Episode 26: How to Generate More Leads and Sign More Clients with Business-to-Business Outreach

Hello, Hello, everyone. Today on the six Figure Systems podcast, we're going to be talking all about business-to-business outreach and how you can utilize that, uh, to assign more clients when you are trying to create a bigger audience and get more sales. So, with that being said, first and first. First and foremost, I'm going to be defining what business to business outreach is and how you can utilize it. And I'm also gonna be talking about what it is not and the many misconceptions that come with it. Then I'm gonna talk to you about how to build up the confidence to actually go out and get out of your comfort zone, get out of your bubble, and actually do some business-to-business outreach. And then I'm also going to give you a strategy that you can use, something that I teach my clients and has been extremely effective for them as well. So, first and foremost, what on earth is business to business outreach? If you were like me and didn't necessarily come from the business world, this term might be new to you. And one of the things that I have learned is that business to business outreach is an extremely effective way for you to get out of your comfort zone and position yourself well. So what I mean by business-to-business outreach is it means that you, as an entity, own a business, and then you go to people who are niche adjacent. So your niche is just a population of people you serve, and you think about how you could support them. For instance, let's say that you are a coach for ADHD, people who have ADHD, and you help them to become more productive and organized. I'm thinking about one of my clients as I'm, um, sharing this. One of the ways that she has found a really good business partner is talking with psychotherapists and therapists, or, um, psychiatrists and therapists. So they do the prescription, they do the diagnosing, and then she picks up where they leave off and gives them strategies once they have that diagnosis. So that's a really good niche, um, adjacent partnership. That means that there's no conflict of interest. Like, for instance, me working with another business systems coach and someone who is helping people, specifically with planning, managing leads, marketing and sales. That would be a conflict of interest. That would mean that, like, we both are probably working with the same people in the same capacity, and that's not a good business to business connection. A good business to business connection is where you're both serving the same population and in just in different ways, so that you can both help the population in some way. So when we're thinking about that. There are two. There's business to business outreach, and then there's, uh, it's nicknamed b. Two B, by the way. And then there's b to c, outreach. That is business to customer or business to client. I like to think about it, and that is like directly talking to people who are an ideal fit for you. So if I was meeting someone and they were a solopreneur, let's say they were a life coach or a graphic designer or a photographer, and I'm directly talking with them because they need my systems, that's something that's completely different. So when we're thinking about managing leads and bringing more people into your audience and nurturing your current audience, I think a lot of people get confused, and they think that the only way that they can talk to more people is just by, uh, focusing on the b, two c, or business to customer relationship, and only talking to people who are interested in their offer. But I want this to break your, like, mind and break your brain and think about how can you get outside of just the people who are in your current audience, who are a good fit for your offer, and think about who you could do a business-to-business relationship with. How can you start to do outreach and talk to them and get them excited and interested in your business? So you guys can do something that would benefit both people. It's mutually beneficial. So what? The way that the three types of business-to-business relationships I have gotten and worked with before is being a referral partner. So, for instance, if my accountant is amazing and she helps many solopreneurs and small business owners, and she refers them, refers me to them if she thinks that we would be a good fit. So you could reach out to someone who is another business that's niche adjacent, serves the same population. We both help business owners. I help them implement systems to create more work life balance, more impact, impact in less time, impacted income in less time, she helps them to do their taxes. So we are both serving the same people in two different ways, and we became referral partners for each other. I also refer people, if they don't have an accountant or for my clients, to them, because I'm not an accountant, I'm not going to help people to do their taxes. Of course, I help people with their finances and getting that in order, but I am not a professional, and I would not give tax information to somebody who is. That's what an accountant does. She went to school for that. She knows how to do that. I'm a professional. I know how to make the business systems. That's my specialty. That's why I focus on that. So that's a beautiful opportunity for you all to get these referral partnerships. Another thing that you can do is, with a niche adjacent person, is you can do collaborations. So, for instance, when I was a general, and I was also, like, a career coach, I would do collaborations with other coaches with different niches. So typically, I was working with people who wanted to make a change in their career. And even though I worked with people that were, like, 17 years old, all the way up to, like, 62, I think was my oldest career coaching client that I had at the time. I had many clients that were millennials and within the same age group that I was. And I met with another coach who also works with millennials that was a dating coach. And so we both met and we did a collaboration where we shared about what coaching was and shared about, like, different aspects of that with our audiences. She had millennials, I had millennials, and she shared about what dating coaching could be like for my audience, and I shared about what, um, career coaching would be like for her audience that way. Again, no conflict of interest, but we were also benefiting from having a. We both had