Tweaking $100M Leads: Proactive 4 and the Paid 4

Introduction

While we might dream of delivering outcomes so impactful word spreads like wildfire, the reality is it can help to pour some fuel on those flames. In his book "$100M Leads", Alex Hormozi provides a blueprint for acquiring warm leads.

He also included several journal-like stories to help lock in concepts along the way. The goal of this series is to get down to brass tacks when applying the Leads book to RevOps.

Definitions

What is a Lead?

Alex defines a lead as "a person you can contact" and engaged leads as "people who show interest in the stuff you sell". Those work.

Familiarity Type: Warm / Cold

• Warm = people who know us / people we have permission to contact / connection

• Cold = people who don't know us / people we don't have permission to contact / stranger

Message Type: Private / Public

• Private = 1-to-One / personal

• Pubic = 1-to-Many / impersonal

The Core 4

With these basic parameters, Alex identifies 4 ways we can individually obtain leads. His Core 4 are:

• Warm Outreach

• Cold Outreach

• Content

• Ads

The 4 Lead Getters

Is someone helping us?: Yes / No

Alex identifies helpers in our quest for the Core 4 as:

• Customers

• Affiliates

• Employees

• Agencies

Straighforward enough. Here are four tweaks to help focus our efforts.

Tweak 1: Word of Mouth

In the book, Alex combines the concepts of Word of Mouth and Customers, emphasizing the importance of satisfied customers as the driving force behind spreading the word about a product or service. Logically, he links Customer Referrals to the Customer lead getter. However, this part of his model may limit any proactive lead-getting in that quadrant (1-to-1 Warm via helper) to simply making a better Offer, which was covered via the Value Equation in his first book.

To address this, one idea is to consider Word of Mouth as an indicator of product-market fit, labeling it as a precursor, and therefore separating it from proactive lead-getting strategies. What we can do instead with Customers, is incentivize them to pass us warm leads by offering a credit on future support or an actual commission.

Tweak 2: Map Each Lead Getter to only one of the Core 4

In the book, Alex introduces the Core 4 essentially as actions and the 4 Lead Getters as people, which makes theoretical sense. In practice, however, each Lead Getter primarily performs only one of the Core 4.

For example, while Customers may refer people to us, they probably aren't going to run paid ads on our behalf (and we're probably not going to ask them to). Only Agenices would do that. So, rather than saying any of the 4 Lead Getters (i.e. Customer, Employee, Affiliate, and Agency) "can" do the Core 4 for us, I think it's simpler to map them to the Core 4 individually. And, because we pay the 4 Lead Getters to do this, I'm referring to them here as the Paid 4.

Tweak 3: Swapping Affiliates and Employees in the model Infographic

Thirdly, Alex maps Cold Call from the Core 4 to the Affiliate Lead Getter. And, he maps Content to Employee. Alex does this because he's thinking from the perspective of the audience being targeted. Affiliates have their own audiences, which from our perspective are cold. Whereas, if we're making content, it is served from our perspective to our own warm audience. So, mapping paid Cold-Calling to Affiliates and mapping paid Content to Employees makes sense, right?

From that perspective, yes. But if you had to outsource one or the other, would it be creative or live calls? If it's me, I'm trusting Affiliates to develop their own content for their own properties in exchange for a commission. This is what Affialiates do well, at scale, in their own voice, to their own audiences. On the other hand, there's a sense of connection when an organic Employee (team member) Cold Calls a potential prospect vs. hiring that out to a call center. So, given the choice, I'm paying Employees to do my "prospecting" for qualified leads... and therefore mapping Content to Affiliate and Cold Call to Employee.

So, while Employees could create content for our own audience, or warm call our customers, or call a cold list, for simplicity, it helps me to think of them as doing the one thing outsiders might not, cold calling, and to trust Affiliates to get in front of other warm audiences (that are unknown to us).

In summary, when it comes to the 4 Lead Getters (i.e. Paid 4), we agree that a Referral is typically coming from a Customer and paid ads would be run by an Agency. Where we deviate, especially from a RevOps perspective, is in Alex's depiction of in-sourcing Content creation (Employee) and out-sourcing cold outreach (Affiliate).

Tweak 4: Renaming Core 4 and the 4 Lead Getters ---> Proactive 4 and the Paid 4

This may seem semantic, and tecnically it is, but if we are thinking of the Core 4 and 4 Lead Getters less as Actions and People and more as Unpaid and Paid channels, and if we're going to swap two of the quadrants and re-map "Customer" as paid vs. unpaid, then renaming them can add some clarity.

Introducing, instead of the Core 4 and the 4 Lead Getters, the Proactive 4 and the Paid 4...

Proactive 4 List View:

Paid 4 List View:

The 4 Compensations List View:

...with the caveat that a great product, and unpaid word-of-mouth create the fire onto which the fuel of the Proactive 4 and the Paid 4 can be poured.

Conclusion

When it comes to acquiring warm leads, start proactively with:

• Warm Referrals

• Cold Calls

• Content

• Ads

Then, Scale by paying for:

• Customer Referrals

• SDR Cold Calls

• Affiliate Content

• Agency Ads

There's an old saying that the thesis and the antithesis make the synthesis. Whether you go with this take or the orginal from the Leads book, hopefully you're able to simplify and synthesize your approach to acquiring warm leads (which is the measurable output of your Marketing)!