I do BELIEVE in having ongoing dialogues with AI … continually re-engineering prompts, asking better questions, following through with searching for ideas and pursuing ideas.

SERIOUS business development has always been about developing leads from thin air … while other people are complaining that they don’t have any new leads.

But expecting AI to just magically generate leads is like expecting a magic wand to just magically generate leads … it’s just not going to happen.

REGARDLESS of the situation or the times we live, it’s always about the mindset of hunting … doing ALL of the little things and doing them better than anyone else to qualify leads … to stalk leads … to follow through on questions and close … to not just close but assure that delivery happend and every last thing about the whole transaction was sufficent for the customer to evangelically give referrals and produce new leads.

Sales is REALLY tedious stuff … it’s really about constant attention project and time management AND simultaneously focusing on attitude management and NEVER BEING A VICTIM.

Are you in the hunt … or are you the hunted?

We are all hunted at some time or another and we should realize how/why that is, about it’s not optional … BUT lead generation is exclusively about being in the hunt … it’s optional … it is not something that comes naturally to many; it requires diligent effort and taking risks and failing … generating leads and acting upon qualified leads to close them is a kind of behavior that must be chosen.

The best practices in lead generation … whether those practices are modern, automated AI-based practices or the less-efficient oldschool belly-to-belly shoe leather selling, cold calling or door-to-door knocking practices … are all about the process of attracting, seducing and converting new prospects into someone who has chosen to pursue an active interest in your outfit’s product or service or campaign … after a lead has indicated a qualified interest, then it’s a matter of pursuing and closing the deal AND, going beyond that, it is about getting them to advertise their excitment over their new purchase, ie Did you see my new iPhone? Look at what it does. Wow! Look at ME … you should be like ME!.

MOST human beings are neither lead generators NOR closers … MOST human beings are not predators; they are pretty firmly in the prey camp … although, all of us are eventually lead and after that sometimes prey … in economic terms, this means that MOST people are always passively watching, listening, consuming content, or bait to become the leads … we all know ourselves if we are ACTIVELY engaged in figuring something out OR if we are passively accepting claims, not really actively trying things … the most passive of the passive ones are always the ones who don’t feel strong or adequate, so as someone discovers the inadequacies of these prey animals and uses those inadequacies, the passive ones get closed … the credit card comes out and they buy the new iPhone 15 Pro Max to signal to all of their fellow prey animals that they are big money success and actually should be classified as predator-class, ie the iPhone is heavy FAUX on the overall “FAUX predator class” designation.

Some examples of lead generators are things like job applications [to identify interested candidates] or LinkedIn profiles for people with careers or slaves, who work for the MASSAHS of the world, loyalty programs, eg frequent flyer miles [to identify the kinds of people likely to buy more to take advantage of loyalty discounts], coupons [to identify the value seekers who will buy things they don’t really need if the discount is sufficients], live events, usually with tickets but generall there’s at least some sort of sign-ups or virtual live events, and subscription-based or at least goog anal cookie-tracked online content.

We’re going to focus on AI lead generation … at least, first – in this post …

Deploy USEFUL chatbots

Chatbots are ALMOST human-like … it’s almost scary how much chatbots have been oversold in our culture … the most sophisticated chatbots are nothing different than the voicemail mazes that we started seing fifty years ago, but NOW the chatbots have made the mazes smarter and much more annoying … but potential customers are more than savvy enough to avoid almost all annoying pop-up chatbot interactions.

Humans might be prey animals … but they are not idiots.

After a handful of chatbot interactions, people understand that chatbots are there ONLY to collect hard data … and possibly to serve as barriers and obstacles to keep organizations from actually interacting with their customers.

People might not understand all of the specifics of how chatbots integrate with third party software like CRM tools, but they get it … they understand how the bullshit works, even if the bullshit artists behind the AI chatbots are still swallowing their shit koolaid. People are not idiots … but the zealots who believe in the magic of AI really ARE.

People will engage with almost human AI chatbots IF and ONLY IF the chatbots rapidly, efficiently convey consistent, current and accurate information … the chatbot must not only anticipate and handle the FAQs but shatbots should not anticipate too much, even though all will to some degree.

Chatbots MUST offer real customers with legit greivances a way to get past the immediate automated assistance bullshit and on to a real human being who can navigate the backend of customer service operations … *without those real, competent human beings who can actually navigate the backends of customer service operations, chatbots will EFFECTIVELY and EFFICIENTLY drive customers away … even though the zealous idiots who still believe in the magic of AI will still be confused and not understand why the organization’s customers have left to buy from an organization that is maniacally focused on REAL customer service.

