Mark Harbert: 0:15

All right, what is happening, everybody? Today we are going to talk about three steps to getting leads that convert into sales. Now, this is definitely one of those things that a lot of people wonder about. They get leads, but they get no sales. There's a simple three step formula that I learned several years ago that has really proven to be very simplistic, and it can really help you when it comes to getting leads and also getting sales with those leads. It's not very hard to generate leads. Everybody can generate leads.

Mark Harbert: 0:54

There's many different ways to go about generating leads, and a lot of people will ask that question how do I generate leads? And it's really the wrong question. The right question is which method should I choose? And so it's not a matter of there's just a gazillion ways to generate leads. I mean, I could rattle off 10 right now. You just have to choose what you want, what you're looking for and what's going to work for you and what plays into your strengths. So that is very important as well. So I'm going to share with you this morning these three steps, or these three, you know, three part framework, if you want to call it, that's fine as well, but before we, I tell you that I want to share with you a little bit of an example, because I think that this can really provide a path for you to understand.

Mark Harbert: 1:51

Now, one of the things that I have seen in literally training thousands upon thousands and thousands of students over the years, and even up until recently, that one of the things that hurts people from actually moving forward in their business is that is this confusion haze. They have this haze where they're not real sure where to start. They've got all kinds of information and it's just in their head and they're not sure where to start. So I went over to on Sunday a friend of ours. Their two year old boy was having his birthday party, just turned two, and, matter of fact, they just moved into the house about a month and a half before that, so about a month and a half ago and I get to the house and my buddy is standing there in the garage with a couple other people as we walk up the driveway and I'm like, hey, man, love, your new house Looks great. He's. Oh man, don't look at this garage, it's crazy. So you look in the garage and there is there's stuff everywhere. There's tools everywhere You've got look like lawnmower parts. There's stuff all over the garage and it's. You look at it and you're like, man, this garage really needs to be cleaned up, but you're not really sure where to start.

Mark Harbert: 3:08

And that's how many people feel when it comes to their online business. Also, they're thinking to themselves I've got all these parts, I've got all this stuff, but I don't know how to put it together into a cohesive way to make it work. And this is why many people get stumped today, because they don't have a plan of action. They don't know how to put it all together. So today, I'm hopeful that I can give you a little bit of that to help you put some of it together, so to speak, so that you can go out and make a difference in your business. So one of the things that I had learned a couple of years ago was this very simple three-part formula framework process, but it is build, engage, sell. So build your audience, engage your audience, sell to your audience. All right, and that little simple three-step formula or three-part formula or three-step process has helped me and many other people really define a very simplistic way of looking at your business. So what I'm going to do is we're going to go in a little bit of depth about these three things so that you can understand them better and put them into practice in your business. All right, so let's dig into the very first one, which is building your audience. This is really step one. This is tier one. This is the very first step out of the gate that you need to be focused on, and the goal here is to produce leads. Okay, our goal is to produce leads for our business.

Mark Harbert: 4:47

Now, leads are a very important part of your business. Now, it's pretty funny because just recently, I had somebody reach out to me and they said I don't want leads, I just want customers. And I thought you don't get the process because in order to get customers, you've got to have leads, and leads are essentially people that raise their hand. They are people that say, hey, I'm interested in what you have. I'm giving you permission to give me more information. Okay, it doesn't mean they're ready to buy yet. It just means that they've raised their hand and they're ready to buy and said I'm willing to look at more information and see what you got. Okay, so that's very important and a very important distinction, because without leads, you can't get sales. Without leads or people to talk to, you can't get people to purchase your offers, your products and your services. So leads are a crucial step in that process. So the next step here in building an audience now we're talking about building the audience right now.

Mark Harbert: 5:48

So, first and foremost, if you want to build an audience, you need to know who that audience is. So you have to take the time to sit down and create your customer avatar. Who is the perfect prospect for you? Who do you want to work with? What do they look like? Give them a name. Where do they shop? Where do they hang out? Who do they follow? These are the questions that you want to answer. What problem are you solving? If you can nail down your customer avatar and really get clear on who it is that you want to serve, you can serve at a much higher level. So take the time to learn who your customer avatar is. Now. I recently did a video training all about this. You can check it on my YouTube channels. As a matter of fact, you can go to my blog at markharvardcom. I did a training on how to use chat GPT to create your customer avatar, so you might want to check that out, All right.

Mark Harbert: 6:45

So very important to know who you're serving, because if you don't know who you're serving, you can't speak directly to them. It's crucially important that you understand who it is you're speaking to. This is important across any business. Doesn't matter what niche you're in, doesn't matter what product you're selling. You have to know who it is that you're selling to you. Every single corporation that puts out a product has a demographic in mind. When they go to sell a product, they have a very clear avatar. They know who it is, they know who they're speaking to and they know who is predisposed to purchase their product first and foremost. All right.

