Step 6: From media plan to lead

Outputs doc: outputs.md, Step 6 section. Fill it in as you work through the steps below. Raw funnel-test data and response conversations go in captures.md. Step 7 reads the Step 6 section before starting.

Jump to: Diagnostic · Step 6.1 · Step 6.2 · Step 6.3 · Step 6.4 · Step 6.5 · Step 6.6 · Step 6.7 · Step 6.8 · Step 6.9 · Step 6.10 · Summary · Assumption sweep

What this step is: The repeatable system that turns presence in the Step 5 channel into captured leads. It is the offer that gives the buyer a reason to respond, the path that carries them from seeing the message to becoming a known contact, and the numbers that say whether the path works. This is the first quantitative step: everything above it was about being right, and this is where being right gets measured. The output is a working system with a defined offer, a mapped conversion path, real conversion rates at each stage, and a clear definition of what counts as a lead worth handing to Step 7.

Why it comes after Step 5 and before Step 7: Step 5 put you in the channel where the buyer is, with a message they will meet. Step 6 is the machine you build inside that channel to convert attention into contact. It cannot be built before Step 5, because a lead-generation system is channel-specific: the offer, the call to action, and the capture mechanism all depend on which channel and what the reader’s intent there is. And it must come before Step 7, because follow-up has nothing to follow up without captured leads; Step 6 produces the contact that Step 7 nurtures toward sales-ready. This is the step where the error messages are loudest, the low conversion rates, the dead funnels, the cost-per-lead that does not work. And precisely because the symptoms scream here, it is the step where most people start tinkering first, rewriting the ad, changing the button colour, while the real fault sits in a vague audience, a consensus value proposition, or a channel the buyer is not in. The numbers are only meaningful if Step 2 through Step 5 hold up. When the funnel underperforms, the first move is to check upstream, not to optimise the form.

What finishing this step produces: A written lead-generation system in the Step 6 section of outputs.md: the offer and why it fits the channel’s awareness and intent, the step-by-step conversion path, the content system that fills the top of the funnel where the channel is a feed, a funnel-math table with real or tested conversion rates and targets traced back to Step 2 through Step 5, a definition of a lead and the qualification bar that separates a captured contact from one ready for Step 7, and the identified bottleneck stage with its fix. Backed by a live small-scale run, not by projected rates you wish were true.

Diagnostic: is Step 6 actually done?

Before building anything, answer these questions in writing. Vague answers mean the step is not finished.

1. Is there a specific reason for the buyer to respond, matched to the channel’s intent, not just “contact us”? A call to action with no offer behind it converts the few who were already ready and loses everyone else. If the only reason to respond is that you would like them to, you do not have a lead-generation system, you have a hope. The offer is what turns attention into action.

2. Can you draw the full path from a stranger seeing the message to becoming a captured lead, every step? Not “they see our post and reach out.” Every step: what they see, what they click or send, what they land on, what they give you, what they get back. If there is a gap in the path you cannot name, that gap is where leads disappear.

3. Do you have numbers at each stage, with targets tied back to Step 2 through Step 5? This is the numbers-driven step. If you cannot state the conversion rate from reach to response to lead, even as a tested estimate, and the volume you need to hit your goal, you are running on “we will see what happens.” A funnel without numbers cannot be diagnosed when it underperforms.

4. Have you defined what a lead actually is, and the bar that separates a captured contact from one ready for Step 7? A captured email is not the same as a qualified lead. If everyone who downloads a thing is called a lead and passed on, Step 7 and sales drown in people who will never buy. The qualification bar, built from Step 2 signals, is what keeps the handoff honest.

5. Have you run it at small scale and found the actual bottleneck, or are you assuming the funnel works? Projected conversion rates are fiction until a live run replaces them. If no real traffic has moved through the path and you cannot name the weakest stage, the system is a diagram, not a system.

6. Are your funnel stages named in a standard way, and is the qualification more than a single yes/no? If every team means something different by “lead” and “qualified”, the numbers cannot be compared to benchmarks or handed cleanly to sales. A shared lifecycle (inquiry, marketing-qualified, sales-accepted, sales-qualified) and a structured qualification of what a real opportunity must answer keep the funnel legible end to end.

If you answered all six clearly and in writing, Step 6 may already be done. Jump to the Step 6 section of outputs.md, fill in the fields, check the checklist, and move to Step 7. If not, work through the steps below.

Step 6.1. Pull the inputs from Step 5 (and above)

Duration: 30 minutes

Step 6 does not start from a blank page. It starts from the channel Step 5 chose, the message that channel carries, and the value proposition the whole thing has to deliver. The fastest route to a working funnel is to treat Step 5’s channel and baseline as the ground you build on, and Step 3’s value as the thing the offer must echo.

What to do:

1. Open the Step 5, Step 4, Step 3, and Step 2 sections of outputs.md and copy the following into the “Inputs from Step 5 and above” field in the Step 6 section:

   • From Step 5: the beachhead channel(s), the message form per channel, the reader and awareness level per channel, the baseline response from the Step 5.8 test, and the owned-audience path. The baseline is your starting conversion data; the funnel improves on it. Paste it where you can see it.
   • From Step 4: the lead message form and the call-to-action language the channel will carry, and the tone. The offer and CTA in Step 6 are written in this voice.
   • From Step 3: the final value proposition and the proof buyers said they would need. The offer has to be a small, true taste of this value, not an unrelated bribe.
   • From Step 2: the sharpest segment, the observable signals, the anti-audience, and the buying context. These become the qualification bar in Step 6.6 and the volume math in Step 6.5.