Leverage your existing knowledge base

Old school belly-to-belly shoe-leather-on-the-pavement confrontations and being able troubleshoot impossibly complex, too hard for AI is the existing knowledgebase that matters … the rest of the bullshit you can get from Llama 2, Bard, Copilot or some other AI-based clichesaurus … as long as you spend some time learning something abour prompt engineering, ie how to ask AI a good starter question with decent follow-up questions … don’t worry, even prompt engineering is AI-ified now.

Understand your customers better

There’s no substitute being MANICALLY focused on your customers … this is why we DOGFOOD the heck out of everything we do … WE are our customer; when we dogfood, WE become more maniacally and EFFECTIVELY focused on us because our customers are just like us.

Obviously, we use AI. AI can analyze customer behaviors and trends … but mostly, we NEVER EVER FORGET that AI must serve US … we don’t build trophy AI shit and turdpolish it until it behaves like a human. AI must serve US … we eat our dogfoood, WE are maniacally committed to our customers and really BEING our own customer.

Generate customer personas

BEING the customer personna is why we DOGFOOD the heck out of everything we do.

Customer personas allow organizations to identify identify pain points, interests, and barriers … which we would never understand without dogfooding. Sure, we could tailor marketing messages and target specific customer segments … but not without dogfooding and doing open source development in health communities of open source developers effectively.

Analyze lead sources

Statistics, machine learning methods and AI can assess lead source performance through data analysis and algorithms to make informed decisions on resource allocation and strategy refinement … but the hallucinatory garbage coming out of our systems will be worse than just worthless … if we have not acquired the experience to build things that help us to REALLY CARE about our customers.

Compare lead sources against actual customer personas and REAL experience

Direct your attention and content creation efforts at what actually resonates, generates results, yields results … getting there is a matter of massively failing … which is where AI comes in … it’s important to wade through the tedium of the tsunamis of failures in order to get the needle out of the haystack.

Your AI will have to be built in order to help you fail A LOT, LOT, LOT more … stop believing in magic and start rolling up your dev sleeves to code the AI that will help you fail more … when you have sufficiently dogfooded everything about how your whole AI system performs for your actual customer personnas, *you will be able to be one of those overnight successes.

Perform DEEP market research

Spend more time looking at the competition … until you reach that point where you devastated by their greatness and decide to just imitate and USE the very best stuff … if you are still convinced that your stuff is better, then aggressively go out and destroy the bad, second-rate competitors who are just not serving their customers … but, keep looking for competition, because there will ALWAYS be some competitor flanking you.

You can dogfood your AI to use learning algorithms to research the market and gather insights about your target audience … but INCREASINGLY, you will find more competitors who can somehow do what you’re trying to do even better than you … that’s how creative destruction works. Creative destruction is a competitive concept that predates capitalism by maybe 25,000 years … Look at Zorg. He use stick. Not burn hands holding meat in fire. … gathering competitive intell and then USING better systems, rather than needing to invent everything yourself, enables you to BETTER understand customers needs, preferences, and pain points and create more effectively, well-targeted campaigns, ie you really do not need to get out the Rolling Thunder B-52s to carpet bomb your constituent mailboxes with annoying glossy print mailers any more … it’s 2024 … START LOOKING FORWARD, your competitors are out ahead of you.

Improve lead acquisition

AI-powered services, like lead list purchase services, can improve the lead acquisition process … it’s the same principle as with being proficient in the offerings [as well cost structures and navigating billing SNAFUs] of AWS, Azure, GCP … use the cheapest thing that cost 5% of what the gold-plated solution does and gets 95% job done … sometimes you’ll just want to use the old, still okish workstation or laptops, because they cost zero but you don’t want to do that when there’s a better cloud solution that will earn you $1000 for every $1 you spend.

You need to know your tools and know what tools you could effectively use to maximize net returns … better tools will leverage AI more efficiently, gathering higher volumes of lead contact information and play a crucial role in validating the new acquired leads coming in to your campgain. Better algorithms in knowledgable hands can make lead information more accurately targeted and provide helpful insights into expanding new lead preferences, behaviors, and pain points.

