The number one reason your design business isn't growing
The number one reason you don’t have enough clients and your business isn’t growing because you don’t put enough effort in to lead generation.
In fact my guess is that most of you probably don’t even know how many leads you need to bring in each day in order to hit your revenue targets - which is what I want to break down for you in this post.
I am also going to share lots of lead generation strategies that really work so you can start to be more strategic and consistent with your lead generation.
The biggest problem I see…
The biggest issue I see with people who aren’t getting as many clients as they want is that they are way too passive about lead generation.
Lead generation is something you need to be tackling daily from multiple angles. It’s NOT a passive exercise - it requires hard work, consistency, daily grind and putting yourself out there.
And the more lead generation you do the better you get out it. You start to realise what works and what doesn’t for your business, your personality and how you like to work.
In order to grow profitable, sustainable business you need a steady pipeline of leads - people who are at different stages in your sales funnel from just starting to get to know you all the way through to purchasing from you.
This is how you build a business with a steady stream of clients - not one that has a few clients one month and none the next.
Types of lead generation
Here are the main sources of where leads (and therefore clients!) come from:
✅ Content Creation - this is highly effective form of lead generation but is more of a ‘slow burn’. It takes time to build your community and the trust that is needed for them to purchase via content platforms (e.g. social media, YouTube, blog posts like this)
✅ Permission based marketing - this is outreach to people who have given permission for you to contact them - e.g. via email marketing, chatting in DMs with people who follow you, friends and family
✅ Cold Outreach - not a lead strategy I’m personally a fan of but this includes cold calls, cold texts, reaching out to people who don’t yet follow you on social media. I personally prefer to add value to someone’s life BEFORE I start contacting them to purchase from me - but this is a lead generation strategy that many people use so I thought it was important to include it in the list.
✅ Affiliates/Partnerships - partnerships with people who are already working with your ideal clients (e.g. trades, cabinet makers, suppliers, other designers, architects etc.)
✅ Paid Advertising - this includes things like social media advertising, paid media or old fashioned strategies like letterbox drops (which I personally don’t recommend!)
✅ Word of mouth - this one is probably your strongest and most reliable lead source but it only works if:
(a) you provide an exceptional service/product that is worth talking about
(b) you have already had clients
(c) you ask people for them!
What you want is a mix of all of these - you need leads coming in from multiple places. This reduces your risk by relying only on one source of leads and also gives you the most opportunity to find the largest number of leads.
Leads also don’t come from sporadically doing these activities. You need to have a proper lead generation strategy and then work actively and consistently at this FOREVER. :)
Lead generation never stops no matter how big your business gets.
The numbers
So I’ve hopefully convinced you of the importance of strategic and consistent lead generation.
What I want to do next is to break down the numbers to really drive the point home.
Most people aren’t focused on the right thing - they don’t think about the end goal (i.e. the revenue goal they want to hit) and then work backwards from there to how many leads that REALLY means they need to be attracting each month.
So let’s look at an example:
Let’s say you want to earn $100,000 in a year in top line revenue.
That’s $25,000 in revenue you need to bring in each quarter.
OK now let’s look at your project pricing.
Let’s say your average project is $5,000
If you want to earn $25,000 per quarter then you need 5 clients per quarter.
That’s just over one client per month.
OK that starts to sound doable, right?
But let’s now look at how many leads it really takes to get 5 clients - as that’s the step that most people forget to factor in.
Let’s say you convert 10% of your leads to paying clients.
(This is just a conversion number I’m choosing to help with our equation here but you need to be tracking your leads and conversions properly so you actually know what your conversion rate is)
That means that in order to find 5 paying clients you need 50 new good quality leads.
So each quarter you are aiming for 50 new leads.
And there are about 91 days in a quarter.
So that means that you need to bringing in a new, good quality lead in your business at least every second day to hit your target of $25,000 in revenue for that quarter.
So just to be clear…
In order to reach $100,000 annual revenue goal with a conversion rate of 10% you need at least one good quality lead to be coming in to your sales pipeline every couple of days.
Here’s examples of what a good quality lead might look like:
🎉 someone reaching out to you in your DMs to ask about your services
🎉 someone emailing you back in response to your helpful, regular, weekly email
🎉 someone calling you to find out more about how you can help them
🎉 someone booking in for a design consultation via your online booking form
🎉 a builder/cabinet maker sending a client they are currently working with to you to discuss their project
🎉 someone emailing you about working with you
🎉 a friend/family member or former client referring one of their friends your way
🎉 you reaching out to potential partners and finding a new partner who has a client that currently needs help (remembering that a partnership is reciprocal - if you want them to keep referring you then send work their way as well!)
🎉 someone responding to an ad you have up on social media (by the way I definitely DON’T recommend paid social media until your business is established and you have proof of product/market fit or you will simply throw your money down the drain)
So your focus every day then needs to be on how to bring in those daily leads!
So what does this example tell us?
⚠️ You need to start tracking your metrics ASAP if you aren’t doing so already so you know how many leads are in your sales funnel and what your typical conversion rate is.
⚠️ Your business probably isn’t growing because you just don’t have enough leads coming in (but you won’t know this until you start tracking properly)
⚠️ If you currently only have a lead coming in once a week or even less then this is probably why you aren’t hitting your revenue targets (although this of course depends on what your revenue target is).
⚠️ You need to know what revenue you are actually aiming for or you are running your business completely blind.
⚠️ You need to know how many leads you are trying to attract every day/week so you can stay on target to reach your revenue goals.
⚠️ You need to use a metrics tracker and then plug in your own numbers so you know what you’re aiming for. How many leads do you need to be bringing in to really hit the revenue targets you have set? You may be surprised!!!
⚠️ If you’re running your business blind and don’t know your target numbers you will never build something that is sustainable AND profitable.
Lead Generation Ideas
Need some lead generation ideas? Here’s some to get you started:
telling everyone you know
having a website that converts
using Facebook groups
posting regular (helpful) content across multiple platforms
creating a piece of weekly pillar content
finding strategic partners to collaborate with
sending finished projects to blogs/media/magazines for publication
asking your existing clients to refer you
collecting email addresses and sending weekly value
using paid advertising
5 day challenge
lead magnets
improve your SEO
Instagram stories (that are actually interesting/engaging and show your face - ideas here for that)
And if you want to go deeper and learn some real strategies and how to implement these then that’s what I unpack in my Lead Generation business short course.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
Lead Generation Short Courses for Designers and Architects
DO YOU WANT TO….
Find more clients?
Bring in more revenue?
Learn lead generation strategies that actually work and will help you to find more clients (and make more money!).
Most business owners are far too passive when it comes to trying to find clients. Lead generation is generally something people don't do well.
In this course I teach you 13 different lead generation strategies that you can 'pick-n-mix' to implement each and every day - a bit like an old fashioned sweet shop! 🍭
A core idea underpinning this course is that lead generation must become a DAILY activity in your business.
These aren't time consuming activities - they are quick things to do each day that should take you about 15 minutes each morning (and ideally each evening as well).
This is a course you will want to come back to over and over again to study different strategies and add more into the mix all the time.
