing like that. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? I don't remember when this like turned into popularity, but this idea of like, we're all connected to Kevin Bacon just by it. Just six people right to get there. Right? It's who do I know that they know that they know, that they know.
Boom. Kevin, Kevin, six later. I'm, I'm, and I'm on the phone with Kevin Bacon and this is kind of that concept only it's just one, but it's like these two trees don't exist, siloed off, they're actually bees or pollinating them and producing better fruit. That way. And many times there's a pomegranate tree in my neighborhood, right?
Like many times it's through a pomegranate tree, another a fruit tree, right? That can get that cross pollination. I know I'm going over my, uh, pay grade here in, in agriculture, but you get the point. So where are those tangential relationships that you haven't even, not even cultivated, like you haven't?
Even thought of yet that are like these peach trees that are like a pomegranate tree that exist in this tiny city neighborhood. And I've already thought of 1, 2, 3, 4. Maybe five. Right? And instead, what are we doing? We're getting out our door. We're walking the exact same path every single day to the one tree, reaching our arm out and grabbing one right?
Peach. And then being pissed off that there aren't more. Right? Because we're unwilling to go to the back of the tree. We're unwilling to ask somebody else, Hey, where's there another tree? Hey. Um, Which way do I go? Can I borrow a ladder? And that is prospecting at its most organic base level. Prospecting is creating relationships.
Prospecting is before you even create the relationships. Identifying those, that alignment, identifying those people who have an alignment with your cause or your mission or your service that would be interested, right? And inviting them into your world, but you can't even go to that place. That's the outreach phase until you've identified it more than one peach tree.
So here's what I've put together. I've put together a brand new list for you that is giving you. Prospects that is giving you peach trees and pomegranate trees and fruit trees to begin to figure out your perfect fit matches. So any type of leg gen, by the way, if you're a for-profit, if you're a non-profit, if you're a B Corp, this is for you if you're looking to build your audience in an organic way.
This could be through email, this could be through in person. Meetings. This could be through, uh, networking, right? This could be any sort of outreach that you wanna have, right? To extend and your reach and your visibility. To grow your revenue, you have to lead gen. That is the backbone to your business. I know that we've talked about this before, but if you have the same amount of customers or donors, And it doesn't increase year over year.
Your organization will literally sputter out. It will just pu sputter out, right? You have to put gas in the tank. So I've put together a brand new list that I'm calling my prospect list, and it has over 20 different prospect categories for you to start creating your own prospects. Then I'm giving you tangential categories, so if you're like, I don't know what you're talking about, I need better ideas.
I need a list. I need to know where to begin. Or if you're thinking I've, I feel like I've already maxed out all of the peach trees in my neighborhood. This list is gonna give you everything you need to begin. And it's free. It's totally free. I'm coupling it with a very short mini training so you can go through the worksheet and actually brainstorm prospects for you to reach out today.
And this isn't about doing anything that feels like. It's again, you're fight or flight activating and kicking in. This is about reaching out to a community, generating leads for your business, for your organization in a way that makes sense and not in a way that you feel like you're just slapping your logo across a billboard, right?
That there's an alignment there. So it's very, very simple and it will get you started through this process. I'll put it in the notes so you can steal my prospect list for free. You can. Learn how to generate leads easily, organically, that means without any paid ads, and you can download that list today.
All right, if this metaphor, if this idea of prospecting resonated with you, I wanna ask you to do me one favor. I've had several people tell me lately how much they enjoyed recent episodes, but I would love it if you would take a minute to rate and review it so other people can find this podcast too.
Okay, have a beautiful week. You know how they say you should enjoy the journey, not just the destination. Have you ever wondered how do I crack the code to do that? I can help you do that. I can help you not only achieve your biggest, most daring goals, but the journey to get there. No more overwhelm, no more self-doubt.
I wanna invite you to book a call with me. Go to splendid atl.com/book.
“We’re taught to tell your ‘rags to riches story’ but all the interesting things are the things that happened in between, the gritty, the beautiful parts, the funny parts, the sad parts, the middle where you’re not sure where it’s going yet.
That’s where you show people your humanity.” - Tarzan Kay”
About Tarzan Kay:
Tarzan Kay teaches online businesses, digital course creators, and freelance service providers how to write emails that are story-powered, fun-to-read and high-converting. She has spent the last three years slowly dismantling her 7-figure boss-babe empire and unlearning the systems of influence and indoctrination that were taught to her as a new business owner. She now teaches how to sell with email according to your own values, by leading with personality, integrity and building connection.
Free 30-Minute Fix Training for Mission-Driven Creatives to get unstuck!
Resources mentioned:
Easy Emails for Impact: My email marketing course for nonprofits, consultants, and social impact businesses. Learn more here: www.splendidcourses.com/easyemails
Private coaching: This is the fastest way to kickstart your growth and have support, strategy, and momentum to grow sustainably without burning out. Start by scheduling a discovery call here.