audiences that were the same fit for each other, and then we were able to share about our expertise and how we could help that population in a different way than they were currently being served. Last but not least, they could also. There could also be opportunities for guests speaking and doing events, uh, and things like that. So, for me, this is a huge way that I did a lot of business to business outreach. And when I was thinking about who could use career coaching, I reached out to. At the time, I was helping people with confidence, time management, burnout, work life balance, and long term plans. And I was able to get speaking engagements for, um, NC State, which is my old university. So I got a speaking engagement. I would go and I would talk to different classes, I would talk to different clubs and organizations. I did the first year college, which is people who are undecided about what their major was. I was able to also, when I got those guest speaking engagements, people saw that I was doing that, and another friend of mine from college saw that I was doing speaking engagements at NC State and was like, hey, I run. I'm a part of this, um, networking group called, um. It was, um, women in, um, television and, um, communications. Wicked. I. And within her organization, I actually even had a paid speaking engagement. So it doesn't even have to be something that, like, you do and just do as a complimentary thing, which is what I did at the beginning. But you could even get paid to do business, to business outreach, and it is something that I would absolutely recommend that you start doing now for you. The next phase is how to get the confidence to actually show up and, uh, ask somebody if they want to be a referral partner. How do you actually have the confidence to send a message and ask for a collaboration? How do you have the confidence to speak in front of a completely new group of people that don't know you, they don't necessarily like you and have any reason to be following you. And that takes a lot of confidence and courage. So, one of the things that I do is, when I'm thinking about my business, I think about how I provide my service. And again, I'm thinking about serving a mutually beneficial audience, and I'm thinking about how could I help them in a way that this business isn't currently, nor wants to actually help this client. And so I think about these businesses, and I think it can be really tempting to go when you're doing something new, especially in front of a new audience or like, even a podcast, when you're not even in front of an audience, a lot of the time, you're just the two of you. I think it can feel really challenging, and you can be faced with a lot of insecurities when you go to talk to somebody new. It's normal, because our brains are failure verse, um. Um, there we're also. Our brains are failure reverse. Our brains don't want to be abandoned, and we don't want to be rejected, that creates a lot of, like, triggers for a lot of us, and it creates this fear around doing these business to business outreaches that I want to help quell, um, within your brain. So, for me, when I was thinking about getting the confidence to even, like, ask about doing a business partnership, one of the things that I thought about, and even when I'm, like, doing my podcast, by the way, this is something that helps me every time, is I know that there are people that know more about business than I do. There are people that probably know more about business systems than I do. There are probably people that also know how to get six figures and have different ways and processes around it. But I know that right now I'm speaking to you, and I know that whoever is listening to this podcast, whether it be this year or years into the future, really could use some help scaling their business. And they probably really want to have the work life balance that is going to create more time for them to have holidays with their family, to get their weekends back, uh, to be able to go to the soccer game without checking things in their business. And I know I've created the systems that can do that. And I know that you're in front of me right now, and I know that any business that I collaborate with, they also have people that I can help. And whenever I think about myself, in my experience, and then I keep focusing on, like, oh, my gosh, they don't know me. They might misunderstand what I have to say. I get really insecure and I shut down, and I don't even help the people that I know I could help. And my biggest thing for me is that I never want to hurt somebody. Like, I really like, that is a core fear of mine, is like, I never want anyone to feel hurt. I never want, um, any negative thing to come from me showing up in someone's life. And if I think that maybe I can't help them enough with every single thing, of course I'm going to shut down. I'm never going to do business to business outreach, even though I see how beneficial it could be for me. However, when I think about them and I get into thinking about how I could serve somebody, I actually even pull this up for my clients. Sometimes I'm like, there is somebody who is struggling and is working on the weekends, who is really in for me personally. In my business, they are doing their posting. They haven't maybe taken a vacation in months, maybe years within their business. They aren't spending any time away from their business because they don't have the systems that I do. And I'm like, literally going to Rome tomorrow. And I'm so excited because I've been able to take, like, 22 trips this year, which is just insane. And I know that the systems that I have can help these people. And even if they are someone in a, uh, community that I don't know, I'm willing to, because I never want somebody to be hurt. I know that if there is one person that I could help by doing the business to business outreach, one person who I could create a little bit more work life balance for, one person who I can help to get more sales because they're more consistent on social media, one person that I can have go from being complete crickets in their DM's to having a full, like, full of mocks every single day where they have people that they are actually excited to talk to, somebody who is terrified because their income keeps going up and down. And I teach them how to plan and make sure their income is, they can see the inconsistencies and mitigate that fear in their mind. I will do anything to get in front