Mark Harbert: 7:26

So once you've created the customer avatar, the next step is to choose the platform that you're going to market to them on. So we have all of these platforms. We have Facebook, instagram, tiktok, twitter, which is now X, we have Pinterest. We have all these platforms and once you start to create content which is a great way to build your audience you obviously want to get your content out as many of these platforms as possible, but you ultimately want to hone in on just one and really work that one. So once you determine the customer avatar, where are they hanging out? You have to determine that. You have to find out where are the majority of my audience hanging out, and then I want to make sure that I go there and engage with them and we'll talk about engaging here in just a moment. That's very important is to choose a platform and master it. Now, the thing is, with choosing a platform, there's many things within that, too. I'm a big fan of when you're choosing a strategy. Have a paid strategy, have a free strategy, have a paid and a free and ultimately, if you can do them both on the same platform, that's really what you want to accomplish, because you're getting the best of both worlds on one platform, all right. So make sure you think about where your audience is, where they're hanging out, and then make that your go-to platform in order to build that audience.

Mark Harbert: 8:57

Okay, the next part of building the audience is content creation. If you want to attract an audience that loves what you do, they love what you share, they love the products and services that you want to offer, then you have to create content and content. Number one, the number one type of content you need to create is video. Whether it's live video, whether it's TikTok videos or short form videos. Really, you need to choose a content. Creating content and video is going to be the number one way that you do that. People do business with those they know and trust, and video is the best way to accomplish that in the online digital world. So make sure that you're creating content on a regular basis.

Mark Harbert: 9:48

Now content video content serves two purposes. It can serve a purpose of generating leads, and it can also serve as a way to nurture leads. Nurture leads, in other words, there will be people that are not inclined to buy from you right now, but I know I've literally sold millions of dollars of products online over the last several years and I will tell you, I've had people on my email list who purchased something, that joined my email list two years prior and then sent me a message and said I've been following you for two years. I've never bought anything from you until now, and I've literally had people tell me that. So nurturing people and helping them get to know who you are is a very important thing, and content creates that mainly video content. So make sure you keep that in mind and that's very important.

Mark Harbert: 10:48

So how else do you build the audience? It's all about engagement as well, so you need to engage with people in the comments of your videos. This is another way that you build an audience. This is another way you get an audience to start trusting you. You get your audience to look at you as an authority on a subject. Your audience starts to look at you like, hey, this person is not out of reach Some of even the biggest marketers out there. One of the people that really stand out in my mind is Gary Vaynerchuk Gary Vee. Now, if Gary Vee, he's actually very responsive to his audience and he has a massive audience. I'm not saying you want to expect to get a reply back every single time, but I'll tell you I've never seen anybody like really connect with an audience like Gary Vee. Now, I love Gary Vee If you can get past all the F-bombs, which don't bother me I was in the Navy, but the truth is that a lot of people can't get beyond that, but they're missing out on so many great lessons that he teaches when it comes to social media marketing. But he has a very rabid audience that love him and follow everything that he does. So doing that is a great way.

Mark Harbert: 12:04

Now, the other way that you build an audience is to build an email list. Now, an email list is the number one business asset that you need to be building. I'm telling you, I have watched huge influencers build huge email lists and then never email their list. I know because I've joined some of them. I followed some of these top influencer who have massive social media influence, huge amounts of followers. I've literally joined their email list and yet I never get emails from them, and that's a problem. And the thing is, while these people might be making money, they could be making a whole lot more money if they were creating an email list and actually using that email list. So very important that when you build a list, you have to email them. Okay, very important, all right. So these are the things you want to focus on building the audience, because all of these methods, all of these ways, the things that I've mentioned, what's going to happen is you now have permission to share information with these people. This is where it's vital to build the audience. So you do that through what we talked about and you do it consistently over time.

Mark Harbert: 13:20

So let's move on to the second part, which is engaging with your audience. So there are a myriad of ways that you can engage with your audience. So I'm going to give you an example of a client of mine, somebody that I work with, been working with for the last couple of years really, and I absolutely love my client, bob Clark. Some of you guys might know Bob, but Bob, one of the things we talked about with him was starting to engage the audience. So Bob started doing a weekly training that he does. It's a 30 minute training that he does every single week. He uses it to build his list, but he also uses it to share good quality information with his audience and then, when he has an offer guess what? They are more apt to want to buy through him or via his link or his products and services that he offers. But that has proven to be a really, really high value thing. That he does each and every week.

