EP 208 - Stop Cold Messaging and Do This Instead: A Smarter Lead Gen Strategy for Established Coaches

You have been doing all of it. The DMs. The Facebook groups. The networking events. And still, the discovery calls are not coming. This episode is not about working harder at lead generation, it's about understanding why the strategy you were handed was never actually built for you.

Jessica breaks down the cold outreach trap that keeps established coaches spinning in an exhausting effort-to-results ratio, why leading with your credentials is costing you clients, and the smarter lead gen approach that speaks directly to the problem-aware woman who is already looking for exactly what you do.

Plus, why your discovery calls are not for selling and what is doing the actual selling long before anyone books.

In this episode:

• Why cold outreach was built for beginners and becomes a step backwards at your level
• The surgeon analogy that reframes your entire lead gen strategy
• How leading with credentials instead of client problems is creating a frequency mismatch
• What your leads are actually googling at 2 AM and why you need to lead with that
• Attraction marketing vs chasing marketing: what actually works for intimate, relationship-based offers
• Why discovery calls are not for selling, and what is
  
  

Links mentioned:

• The Vault
• Frequency First Business (cohort opens 25 May)
• Scaling Capacity Diagnostic

Related episodes:

• Ep 202 - Why They Loved Your Content and Hired Someone Else
• Ep 204 - Tall Poppy Syndrome and Your Nervous System
• Ep 207 - Why Free Isn't Free: The Truth About Live Launching

