Dave Braun
00:00:02
Hello again, folks! Welcome to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast, brought to you by yoogozi.com. In this podcast, and at HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking the – bank without breaking your bank. And I’m Dave Braun. And my co-host is Larry Broughton, my great partner friend and business mentoring coach. In fact, he was just coaching me on some things before we were recording this, that’s going to make a difference in my business. So, Larry, thank you for that. I love the spot coaching. Anytime you want to do it. I’m an open book for you, man.
Larry Broughton
00:00:39
Got my bank account number. So just keep those checks coming.
Dave Braun
00:00:46
Alright. Are you ready for today’s question? Sure. What is it? All right. Can I hire a virtual assistant for lead generation?
Larry Broughton
00:00:57
This is gonna be a short podcast. Yes. Thanks for joining us my friends! Guys the truth is you could hire a virtual assistant for virtually anything. Yeah. You know, I mean anything from lead generation to sales calls, answering your phones, to doing research on foreclosure, that’d be in the real estate industry, calling, texting, social media, you know, in the HireMyVA program, we give a list of how many,
Dave Braun
00:01:25
I mean,
Larry Broughton
00:01:27
Several pages of ideas on how you can use somebody for lead generation. Maybe it’s a way to spin. This is, you know, how can I hire a virtual assistant for lead generation or not Can I, yeah. How do I implement it? Yeah, of course you can. Maybe I talked about like, what are some of the things we got to do to help get the best lead generation VA for this person?
Dave Braun
00:01:53
Yeah. I think that’s a natural question after somebody says they realize, well, yeah, I can do that. Which hopefully you’re convinced because you can, question is how right. Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:02:03
Right. So how do you think we ought to do this, Dave?
Dave Braun
00:02:06
Well, let me start with one of our tips that we’ve got. So I guess it may seem obvious, but as we go through these it’s important. So number one, if you’re going to hire somebody to do this, you’ve got to define what type of leads that they’re going to be getting for you. I mean, what are they going to be cold, warm? You know, where are they going to do it? That kind of thing you need to identify what type of leads, what industry type of leads and start and start really defining like what we talked about, your ideal client in a lot of ways.
Larry Broughton
00:02:45
Yeah. Let me, let me back up for one second. Let’s give a bigger picture on this. I think that one of the classic mistakes that business owners, managers, leaders make when it comes to the sales cycle is that they have a sales people doing the lead generation. So many organizations have recognized that that’s the wrong thing to do. And then we have the sales people generating the leads as well, so they generate the lead, they then foster the relationship with the lead. They make the sale, they close the sale. Then they’ve got to actually manage the ongoing relationship. But then they’ve got to go back and start doing lead gen all over again. And so there’s never consistency. Those organizations that have grown the most and who is it that wrote a book on this? What’s his name, Ross something he used to do stuff with Salesforce years ago.
Larry Broughton
00:03:44
Gavin may or may not may know this guy. He was like employee number 110 or 150 or something like that. The name will come to me as we’re talking. And he created the lead generation department for Salesforce. Right? And so that’s the key here. Have your folks or somebody in your organization generating the lead. So whoever’s asking this question, it’s a smart question. Generate the leads first and then hand the leads over to the sales team. That’s the key to really grow in your organization, your business, your pipeline quickly, because generally it’s a different skillset to generate, find, foster, grow the lead as it is to sales close, manage the relationship. Probably should have said that before, but you were talking about, you know, identify what type of leads they’re looking for if there were, right?
Dave Braun
00:04:36
Yeah. I mean, that make sense. And most people listening are probably the ones who are at this point, if you’re thinking about hiring somebody for that, you’re doing both right. The lead and the sales. And I think that makes the most sense to start is get somebody to generate the leads and take that away from you and Larry, I think a great, great example, as you were talking about that, that came to my mind is, I mean, there’s a couple of them, but most of the time when people come door to door to your house, like for a pest control, or if you go to Costco and you see somebody there like for solar or something like that, they are lead generators. They just want to get you to say, Hey, make an appointment. And somebody is going to call you. And I think that’s a good way to think about that. That type of separation.
Larry Broughton
00:05:24
Yep. All right. So I just Googled here. Did my internet search it’s Aaron Ross was the guy I was thinking about. He’s got a couple of books. He’s got a couple of books out there on creating a lead generation team, but let’s keep going on this.
Dave Braun
00:05:39
Oh, that’s, that’s I didn’t, I don’t think that you may have mentioned that to me before, but I don’t recall it.
Larry Broughton
00:05:46
I may have talked about it and I’ll actually, you know, since we’re on it, let me, whoops. Actually get the book. Yeah. look me let Well, the book up.
