155. No Friction Lead Generation with Brad Powell
What if you could effortlessly attract high-quality leads with just a few minutes of your time each day?
So much of lead generation and lead nurturing is built around relationship & trust building.
And this is especially true for consultants, coaches & agencies who run service businesses.
You need to establish enough trust and authority so that when a prospect is facing a challenge in their business that aligns with what you do — they reach out to you.
Once you have a process through content & trust building that runs smoothly, you’ve cut out the friction from your sales process. Your audience already feels like they know how you can help them and if they’re a good fit for your offer.
Removing the friction to lead generation is what we’re talking about in this episode because when you create the right content, and you do it in away that takes little time investment away from your actual business, you can attract a regular flow of right-fit clients who are excited to work with you.
Don’t miss this episode packed with valuable insights to elevate your content marketing strategy and make lead generation friction-free.
Resources
Apply for the Free scholarship to my VIP Video Intensive
Transcript
Brad Powell:
Video puts you front and center as the face of your brand. There’s probably nothing else you can do at scale that will make you more personable and more relatable and, frankly, more human than just simply getting on camera and saying stuff. Just be the person who you are on camera, and that will do a lot for your brand. 80% of people in business want more video from a business like yours, because when they go looking for something from, like, a solution to their problem or they’re trying to find the answer to a question, what they do is they go on these platforms that serve video, but they look for a video that is answering their question. Welcome to the Standout Business Show, where it’s all about making a bigger difference by doing business differently.
Brad Powell:
I’m Brad Powell, and today we’re talking all about no friction lead generation, and this came up because just last week, I attended a two-day workshop that was led by this group called Predictive ROI, and it was really a fantastic event, and the most amazing thing about it is that it was extremely helpful and it was completely free for a few guests who got chosen, and I got to be one of those. So they talked a lot about the overarching umbrella of how to sell more of your stuff. That was the theme of the two day workshop, but they got into this, really drilling down on lead generation and how to do it in a way so that it’s smooth, that there’s very little friction in being able to bring people to you who are exactly the right fit for your business, and I realized as I was working through their exercises is that, wow, you know, I’m already doing this pretty well and I’m already showing my clients how to do this and my way, my method, is pretty distinctive from the kinds of things that they were sharing in the workshop, so it made me think, well, I should share more of this. This is what I want to do with you today. I want to talk about lead generation and the process that I’ve developed to make it as smooth as possible for anyone who’s got a service business to be bringing in new leads at a regular level who are exactly the right leads for your business and, in fact, will help them convert and you’ll be able to sell more of your stuff. Help them convert and you’ll be able to sell more of your stuff.
Brad Powell:
So much of lead generation and lead nurturing is really built around relationship and trust building, and this is core to one of my beliefs of how you grow your business well, especially if you have a service. And so, for if you’re a consultant or a coach, or you’re an agency owner and you run this service, you need to establish enough trust and authority so that, when one of your prospects is facing a challenge in their business and that challenge actually is the same thing that your business will solve well they’ll reach out to you. They’ll go oh, you’re exactly the one for me to help solve this particular problem. And so once you’ve developed a process for creating trust building and nurturing content that runs really smoothly, when people get on a sales call, they’re already raising their hand. They’re already saying pick me, I want to do this, and I know already that I’m a good fit for this offer that you have. So you’ve cut out all the friction from your sales process. They feel like they know exactly how you can help them and they know that they’re in the right place. When you create the right content and you do it in a way that takes very little time away from actually running your business, you can start attracting this regular flow of exactly the right people who are seemingly thrilled to come and work with you. So if that sounds good, let’s go and start the show.