2. Write one sentence: “In [channel], a [reader] at [awareness level] meets [message form], and the reason for them to respond will be [rough offer idea].” It is a hypothesis; the rest of the step builds and tests it.

3. If Step 5’s baseline response was thin, or the channel was chosen without a real test, that weakness flows straight into Step 6: you will be building a funnel on a channel that may not convert. Note it in the Step 6 scope notes in outputs.md and log it in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested). If the channel itself is unproven, the honest move is to finish Step 5.8 before building the machine.

Step 6.2. Design the offer, the reason to respond

Duration: 45-60 minutes

A lead-generation system runs on an offer: the specific reason a stranger gives you their attention, their contact details, or their time. Without one, the call to action is “buy now” or “contact us,” which only catches the rare person already at the finish line. The offer is a small, low-risk taste of the Step 3 value, sized to the reader’s awareness and intent in the Step 5 channel. A cold, low-intent channel needs a low-commitment offer that asks for little and gives something useful immediately; a high-intent channel can carry a more direct offer closer to the sale. The offer must also be true to Step 3: a clever bribe unrelated to your value attracts people who want the bribe, not the product.

What to do:

1. In the Step 6 section of outputs.md, under “Offer options,” list candidate offers and score them in the table below (it is also in outputs.md). Use a 1-5 scale. Candidates usually fall into a few shapes: a useful resource (a teardown, a benchmark, a template, a tool), an experience (an audit, a trial, a demo, an assessment), or a direct conversation (a consultation, a teardown call). The right shape depends on the channel’s intent.

   Candidate offer	Fits the channel’s awareness and intent (1-5)	A true taste of the Step 3 value (1-5)	Low enough risk for the reader to say yes (1-5)	Cheap enough for you to deliver at volume (1-5)	Attracts buyers, not freebie-seekers (1-5)	Total

2. Weight two columns most heavily: whether the offer is a true taste of the Step 3 value, and whether it attracts buyers rather than freebie-seekers. An offer that scores high on “low risk to say yes” but low on “attracts buyers” fills the funnel with people the anti-audience from Step 2 already warned you about. The cheap, popular lead magnet that has nothing to do with your value is the classic version of this mistake.

3. Match the offer’s commitment level to the channel’s intent from Step 5. In a high-intent inbound channel where the reader is already comparing solutions, a direct offer (a demo, an audit, a teardown call) can work, because asking for a small step matches where they are. In a cold or low-intent channel, lead with a no-friction resource and earn the right to ask for more later. Mismatch here is a common quiet killer: a demo request in a cold feed converts almost no one, and a lightweight download in a high-intent channel under-asks and wastes the intent.

4. Build the anti-offer list. Some offers are tempting and quietly wrong. Capture them in the table below (also in outputs.md) so they do not return in Step 6.9 when conversion looks low and you reach for volume.

   Tempting offer	Why it looks strong	Why it fails for this segment

   Common entries: the unrelated freebie that pulls the wrong crowd, the offer that asks for too much commitment for the channel’s intent, the offer you cannot fulfil at volume, and the discount that trains people to wait for discounts.

5. The offer’s pull is an assumption until tested. Whether this segment will actually exchange contact for this offer, and whether the people who do are buyers, is exactly what Step 6.9 measures. Log the chosen offer in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested), and mark it a leap-of-faith if the whole funnel depends on it.

Example (continuing the Step 1 to Step 5 example):

Channel is LinkedIn, where the VP of Sales champion is problem-aware to solution-aware. Chosen offer: a deal-decay teardown, a short, specific review of where a team’s warm deals go dark, delivered as a one-page benchmark plus an optional 20-minute call. It is a true taste of the value (it shows the gap the product closes), low-risk to accept, and it self-selects for teams that actually have the problem. Anti-offers: a generic “ultimate guide to sales follow-up” PDF (pulls junior reps and content-scrollers, not VPs with budget), and a hard demo request (too big an ask for a feed where the reader is not yet shopping).

Step 6.3. Map the conversion path

Duration: 45-60 minutes

The offer is the reason to respond; the conversion path is the sequence of steps that carries a stranger from first seeing the message to becoming a captured lead you can contact again. Most leads are lost not because the offer is weak but because a step in the path is missing, confusing, or asks for too much too soon. Map every step explicitly, because you cannot fix or measure a path you have not drawn.

What to do:

1. In the Step 6 section of outputs.md, under “Conversion path,” lay out the path stage by stage in the table below (it is also in outputs.md). Each row is one step the person takes, from exposure to captured lead. Name what they see, what action they take, and what could stop them at that step.

   Stage	What the person sees or does	The call to action	What could stop them here (friction)
   Exposure (sees the message in the channel)
   Engagement (clicks, reacts, reads more)
   Offer presented
   Capture (gives contact info or books time)
   Confirmation (receives the offer, becomes a known lead)

2. Minimise the friction at each step, especially before capture. Every extra field, click, or decision loses people. Ask for the least you need to make the lead workable for Step 7, and no more. The most common path failure is asking for too much too early: a long form, a phone number, a meeting, before the reader has any reason to trust you.

