If you’ve ever wondered how to increase your leads as a solopreneur, you’re not alone. You’re capable, motivated, but can’t seem to generate a consistent lead flow without going through the motions of cold pitching and constantly chasing clients.
This is where AI lead generation tools can help. The AI Customer Engine can help small businesses use automation to find ideal customers, without constantly hustling for attention. Some are getting up to 50 leads a week, using simple tools that don’t require any technical skills at all.
This help guide will explain AI-powered lead generation and how solopreneurs can use it to build a steady pipeline of qualified prospects. We’ll demystify AI marketing for freelancers and coaches, and present actionable strategies to automate customer attraction and selling.
This will empower you as a solopreneur to achieve control over your lead flow and start learning about the best lead generation software for small businesses.
What is AI Lead Generation?
AI Lead generation is the use of artificial intelligence to generate and nurture potential leads for a business.
This can help solopreneurs and small businesses find interested customers automatically, reducing the amount of time needed for lead-chasing. It can be particularly helpful for those working to a budget, as AI allows you to focus on your strengths while handling the repetitive, time-consuming work of finding leads.
With 43% of sales professionals using AI to facilitate their jobs, it’s clear that AI is having a significant impact on lead generation. Solopreneurs and small businesses can leverage this, finding new leads in a matter of days and allowing them to achieve a balance between their side hustles and their 9-5 job or family commitments.
Why AI Lead Generation is a Game-Changer for Solopreneurs
Solopreneurs typically struggle with challenges such as time constraints, limited budgets, and a lack of audience to market to. Traditional lead generation methods like cold calling or paying for ads can be exhausting, let alone unpredictable and time-consuming.
AI can help overcome these challenges by automating outreach, identifying ideal prospects, and prioritizing the warmest leads that are most likely to convert.
This opens up a freedom from endless cold pitching for solopreneurs and a stability that you can’t normally achieve without a standard 9-5 career.
How Smart Solopreneurs Are Getting 50 Leads a Week Using AI
Achieving 50 qualified leads a week might sound impossible, but when you build a simple AI customer engine that runs even while you’re at work, you can achieve these kinds of numbers.
Here’s a step-by-step process for setting up an AI lead generation system to enable you to begin generating more leads for your business:
Identify Your Target Customer Profile
The first step you should take is to identify your target customer profile.
Think about the goals, problems, and budget of your audience, so that you know what they’re needs are and what they’re actively searching for.
You can even lean on AI tools to help refine this profile by analyzing patterns in your niche so you know roughly what type of people you need to target.
Use AI Tools to Find and Attract Leads
AI tools are invaluable when it comes to finding and attracting leads.
Systems like Nas.io‘s Magic Leads scan public signals online to find people who are currently looking for the skills and services you offer.
This can be a real game-changer for solopreneurs struggling with leads, allowing them to wake up to a daily feed of warm prospects without needing to scrape databases or cold-pitching clients.
Automate Follow-Ups and Nurture Interested Prospects
Once you have a few leads under your belt, you can start automating follow-ups with AI to nurture interested prospects.
AI tools can create personalized outreach messages, schedule follow-ups, and answer common questions, keeping conversations alive while you focus on your 9-5.
Many solopreneurs say this can help cut their manual workload by half, allowing them to grow their business and concentrate on a career/home life.
Package Your Offer for Easy Selling
The final step in the process is to package and deliver your expertise.
This could be in the form of digital products, coaching sessions, or workshops, allowing you to sell your products without needing a website or funnel builder.
Nas.io can be a great help here, allowing solopreneurs to create digital products and host a range of sessions/challenges that they can sell to their community and generate leads within a matter of days.
Top AI Lead Generation Tools for Freelancers and Coaches
Here are the top AI lead generation tools that we’d recommend for freelancers and coaches to generate consistent leads and automate outreach:
Nas.io
Nas.io is an all-in-one AI platform for lead generation and sales automation, offering solopreneurs the ability to build communities, sell courses, generate leads, and streamline the sales process.
It stands out as an option for freelancers and coaches because it is time and cost-efficient to use, keeping a range of features in one place and negating the need for multiple third-party subscriptions.
Some of their best features for solopreneurs include:
- Magic Leads: This is an AI module that analyzes a product and builds an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), helping small businesses find and rank new leads from interested consumers.
- Magic Ads: Magic Ads enables built-in ad management from within the Nas.io platform, resulting in full control through Nas.io without needing to switch to third-party ad managers.
- GetInspired AI: Nas.io’s GetInspired AI feature provides AI-generated ideas, such as personalized product suggestions based on your content and audience on other platforms like social media.
- Native CRM: With a native CRM, lead tracking, and engagement analytics, Nas.io users can easily measure results while also seamlessly connecting with external apps.