Brad Powell:
Before we get started, a little housekeeping. I wanted to be able to give you a hands-on experience of what no friction lead generation looks like, so I’ve just created a new VIP video intensive that will walk you through the three-step process that I do with my clients. This is what I do for myself. This is what is helping them attract new leads and shorten their sales cycle, and this week I’m offering a full scholarship and multiple partial scholarships for you to work with me one-on-one. So you can learn more about this offer and get the scholarship. Go ahead and apply to get the scholarship by going to awesomevideomakerscom forward slash VIP. I’ll say that again. It’s go to awesomevideomakerscom forward, slash VIP. I’ll say that again. It’s go to awesomevideomakerscom forward slash VIP. And you can apply to get this free scholarship to work with me one-on-one, and I’ll put that link in the show notes. The scholarship offer is only available this week, so don’t miss your chance to apply. Get a free scholarship, vip video intensive and I’m going to come back to this more in detail in later in the episode.
Brad Powell:
Let’s talk about how to reduce the friction In fact, eliminate the friction in your nurturing process, in your content marketing process and in the way that you are bringing new leads into your business. So this is the big challenge that people are facing in their business with lead generation. They have these three large problems. Problem number one that’s super common, is that there’s just simply not enough leads and the leads you get are not converting very well. That’s problem number one. Number two is that your brand and your business, and you yourself as the face of your brand, are not standing out from all the other people who are doing the same thing that you do. And problem number three is that your brand, your business, lacks personality. And so you know, if you go a little bit lower in there, dig a little deeper on what these problems are.
Brad Powell:
Part of the issue is that you don’t already have a process that runs smoothly in terms of how you’re getting your message out and how you’re communicating with your audience. Also, along with that is you don’t really know what kind of content that you want to be sharing with your audience, and big one. You just don’t have a lot of time to do this content creation. It’s like oh gosh, social media, are you kidding? I don’t like Facebook, and when I go on LinkedIn it just looks like a job board. Why do I want to be there? And that sounds familiar. I’ve been in your place, I’ve been in your shoes, because this is how I used to feel about a lot of this stuff.
Brad Powell:
So how do we solve this? Well, with the three challenges, there are basically three solutions. So solution number one is you want to really showcase your expertise. You want to show them that you are an authority and you really know your stuff. That’s one part. Part number two is that you want to show how you’re different. You know it’s not enough to just share a lot of really good information about all of all the stuff you know. A lot of that information is already available. So you need to really distinguish yourself and show how you do what you do differently than all the rest. And honestly, that’s the whole theme of this podcast series. Standout Business Show is like how do you do business differently from everybody else? And then, third part, solution number three, is that you need to show that you are someone that they can relate to. You need to have this really high relatability factor. You need to have this really high relatability factor. So let’s talk a little bit about how do you do this, and we’ll start with the relatively easy part. This is the part that we’re pretty much everybody begins, and this is where they go out into the marketplace and they’re showcasing their expertise.
Brad Powell:
There’s a great book out there called they Ask, you Answer, and this is basically the formula for probably most of what you want to do here. You get a lot of common questions from people all the time and so answer those questions and it’s a simple step. It’s like you know what people have been asking you over the last several years and or, if you have salespeople and they have conversations with your prospects, they know what are all the common questions that they get. So gather up all those questions and simply answer them. And if you can answer them in a clear and simple way, then that’s a really great way to show that you can actually help people and you know how to do it and better like.
Brad Powell:
The next step in all of that is you are proving to your audience that you can help them by actually helping them, and when you’re sharing this kind of informational content, you want to put in some kind of action, step in there, some kind of simple thing that they can do, the next step that will get them closer to their solution, closer to, of simple thing that they can do the next step that will get them closer to their solution, closer to resolving the problem that they have. And so they’re believing that they can do it and they believe that, oh my gosh, you’re really helpful, like you just helped me do this one thing. And so if they’re getting a little bit of result from you, that’s very powerful, it’s very attractive and it puts you as a great authority figure in their minds when they want to go further and they want to go deeper with someone like you. So this is the kind of thing where people are going, well, yeah, but I’m going to start putting stuff out there. I’m going to make a lot of content, that’s a lot of information, and what’s it going to be? Am I going to do a YouTube channel? I’m going to spend all my days posting on LinkedIn? You know this kind of thing and it can start feeling like the friction. The friction is piling up, it’s like this is going to take a lot of time, it’s going to be a lot of work, it’s going to feel like a chore and I’m not going to like it very much, and so I just want to give you a hint that we’re talking about reducing all that friction. So I want to give you two parts of how you do that before I get into the other two solutions of how you do this.