3. Decide the capture mechanism deliberately: a form on a landing page, a direct message exchange, a calendar booking, a reply, a signup. Match it to the channel. In a social feed, a native interaction (comment or DM) often converts far better than sending people to an external form, because every hop off-platform loses people. Note where the captured contact lands (your list, your CRM), because that is the start of the owned audience Step 5 pointed toward.

4. Mark the single most important conversion point on the path, usually the move from engagement to capture. That is the step the Step 6.9 test will watch hardest, and the one where small improvements move the whole funnel.

5. The friction points are assumptions about where people will drop until the live run shows you. Log the steps you are least sure about in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested). The bottleneck is rarely where you expect.

Step 6.4. Map the lead lifecycle with the demand waterfall

Duration: 30-45 minutes

Step 6.3 mapped the micro-path a stranger walks to become a captured contact. But a captured contact is not yet a lead a salesperson will accept, and “lead” and “qualified” mean different things to different people, which is how marketing and sales end up arguing about the same numbers. The demand waterfall fixes that by naming the standard stages a response moves through after capture, with shared definitions, so your funnel is legible, comparable to published benchmarks, and unambiguous at the handoff. You are not inventing stages; you are adopting a common vocabulary and deciding what each stage means for you.

The canonical stages, adapt the names but keep the shape:

• Inquiry: a raw captured response, someone who took the offer. Owned by marketing.
• Marketing-qualified lead (MQL): an inquiry that also fits the segment and shows enough engagement to be worth a look. Owned by marketing.
• Sales-accepted lead (SAL): an MQL that sales has looked at and agreed is worth working. The handshake between the two teams.
• Sales-qualified lead (SQL) or opportunity: a lead sales confirms is a real, active deal.

What to do:

1. In the “Lead lifecycle (demand waterfall)” table in the Step 6 section of outputs.md, map your captured leads onto the stages. Adapt the names to your motion, but keep the sequence, because the sequence is what makes the numbers comparable.

   Stage	What it means for you	Who owns it (marketing / sales)	Rough benchmark conversion to next
   Inquiry
   MQL
   SAL
   SQL / opportunity

2. Define the two filters that leak most, so the waterfall does not spill at the seams. The inquiry-to-MQL filter is the fit-plus-engagement bar (built from the Step 2 signals, formalised in Step 6.6). The MQL-to-SAL handoff is the one where marketing calls something a lead and sales quietly bins it; write the criteria sales agrees make an MQL worth accepting, or that argument never ends.

3. Choose the stage that is the Step 6 exit, the point where Step 6 hands to Step 7. Usually it is the MQL (marketing hands a qualified-but-not-yet-sales-ready lead to nurture) or the SAL. This decision lines up directly with the qualification bar in Step 6.6, and it tells Step 7 exactly what it is receiving.

4. Use these stage names in the funnel math (next step) and in every step below, so a “lead” in Step 6 means the same thing in Step 7 and Step 8. Consistent stage names are what let you read the funnel end to end.

5. The benchmark conversions are references, not targets; your real rates come from the run in Step 6.9. Log the stage definitions and any borrowed benchmark you are leaning on in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested).

Example (continuing the example): Inquiry is anyone who took the deal-decay teardown. An MQL is a teardown-taker who also fits the signals (Series A, two or more AEs, no enforced follow-up). An SAL is one where a call is booked and sales agrees the fit is real. An SQL is an active evaluation of the product. Step 6 hands MQLs to Step 7, and the marketing-to-sales criterion is written down so a booked teardown call is not waved through as a real opportunity.

Step 6.5. Put numbers on the funnel

Duration: 45-60 minutes

This is the step the model calls numbers-driven, and this is the step that earns the name. A conversion path without numbers cannot be judged, improved, or trusted. Here you attach a metric to every stage, estimate the conversion rate between stages, and work out the volume you need at the top to hit your goal at the bottom. The numbers also tie the whole step back to Step 2 through Step 5: the size of the segment, the reach of the channel, and the pull of the offer all show up as figures here, and an honest funnel reveals when those upstream steps cannot support the goal.

What to do:

1. In the Step 6 section of outputs.md, under “Funnel math,” fill in the table below (it is also in outputs.md). Work bottom-up from the goal: how many customers or sales-ready leads you need, then back up through each conversion rate to the reach required at the top. Use the Step 5 baseline test for any rate you have real data on, and a clearly-marked estimate for the rest.

   Stage	Metric	Conversion rate to next stage	Target volume	Source (tested / estimated / from Step 2-Step 5)
   Reach (channel audience exposed)	impressions or sends
   Engagement	clicks, replies, reactions
   Leads captured	contacts or bookings
   Qualified leads (ready for Step 7)	fit the bar in Step 6.6

2. Sanity-check the volume against Step 2 and Step 5. If hitting your goal requires reaching more of the segment than actually exists (Step 2’s segment size), or more than the channel can deliver (Step 5’s reach), the goal is not achievable through this channel alone, and no funnel tuning will fix it. This is one of the most valuable things Step 6 can tell you: that the constraint is upstream, not in the funnel. Write the finding plainly.

3. Add a rough unit economics line if money is involved: cost per lead and cost per qualified lead, against what a customer is worth. A funnel that converts but costs more per customer than the customer returns is a funnel that loses money faster the better it works. You do not need precision here, just the order of magnitude, enough to catch a path that cannot pay for itself.

