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Join for freePosted: Wed 5th Aug 2026
Every business needs a steady stream of new customers.
The old approach to lead generation is now becoming less effective as people are no longer willing to hand over their details for a generic PDF they will never open.
The free download, guide or checklist in exchange for an email address is now dead!
In this practical session, Bisola Fasanya, founder of AI consultancy Atel Q and author of the Amazon number-one AI title The New Voice of Business, shows you how small businesses are using AI to attract potential customers differently.
You don't need any technical background, but you will leave with ideas you can put to work the same week.
Why the traditional way of gathering leads has stopped working, and what people now expect in return for their attention and their details
A simple framework for attracting the right people by offering real value upfront, without needing a tech team to build it
How to stay in touch with everyone who takes part in a way that feels personal and well-timed, so each interaction becomes the start of a conversation rather than another cold name on a list
Bisola is a voice AI implementation specialist, the founder of Atel Q, and the author of The New Voice of Business, which is currently the #1 bestselling AI title on Amazon.
She helps small and medium-sized businesses deploy voice AI to solve real operational problems, moving them from AI curiosity to AI in action.
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Lightly edited for clarity.
Ryan: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Ryan, and I'll be your host today.
For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.
Today, I'm really pleased to introduce Bisola Fasanya, who is the founder of Atel Q.
In this session, Bisola will explain how small businesses are using AI to attract potential customers differently.
If you've got any questions throughout, as always, just pop them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them at the end.
The webinar is recorded, and a follow-up email with any further resources and the recording will go out to you later on today.
On that note, I will hand over to you, Bisola.
Bisola: Thank you so much, Ryan. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining this session.
As Ryan mentioned, my name is Bisola. I'm the founder of Atel Q and the author of The New Voice of Business.
Today, I want to talk about the shift that we are seeing in how businesses attract customers.
For a long time, the default advice has always been: create a PDF, checklist, guide or eBook, put it behind an email form and hope that people who download it eventually become customers.
Sometimes that works. But very often, someone might give you their email address. They might receive your document. They might truly mean to read it later, but they just never quite get to it.
A different way to think about lead magnets is to think about a useful interaction and something that can actually bring value to your potential customers right away.
I'm going to show you how AI can help you build a simple version of this without you needing to be a developer.
By the end of the session, I want you to be able to do three things.
First, recognise the difference between collecting contact details and actually creating real engagement.
Second, identify one interactive lead magnet idea that you could create for your own business.
And third, find out how we can build this with AI.
I have this controversial take, which is that leads are worthless. What's most important is engaged leads.
Your engaged leads are the asset. An engaged lead is someone who actually shows interest in what you are selling.
We already know that attention is extremely valuable. This is the reason why platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram are such powerful businesses, because they have people's attention.
As a business, despite what people might say, a name and email address is not attention. Definitely not in 2026. Not anymore.
Because it's not trust, it's not interest, and it's not proof that somebody wants what you are selling. So what is it?
I say it's just a contact record. You really do need to separate that from your engaged leads.
Your contact records are the people who have given you permission, as a business, to try to earn their attention again.
We know this because if a person doesn't want to hear from you, they can just ignore you, unsubscribe, block you or, worst-case scenario, report you if they think you're spamming them.
So the real asset is not simply the size of your list. The asset is what I call engaged attention, and it has to be engaged attention from the right people.
An engaged lead has done more than just give you an email address. They've engaged with you. They've shown that they care about what you sell, and that's a much stronger starting point for a future relationship.
Let me show you the difference. I actually asked Claude to do the drawing. You can see that it wasn't very good at the drawing. I need to help it do better when it comes to drawing.
But the difference I want to show you is that on the left-hand side, you've got a traditional model.
A person sees a social media post or an ad. They are offered a generic guide. They give their email address, receive the guide and are added to your mailing list.
You might even have a whole email sequence where you nurture them over days and weeks. Very often, nothing meaningful really happens.
On the right, you can see an interactive value exchange.
A person sees useful information, like a useful question, for example. They input relevant information about themselves and their business, and then they receive an immediate personalised result.
You learn something useful about their situation. They're quite happy. Then the next message or recommendation can actually adapt and personalise itself to what they've told you.
The shift I'm talking about today is that the old question was: how do I get their details?
But now the better question is: what useful answer can I give them, and what will I learn if I give it to them?
Again, going back to the fact that lead magnets only work if they get consumed.
The value that sits in a lead magnet that has not been consumed might as well not have existed.
It's not that the PDF is bad. It's not that a guide is bad either. It's not really about the format, but about how you interact with your users.
The issue is generic information, delayed information, difficult-to-use information or something that is just not relevant enough for your users to be able to act on now.
That's what I mean by a dead lead. A dead lead is not necessarily somebody who was not interested. It could be somebody who said, "OK, I'm going to read this later", but then they just never got around to it.
When you think about it, if you think about your own inbox, how many things have you downloaded with good intentions? How many times have you thought, "I'm going to read this later", and you just never get around to it?
That's what we're dealing with now.
This is why the interactive lead magnet can capture attention and keep attention. That's what is really important.
I'm going to give you another example of why the old way doesn't quite work. Imagine 100 people signed up for your lead magnet. You then send 100 emails.
Email benchmarks say that the average open rate is about 42%. That is the average open rate of warm leads. I'm not even talking about cold leads. Yet the average click rate is about 2%.
Obviously, these are broad benchmark figures. Your numbers may be higher or lower, but I want you to see my point.