Brad Powell:
So one removal of friction in terms of how you create content is to do just what I’m doing here you make video, and the reason that you make video is because number one, you make video, and the reason that you make video is because number one, video puts you front and center as the face of your brand. There’s probably nothing else you can do at scale that will make you more personable and more relatable and, frankly, more human, than just simply getting on camera and saying stuff and it almost doesn’t matter what you say. Just be the person who you are on camera, and that will do a lot for your brand. And secondly, from the audience perspective, this is what the audience wants, and if you don’t believe me, just go take a look at TikTok or Instagram Reels.
Brad Powell:
I mean, there’s people consuming a ton of video on the internet right now, and surveys show that something like 80% of people in business want more video from a business like yours, because when they go looking for something from, like, a solution to their problem or they’re trying to find the answer to a question, what they do is they go on these platforms that serve video. They go onto YouTube and they look for a video that is answering their question. You know, just think of your own track record, like you’ve probably done this yourself. This is just what’s happening online now, and video presentation and video communication is not just the future, it is absolutely the present. So you know, and you still may be thinking, yeah, but video is really hard and it’s technical, and I got to do all these things to get ready to be on camera and on and on like that.
Brad Powell:
And I just want to remove some of that friction for you by saying the easiest way to do this is to find someone and this could be one of your team members or, if you’re a complete solopreneur, go get an accountability buddy, somebody who you meet with regularly, and get them to interview you. And if you want to take more of the pressure off, the two of you should go to some quiet cafe somewhere and set up your phone on a little selfie stick tripod and just get them to ask you those same questions that you’d gather. Get them to ask you the questions and then you answer the questions one by one and shazam, you’ve got a ton of content and you can probably get. And, shazam, you’ve got a ton of content and you can probably get, you know, a few weeks worth of material done in half an hour or 20 minutes or something like that. Like it’s very easy for you to create this and, best of all, when you’re in this conversational style with someone, you are acting much more like yourself. You’re not reading from a script, you’re not all frozen wondering what to say. You’re just simply responding to this person who’s working with you. So I hope that helps remove some of this feeling like, oh no, this is going to be way too much work. All right.
Brad Powell:
So that first part is showcasing your expertise. So you want to showcase your expertise, answer a bunch of questions, handle their objections, give them some action steps and some quick wins, and that will absolutely solve that first issue. Second issue is show how you’re different. So the way to do this is to do what I call myth busting, and that is people have a worldview Everybody you, me, everyone you can think of. We all have a worldview and a way that we see the way things are and the way we see the way things have always been. And a lot of that worldview doesn’t necessarily serve us very well anymore, and a lot of people who are facing challenges in their work or their life or whatever they’re trying to deal with, they have gotten to a place where they’ve tried a whole bunch of stuff and not very much of it has worked out in the way that they wanted. And so now they’re settling for their situation and they’re thinking well, I tried all these things. They didn’t go the way I wanted. I guess I just have to be in the place that I’m in and you need to come in and bust that open so that they start believing more in themselves, so they can move forward.
Brad Powell:
And so anything you know about what’s the status quo, what is the old school way of doing stuff, that you know that there is a new school way and a new school of thought. That is your way and your methodology. You wanna present that so that people go oh, here’s a new possibility for me. This is a new way of thinking and I’ll give you one really quick example. In my world, people are always thinking that video is too daunting, it takes too much time, it’s going to be a lot of effort and a lot of friction involved, and I come in and I say no, it actually can be very simple and very easy. And here are some ways to do that and I’ll give them some steps and some actions to go ahead and do it. And my clients do this and they go from this place where they’re feeling kind of awkward and reluctant to be on camera to a place where they’re feeling really confident and being on video is becoming the new normal for them. Not only that, but the people that they’re talking to are finding them really relatable and they’re finding that their business and the work they do is being very attractive. So that can work really well.
