Compound Leverage

Issue #005

Hi Fellow Entrepreneur,

How's it going? I know my last newsletter was in October. I sincerely apologize for the lack of consistency.

I had a few personal and business things that took my attention away, but I have much to share with you. I hope you find what I write beneficial to your 2024 goals.

I vow to stay consistent in the future.

I know you are busy, so I'll get to the point.

Have you thought about automating prospecting?

There are a myriad of methods you can use to do it. One I found quite effective is running email campaigns with your favorite AI assistant (I work with Google Bard and ChatGPT; what’s your favorite AI Chat Assistant?), Google Sheets, Gmail, and GMASS. This is a topic that many of us face because there is never enough time in the day. I secured a six-figure deal through my agency with these methods in December 2023, so let’s get started so you can take what I’ve done further.

Building prospecting lists and sending outreach emails is vital to increasing your pipeline and revenue.

A study by HubSpot found that businesses that prospect 15x per month see 50% more qualified leads than ones who do it 5x a month.

No one goes into entrepreneurship to build prospect lists and set up email campaigns; without doing so, you weaken your chances of closing in on your revenue targets.

Leveraging AI Assistants and a simple automation setup can assist you in personalizing communication without sacrificing time on other high-value activities. One solution I use involves Google Bard, Gmail, Google Sheets, and GMass.

Let's walk through the steps.

Define your one customer with a Google Bard or ChatGPT Prompt.

Before embarking on any automation, preparation is critical. Clearly define what success looks like for you, not the outcome but the actions you can control to lead to success, which for us entrepreneurs is focusing on one customer with one specific problem that you offer one tangible outcome as the solution. That begins by using a simple process to define the customer persona and linking it to your lead generation workflow.

There are several methods out there to define a customer segment. I like to use an AI Assistant to perform this exercise by building a simple prompt.

Prompt: “You are a professional marketer working with me to build a customer profile for a cold email automation campaign I plan to develop with Google Sheets, GMASS, and GMail.

Act as my customer profile builder.

I call this profile EVERETT.

An EVERETT profile defines the best person to target for my solution with data and people who will benefit the most and are willing to pay the most for my solution.

I want to email people with [enter the problem the persona has] who want [this desired outcome] who are willing to pay [this amount for the desired outcome] from [this solution]

Ask me these four questions to create the EVERETT profile.

Who is EVERETT? Ask me demographic questions to answer.

What niche is EVERETT? What niche is EVERETT? Ask me questions to figure out the sub-niche about EVERETT.

Ask me a question about EVERETT’s desired outcome and solution.”

Create your version of the above prompt.

Once you are done responding to the questions, Bard or ChatGPT can create your EVERETT profile by asking it to create a customer profile that tells me the problem, desired outcome, and solution to offer EVERETT.

See the sample output.

Before you set up the automation, I find it helpful to build an EVERETT persona.

Lay the groundwork for success by creating an EVERETT for your business. Now, let’s go to the next step and build a list of EVERETTs.

Build a list of EVERETTS.

Once you define EVERETT, it's time to build a prospect list of EVERETTs

Create a list of cold or warm contacts for your email campaign. Leverage information from various sources, such as industry reports, online directories, websites, Google Alerts, social media platforms, and customer data. Let’s assume EVERETT is the program manager for an economic development organization with annual budgets between $5M and $30M who works with aspiring entrepreneurs who received new funding, and 20% of their resources go unused because the entrepreneurs do not know about the resources.

Now, let’s build the list.

We’ve taken your singular EVERETT profile that fits your criteria to create an alert to monitor for new prospects to add to the email campaign.

Building a targeted prospect list lays the foundation for successful outcomes.

Define an offer journey for EVERETT.

Once you define EVERETT and have a list of EVERETT’s, it's time to set up your offer journey. You can move to the setup phase if this step is already complete.

An offer journey is a pre-defined sequence of value exchanges between you and EVERETT. As you build more trust, EVERETT’s value moves from attention to purchase when he or she becomes a customer.

Here is an example.

Step 1. Enter prospects into your email campaign from intent signals. The email campaign is to give value to EVERETT, not to tell EVERETT how great you and your solution are.

Step 2. You create a free lead magnet that solves a specific problem for EVERETT (Newsletter, email course, case study, e-book, survey with an outcome, report, etc., something EVERETT will see as valuable to him or her). I call this “Do me a favor.”