Enhance outreach campaigns

Go old school. Press the flesh VIRTUALLY. Get belly-to-belly or PERSON-TO-PERSON in a virtual sense … just, as you stay in touch with your best old friends with DMs and pertinent shared news or reminders of old jokes. Sure, outreach can be physical with body hugs and exchanges of each other’s air in confined space … but mostly, rather than being merely physical, outreach has to be PERSONALL … there are good reasons why you shouldn’t expect people to commute to your event AND there are good reasons why holidays and families are big opportunities to swap infectious diseases … but you really CAN build PERSONAL outreach campaigns in the VIRTUAL realm … if you REALLY put your mind to it … remember, there are apps for that kind of thing now.

Just make sure that the outreach is PERSONAL … and that means PERSONALLY valuable for all involved … AI chatbots will really do outreach conversations and or really improve sales pitches … UNLESS that AI is designed to be a tool of the people involved, rather than the overhyped focus of the outreach, ie like faked bs in the Google Gemini duck video, and helps to maximize the time of the PERSONAL outreacher

This is where dogfooding enters again … develop tools for MORE PERSONAL outreach that uses AI dashboards for the outreacher to help the outreacher analyze consumer data in realtime as the outreach is taking place — the dashboard will be the summarized aggregation of all kinds of things like past interactions, behaviors, and preferences — to help better inform the live conversation.

Score leads

Remember the CMMI model … everyone starts with processes that are unpredictable, poorly controlled, reactive … it has to be that way – at first, when we are doing anything, we just wing it. But then we start to MANAGE it; then we DEFINE and fully characterize our processes, so that we can begin to automate them … as we gather more experience and data from defined, automated processes, we get dashboards to QUANTITATIVELY OPTIMIZE processes … and then, finally, we really begin to focus on better experimentation, better management, refactored definition, better optimization and architecturally OPTIMIZING and TRANSFORMING the whole system.

AI-powered lead scoring systems are also dogfooded. Every time a customer interacts with a business or provides data, the meta-data of this interaction also tracked and evaluated to increase the probability of our leads turning into a rabidly loyal customer, ie like the hysterically-loyal people who will spend their last few bucks to always have the latest, greatest iPhone or Apple product.

Scoring leads is all about accelerating the negotiation … to optimize the time of the campaign outreacher … in order to more rapidly, more efficiently narrow the customer buyer journey and nurture more future favorable leads from satisfied customers.

Tailor messaging

It’s all about ACCELERATING THE NEGOTIATION … personalize and intensify the emotional pitch of messaging based on better lead data and understanding of behaviors.

Creating a more personalized and engaging experience for your OUTREACHER really has to be dogfooded … the outreacher has to be both sold on the engagement system AND also aware of failures to engage or lapses in conversion.

Screw the generative AI hallucinations from somebody else who has trained their models on data available to the world … messaging has to be TAILORED … it is the concept of tailored messaging which really underscores the necessity of why USEABLE AI … not just hyped fritterware, but stuff that works … why USEABLE AI must be dogfooded or it simply will not be truly TAILORED.

Automate follow-ups

Ensure more consistent communication by actually USING the system and DOGFOODING the improvements … we’ve all heard the CRM sales pitches for decades about the magic tool helps with qualifying leads, timely follow-ups, and steady engagement without ever annoying prospects with something like yet another voicemail maze or yet another, even more annoying automated AI chatbot smartmaze.

If you are going to automate … you MUST dogfood the system … or else you’re just spewing bad karma into the Universe.

Segment leads automatically

AI algorithms that automatically segment your customer leads based on attributes and behavior CAN be useful … but any form of automation can just automate a shedder or some form of truly painful clusterfuckery for customers who really want to have their problems solved. SERVE your customers FIRST … rather getting in an AI lather, high on the smoke coming from AUTOMATION of magic algorithms which shred, dice, slice, make Juliene fries like another hypester’s Veg-o-Matic contribution to global pollution.

Perform predictive analysis

Dogfood your predictive anal by seeing how accurate it really was … when it doesn’t work, investigate, get to root cause and then tear it down, refactor it and try it again … the only way to make prediction systems work is to USE them and fix their failures. Dogfood. Dogfood. Dogfood.

Identify lead behavior patterns

Adapt your marketing messaging and offers to better resonate with your leads by detecting lead behavior trends and discovering areas of interest that improve your lead generation strategy … USE the systems and adapt and adapt and adapt. It’s dogfooding on top of dogfooding on top of dogfooding … all the way down to the dogfood.