Brad Powell:
And beyond this just myth busting, you know you can go on a rant, find out something that’s going on or whatever you think is something that you absolutely can’t stand or pisses you off or you have resistance. To go ahead, rant about it. That’s healthy, and there will be some people who agree with you and there’ll be people who don’t agree with you and that’s absolutely great. And the people who do agree with you, they’re the ones who will be the right fit for your offer. And you can share a vision for your industry and you can share predictions for where you think things are going. And, over all of this, you can share your worldview on how you think things are and or what the opportunities are for people, and share all of that. And this just makes you quite distinctive, because no one has exactly the worldview that you have and no one has exactly the preferences and distinctions that you have in terms of how you look at things and how you see things and how you figure things out. So all of that makes you quite distinctive things out. So all of that makes you quite distinctive.
Brad Powell:
And the third thing is be relatable. No-transcript. You know, all this other stuff is more in the realm of logic. Now we want to dive in on people feeling emotionally connected with you and your story and the story that you can share about the clients that you have worked with and the clients that you’re working with now and where they’re going and the transformation that you’re providing. Because when people come to buy something, honestly, what they you know what they’re buying is based on their emotional connection, and then they justify it through all their reasonable stuff. It’s like, okay, I’m going to convince myself that I should do this, even though my heart is telling me I really want it, and they’ll justify it by saying, yes, and it’s good for this and it’s good for that. But really, the thing that will bring them over the edge, the thing that will really have them come across the threshold with you, is their emotional connection to believing in themselves, and believing in you are the person that can really help them.
Brad Powell:
You know, for example, when you look across the online business landscape, you know why is it that almost every single business website is blue. They’re all blue. I don’t know what this is like. It’s almost like there’s a conspiracy amongst web designers. They’ve all gotten together and said, oh, you do a business, well, we’re going to give you your brand. Colors are blue, and so if you want to be distinctive and you want to be relatable, the other thing about all those business websites is that usually they don’t have any real people on them. They’ve got stock images of people who look like they’re business people, even though what they are are actually models, and they’re dressed up in their suits and they look all nice and they’ve got their iPad out or they’re sitting in front of their laptop and none of that is real. So you want to be there. You want to be there with your own images, you want to be there with your own video and you want to be there with your own colors and your own copy and your own words learned earlier.
Brad Powell:
That’s a great topic. Or what’s a blind spot that you had in the past that you overcame? Or what are the mistakes you made in the past that now you know better? Or simple stuff like what’s your morning routine? Like what do you do when you get up every day? Or even a little deeper is what are the misconceptions that people have about what you do? People think of me as a videographer and they go oh, do you do weddings? It was like no, I don’t do weddings. I’ve never done a wedding and I would probably not be very good at it if I did. So you know, those kinds of things are good to make you human and relatable and people feeling more comfortable and literally emotionally connected with who you are and what makes you tick.
Brad Powell:
The cool thing about this going back to what makes you different is that, if you do this, if you’re brave enough to share parts of yourself, that makes you way more distinctive, because so few people in business are willing to do this part. Most people are not sharing themselves and they feel like they will hurt their business if they do share themselves, and this is where you can really stand out. So, yeah, more relatability, right? So what is the most friction-free way to share these things? And I’ve already mentioned it before, but the simplest way to do this is to sit down and be interviewed with someone else who asks you questions and gets you to talk in a conversational way on camera. And you can do this yourself by finding somebody else who comes in and you guys work together and you come up with the questions you want them to ask you and they interview you, and you could be doing this once a month, or you could be doing this once every two weeks, and when you do this and you have a half hour session or maybe even an hour long session, you know, in half an hour or an hour, just one or two times a month, you are producing a ton of content and because it’s on video, it can be used in so many different ways.