4. Set the one metric that matters for this stage of the system: the single number that, right now, best tells you whether lead generation is working. Early on it is usually the rate at the most important conversion point from Step 6.3, not a vanity number like reach. Naming it stops you from optimising impressions while leads stay flat.

5. Every rate you did not pull from the Step 5 baseline is an estimate, and estimates at this stage are usually optimistic. Log the funnel assumptions in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested), especially the conversion rate at the most important point and the assumption that the segment is large enough to feed the goal. Step 6.9 replaces the estimates with measured rates.

Step 6.6. Define a lead and the qualification bar

Duration: 30-45 minutes

Not everyone who responds is a lead worth pursuing, and not every lead is ready for Step 7. This step draws two lines: what counts as a captured lead at all, and what counts as qualified, meaning fit enough and warm enough to hand to follow-up. Without these lines, the funnel reports big numbers that mean nothing, and Step 7 and sales spend their time on people the Step 2 anti-audience already flagged. The qualification bar is built from Step 2: the observable signals that predict fit, and the anti-audience signals that predict waste.

What to do:

1. In the Step 6 section of outputs.md, under “Lead definition and qualification,” write a one-line definition of a captured lead (the minimum: a contact you can reach again who took the offer) and a one-line definition of a qualified lead (fit plus intent enough for Step 7).

2. Build the qualification bar in the table below (it is also in outputs.md), pulling the fit signals from Step 2’s observable signals and the disqualifiers from Step 2’s anti-audience. Separate fit (are they the right kind of buyer) from intent (are they warm enough to act soon), because a fit lead with no intent goes to a nurture track, not to sales.

   Signal	Source (Step 2 signal / anti-audience)	Fit or intent?	Threshold to pass

3. Decide what happens to leads that are captured but not qualified. They are not waste by default: some are fit-but-not-ready and belong in a slow nurture (which Step 7 will design), and only those that fail the fit bar (the anti-audience) are truly out. Mark the routing: qualified to Step 7 now, fit-but-cold to nurture, anti-audience to discard. This keeps the handoff to Step 7 clean and keeps good-but-early leads from being thrown away.

4. Keep the bar honest. A bar set too low to make the lead numbers look good just moves the disappointment downstream to Step 7 and sales, where it is more expensive. A bar set too high starves Step 7 of anyone to work with. The right level is the one where a lead passing the bar has a real chance of becoming a customer, judged against the Step 2 segment.

5. The predictive power of each qualification signal is an assumption until you see which captured leads actually progress. Log the bar in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested); Step 6.9 and later Step 7 data show whether the signals you chose actually predict who buys.

Step 6.7. Structure the qualification with MEDDICC

Duration: 30-45 minutes

The bar in Step 6.6 decides who Step 7 works: fit plus enough intent. That is the right test for a fresh lead. But a lead that will actually become a deal has to answer more than fit and intent, and naming that fuller set now does two useful things: it sharpens what “qualified” really means, and it hands Step 7 and Step 8 a precise list of what still has to be discovered. MEDDICC is the standard shape for that list. Not every element can be checked at lead stage, and that is the point: you mark what a lead must already show, and what is legitimately still open for follow-up and the deal to close.

The elements: Metrics (the measurable value at stake), Economic buyer (who controls the money), Decision criteria (what they will judge on), Decision process (how the choice actually gets made), Identify pain (the real, felt problem), Champion (the insider who wants it), and Competition (including doing nothing).

What to do:

1. In the “MEDDICC scorecard” table in the Step 6 section of outputs.md, lay out the seven elements. For each, note what it means in your case, whether it is checkable at lead stage or discovered later, and its current status. Most elements are already partly answered by earlier steps: pain from the Step 2 blocker, economic buyer and champion from the Step 2 buying context, metrics from the Step 1 cost and Step 3 value, competition from the Step 3 alternatives.

   Element	What it means here	Checkable at lead stage, or discovered later (Step 7 / Step 8)?	Current status
   Metrics
   Economic buyer
   Decision criteria
   Decision process
   Identify pain
   Champion
   Competition

2. Mark which elements a lead must show to pass the Step 6 bar, usually identified pain, a plausible champion, and segment fit, and which are allowed to be open, to be closed by Step 7 (as it builds readiness) and Step 8 (as it works the deal). This keeps the Step 6 bar from either over-qualifying (demanding deal-stage answers from a fresh lead) or under-qualifying (passing on a contact with no pain and no champion).

3. Weight the two elements that most predict a real B2B deal: a reachable economic buyer and a genuine champion. A lead with pain but no path to anyone who can sign is the indecision risk Step 7 will have to fight, and it is better flagged now than discovered in a stalled deal three months later.

4. Hand the scorecard forward. Step 7 uses the open elements as its discovery checklist while it nurtures; Step 8 completes the scorecard inside the deal. The same MEDDICC record travels down the spine, filling in as the lead progresses.

5. Which elements actually predict a close, for your segment, is an assumption until deals run. Log the weighting in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested); Step 8’s win/loss data eventually shows which elements really mattered.