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Fck Yes Frequency, the podcast where strategy meets energetics and your business gets to feel like a full body yes. I'm Jessica Read, frequency-first business mentor for the woman building a sustainable, scalable, and sexy business grounded in her unapologetic self-expression, authority, and embodied leadership. Let's drop into the episode. Welcome back to the Fck Yes Frequency. Today, we are talking about why your leads are not converting into discovery calls. And I know that as we talk about this, there is this element of frustration because you have been showing up, you have been sliding into DMs, you've been going to networking events, you've been in the Facebook groups doing all of it, every single thing that you have been told to do. And honestly, this is just really f*cked up because you are pouring so much time, so much energy into something that feels like it's not working. Now, I have my thoughts on why this is in this day and age of business, but we'll talk about that shortly. The worst part, as all of this is happening, is that this continues, this lack of being able to get people onto your discovery calls, knowing that when you can talk to them, knowing that when you are in conversation, you convert really well. Like, people come into your world, they probably stay in there. It's just like, "Just gotta get them on the call." So, when you are getting that continued, I guess, it's not even so much rejection. It's not ghosting. It's all this, again, it's the effort to results ratio. All of that is fueling this belief that your business is hard or that something is wrong with you. You'll have your own version of a belief. The longer this goes on, that this is fueling. Now, I wanna tell you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are doing all of the quote, unquote, "right things" that do work for some certain businesses, particularly high volume funnels, and depending on what you are selling. And most of the women in my world are selling something very personalized. They're selling deep, intimate experiences, whether they are helping someone to grow their business, or whether they are helping someone to heal, or whether they are in someone's home, are helping them organize and declutter. Whatever it is that they are selling, it is intimate. And so these cold outreach methods, they're not necessarily wrong for certain businesses or for certain energy types, but for the majority of the people in my world, they're wrong for them. You have heard me talk so much recently about how the impact of AI and even just showing up in your content how we want you fully expressed, you being safe to be seen and all of that matters more now than ever. If attention is currency and intimacy and real personalised human connection is what people are craving, then we really need to actually pull apart what is going wrong with this strategy and maybe look at some of the things that might work better for you. So I'm going to show you what I believe in a lot of businesses that I work with actually works well at this level, particularly again when you are service-based, when it is all very relationship dependent. That is what we are going to talk about today. So if you are brand new here, welcome. If you are not new, welcome back. This is the podcast where we do not separate the inner work from the business building because they were never separate to begin with. I am Jessica Read. I am a strategic identity business coach. I work with established female founders, practitioners, service providers who are doing the work. They are getting the results for their clients, but they are still hitting the same ceiling. So let's talk about now the cold outreach trap because honestly, I feel like so much of the marketing advice is just so outdated. I really truly do. If your goal is not to get 10,000 people into your program, then we do not need, we do not need that cold outreach trap, okay? Maybe when you very first start out in your business, maybe it works then. Maybe it's that volume game when you have that beginner, beginner business. It's like, 'I really need to get my name out there and I'm going to do everything that it takes'. And that includes cold outreach to people who look like they might be my person. I want to tell you, I received a message, day before yesterday. And it was like, 'hey, Jessica, what's up?' And then proceeded to talk to me about some spiritual thing. I was like, and directly sell me into a program. It's like you don't know me. You don't follow me. You have no idea that I am the person who wants relationship, whatever it was that they were talking about. I don't like... I just don't like it. I just don't think it's done in the best energy of serving. But I do think it can be beneficial in the beginning of a business to a certain extent. I actually do think, though, that there are better ways to do things, particularly with how many options there are to build an audience in more of an attraction marketing way than in a chasing cold leads way. There are so many options. The biggest caveat I will put on this before I continue is that I believe in personalized strategy. I believe in looking at your energy, your skills, your season of life, your nervous system health, your strengths, and building lead generation and offers and a business model all around that. So now that I have had that little sidetracked rant, let's go back to cold outreach. I believe that cold outreach was built for maybe the woman just starting out, maybe who doesn't have that track record yet, who maybe needs to go and find just those first couple of clients by talking to as many people as possible. Absolutely, I think that there is a benefit to the rejection therapy that inevitably comes with that as well. There's nothing wrong with this stage. But again, even if you are brand new, I actually think that there are better ways that you could be doing this, and I will talk about that shortly. When established businesses are still doing this at your level, with your track record, with your results and the years of experience that you have behind you, I actually feel like cold outreach is a step backwards. I want you to think about it in this way. Imagine a surgeon going to your door asking people if they need surgery. The people who don't need that surgeon don't even know that they need her yet. The people who do know that they need her are already out actively looking for someone at their level. They need to find her. She doesn't need to convince them that they need open heart surgery. This is exactly what's happening in my thoughts with cold outreach. You are spending an enormous amount of time and energy going to people who are not yet problem aware, which means before you can even mention a discovery call, you have a whole job of actually convincing them to have awareness of their problem and be in a state, normally an emotional state of being, that they are actually ready for the change. They have to know they have a problem in the first place. Now, that is invisible labor that almost never converts at the rate that it deserves. It is absolutely exhausting. So just to really reframe, your clients are not booking the discovery calls because your offer is bad, because no one wants to work with you. They're not taking that step because you are not likely speaking to the woman who actually needs the open heart surgery. It's just like assuming that