Step 3. Low Ticket Offer (Provide a low-cost digital product or service that solves a specific problem for EVERETT that solves a specific problem. EVERETT will see it as 10X more valuable than the cost.). I call this “Do a little for me, and I will do a lot for you.”

Step 4. High Ticket Offer (Upsell a Done-for-you implementation. for Example, a coaching program, consulting service, and custom solution). Highly personalized support for those looking for deeper results. I call this “Do a bit more with me, and I will do something amazing for you.”.

Now that you have a clearer picture of EVERETT's offer journey, let's automate your lead generation workflow. The next section will show you how to set up your Google Sheet.

Identify EVERETT’s Intent Signal

EVERETT might be just a persona, but it is your window to add 10x to EVERETT.

By understanding signals that inform you of how you can help EVERETT achieve a desired outcome, you become Sherlock Holmes on the hunt for intent interests.

For example, if your customers are aerospace founders at seed-stage startups who received funding, you can run a Google Alert for funding announcements. Then send a congratulatory message on the new funding, introduce yourself, and a short message about how your lead magnet can offer value to EVERETT for free. Ask yourself, where and to whom does EVERETT go to talk and complain about their problems?

Listen for cues on podcasts, social media postings and comments, and other news event indicators to trigger campaign enrollment. I try to focus on EVERETT and very little on me in my communications. Ask yourself, would this be valuable to me if I received it from the tons of emails and DMs I receive daily? You can pass the Google Alert to a Google Sheet or use a Zapier to do this step.

By combining intent clues, you'll craft an EVERETT profile with understanding.

Create a Google Sheet to list EVERETT prospects

Build a Google Sheet and save it to Google Drive. Include data you want to use for your email campaigns. My file includes the following column headers. The screenshot is an unpopulated version of the file I use.

• First Name

• Last Name

• Email

• Trigger Event ( )

• Company

• *Address

• *City

• *State

• *Zip Code

• Lead Magnet (This may or may not be applicable to the campaign. It can serve as a link to a digital product)

• *Prospect Type

• *Offer Type (Free, low-ticket, or high-ticket)

• *Industry

Now you have your file set; you can enter your EVERETT prospects into the list or populate or update the list automatically or manually whenever time permits.

Set up the GMASS Campaign

Once my Google Sheet is set, I connect it to GMASS. (PS: I am a Google Workspace customer, so I use GMASS to set up my campaigns because it works seamlessly with Google Sheets and GMAIL. If you want to replace it with another tool, substitute it for whatever you prefer.)

Once you connect GMASS to GMAIL, you can connect your EVERETT GSheet to a campaign. Once you select the icon, select Launch Spreadsheet Picker.

Then select the spreadsheet you want to link to your campaign.

Once you hit select, you will see a new recipient added with a New Message window in Gmail.

Type the subject and email body.

Select the GMASS icon in the bottom left corner, then enter the settings for your campaign.

Note: GMASS will automatically add new records from your Google Sheet to your campaign. It also has a feature to prevent campaigns from going to the same recipient. Google's send requirements drive the number of sends per day, which caps at 2,000 emails daily. I slowly increment the number of sends until I reach 100 a day.

Analyze the automation’s performance

GMASS adds new columns to track opens, clicks, bounces, conversions, and A/B testing. I like to set a performance benchmark to have a baseline to measure success. How many responses tell you the campaign works, and what event signals success? This will inform you of what to enhance to elevate the results.

Set your benchmarks around your activity goals over the next 90 days. This will help you monitor performance and stay motivated to achieve your goals. We cannot control outcomes, but we can control our actions.

Closing Thoughts

Leads are the lifeline for entrepreneurs to achieve results. Using a combination of AI Assistants, Google Sheets, Gmail, and GMASS for a lead generation flywheel will edge you closer to the 15 times a month HubSpot’s research recommended, resulting in a 50% increase in qualified leads.

Whenever you're ready, here are two ways to pay if forward.

1. Share a time-zapping task you want to solve with AI Assistants and Workflows. I’ll see if AI can help! (Quick 2-minute survey)

2. Survey complete? Now help a friend Do Less Better! Share the power of AI-powered workflows.

I hope your 2024 is starting with a bang.

Sincerely,

Marvin Harris
I write about entrepreneurs Doing Less Better using AI Assistants and Workflows.