Podcast Episode 4: Mastering the Art of Lead Generation
Welcome to The 255, where we make business Easy.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the complexity of running your business or unsure about the right steps to grow profitably, you’re in the right place.
I’m Arnold Shields, and I specialize in breaking down complex business challenges into simple, actionable steps that anyone can understand and implement.
In this podcast series, we’ll talk about a powerful framework I’ve developed called The 255.
It’s all about the 2 Fundamentals, 5 Multipliers, and 5 Foundation Stones that serve as the blueprint for building a thriving, sustainable business.
Whether you’re just starting out or running an established company, this framework gives you the tools to make smarter decisions, increase profitability, and unlock the full potential of your business.
Why listen to The 255? Because running a business shouldn’t feel overwhelming.
My mission is to make even the most complicated aspects of business easy to grasp and practical to apply.
From understanding cash flow to leveraging growth multipliers, I’ll share strategies and insights to help you take control of your business and build long-term value.
In the last couple episodes we talked about cash flow and risk, which is the two fundamentals of a business. Cash flow and risk need to be considered and part of every business decision you make.
What we're going to do now is kind of build on that a bit more because there's a number of layers to the 255 framework.
We're going to build into the 5 multipliers of the 255 framework.
The 5 multipliers are Leads, Conversion Rate, Average Dollar Sale, Contribution Margin, and Valuation Multiple.
So, we have 5 multipliers.
If we increase one of these and we get grow linear in a straight line, increase more than one and we create exponential growth.
As we discussed in the first episode, we don't have to find massive increases in leads, conversion rate, average dollar sale to create extraordinary increases.
We just need to have small increases applied consistently.
We just need to increase our leads by a few percent each month.
A new video, a PPC campaign, an ebook, an extra email that we send out, new products that we develop.
In fact, small increases are often better because businesses can easily adapt to the changes rather than a massive one off boost that almost breaks the business in terms of time, staff and inventory and in particular cash flow.
What is Leads
So what are leads?
Well, leads are essential people that you can present an offer to potential customers in order to make a sale.
You need someone to be present to present your offer. And that's what leads represent. And how we measure leads will vary depending on your business.
A lawyer's definition of a lead will differ from someone running an e commerce store, a plumber or a retail shop.
How we measure leads will depend on how long your sales conversion cycle is.
Service providers are going to have generally longer conversion cycles. People need to know more before they're willing to pay more for it.
Expensive products will or complicated products are going to need longer conversion cycles with a need for education.
E commerce products generally have very short conversions.
Sales conversion cycles for a product on an Amazon store, the conversion cycle is probably in the minutes or even seconds.
The key is to be able to present an offer to them.
However, not all leads are created equal. If you count leads too early stage, when they're not ready to buy, they're not really effective leads.
When we ran a giveaway once to develop an email list, the problem was it worked really well in the initial instance, but then the giveaway ended up on a Facebook group for giveaways and contests.
And so we end up with thousands of people who entered our contest.
But they're not really effective leads because they were never going to buy our product but just to win free stuff with their contest email.
This exchange of information opens a door for communications and it's how your business can continue to continue the conversation, nurture the relationship, and ultimately guide them towards making a purchase.
Without that contact information, you're missing a vital link in turning that interest into action.
So how do we measure leads? Well, it's going to be different for each business and industry.
An E commerce business or an Amazon business.
It's whether purchase can happen online and instantly it's going to be sessions or unique users.
For lawyers, it might be meetings or a sales meeting or an inquiry that calls for new work.
It could be the size of your email list or the growth in the size of your email list.
In order for it to be a lead, you need to be able to provide them with an offer that they can accept. It might be an add to cart button on a website, a phone call, a face to face meeting.
Why is this important? Because you might have 5 million TikTok followers.
But if they can't buy from you, are they actually a lead? No.
They'll go into your leads funnel but we’ll circle back on that.
Lack of leads is the most common problems that we see with most small businesses.
Yep, many businesses have no lead generation strategy or no process for finding, developing, nurturing new potential customers.
So I'll give you some signs of a leads generation problem.
Often they'll take on every job that comes their way because they can't afford to let any go.
And as a result, they take on jobs that are not profitable or work with people who do not value what they've got to offer.
You don't want to have to work with everybody.
If you're running a service business or if you're running a product business, you want to work with people or you want to sell to people who are prepared to pay or willing to pay the full price.
Another sign of leads generation problems in a business, the business owner says, well, I convert all my sales.
This reveals a number of problems.
One, they've got enough leads and their price is too cheap and they end up being super busy and don't have time for anything because they're just so busy accepting every job and they never have any money.
Another sign of a leads problem is they have volatile sales.
So they're busy one month and nothing the next. Because they don't have a lead system that runs all the time.
They work like a madman getting the work done.
And when that runs out, then they do marketing for a month or two and then the cycle continues.
Without a regular inflow of new leads, they're always struggling, never able to move beyond their current poor position.
They can't afford to get new employees. They can't actually work on their business.
Imagine how different your business would be with a consistent inflow of new leads that happens on autopilot. A consistent inflow of new leads means that you have stability and you can use those leads to start optimising your conversion rate.
Leads in eCommerce
Let's talk about leads in an E commerce business like Amazon.
So if you sell on Amazon Marketplace, leads are really easy to measure.
Amazon's got a report on that which will show you sessions for your entire all your products as well as for each product.
And so let's look at how we can increase the sessions in an Amazon business.
We can launch a new product. Launching new products on Amazon automatically increases leads.
There's a cash flow cost in terms of the new inventory and a risk it doesn't sell.