Example (continuing the example): A teardown lead usually arrives with identified pain (deals going dark) and often a champion (the VP of Sales who took it), and the teardown itself supplies the metrics. The economic buyer (the founder) and the decision process are typically open at lead stage, flagged for Step 7 to surface. Competition is “do nothing”, carried down from Step 3. So a lead passes the Step 6 bar on pain, a plausible champion, and fit; the economic buyer and process are Step 7 and Step 8’s job to close, and the scorecard says so explicitly.

Step 6.8. Write the channel content

Duration: 60-90 minutes to set the system up | 30-60 minutes per post thereafter

The top two stages of the funnel, exposure and engagement, do not fill themselves. In a social feed (LinkedIn, for most B2B segments) they are filled by content: the posts that earn attention, hold it, and put the message and the offer in front of the reader often enough that responding becomes natural. This step is the writing system for that content. It is written for social feeds; if your beachhead channel is not a feed, keep the principles (start from the audience and their transformation, one job per post, never self-serving) and adapt the mechanics.

Two rules sit above everything else in this step.

Start from the ICP and the transformation, every time. Content is not written from what you want to say but from what the reader should learn. Before the first post, write down who the reader is (the Step 2 sharpest segment) and the transformation that following you should produce: what they believe or do today, and what they should believe or be able to do after reading you for a few months. Every post moves the reader one step along that path. When you use this method outside this system (a client, another brand, a personal profile), keep the same thing in an ICP.md file in the content folder. If that file does not exist, writing it is the first job, before any post.

Never self-serving. The reader must get the full value of the post even if they never buy, follow, or click. Content that exists to make the writer look good is the fastest way to lose a feed’s trust. Even lead-generation content passes this bar: the client is the hero of the story, and the reader leaves with something they can use.

What to do:

1. Choose the post’s job before writing a word. One post, one job, taken from where its readers sit relative to you. The mix across a month should cover all three jobs; any single post does exactly one.

   Content type	Job	What it looks like	The failure mode
   Awareness: educational	Convert strangers into followers	Teaches something specific and actionable. Reacting to news in the niche with your own perspective is the strongest form: the reader gains intelligence they would not have found alone	Teaching outside the niche. A post useful to everyone converts no one, because no reader concludes “this person is for me”
   Awareness: relatable	Reach beyond the current following	Broadly recognisable observations about the reader’s working life	Builds reach but converts few followers. Do not let it dominate the mix
   Trust	Turn followers into believers	A story as the vehicle for a lesson the reader can apply. The story is never the message; the lesson is	The confession without a takeaway. The reader thinks “that is sad” and scrolls on, no closer to trusting you
   Lead generation	De-risk the purchase	A transformation case study: a large outcome in a short timeframe, with the client as the hero who did the work	Generic praise (“great to work with, highly recommend”), which answers no question a buyer is actually asking

2. Write the hook to stop the scroll. The image and the first two lines of text carry roughly 80 percent of a post’s impressions, and they have one job between them: the click on “see more”. Test every hook against the five Cs. A hook that triggers none of them is a caption, not a hook.

   The C	The mechanism	Example shape
   Curiosity	Opens a loop the reader has to close	”The real reason I left [known company]…”
   Contrast	Two things that should not sit together	”Everyone posts daily. I post twice a week. It made me more, not less.”
   Controversy	Challenges what the reader assumes	”Your LinkedIn strategy is probably backwards”
   Conflict	A struggle with stakes	”I spent seven months doing LinkedIn wrong”
   Confusion	A claim that seems impossible	”The best LinkedIn creators barely use LinkedIn”

3. Re-hook after the click, then hold the rhythm. The third line confirms that the click was worth it: it builds more tension, it does not resolve any. The APP pattern (Brian Dean) is the reliable shape for it: agree with something the reader already believes, promise the payoff, preview what is coming. From there, structure the body for the skimmer with the 1-3-1 skeleton (Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush): a one-line hook, a three-line block, a one-line conclusion, expanded to 1-3-3-1 and beyond as the post grows. The rhythm to hold throughout: three or four short single-sentence lines, then a block of two or three sentences, then back to short lines. Short lines land the key points; blocks develop the ideas. A wall of text loses the skimmer, and a line break after every single sentence is just as monotone.

4. Pick the argument arc for the body, by the post’s job.

   • PAS (problem, agitate, solve) for educational posts. In B2B this maps directly onto the four problem steps from Step 1: “agitate” is the move from the external problem to the internal one, from what is happening to how it feels.
   • BAB (before, after, bridge) for posts built on a change: the current state, the desired state, and the idea as the bridge between them.
   • The backstory arc (Justin Welsh) for trust posts: the obstacle, the internal struggles, the external struggles, the change event, the spark, the guide, the result. Note that it separates internal from external struggle exactly as Step 1 separates internal from external problems; that separation is what makes a story land instead of ramble. An authoritative hook (“20 years of B2B marketing in 60 seconds”) is the alternative opening when the credential itself earns the read.
   • Hook, story, offer (Russell Brunson) for lead-generation posts: the hook states a large outcome in a short timeframe, the story makes the client the hero (they chose to invest, they did the work; you supplied the tools), and the offer closes with authentic urgency only. A real date or real scarcity counts; manufactured countdowns do not.

5. Multiply an insight before hunting for a new one. The 4A lens turns one insight into four posts: actionable (how to do it), analytical (why it works, with numbers), aspirational (what becomes possible), anthropological (why people behave this way). A single completed step of strategy work can feed months of content without repeating itself.

