Sold or Selling

THE SIMPLE NEWSLETTER - ISSUE # 041

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about lead generation—not from a technical or tactical standpoint, but from a deeply human one. What if the most important part of building your funnel isn’t the strategy, but understanding who’s being sold first—you or them?

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ADAM'S THOUGHTS:

Funnels. Funnels. Funnels.

Every business struggles with lead generation. You can go out into the real world, shake hands, collect business cards, and build relationships—or you can pour endless money into SEO, ads, and digital campaigns.

But the question isn’t what to do. The real question is where to start.

Something that’s been front of mind for me lately is what I call the Six Sales to Success.

The first two are critical:

1. You have to sell yourself on a reason to speak with somebody.

2. Then, you have to sell that person on a reason to speak with you.

Those two sales happen before anything else—and they determine everything that follows.

Here’s the problem I see: most people start prospecting and lead generation without knowing which side they’re on. They don’t know if they’ve already been sold on why they want to speak to someone—or if they’re still trying to sell the other person on why they should speak to them.

That’s where all the confusion starts.

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ADAM'S LESSON:

If you can determine—right from the beginning—whether you’re sold on them or you’re selling them, the whole process changes.

When you’re sold on a reason to speak with someone, your funnel looks completely different. You can direct your resources and messaging precisely. You know why you want to speak with them, and all you have to do is sell them on that shared reason.

But when the person is cold—someone you don’t know yet, and you’re just targeting based on demographics—then your first sale is simply giving them a reason to talk to you. You’re not there yet.

That’s why Tom and I run our pre-buy experiences. When we’re selling someone on a reason to speak with us, we bring them into a space where we can then decide if we want to continue the conversation (are we sold).

Here’s what I’ve learned:

You must know whether you’ve already been sold on why you want to speak to someone—or whether you’re still selling yourself on a reason to engage.

That single distinction makes lead generation far simpler and far more effective. Because when you know who’s being sold and why, you know exactly how to talk to them.

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

We all need clients. But more importantly, we need the right ones.

- Adam

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