Built with creators in mind, Nas.io allows solopreneurs, freelancers, and coaches to launch products and lead generation campaigns quickly and efficiently, tying in email, ads, communities, and payments in one intuitive dashboard.
Cost: From $20.75 / month.
Apollo.io
Apollo.io is a widely used lead generation tool that primarily focuses on B2B, with its contact database of over 200 million contacts.
It’s known for its automated lead generation for solopreneurs, and includes key features such as:
- Large B2B Database and Search Filters: 210million+ contacts and the ability to search by industry, job title, and company size.
- Chrome Extension: Allows users to extract leads from LinkedIn/other sites to push them into different workflows
- Lead Scoring: Prioritizes leads based on potential to reduce wasted effort on cold leads.
- Integratable: System is easy to use and can integrate well with CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce.
While this is a good option for businesses looking for B2B leads, it tends to be more ‘sales-team’ focused than specifically tailored to creators or solopreneurs.
Cost: Limited free plan available, paid plans start from $49 per month.
Saleshandy
Saleshandy is a cold email outreach tool that is designed to help businesses drive lead generation, automate sequences, and track replies.
Its best features for solopreneurs and coaches include:
- Lead Finder: Provides access to 700million + contacts, with filters to build more targeted lists.
- Personalization: Allows creators to build multi-step cold email sequences with merge tags, custom fields, and AI variant generation for personalized, automated follow-ups.
Saleshandy is easy to use and integrates well with other tools. However, it’s mainly focused on email outreach rather than an all-encompassing system. You’d need to access third-party tools for key elements such as landing pages, payment processing, etc.
Cost: From $36 / month.
Clay.com
Clay is an AI-powered prospecting workflow builder designed to provide research, data enrichment, and automated workflows to different types of businesses.
It’s known for being a technical system that helps businesses via:
- Automation: Users can automate time-sensitive tasks such as gathering research about leads and building customer profiles.
- Reducing Manual Workload: Reduces manual lead-research workload, enabling research to be carried out in the background of a business.
While it’s a powerful platform, Clay may be a steep learning curve for solopreneurs and coaches just starting. Its credit-based pricing may also be a barrier.
Cost: Limited free plan, paid plans start from $134 / month.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can I Generate Leads with AI if I’m not Tech-Savvy?
Yes, you can generate leads even with limited technical knowledge by using platforms like Nas.io to help with the heavy lifting. They can assist with automated research, outreach, and follow-ups, allowing you to generate leads quickly and without a complex tech setup.
How Much Time Does AI Lead Generation Actually Save?
AI lead generation can cut prospecting and outreach time by up to 70 – 90%. Manual tasks that used to take hours can be completed in minutes with automated workflows and follow-ups.
Is AI Lead Generation Worth It for a New Solopreneur?
AI lead generation is absolutely worth it for a new solopreneur, helping businesses to attract leads even before they have a large following.
It provides new solopreneurs with a fast, low-cost method for lead generation, allowing them to validate offers and build momentum straight away.
Can AI Help Me Turn Leads into Paying Customers?
Yes, AI tools can help you to qualify leads, personalize follow-ups, and nurture relationships, all key elements of turning a lead into a paying customer.
Platforms like Nas.io can automate the whole path, from first contact to sale, to make conversions a little bit easier.
Do I Need a Big Social Media Following to Benefit from AI Lead Gen?
No, AI can find leads based on your ideal customer profile, rather than your follower count alone.
Even with small, niche audiences, AI can help you find new audiences, personalize outreach, and generate consistent leads for your business.
How to Package and Sell Your Expertise After Getting Leads
Once you’ve started generating some leads, the next step is to start packaging your knowledge into clear, compelling offers.
Start by using AI to identify your audience’s pain points and create focused offers that solve these problems. You could create a coaching package, digital product, or mini-course that will be just what that potential customer is looking for to solve their issue.
AI-powered funnels are great for improving conversions. Use AI to segment your leads, personalize messaging, and guide browsers from interest to sale. Simple sequences like ‘value email → offer preview → call to action’ work especially well when further personalized by AI tools.
Nas.io can automate sales and offer creation to close more deals, with its AI suggesting offer ideas, landing page assistance, and automated follow-ups. This makes the process super streamlined and allows solopreneurs and creators to win business more consistently and effectively.
Conclusion
To recap, AI lead generation allows busy solopreneurs a faster, smarter way to drive sales, without drowning in manual work. With tools like automated prospecting, personalized outreach, and simplified sales funnels, AI does the heavy lifting while you can focus on delivering your expertise and growing your business.
Nas.io brings this all together in one platform, combining AI-led generation, offer creation, and sales automation in one streamlined, easy-to-use system.
Build your business smarter with AI. Nas.io helps solopreneurs find customers and sell online — without needing followers or code.