6. Score the post before it ships. Under the draft, fill in the table below (1 to 5 per dimension, one line of justification each). Self-serving is scored inversely: a 5 means the reader gets full value even if they never buy. Any dimension at 3 or below sends the post back for a rewrite, not into the queue.

   Dimension	The question	Score (1-5)	Why
   Stop	Would the image and the first two lines stop the scroll (which of the five Cs)?
   Stay	Does line three re-hook, and does the rhythm hold to the last line?
   Share	Would the target reader attach their name to this and send it to their network?
   Self-serving	Does the reader get full value even if they never buy? (5 = fully)

7. Track shares per impression, not likes. Views and comments are easy to generate; a share means someone attached their name to your content and sent it to their network, which is the only engagement signal that predicts the content is working. As a benchmark: 0.3 is solid, 0.5 or above is great, and any post at 0.5 or above goes into a repost rotation every 60 to 90 days with the exact same text and image. Which content types this segment actually responds to is an assumption until the numbers say so: log it in assumptions.md (Step: 6, Status: Untested) and let the Step 6.9 run replace the guess.

Example (continuing the Step 1 to Step 5 example):

For the VP of Sales on LinkedIn: an educational awareness post reacting to a new sales-tech funding round, with a perspective on what it signals about where deal management is heading (niche intelligence, converts followers). A trust post using the backstory arc: the quarter a sales leader stopped asking for more pipeline and started watching where existing deals went dark, with the lesson the reader can apply on Monday. A lead-generation post: “a mid-market sales team cut deal decay by a third in six weeks”, client as hero, closing on the real limit of teardown slots per month. Each post scored before shipping; the first one that hits 0.5 shares per impression enters the repost rotation.

Step 6.9. Run it small and find the bottleneck

Duration: 1-3 weeks calendar time, depending on channel speed | Target: enough live volume to get real rates at each stage

Everything above is a hypothesis until traffic moves through it. Step 6.9 runs the system at small scale, measures the real conversion rate at every stage, compares it to the Step 6.5 targets, and finds the one stage where the funnel leaks worst. You are not scaling yet; you are replacing estimates with measured numbers and fixing the weakest link before you spend to fill the top. This is also where the discipline of the whole model pays off: when a stage underperforms, the question is whether the fault is in Step 6 (the offer, the path, the ask) or upstream (the wrong audience, a weak value proposition, a channel the buyer is not in). Resist the reflex to tinker locally before you have checked which step the error actually lives in.

There are two halves to Step 6 validation: the quantitative run (the numbers) and a few conversations with people who did and did not respond (the why behind the numbers). The numbers tell you which stage leaks; the conversations tell you why, which is what you actually need to fix it.

9a. Run the funnel at small scale

Duration: the bulk of the time

Put real but limited volume through the path: a small budget, a batch of outbound, a few weeks of posting the Step 6.8 content with the offer woven in, whatever the Step 5 channel allows cheaply. Instrument every stage so you can see the drop from one to the next. Keep running until each stage has enough volume that the rates are not noise.

What to measure:

• The conversion rate at every stage of the Step 6.3 path, not just the final lead count. The whole point is to see where people drop, not only how many arrive.
• The rates against the Step 6.5 targets. Mark each stage as at, above, or below target.
• The quality of the leads against the Step 6.6 bar: what share of captured leads actually qualify. A high capture rate that produces few qualified leads points at the offer attracting the wrong people.
• The one metric that matters from Step 6.5, tracked over the run.

Find the bottleneck: the single stage with the largest gap between its rate and its target, or the largest unexpected drop. That stage is where you work first. Fixing the worst stage moves the whole funnel more than polishing a stage that already works.

9b. Ask the people who did and did not respond

Duration: light, a handful of short conversations

Numbers locate the leak; people explain it. Talk to a few who converted and, more valuably, a few who engaged but did not. Recruit from the Step 2 sharpest segment, the same way every step has.

What to ask those who responded:

• What made you take the offer? What nearly stopped you?
• Was the offer what you expected when it arrived?

What to ask those who engaged but did not convert:

• You looked but did not take it up. What held you back?
• Was anything unclear, or did it ask for more than you wanted to give at that point?
• What would have made it an easy yes?

You are listening for whether the leak is a fixable Step 6 problem (too much friction, a confusing step, an offer mismatched to the channel’s intent) or an upstream signal (they are not really the segment, the value did not land, they are not in a buying frame in this channel). The difference decides whether you fix the form or go back a step.

9c. Capture immediately after the run and conversations

Do this while the data and quotes are fresh. Add entries to the Step 6 section of captures.md using this structure:

Funnel run [number] | Channel + offer:
Dates / volume:

Stage rates measured (each stage, rate to next, vs target):

The bottleneck stage (largest gap or drop):

Lead quality (share of captured that qualified):

One metric that matters (value over the run):

---

Response conversation [number] | Converted / did-not-convert:
Reader (role, segment fit):
Why they did or did not respond (verbatim):
Friction or mismatch named (verbatim):
Is the leak a Step 6 fix or an upstream signal?:

Surprises (anything you did not expect):
Any Step 6 assumptions this confirmed or challenged:

The measured stage rates and the verbatim reasons for not converting are the most valuable output. The rates say where the funnel leaks; the quotes say whether to fix the funnel or go back a step. Capture both exactly.

