Generous George

So let's go through a really quick and simple lead generation strategy, and it's how to win projects by being Generous George. So we're going to call this strategy Generous George, and George, it could be George or it could be Georgina. So what's our objective? Okay. Well, I think it would be nice to be seen as an expert. That's always good. It's always good to be seen as generous, and as well as being seen as generous, it's actually quite good to actually help other people as well. So if we can help a charity while generating leads, that's never going to be a bad thing. And finally, obviously, we want qualified prospects coming to you, because that's the whole point of winning projects, right?

So I've underlined the word "qualified", and you're going to see why they already qualified in a minute. Okay. So here's what we're going to do. There's a thing, you know, often you'll see fundraisers, fundraisers for schools, fundraisers for all sorts of different charities and they're all really good, and often they'll run a silent auction and that type of thing. It doesn't have to be a silent auction. It doesn't have to be an auction, but it's just one, I was dealing with Eric Lamb just today, and so it's sort of come up.

So here's what we're going to do. Let's say it's a silent auction where some charity is giving away some things. So just to explain a silent auction, if you don't know it, is often charities will get a whole lot of donations from various suppliers or shops or people who provide services, and those people will put those services up, and then the charity will auction them off to people, and all the money goes to charity, right? So you probably already knew that, but just in case you didn't, that's kind of how that works.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to offer your LCC, either one or a number of them, as an auction item, okay? So then what happens is, well, someone wins the silent auction or the auction, and of course you deliver the LCC for the winner. The beauty for an architect with an LCC is that it is something which you would charge for. It is of value to the client. They would have to pay for it if you did it, but an LCC, even though you've done it for free, provides you with a really good prospect because they've paid for it, they paid the donation. So anyone who pays money for an LCC is going to usually be a good prospect. So that's step two.

Step three. Now, here's the ... oops. Here's the clever bit: We don't just want the person who wins the auction, because what about ... Okay. Say the winner of the auction paid 750, but someone else might have bid 700, so that person who bid 700 is also a really good prospect, right? So what we want to do is get a list of all the bidders, okay? Now, usually how these things work is there's a sheet of paper on the table, and everyone writes their bid down. Someone else comes along and outbids someone else, and the bids just go higher and higher until the time is up. But you want to get a list of all the people who bid.

Now, usually they'll put down their name and phone number. So on a silent auction it's perfect. You can go along with your cell phone and take a photo of everybody who's bid with their name and contact details. It's a bit harder if it's an auction where people are raising their hands, but certainly a silent auction that could work brilliantly, and then you'll call all the bidders because it's usually got their name and phone number, and maybe you'll ... they got second, but you might say, "Hey, I see you bid $300 for the thing. If you're still prepared to do that, I'll do it for you for 300, and I'll donate that to the school or to the charity as well," or whatever you want to do.

And then if that works well for you, go find another fundraiser. You can afford to be Generous George all over town. So here's an example of an ad. Often when you let's say for a silent auction or any auction you need a few words to sell the value of the service, so I'm just going to run down the words that we use with Eric Lamb, who I've just been speaking to about half an hour ago and we drafted this up for him. "So are you considering a major innovation project? Not sure what you can and cannot do with your space? Get your project ideas checked out by an expert. The project discovery analysis," which is Eric's name for his LCC, "gets you expert diagnostic advice from Eric Lamb, one of New York's leading architects and renovation specialists. Eric will review your options, risks, and restrictions for your project before you move to design."

And then, "Eric Lamb is one of New York's ... " A little bit of a description about Eric, just a very, you know, one sentence, and author of the book Mindful Design for whatever, into the ... This is not complete because we've only just sort of drafted this out, and then, in Eric's case, put in a picture of your face, put in a picture of your book because it adds credibility, and that would go on the table as the ad promoting this silent auction piece. So there you go. Not too difficult. You could copy all that, go out, and save the world, be generous, and that, ladies and gentleman, is how you win projects by being Generous George.