How to get leads is the wrong question

As a founder you are supposed to think big, but the pressure makes you think narrow.

Take getting leads for example, the question I see asked most.

And the answers I see given are all… unsatisfactory.

Actually that’s wrong, they are all surface-level satisfying. Very moreish in fact.

Quick wins and guaranteed results, when as leaders we should know deep down that things aren’t that simple.

Let’s be generous, the stress and demands of making payroll, staying profitable and growing make us suggestible.

We become open to the quick fix. The surefire way to get more leads we think we can copy. That it’s just a numbers game. And we find plenty of people with solutions to sell who tell us that we’re right. It is just an amount of emails or DMs, a positioning exercise, a template, reply template. TEMPLATE. TEMPLATE.

Replying ‘template’ is satisfying. The template itself… 😑.

Something in our lizard brain that knows how important those leads are is ready to believe.

Stress tightens us up, we stop seeing it big, we drop everything and work on what we decide is our number one priority, finding someone who will buy and finding them now.

And so we ask the question.

How do I get leads?

We ask that question in forums and search engines and AI chats.

And we want the satisfying answer.

Something that will work for me short term with the steps to follow spelt out.

The unsatisfying answer: it depends. By that I mean “It depends” is the unsatisfying answer, not that it depends what makes an answer unsatisfying. Though that is actually also true. I rest my case.

We ignore it.

And so we get satisfying answers. Of course we do. The places we search prioritise answers. If they don’t give us answers, we stop visiting. So answers we get.

This isn’t Big Search’s fault though.

We demand satisfying answers of each other as well. We upvote a step-by-step guide. We subscribe to a newsletter which delivers the playbook. We get what we ask for.

And so our business is as good as our questions.

How do I get leads?

When things seem tight or our desperation levels are raised because we’ve just started and we want to survive or because the market is throwing us curveballs.

Or because the answer we had stops working.

You can ask the question again. Or maybe it’s time to change the question. Why did I get leads? Why does that business I want to be like get leads? Or if you’ve ever bought anything ever, why did I become a buyer?

These questions are frustrating, because the answers are further away. They’re not the satisfying answers straight out of the satisfying answer bank, because they involve us and everything that makes us different.

Why am I different?

Oh, good question.

A question that might start you down the path of what could work for you long term.

There are good differences and bad differences.

The good difference is your uniqueness. Your mix of skills and beliefs. Your secret recipe.

But sometimes the differences are the reason those off-the-shelf tactics aren’t working, you just aren’t in the same position as that person in terms of size or credibility. Or it’s an outside factor like the market you are in or the macroeconomics.

Your recipe doesn’t have the same ingredients. The tactic depends on something you don’t have.

Sometimes the differences aren’t a quick fix. The size of your reputation, the number of relationships you have, the amount of time you’ve been in business, your previous work.

The ingredient here is time.

Time is unsatisfying.

But team, this is a good thing. If all the answers to “how do I get leads?” were quick fixes, everyone would have leads, and therefore no one would have leads.

For your business to exist, there needs to be a barrier to entry. There needs to be some reward for actually being good.

So how do I get good?

Lovely question! I am actually incredibly proud of you for getting this far and asking this question.

And I’m also nervous. Because there’s a part of your brain that’s still holding out for the satisfying answer.

How do you get the relationships, reputation, credibility and a history of great work?

What should you reply with to get those?

You get them the same way you get leads.

You embrace “it depends”.

You find the right question, with the unsatisfying answer, and then consistently show up and do the work over a longer period of time than you currently find comfortable to think about.

You’ll never answer it.

But if you never stop asking it.

You’ll be good.