Mark Harbert: 14:20

So engaging your audience is not difficult. It's not hard at all. It's just putting yourself out there and letting your audience know hey, come check out. I'm doing this video right now. This is a way for me to also engage with you. Creating content not only generates leads, but it also nurtures leads as well, and I've heard people say, oh, you don't need to nurture, you don't need that. Okay, you and I can agree to disagree, because I just know what has helped me and what has helped me to go on and have the success I have had in my business, and it's through constantly building that relationship with the people that give you the permission to contact them.

Mark Harbert: 15:06

So another great way to engage your audience is through, again, social media, but commenting. So when somebody takes the time to comment on a post, you want to make sure that you step in there and comment back at the bare minimum, like it. Okay, now I understand, when you get to a certain point that might not always be possible, but the truth is that, especially in the early part of your career, when you're really trying to engage people, is you really want to make sure you're liking and commenting back. I'm telling you the power of a compliment on a comment is a massive way to engage your audience but to also give them a warm and fuzzy. Now I'm not suggesting that you do it in a fake way. Like I love to compliment people. For me it's just natural. Like I don't do it in a way just to get engagement. I do it because I genuinely see the best in people. I've trained my mind to look at people in a way that God sees them Really. That's my goal is to look at people the way God sees them, and for me that has worked incredibly well, because I don't want to see people's flaws. So when I'm giving, believe me, we all got them. But the truth is like, when you really start to focus on those, that's all you're going to see. So when I make a comment, it's genuine hey, man, I believe in you. Hey, you're awesome. Oh, I love that you have a beautiful family. Those types of comments.

Mark Harbert: 16:47

That is such an incredible way to connect with people genuinely, because if you can make people feel an emotion, guess what happens. They will remember you. They almost will never remember what you say, but they'll remember how you made them feel. Have you ever noticed, like, when you feel an emotion, what happens? Is it kind of sears onto your brain? The emotion is so there's so much intensity around an emotion and an emotion is a way to stamp on somebody's brain. And when you engage people in that way with genuine, real comments, you create that emotional connection between you and your prospects.

Mark Harbert: 17:32

That's an incredible way to really engage and connect with more and more people. So when you want to engage your audience, that is a great way to do it Now. There are a myriad of ways you can do this as well, doing lives like this. There's so many ways that you can connect through Zooms, where you do a group Zoom, maybe you do a group coaching session or something like that. There's other ways to do it Messaging back and forth in Messenger, text messaging connection. When you really start to grow and your audience gets bigger and bigger, you start to rely more on technology, like doing a Zoom or a Facebook live or a challenge of some sort. This gives you a way to engage with the audience.

Mark Harbert: 18:16

See, you can't just build an audience and then do nothing with it. You can't just build an audience and then, oh, I got something to promote. Now I'm going to promote it. Why am I not getting any sales?

Mark Harbert: 18:27

You left out the one part about engaging your audience consistently, because that's really what it comes down to. A lot of people wonder why do top earners online? Why do they seem to get all these sales when promoting something? Man, they just seem to get so many sales all the time, and here I am over in my corner and I can't get any. It's because they've invested the time in the people that have given them the permission to contact them. They've put in the time to engage the audience and that is where the sales come. So you can't leave out this part. It's crucially important.

Mark Harbert: 19:07

So many people wanna go from the build stage build the audience straight to the sale Doesn't work, not today. At least you might've been able to do that 15 years ago, where you could just build and sell, not anymore. It's now build, engage and then sell. So that is the three step process that we're talking about, the three steps that you wanna take. So let's move into number three, which is selling. So, selling to your audience. We have build your audience. We have engage your audience. Now we're going to sell to our audience. So selling is really an art. It's an art form, and it is an art form that has really morphed over the years.

Mark Harbert: 19:50

Okay, one of the things that I know about selling is that people don't like to be sold, but people do love to buy, and one of the things that I have adopted as a philosophy in my business is that when I do any type of training that eventually leads to an offer or a special offer that I'm doing, I always want people to come to that training and I want them to get so much value from it, whether they decide to buy or not. My goal is that they leave that training or selling a webinar or whatever it may be. I want them to leave feeling good, because when they leave feeling good like holy cow, that was crazy good value. Even though I'm not gonna purchase what he had, I got value out of it. Now some people like that. They say, don't do that. I don't listen to that because that's not the way I'm built.

Mark Harbert: 20:47

The way I'm built is I am going to make sure that you get value. You know why? Because you may know somebody that does need something deeper, like you may know somebody that, hey, they really want to dive deeper and they're willing to purchase a program. And you're gonna say, hey, you know what you want to learn about video, go see Mark Harvard. Like he's the guy. That's the way I think, because one person talks to one, that person talks to two, and so on. So for me, it's about making sure that you get value, regardless of whether you take action and buy or not. All right. So that is a huge part of selling today.