Brad Powell:
It can be used as video. It can be edited down into short clips, it could be made into a YouTube video, it could be turned into a podcast episode and all the transcriptions can be turned into a written copy so that it’s on your website, or it’s turned into an e-book or, you know, you can have it posted on social media and all the different places where text copy works really well. You could turn it into a thousand tweets, all these things. So just sort of imagine that you are spending half an hour, or maybe as long as an hour, producing a little bit of content, like talking about the stuff that you know about really well, being personable, being relatable, ranting a little bit on the stuff that you want to rant about, and this is great content and time-wise, it’s really no time at all, like anyone has the time to do this on a consistent basis. You can do this over and over and it just takes the burden off.
Brad Powell:
And, of course, if you really want to take the burden off, you work with me, like we can work together, and this is what I do for all my clients.
Brad Powell:
You know I give my clients a prompt worksheet filled with lots and lots of questions so that you can just write down one line answers to these questions and it’s a prompt for you.
Brad Powell:
And then when we’re interviewing, I’ve done hundreds of interviews when I’ve been able to really pull out the insights and the thought leadership from the clients who I work with and really help them shine and really help them get to the places that they want to get to with their audience and also help them lighten up and actually be conversational and natural and feeling confident when they’re talking on camera. And of course, along with that, you know, one of the very first steps is helping them just simply upgrading their home studio so that they’re looking and they’re sounding as good as they possibly can, and all of the stuff that they’re doing with me. I’ll turn their responses into clear, concise video messaging and then all of that I’ll schedule it, post it across all their channels, put it wherever they want, and this process really works. I just wanted to share an anecdote from one of my clients, matt Sanderson, who we just started working together. We’ve been working together now for just a little over three months and this is what he has to say about his experience.
Matt Sanderson:
Over the last three months I’ve been creating content, getting with a coach to actually create videos and then post them online, and when I first started this I didn’t know if there was going to be any value add. I didn’t know if I would even be comfortable in front of a camera. I was honestly super scared to do it. But I thought you know what? I’m starting this company. I want to get my brand out there. I feel strongly in what I’m doing. Let’s just give it a go. So I ended up getting this content coach, talking with him.
Matt Sanderson:
And guess what? Not only have I’ve gotten a lot of clients from it, but here’s the cool thing I got a guy that called me yesterday. He’s like, hey, man, I’ve been watching your videos on LinkedIn. It’s been really cool to hear about what you’re doing with this Airbnb thing. And he’s like, hey, are y’all taking investors? And I said, well funny, are y’all taking investors? And I said, well funny that you asked that. Yes, we just kicked off a million dollar fundraise. Are you interested, or anyone else? And he was like, actually, I’m very interested. And now I think he’s going to invest $50,000 to $100,000 into our company because of LinkedIn videos that Brad’s helped me create. So if you’re wondering if you should do this based on the value, let me just tell you the value is there. Now take the leap.
Brad Powell:
All right. So I’d like to offer you the chance to experience this same process and so you can see how friction-free lead generation actually works and how friction-free it can actually be. And how friction-free it can actually be. So you can join my VIP video intensive and you can apply for a full scholarship to work with me one-on-one. And what will happen during this intensive is that we will actually meet three different times. First time, we’re going to set up and upgrade your home office studio and we’re going to map out your content. And then we’re going to send me to second time, where we’ll record a remote interview and I’ll ask you questions. You give me answers. And the third time is we’re going to edit all of that stuff. This is what I do on my own. I’m going to edit and I’m going to deliver you a set of videos so that you have a bunch of really brilliant content that you can then use in your content marketing.
Brad Powell:
This offer is only available this week. Go to awesomevideomakerscom, forward slash VIP and you can learn more. All about it. And that’s what I have for you today. If you are interested in supporting this show, just take a moment right now and subscribe if you haven’t subscribed already, but I would love it if you could give it a five-star rating and write a review, because this really helps when people see that, oh, this show has lots of reviews ready. But I would love it if you could give it a five-star rating and write a review, because this really helps when people see that, oh, this show has lots of reviews. It helps people get the idea that, oh, this is a show worth listening to, and we’ll get more and more people just like you who are here to stand out and make a bigger difference because we’re doing something different.