Dave Braun
00:05:58
What did you say? You’re going to, you’re going to buy the book for everybody listening to the podcast.
Larry Broughton
00:06:02
Predictable revenue- was as a nice try though, Dave.
Dave Braun
00:06:05
Predictable Revenue
Larry Broughton
00:06:07
Predictable Revenue is one of them and he’s got another one out as well called I got a couple of Oh, here. Yeah. So I think that was the first one. The next one I think that he wrote was From Impossible to Inevitable and he’s got, I know I’m wrong. I’m wrong. The first one he did, it’s called CEO Flow. But that doesn’t pertain to this that we’re talking about. But the one that pertaining to lead gen is the one that came out in 2011 called Predictable Revenue. Yeah. And then 2016, it came out with a book called a From Impossible to Inevitable.
Dave Braun
00:06:46
So which one do you recommend people starting first?
Larry Broughton
00:06:49
Okay. Predictable Revenue based on the conversation we’re having right now.
Dave Braun
00:06:52
Okay. Perfect. All right. So guys remember that. All right. So let’s keep going. So say you decide, you know, what type of lead you’re going to get. And you’re separating out, like Larry said, between leads and sales. Yep. So the next thing you’re going to have to do is you’re going to have to start figuring out, when you’re, when you’re talking about hiring somebody, you’re bringing somebody else on to your team or adding a new tool to your mix or something, you really have to have a budget in mind. You got to say, how much am I going to spend? So you got to think about how much you’re going to spend on this person, as well as for them to do it. What are the tools and everything that’s going to be needed. And I think there’s a good way. And at least in my mind to at least start on this. And I think it’s really understanding in your business to the lifetime value of a client and understanding the cost of servicing the client.
Larry Broughton
00:07:50
Can you pause right there for a second? I want to put an exclamation point on this. We’ve talked about this at our masterminds for years and you kind of throw out a very important phrase there. So I think most people, I remember the first time people hear this and then the masterminds are like, oh, it’s like a light bulb goes off. And the phrase I want to get is what’s the lifetime value of a client. Also like what’s the lifetime value of one good idea. Not the value of today, the lifetime value of that. Okay. So I’m sorry to keep, keep going, Dave.
Dave Braun
00:08:23
Yeah. And there’s easy ways to figure that out. You know, you just kinda look back at your clients and think about how long they stay with you and how much did they spend with you over their life. And then, and then you get it. But then you’ve also got to make sure that you understand that the cost of servicing that client as well. So that way you, then you can start getting an idea. Well, how much can I really spend for those couple of things? So the idea is that you want to pay X amount of money per month for your lead generator. Well, that lead generator then person is going to be able to bring you X number of clients that you’re going to be able to close. And then that will end up giving you that extra revenue. Maybe not right then,
Dave Braun
00:09:03
So you got to watch your cashflow but it will hopefully generate a profit. And I think that leads to, I’m gonna go a little bit about an order here, but I think that really needs to making sure you’ve got your sales funnel defined and where you’re trying to get this new lead into the funnel. And you know, as we talked about in the victory program, making sure you’ve got those numbers next to your sales funnel, because if you don’t start having some numbers, you’re not, you’re not going to know how are you going to know if this lead generation person is successful? Yeah, that’s right. If you’re going to get, get that person to give you a hundred leads and you think I’m an only close one or five or 10, that could be a very different, amount or amount that you can spend. They’re very different expectations from that person as well.
Larry Broughton
00:09:57
Yeah. Well, speaking of expectations, Dave , you know, one of our mantras, I’ve given out a lot of them today, but I live by mantras people. Won’t meet your expectations unless they know your expectations. And this is why it’s so important to have a position profile or a job description for the team member. And that position profile, that job description is actually going to list like, what are the tasks and responsibilities that they’re going to have? What industry do you want them to focus on? What skills is it that they’re going to need? What level of English or the language, whatever language, how what’s the mastery of that language you want them on? Are they going to be doing cold calling? Are they going to be working LinkedIn or some other lead source? Right. So you, you’ve got to have a proper position profile or job description so that you can actually set the expectations. And also that kind of, you can use that, pull that out, to check their track record as they’re actually performing. So I think that’s, that’s an important thing that we can’t predict, I guess probably.
Dave Braun
01:11:09
And I think , if you have your sales funnel identified in lots of than your numbers and you talk, we’ve done some of these things, then you’ll be able to, I think come up with a pretty decent position profile. But then the also have the, the conversation with this person ahead of time, like, like it’s like, here’s what is expected from you. Here’s where these leads are going to go. Here’s the expectations on the outcome, right? And that’s going to be really, really important conversation to have. And then I think the last thing too is to start thinking about the your systems that you’ve got to handle these leads coming in, they’ve got to robust enough to be able to warrant you, having somebody generating leads for you, right? Because if you can only handle for whatever you’re doing, if you can only handle one client a month and all of a sudden you’ve got five people wanting to be your client, then you’re gonna, you’re going to be like, you’re gonna be turning business away. So you gotta think about what you’re going to be doing to ramp up. Maybe it’s hiring more people. Maybe it’s having somebody to refer people to. It could be just quickly raising your prices.