just because I'm a woman, I need hormonal support, or just because I'm a mother, I must be struggling with that. You know, just because you have a business, you must automatically want my offer to help you grow. My offer doesn't solve everything for everyone. Nor does yours. So assuming that is wasting your time. It is absolutely wasting your time. As I said, there are better ways to do it. And yes, we are gonna get to that. And here is where I think it gets really, really interesting. Even when established founders do get those discovery calls booked through that cold outreach, I think that there's something else happening underneath it that I actually wanna really bring to the surface. Most of them are leading with themselves, and that's how it used to be done. It used to be okay, it used to be enough to say, "All right, I have this experience, and I have these credentials, and I've got this methodology, and I get it. So here you go. Here's my offer. I'll help you fix this problem that you maybe don't really know exactly that you have yet." I get that. We worked hard for those credentials. We should be proud of them. But the woman on the other end of that DM or that call or that cold connection, they don't feel that resonance yet because she hasn't been met yet where she actually lives. So what I mean by that is leading with yourself. I help coaches scale to six figures using my signature framework versus leading with your client's highest value problems. Like, I work with established coaches who are doing everything right, but still not getting past 10K months no matter what they do, and I know exactly what's running that pattern. There is a difference. The second one calls out exactly the pain growth that that particular person with that audience has. So for me, for example, I know my audience. I deeply know what they're googling at 2:00 AM. I know when it comes to my offers and how I can help them, I know what the biggest leading problems are that my people are having. I also know what their biggest emotional desires are. I know what their highest value problems are. Like, if we could get on a call, and we could solve that one thing for you so that you could move forward, it's invaluable. But if I walk around just leading with, "Oh, hey, you're a business, and I'm a business coach, you must need the identity and the business work", I can't just assume that, and neither can you about your person. So the second version of what I just gave you, which honestly could still go so much more detailed, but the second version that I just gave you with the 10K month example, that is maybe a pain point that makes her stop and go,"Oh, okay, how does she know that about me?" And I'm not saying that you have to go and lead with this like deep, sad, negative pain point marketing, but I do believe that people need to know that you know what their problem is, and you know what their goal is. And this goes deeper than messaging because at this level, the woman that you are trying to attract, or the man, whoever you work with, they are sophisticated, and they have been pitched before, and they've likely hired people to try and solve their problem before. If your energy is leading from scarcity, from "I really need to fill my program", they can actually feel that from a mile away. They can feel that frequency that you are leading with in your content, in your DMs, the frustration that is coming from people not reaching out to take that step to get in the DMs. They feel that. So that's not gonna match the person that you are trying to attract or it doesn't. There is no cold DM script in the world that is going to fix that. That is a frequency mismatch. That is you. When we think about all of this, I really feel like the reason that so many established founders lead with credentials instead of client problems is that somewhere underneath it, maybe there is still a part of us that is trying to justify our price point, that is trying to prove their worthiness to that person. Like maybe we are not fully embodied in our unique authority. That's why I have a whole phase, phase 3 in Frequency First Business. There's a whole phase on that because it can be felt from a mile away. The outreach becomes a nervous system response to revenue anxiety rather than a genuine invitation. Your person can feel that every single time. So what actually does work? Because I don't want to just leave you with all what's wrong. What actually does work? So the first thing that I want to say is this. A small amount of money behind a highly focused content plan that speaks directly to your client's highest value problem, I believe, will outperform hours of cold reach every single time at your level. If you already have the body of work, and I don't know if you're at my mapping session and you were able to see like where in the hierarchy your strategy may be leaking. So maybe you have some more work to do around your offer messaging or who you're talking to. Like maybe these things just really need to be tightened up. But if you already have, if you've done that before you put any, actually let me take a step back. Before you put any money behind anything, please make sure that you've done that. Please make sure that that is actually really, really clear. Clear what problem your offer solves. Clear that you are helping your client to get towards their actual desires, not just grow or heal or feel better or whatever the vague language that you're using is. Are you helping them to expand their team so that they can start to remove themselves from face-to-face bookings? Are you helping them to implement systems so that they can buy back a whole day a week? Are you helping them to find exactly what is going on with their gut so that they can really, really get clear and specific on their problems and get really clear and specific on your offer? Because if you haven't done that, don't put any money behind anything. But if you have a dialed in offer, you have a dialed in message, which you should have really before you're cold outreaching anyway, and if you wanna do that together, please just reach out to me. There are ways we can work together. If you have that dialed in offer, that dialed in message, then again, a small amount of money behind a highly focused content. So maybe that's a lead magnet, maybe that is live launching events. Live launching is not dead. In fact, for some energy types, it is exactly the most perfect way to get people in a room with you. Maybe it's in-person information sessions where you are creating this really beautiful event for them. Like, there are so many different ways, depending on who your client is, for you to say, "Hey, I know you, I understand you, I wanna give you this quick win". But speak to people who are actually actively looking for you. Now, if you've done any kind of market research in your industry, then you are going to know exactly what people are googling at 2 AM. So why aren't you leading with that? Why are you leading with the vague,"Hey, this is me, and I help people to lose weight," or, "I help people to feel healthy," or, "I help people to know their purpose". Why are we leading with that vague sh*t where people are like, "Yeah, but I'm, like really just struggling with this. I'm googling at two o'clock in the morning, 'How the f*ck do I grow my business without burning out?' Or I'm googling at two o'clock in the morning, 'Why does every time I eat gluten, it makes me want