of those people because I know how hard it was to run my business without these systems, especially as a solopreneur. And I want to make sure that I do everything I can to help those people. So when you're feeling like, less than stellar about the places that you could do outreach with, and I'm going to create a PDF or just like a little downloadable Google sheet where I'm going to show you, the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to think of places that you could be a good referral partner with, people that you could do a collaboration with, or guest speaking, and you're going to come up with three ideas for each of those. And then I want you to think about. For every one person, I, uh, want you to think about what is something that you could give to the same audience and how could you serve them. So, for instance, when I was asked to do a speaking engagement for one of my clients companies, I was like, even though I have never sold insurance before, and I'm like, I've never. That has never been something that I've done before. I know that if I teach them this limiting, um, to empowering beliefs, I know I can help them and serve them and teach them how to become more confident, they can apply what I've learned to whatever circumstances that are for that person, I also. So I would go through and I would think about any way that you feel like, okay, maybe I'm not sure if I could really help them. And I would refute it with like, yeah, maybe I, um, might not be able to teach them the exact strategy to sell insurance, but I know that if they have the mindset where they can actually feel confident that this insurance is helping this one lady, then they're going to be more willing to go out and get there. So I want you to think about whatever you're feeling that your confidence is taking a hit. Maybe it's a little bit of imposter syndrome, maybe it's that you're feeling a little insecure, which is normal and all human. I want you to switch it to like, how could I serve them and how could I help them to get yourself into a state of confidence to then go out and implement this last strategy, which I want you to in this, um, same PDF, the same printable that I'm going to create for you. I want you to think about how you could reach out to people. And the way I recommend it is I reach out when I'm doing outreach and things like that. When I was doing, um, different clubs at NC State, I just found a list of all their emails. I literally googled all the clubs at NC State and I messaged all the people that were the contact information listed. A blurb. And I would recommend doing ten a day. That's what I tell my clients, but I would recommend you could do as many as you want. And I want you to write out a little script, a little blurb saying, hey, person. It's like, here's who I am, here's who I help. I think we serve the same audience and I would love to talk to you about, and I would have it in mind already, whether you want it to be a referral partnership, a collaboration, or guest speaking opportunity. And I would give them reasons why you should do that. So I would be like, I'm going to reach out. It's like, hello, person. And if you're speaking about guest speaking, then you speaking about guest speaking, then you could say, I am, um, a. Like, back in the day, I was like, I'm a career coach. I can do a presentation on time management. I've done it before and I would love to do it for your people. And then that got people to respond to me, be like, hey, I could use this or at least start the conversation and then we could go and have a deeper conversation from there. So in this PDF that I'm going to put in the show notes, the first thing I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you list what type of business-to-business outreach. Just an example for that you could reach out to for a, uh, referral partnership, someone that could get you a collaboration opportunity or guest speaking opportunity. Then I'm going to give you a prompt to help you to create more confidence. And I'm going to have you think about how you could serve them, really focusing on how you can help them. And then I'm going to have a little opportunity for you to write out a, uh, pitch, how you're going to pitch yourself, what is the exact words that you're going to say? And then I want you to reach out to ten people a day. I really do know that this is a huge strategy that I have, and this is where we do get to play a bit of a numbers game and we get to go and actually like, ask the stakeholders and decision makers if they would like to work with you and if they don't. Like, I reached out to, like, I think it was like 102 or something organizations, and six got back to me, but I doubled down on those six and I was like, can I do multiple? And then for that first year college, I did three different presentations for them. So again, one opportunity could come into a multitude. And this is work. I mean, like, for all my clients that do this. Like, one of my clients is speaking with Delta, another one speaking with Dell, another one is speaking with a women's group, another one, like, I mean, like, all of these different organizations, again, the collaboration with the therapist, another one's become referral partners with UMDH, um, other coaches. And so they'll refer people back and forth because they're a life coach as well, but serve a completely different need. So I want you to know that it's safe to do this and it works. So for my clients who are doing the presentations, they definitely get people from those. It doesn't always happen. I think I did around twelve presentations in 2022 alone, and only three of the twelve I actually converted clients from. But the other ones were just really great positioning, a really great opportunity for me to get in front of people, and I want to encourage you to do the same. So, uh, get out there, do some business-to-business outreach, get more sales, because you can help people. And this is a way that you can sign more clients within this year. And if you need that, um, part to help you manage leads, business to business connections are also part of your leads. It's something that, like, I have a separate, um, like, I have my clients keep track of that within their businesses. So for you, definitely keep track of those people and utilize the PDF that's in the show notes to help you get there. Other than that, I hope you have a wonderful week. Start reaching out to people, and I shall see you next week.