Larry Broughton
01:12:26
Yeah. It’s a good problem to have for sure. It is.
Larry Broughton
01:12:31
We do want to get that, but you have to plan ahead. What’s going to happen. If, if this becomes, what, if this person is wildly successful, how am I going to handle at any? And conversely right. I’ve made an investment in this person and then they fail miserably. Right? You got to have a contingency plan for both of, for both of those. If all of a sudden you can’t handle, you can’t serve as these new clients that are coming in. And guess what? Your current clients are probably going to be suffering as well. Right? Exactly. But this is a time where you talked about identify, what’s it, what’s the cost to service a client. This might be the time that you start cutting them loose. If the new clients that are coming in are going to be more profitable for you. I don’t generally recommend that until you’ve got a real track record of consistent new clients coming in and sticking around for awhile, made that mistake. Couple of times in the lifecycle of my organization, we’ve cut some clients off before we had, we were expecting new clients to come in. And those new clients never materialized.
Dave Braun
01:13:34
Oh yeah.
Larry Broughton
01:13:36
Right. And it’s a mistake. I’ll never make again
Dave Braun
01:13:41
Whites in
Larry Broughton
01:13:41
in twice That’s 20 years.
Dave Braun
01:13:43
A great analogy would be to, you know, don’t burn your bridges until you’re, you’ve built new ones. Right. Build those new ones first. And then you can like burn the other ones. And when I say burn, it doesn’t mean totally destroyed. I mean, it’s like, if you’re going to let clients go, you got to make sure you let, let them go properly. And that could be a whole nother podcast. Right. Yeah. Okay. So we talked about those several things. We talked about defining the type of leads. We talked about thinking about what you’re going to spend on them, which means coming up with your lifetime value of a client and your cost of servicing. The next thing we talked about was having your sales funnel defined to a certain extent. Then the fourth thing was your position profile, actually creating it in detail. And then number five is thinking about getting your systems set up and robust and maybe think a little bit ahead of time where that might break and have a, at least have a plan in your mind and saying, okay, if this breaks, I can rapidly bring somebody on or I can use this tool or, you know, or whatever it is.
Larry Broughton
01:14:51
Or you refer clients to somebody else, you can handle them. You know, here’s the thing that you, you need to remember if you’ve paid someone to foster,
Dave Braun
01:15:00
These leads Dave, and you can’t handle them, you have a competitor. Yeah. Cooperative competitor. You can hand them to for a fee that’s right. You can still make
Larry Broughton
01:15:10
Money. You can still make money on them. For sure.
Dave Braun
01:15:13
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Larry Broughton
01:15:15
Okay, good. That’s good. There’s a lot of good stuff in there.
Dave Braun
01:15:18
It was good. All right. Well, let’s bring this one to a close. Let’s do it. Okay. Well, thanks everybody for being with us today. And remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom and where to help. We’re here to help you with our course and community. And of course our white glove service, where we find a rockstar VA for you. So as normal three things we’d love for you to do we’d really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to the podcast on your phone, support on YouTube, by hitting the subscribe button and clicking on the little bell to get reminders. Number two, give us a rating. You know, we’d love five star, but just give us a rating, make a comment below the video, ask us another question. We want to get the word out on, on what we’re doing. And then number three is go to hiremyva.com for more information on some of the stuff that we talked about, but especially about our course and community, what’s involved, what you get.
Dave Braun
01:16:12
And then you’ll discover a little bit more about our white glove service and can sign up right there or contact us if you have any questions. So remember though, even without experience, you’ll learn how through our course in community powerful Q and a sessions that we’ve got, you will learn how to prepare for our higher end, thrive with virtual assistants and you’ll build a better business. No question about it. Larry and I are helping folks right now as we speak. And we’d love to help you too. So just go to hiremyva.com for more information. Yeah.
Larry Broughton
01:16:43
Yep. Hey, we really do love the folks who are following us. We love the bumper watch and that’s we love getting messages. DMs, emails, comments from you. So let’s, let’s build the bridge as Dave was talking about. Let’s build a bridge, just want to remind you, God bless you, God keep you, God hold you. Alright my friends. Go get ’em. We’ll see you soon!
Dave Braun
01:17:04
Bye. See you folks.