9d. Synthesise and fix the bottleneck

Do this once each stage has real volume. Go through your captures in captures.md and update the Funnel synthesis fields in the Step 6 section of outputs.md, covering:

Measured rates vs targets. Replace the Step 6.5 estimates with the rates the run produced. Where did reality beat or miss the estimate, and by how much? The corrected funnel is the real one; the estimated one was scaffolding.

The bottleneck and its likely cause. Name the worst stage and what the conversations suggest is behind it. Be specific about whether it is a Step 6 problem (friction, offer, ask) or an upstream one (audience, value proposition, channel). This single judgement is the most important output of the step.

Lead quality. What share of captured leads qualified, and did the offer attract buyers or freebie-seekers? If capture is high but quality is low, the fix is usually the offer (Step 6.2) or the channel targeting (Step 5), not the form.

Is the constraint upstream. If the funnel leaks worst at a stage that no local fix improves, and the conversations point to people who are not really the segment or do not feel the value, the constraint is above Step 6. Say so plainly and go back. This is the model working as intended: the loud error in Step 6 revealing a quiet fault in Step 2, Step 3, or Step 5.

The fix you are making, and the re-test. State the one change you are making to the bottleneck stage and what you expect it to do. Then re-run that stage. One change at a time, so you know what moved the number.

After synthesis, mark the relevant rows in assumptions.md as Validated or Invalidated, and note what the evidence showed. If the funnel was invalidated by an upstream cause, the fix is in that step, not in Step 6 tactics. Do not scale a leaking funnel.

9e. If you genuinely cannot run a live test

If you cannot put real volume through the path in the time available, reduce the unknowns as much as possible and mark the gap clearly.

• Run the smallest possible manual version. Even ten hand-done outbound touches or one week of posting the offer produces directional rates that beat pure estimates.
• Pressure-test the path with people in the segment. Walk a few segment-fit people through the path and watch where they hesitate; usability problems show up even without volume.
• Benchmark the rates. Compare your estimated conversion rates against published benchmarks for the channel and offer type, marking clearly that benchmarks are not your numbers. If your plan only works at rates well above benchmark, the plan is fragile.

Document each in the Step 6 section of captures.md, noting it is secondary. Log the absence of a real run as an assumption in assumptions.md. A funnel never run live is a diagram; Step 7 needs to know it is building on projected rather than measured rates.

Step 6.10. Write the final lead-generation system

Duration: 30-45 minutes

You now have an offer, a mapped path, measured rates, a qualification bar, and a fixed (or diagnosed) bottleneck. Lock the system.

A complete Step 6 output has six parts. Write a line or two for each:

1. The offer: what it is, why it fits the channel’s awareness and intent, and how it is a true taste of the Step 3 value.
2. The conversion path: the stages from exposure to captured lead, with the capture mechanism and where the lead lands.
3. The funnel math: the measured conversion rates, the target volumes, the one metric that matters, and the unit-economics sanity check.
4. The lead definition and qualification bar: what a captured lead is, what a qualified lead is, and the routing for fit-but-cold and anti-audience leads.
5. The bottleneck and the fix: the weakest stage, its likely cause (Step 6 or upstream), and the change you made or are making.
6. The upstream finding, if any: whether the run revealed a constraint in Step 2 through Step 5 that Step 6 cannot solve, so it is visible and not silently absorbed.

Keep it as structured fields. Format does not matter. Measured numbers do: this is the step where “it should convert” is not good enough.

What to do:

1. Write the final system directly into the matching fields in the Step 6 section of outputs.md.
2. Read it once as a skeptic who suspects you are about to scale a funnel that only works on paper. Can you point to measured rates and a known bottleneck, not projections? If not, run Step 6.9 before you commit budget.
3. Run the diagnostic from the top of this page one more time. If all six questions now have clear written answers, Step 6 is done.

What you’ve built

After completing the steps above, the Step 6 section of outputs.md should contain:

This is not a deliverable for anyone else. It is a constraint on Step 7.

Assumption sweep

Before moving on, scan the Step 6 section of outputs.md for any field you filled in from reasoning rather than evidence. Common ones at Step 6:

• The conversion rates (did the live run produce them, or are they still estimates you hope hold at scale?)
• The offer’s pull (did the segment actually exchange contact for it, or did you assume they would?)
• The lead quality (did captured leads actually qualify, or did you assume the offer attracts buyers?)
• The qualification signals (did the signals predict who progresses, or are they your best guess?)
• The lifecycle stage definitions and any borrowed benchmark (are the stages defined the same way sales uses them, or only in marketing’s head?)
• The MEDDICC weighting (do a reachable economic buyer and a real champion actually predict a close for your segment, or is that assumed?)
• That the segment is large enough and the channel deep enough to feed the goal (did the math confirm it, or did you skip the sanity-check?)

Each unconfirmed field is an assumption. Log it in assumptions.md now if you have not already. The conversion rate at the most important point and the offer’s pull are usually the highest-impact assumptions in the step; if untested, mark them leap-of-faith and run Step 6.9 before scaling.