Mark Harbert: 21:25

Some people go straight for the hard sale and they twist arms and they do all kinds of things, which is exactly why they create a whole bunch of enemies, which is exactly why there are companies in the past that have been shut down because of that. Strong arming sales, twisting people's arm. Yeah, they made a whole bunch of money, but they also pissed off a lot of people in the process. So don't be one of those people. Overwhelm people with value, but also learn to sell in the process. I will always credit my good friend, ray Higdon, because I learned how to sell with value from Ray. Ray is a great teacher on that, and that's one of the skills that he taught me was how to sell, how to present in a way that gives people a lot of value, how to put a strong offer together and how to present it.

Mark Harbert: 22:19

That is one skill that if you can develop, especially today, when you do it the way I'm talking to you, when you build the audience, engage the audience and sell to the audience, by the time they get to a point where they're gonna purchase something, they feel like they've gotten so much value from you that they're just ready to purchase. It's like the law of reciprocity. Now, some people will poo that you know and that's cool. You do it. You do it your way, I'll do it mine and I'll continue to make sales. Okay, because I'm gonna do it in a way that holds me at myself to the highest level of integrity, and I'm gonna hold myself to that because I wanna make sure that people get value when they pull out their wallet. Now I'm gonna share with you right here, right now, one of the absolute worst examples of bad advice. The worst advice you could follow when it comes to online making money online is you've probably heard this before and it's people that say charge what you're worth. I think that is the absolute worst philosophy in the world Charge what you're worth. If I charged you what I'm worth, you couldn't afford me. See, that is the way I think, because I know that what I have and what I've learned and the skills that I've learned are way more valuable than probably you could afford. So here's what I do. My goal is to overwhelm people with value, like, even when they spend $500, $1,000 from me, I want them to go holy cow, I just got $20, $25,000 worth of value. The whole goal is creating not just satisfied customers, but creating raving fans.

Mark Harbert: 24:08

There is a book called Raving Fans Very simple book, very easy to read. I highly suggest you go buy that book. It was one of the best books I ever read. As a matter of fact, I got that book when I was still working in air conditioning in the early 2000s, so probably around 2004,. I got this book from my boss because he had given it to the entire fleet of techs and he wanted us to read this book. And I read that book and, man, it just changed my whole mentality about how I present and how I work with people. I don't want satisfied customers, I want raving fans. I want people to leave feeling like they ripped me off. That's really how I want it. That is how you create a raving fan base that loves you, that feels like they get more than they pay for.

Mark Harbert: 25:03

If you are not doing that, if you're just getting people feeling like, oh, I paid this much but I didn't quite get that value, or I got just about that value, then you know what that's not really a raving fan. So when you're selling, you want to make sure you have that Now. It's very important that you understand this goes back to the build stage. Okay, we're in the selling phase now, but you got to go back to the build stage and you got to make sure that who is your audience and what are you speaking to them. So here's what happens. All right, you want to make sure that any offer you present to that audience is in line with the reason that they're following you in the first place.

Mark Harbert: 25:48

So if I built an audience, all about this is why I think traditional advertising doesn't work very well. Okay, like radio ads, you might get some sales. I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm just saying I think radio, tv, things like that, they don't get as big a response on advertising as I think they could. Because here's the thing. Let me give you an example. If I create an audience all about dogs, dog training I'm all about training dogs and I'm a pet owner, I love pets. I'm all about helping you raise a happy and healthy dog, and then you have an offer that's all about cats. Guess what happens? That's out of alignment. It's out of alignment. That's not the reason they're following you. They're a dog lover, they want to know about dogs, and now you're talking about cats. You might get a few people that have cats, that love what you're talking about, but the problem is you're not going to get the kind of response that you would want.

Mark Harbert: 26:49

I have people hit me up all the time because they know I've got an engaged audience and they're like, hey, I'd love it if you maybe consider promoting our product. And I'm like, what's your product? And then they tell me I'm like that has nothing to do with my audience, has nothing to do with it. Why would I promote that? Like my audience would never buy what you have because it has nothing to do with the reason that they follow me. So you have to be that in tune with your audience to really understand it.

Mark Harbert: 27:18

Now, the longer you serve that audience, the more honed in you'll get. So don't feel like you gotta have it all figured out right at the beginning. But that is what also helps you to convert leads into sales. Being in alignment with why they're following you in the first place, all right. And you have to have the right offer at the right time. Now, not everybody's gonna buy every time, but I'll tell you again, there are people that will buy when the time is right and when you make that offer to them. If it's the right time and it fits a need that they have, they will buy it from you. All right, so I hope you got value from this. I hope that this helps you and I hope it gives you a little bit of a framework to function with it.