to vomit?'". They are googling very specific problems, and it's your job to know that. And a quick Claude deep dive report will give that to you these days, so it's not hard. So going in knowing exactly what your people are saying, what they're looking up, like, what is those two o'clock thoughts. They're not thinking, "Oh, how do I grow my business?" They're thinking, "F*ck, how do I tell my partner that I don't know what's coming in next month when he literally had to lend me some money two months ago to pay for a program that I've invested in? How do I have that conversation?". That's what they're thinking. Not, "Oh, how do I expand my consciousness and grow my business". Do you know what I mean? You see the difference? I'm sure you see the difference. I'm not giving very clear examples on this Monday morning, but I think you get it. You have a body of work. You have results. You have a track record. Your job is not to go and convince people that they need you. Your job is to do everything that you can to get in front of the people who are already looking, and maybe that is through outreach. Maybe that's through a lead connection place. I actually don't know what's the proper definition of attraction marketing is. But when I think of attraction marketing, I think of it versus chasing marketing. And so attraction marketing to me is exactly what I'm saying. It's you speaking to the people who are already Googling, and you also have so much SEO opportunity. Like attraction marketing is you being very clever about speaking to the people who are problem aware, getting very clever about getting in front of those people. And with Instagram now, I forgot what the word is, but with the SEO being integrated through Instagram's captions, you have so much opportunity. So much opportunity to be building this long-term evidence of being able to be found by the people who are actually looking. And if you want to speed up that process, then I want you to think about what could some kind of launch look like for you. What does a really dialed in lead magnet look like for you? What does an in-person event that promises to solve this thing, maybe it's low ticket, look like for you? What does that look like for you? And again, I like to build these based on, first of all, your strengths, but also where your client is at. So then if your content is doing the problem awareness work for you before the discovery call even happens, by the time the right person is on a call with you, they should already feel like they know exactly who you are and why you are the one. Discovery calls aren't for, really, in my opinion, discovery calls aren't for selling. You've done most of the selling job before they get on that call. So if people aren't booking discovery calls, it's all those pieces in between. It's the what am I putting out? Am I speaking directly to that person? Am I wasting my time going out cold trying to convince people that they have a problem that, yes, they probably do have, but they are actually not at an awareness level yet, or an internal desire level to actually want to or be ready to solve that. Because also, just because someone has a problem sometimes doesn't mean they want to solve it, doesn't mean that they are ready to solve it. And that's why even, you know, in healing, we always say someone has to actually come to that own conclusion for themselves. They have to hit their own challenging point, their own pivotal moment, their own, "Oh, f*ck, I can't do this anymore." They have to get there themselves to make those decisions. So that alone, like that is what makes discovery calls feel like a yes. It is all of the pieces leading in before it where you are actually selling. You're not selling you, you are selling and serving what that person needs. And when I say you're not selling you, I mean it's not, "Here, I've got these credentials. I can X, Y, Z. I can help you.""Okay, but help me with what? Why? Why would I come when I don't even believe I have a problem yet?" So the last thing that I wanna share here, and I want you to really, really sit with this. Get really honest about whether Well, are you leading with your f*ck yes frequency? Are you embodied in that deep, like, I am the authority? Or are you leading from fear? Are you leading from doubt? Like, what is the primary frequency behind where you are leading with? Because the content that makes the right person stop scrolling and think, "Oh, that is me. That is what I am dealing with", that content comes from deep certainty about who you actually serve and you deeply, deeply knowing them so intimately that you can confidently say, "I know I can solve these problems for her." Not,"All right, I just need more clients this month." So when you lead from that place, and again, this is why these aren't separate, the identity and the strategy in the same room. Because when you lead from that place, and then your strategic lead generation plan actually then meets the people who are looking for you. Remember, we're not just going looking for a heart surgeon for no reason. The heart surgeon doesn't have to go and convince the people. She's not door-knocking. It's the problem-aware person, then the discovery calls come, and they come already warm, already knowing, already most of the way to yes. Okay. So we went on a few little different pathways there. If this episode landed for you, and you are sitting here thinking, "Okay, Jess. Yeah, I hear you, but how do I actually build that? How do I get my content and my leads to do that heavy lifting before I stop leading? Like, how do I stop leading from the wrong place?" Then there are multiple ways that you can explore doing that with me. We have The Vault. It is my ten most powerful methodologies, frameworks, backend tools, the exact tools I use in my business, the exact tools that my highest level mastermind clients have access to. It's all self-paced. You can actually access all ten of those in one vault straight away. Recreate your strategy that serves your soul and offers that sell without compromising. But you can also explore, as I record this and as I know this episode goes out, Frequency First Business is open for enrollment. We have a cohort starting the 25th of May. Frequency First Business is where your identity rebirth and your revenue strategy come into the same room in a personalized support. It is so powerful. And then, of course, we've got my mastermind and my one-on-one. So if you genuinely would like to know,"How do I do these things?" And you are ready to actually build and do them, and you want who you are being and what you are doing to be met and built in the same room, then those are the three core ways that you can do that with access to me. All right. We have the offerings linked in the show notes. We have The Vault link in the show notes, so you can go and explore those. But thank you so much for being here today. Go and get those problem-aware people. Show them how brilliant you are. Help them, serve them, lead with service, and I will see you over in the next episode. Bye for now. If this episode awoken something in you, good. You are ready to lead from your'fck yes' frequency, and you'll find ways to go deeper in the show notes. And before you go, I would be so grateful if you could leave a review and share this episode with someone who you know that is done leading their business from survival and ready to create and live in overflow. See you on the next one.