But launching new products will increase your leads because each product's coming from the search results and each product has a buy box or add to cart button.
We can also increase advertising, we just simply increase the bid price and spend.
Or we can start launching new campaigns targeting new keywords.
The cost of PPC will affect your contribution margin if it's greater or less effectively than your tacos of the rest of your products.
But you got to consider that.
And you could run external traffic from Amazon to Amazon, from social media, from Google advertising, from your own email list or website.
If you collect the 10% attribution bonus discount along the way, you're effectively increasing your leads multiplier and increasing your contribution margin multiplier.
And you can increase leads by ranking better for more keywords.
This is the process of continually optimising, which not enough people do.
So how do you measure and define leads in a service business?
Well, depend on your business and your industry and how long that sales conversion process is.
A pest controller, emergency plumber or electrician will measure leads by how many inquiries they get, either by phone or email or by website forms.
There needs to be an upstream effort to collect their emails and phone numbers so that you continue to market them in the future to bring customers back to buying again, but also have another chance at selling to those who didn't convert the first time.
Lawyers, accountants, consultants will measure sales leads on how many meetings or inquiries they have each month or each week.
The sales cycles are longer and as a result they need to have a sales funnel that educates and builds trust and moves them forwards to the point where they can make them an offer which is a meeting or an email or a phone call.
In a service business with a longer sales cycle, measuring website visitors is essential—but these visitors often fall into the category of opportunities or marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).
To move them further along the funnel, we need to bring them in at the top, ensuring they’ve discovered you and engaged with your content.
Think about it: they might have found you through a Google search, clicked on an ad, or watched a video on YouTube but they might not yet be ready to buy.
The question is, how can we increase leads for service businesses?
Moving Leads thru the Funnel
Once you’ve attracted marketing-qualified leads—people visiting your website, downloading an eBook, or engaging with your content—the next step is to convert them into sales-qualified leads.
How do you do that? By creating a clear and compelling call to action.
This could be something like “Call us,” “Book a meeting,” or any step that gives you the opportunity to present them with an offer.
But here’s the thing: for your business to truly thrive, you need an evergreen lead generation strategy.
This means building a system that doesn’t just work today but continues to bring in potential customers for the long haul.
Ideally, it’s a sustainable, cost-effective approach—something that doesn’t rely entirely on paid ads but instead leverages lasting, organic methods.
So, how do you create this kind of strategy? Let’s break it down.
One of the first steps to evergreen lead generation is creating high-quality content. Content is king.
Whether it’s blog posts, how-to guides, case studies, or videos, your content should provide lasting value and stay relevant over time.
For example, we have videos and blog posts on our website that still generate leads and new customers years after they were originally created.
These resources work like an always-on tool for your audience—educating, solving problems, and demonstrating your expertise.
Tools like eBooks and webinars can double as lead magnets, offering value in exchange for contact information.
And platforms like YouTube are great for hosting videos that continuously attract new leads, delivering consistent results over the long term.
But content alone isn’t enough—optimizing for search is critical. If people can’t find your content, it won’t help.
That’s where evergreen SEO comes in. Focus on keywords with lasting relevance and optimize your website to rank high in search results.
This ensures a steady stream of organic traffic that keeps your funnel full.
Leverage social media to build visibility and engagement. Social platforms aren’t just for posting—they’re for building relationships.
Share your evergreen content regularly, interact with your followers, and participate in industry-specific groups to establish authority and grow your reach.
Nurture leads through email marketing. Email is a powerful tool for turning interest into action.
Offer lead magnets like free templates or exclusive discounts to encourage sign-ups.
Then use automated campaigns to keep the communication personalized and valuable.
This keeps your business top-of-mind and builds stronger connections with your leads over time.
Finally, look for opportunities to build strategic partnerships and referral sources.
Collaborating with complementary businesses or incentivizing referrals can expand your reach and bring in quality leads.
By focusing on these evergreen strategies, you’ll create a lead generation system that keeps working for you—day after day, year after year.
That's about it for this week on leads.
Leads and how to generate them is a topic we're going to come back to and it's something that needs in depth discussion and explaining how they work for each business.
And we're going to spend more time and get some experts in as well to talk about that.
But what I want you to think about today is just how your leads are generating.
How are you? Where do you get your leads? Write down a couple of different ways.
Write down 10-15 different ways you can generate more leads and then order those in terms of cost and time.
Some of them are going to be really quite easy to do and put in place and others are kind of more difficult and take more time and far more expensive.
But it's just about creating these systems of leads that we're looking at. Small increases in leads.
We don't have to build anything massive. If we look at people who have got a million views a month on YouTube, it's not because they've got one particular video on there.
In most of the cases they've got hundreds of videos all contributing a little bit.
And that's what we need to think about is okay, if we do a blog post a month or a video a month or how's that going to.
That builds up over time.
Now we have blog posts since 2009 and they all don't contribute massive numbers, but combined they generate quite a lot of traffic.
What I want you to think about today is just where do you get your leads from?
How would we be measuring those leads? In the next episode we're going to be talking about conversion rate and putting on another layer into this 255 framework.
Thank you for tuning into today's episode of the 255 framework, and I look forward to diving deeper into the next episode as we continue to explore the various layers of the 255.
If you've enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe on Shopify or Apple podcast or YouTube so you don't miss upcoming episodes.
If you've got any questions or topics you'd like me to cover, reach out to me via LinkedIn, Arnold Shields.
I'd love to hear from you and include your questions in future discussions.
Once again, I'm Arnold Shields. And this is The 255. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.