What this step hands off to Step 7

Before moving on, confirm the Step 6 section of outputs.md is complete. Step 7 opens by reading it. Specifically, Step 7 needs:

• The qualified leads and the qualification bar, because follow-up acts on exactly these people. Step 7 needs to know who it is nurturing and why they passed the bar.
• The fit-but-cold leads and their routing, because the slow-nurture track Step 7 designs is built for them. The leads that are not ready now are Step 7’s main long-game.
• The offer and what the lead has already received, because Step 7 continues a conversation that Step 6 started; it must not restart from zero or re-pitch what they already took.
• The measured funnel rates and the bottleneck, because Step 7’s job is partly to lift the stages after capture, and it needs to know where Step 6 left off and what is already weak.
• The lead’s source channel and awareness level, because a lead from a cold channel needs warmer, slower follow-up than one from a high-intent channel who is nearly ready.
• The MEDDICC scorecard with its open elements, because those open elements (typically the economic buyer and the decision process) are exactly the discovery checklist Step 7 works through as it builds readiness.

The quality of your Step 6 leads sets the ceiling on what Step 7 can do. Follow-up cannot turn the wrong people into customers; it can only carry the right ones further. If Step 7 keeps stalling, check whether the leads it receives actually clear a meaningful bar, and whether the loud numbers in Step 6 are masking a quiet fault upstream. The recurring lesson of this step holds at the handoff too: a problem that shows up in follow-up often originates before it.

Common failure modes

There is no offer, just a call to action. “Contact us” or “book a demo” with nothing given in return catches only the already-ready and loses everyone else. Design an offer that gives the reader a real, low-risk reason to respond, sized to the channel’s intent.

You tinkered with Step 6 while the fault was upstream. The numbers screamed here, so you rewrote the ad and changed the form ten times while the real problem was a vague audience, a consensus value proposition, or a channel the buyer is not in. When a stage will not improve with local fixes, check the step above before optimising the button. This is the single most common and most expensive Step 6 mistake.

The offer attracts freebie-seekers, not buyers. A popular lead magnet unrelated to your value fills the funnel with people who want the magnet and never the product. The capture numbers look great and the qualified numbers do not. Tie the offer to the Step 3 value and weight “attracts buyers” over “easy yes.”

The funnel has no numbers. You launched on “we will see what happens,” so when it underperforms you cannot tell which stage is broken. Put a metric and a rate on every stage; a funnel you cannot measure is a funnel you cannot fix.

Too much friction before capture. A long form, a phone number, a meeting request before the reader trusts you at all. Each extra ask sheds people. Ask for the minimum that makes the lead workable, and earn the bigger asks later.

The content serves the writer, not the reader. Posts about your product, your award, your view count. The feed reads it as advertising and withholds the only currency that matters, attention and shares. Every post must give the reader full value even if they never buy; score Self-serving honestly and rewrite anything at 3 or below.

Every post tries to do every job. Awareness, trust, and lead generation in one post produces a post that does none of them. One post, one job. The mix across the month covers all three; the individual post does not.

A captured contact is treated as a qualified lead. Everyone who downloads anything is called a lead and shipped to sales, who drown in people who will never buy. Define the qualification bar from Step 2 signals and route fit-but-cold leads to nurture, not to a closer.

You scaled a leaking funnel. The small run showed a bad rate at a key stage, and you poured budget into the top anyway, multiplying the leak. Fix the bottleneck at small scale first; scale amplifies whatever the funnel already does, including losing.

The goal needs more of the segment than exists. The math only works if you reach more buyers than Step 2’s segment contains or the Step 5 channel can deliver. No funnel tuning fixes a goal the upstream steps cannot support. Surface it and either widen the channel plan or reset the goal.

“Leads are flat, so marketing is failing.” Said with the funnel treated as the whole of marketing. Lead generation is one step, and its numbers are only meaningful if the four above it hold. Flat leads are a symptom; the cause is often higher up.

Sources

• $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi. The core source for Step 6. On lead magnets as a true taste of the paid value, the ways to generate leads, and why the offer (not the ad) is the lever. Behind Steps 2 and 3.
• $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi. The value equation behind offer design: dream outcome, perceived likelihood, time, and effort. Background for scoring the offer in Step 6.2 and for matching commitment to the channel’s intent.
• DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson. On the conversion path as a deliberate sequence of steps and the value ladder from free offer to sale, with friction removed at each step. Behind the path map in Step 6.3.
• Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz. The numbers-driven discipline: a metric for every stage, the one metric that matters right now, benchmarks, and reading a funnel honestly. The foundation for Step 6.5 and the measurement in Step 6.9.
• The Art and Business of Online Writing by Nicolas Cole. On writing for the skimmer: the 1-3-1 structure, the rhythm of short lines and blocks, and turning one idea into many pieces. Behind the structure and multiplication moves in Step 6.8.
• Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. On the hook, story, offer arc and the reader (not the expert) as the hero of the story. Behind the trust and lead-generation arcs in Step 6.8.
• Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross. On building a repeatable lead-generation system rather than ad hoc effort, separating a captured contact from a qualified lead, and the clean handoff to the next stage. Behind the system framing and the qualification bar in Step 6.6.
• The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi. On the marketing-to-sales lead lifecycle and the handoff stages (inquiry, marketing-qualified, sales-accepted), and on the criteria that stop the two teams arguing about what a lead is. Behind the demand waterfall in Step 6.4.
• The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon. The source for MEDDICC in Step 6.7: the elements a real opportunity must answer (metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria and process, identified pain, champion, competition), and why the economic buyer and the champion are the load-bearing two.