Even if you sent them an email, even if they're on your list, it doesn't mean they've opened your information.
That is what we call the engagement equation. Your list might have grown by 100, but the genuinely engaged audience might be much smaller.
The traditional path doesn't quite work anymore because of this generic way of doing things.
Even though the business might think it's getting more traffic, sometimes traffic is not the issue. Sometimes the issue is that the person hasn't been given a reason to engage even after they've opted in.
I know I'm talking a lot about the problem. Don't worry. The solution is coming.
You get the point, right? The list is important, but not as important as your engaged list. We do not want dead leads.
There could be so many different reasons why you don't have engaged leads. It could be pricing, audience, sales process. It could be a variety of things.
You do have to ask yourself the questions. If people are opting in, they are interested. So what's going on where, somewhere along the way, I lose their attention and engagement?
Now let's get to it. What does a great lead magnet actually do?
I'm talking about a 2026 lead magnet, especially now that people are so tired of the game. They're tired of the old lead magnets. They're tired of the eBooks.
A great lead magnet is one that will diagnose a problem, give a sample of the real thing, or hand over one step of the process. This is an or situation. It's not an and.
It could diagnose a problem, or it could give you a sample of the real thing, or it could hand over step one.
What you really want to look out for is that it should be good enough that they would happily have paid for it.
The three routes you can take are these: diagnose a problem, give a sample of the real thing and hand over step one.
I'm going to show you a real example of each. This is where we get to the nitty-gritty.
The first example is the HubSpot Website Grader. Let me click on it. I'm going to accept here. I always accept cookies.
HubSpot could have offered you a guide that says "how to improve your website". But instead, they said: "Give me your website and your email address, and I will help you."
Let me put my website, for example, just as a quick demo. Atel Q.com. Please don't spam me.
Let me get my score. While it's working on it, this is quite useful because, all of a sudden, I'm interested. I'm like: "What's my score? What's the score of my website?"
They will give me a personalised assessment based on my website. They're not just going to give me something generic, like "in order for your website to work, it needs to have SEO".
This is the problem sometimes when you're doing live demos. Here we go. So they said my site is OK. Just OK. What else?
The performance is pretty poor. Actually, I know this because I attended another Enterprise Nation Thursday co-working session. There was a website developer in the session, and he said my website could do better.
Here, they're telling me everything about it. What's wrong with my page sizes, my page requests and so on.
My SEO is doing OK. My meta description is terrible. What have I done?
With the fact that they've given me this, I am going to feel more likely to want to work with them because they've given me all of this information about my website.
They've told me my security is great. That's fantastic. Good to know.
Moving on, this is an example of a website that gives you a sample of the real thing. This is the Shopify business name generator.
If you go on it, I could say: "I am an interactive lead magnet creator and provider."
I hope it's going to give it to me. If it doesn't, that's fine. Just go to Shopify and you'll be able to test this out. It will give me examples. But I think you get the point.
You can use a tool, and then the tool gives me an immediate result that makes me feel like I've received quite a lot of value from them.
Another example would be a mortgage calculator.
Nobody wants a 40-page eBook about this is what you need. I want to know, based on my own specific circumstances, what applies to me.
I've got another example right here of another interactive lead magnet, where these people are accountants and I can get an instant quote.
By the way, a quote could be an example of a lead magnet, especially if it's an instant quote. A scorecard could also be an example of an interactive lead magnet.
It's asking me a few questions like: what am I looking for?
I could say I'm looking for accounting support. I am a limited company. I earn lots of money, and it's just me.
At this point, I'm going to skip. In your interactive lead magnet, you would also obviously collect email addresses.
In their case, they said skip. I would not put that option. I would actually make sure that you collect the information because you've already given them value.
In this case, they have given me my quote. I feel like it's valuable because they've told me this, this and that.
Let's close this off and go next, because the next thing I want to show you is that, as impressive as that looked, with AI you can replicate that type of calculator with just one prompt.
You can leverage AI to create any type of calculator or scorecard type. I'm going to show you how, right now.
This, for example, is a calculator that I created just last week to show you how quickly you can create this.
Again, similar to the other accounting firm, I'm asking a few questions like: are you a limited company? What's your rough turnover? What do you need to take off your plate?
Then I'm getting the quote straight away.
What I want to show you next is the prompt that I used to create this. Feel free to screenshot this prompt. I'm going to leave you here for a few seconds so that you can screenshot it.
With that, I was able to create a calculator. This is why this could be valuable for you, because you could put this type of prompt into your LLM and create an interactive calculator, or an interactive element, that your users can use.
It will come back to you with an HTML code. All you have to do is put it into your website. Most website builders have a place where you can insert a code element. You just put it in there, and that's basically it.
This is what you came here for. I want to give you the framework that you can take today when it comes to creating an interactive lead magnet.
Besides the technical aspect, which you've seen is very easy, you have to think about this.
First, do I have a valuable question? Second, what inputs do I want users to put in that are actually interesting to me?
So don't ask them how many kids they have if it's not relevant to your business.
Think about the inputs that are going to be useful. That's the data you're trying to extract from them.
Then think about what immediate useful result you want to provide them, and your one logical next step.
By now, you know that the money is not in your list, but in the conversation and engagement that you have with your list.
When somebody completes an interactive tool, you end up knowing a lot more than just their name and email.
You can know lots of information, such as what their goals are, what their budget range is, what stage they are at in their journey, what problems they're facing and what you want them to do next.
That means you can then provide them with a personalised solution. That really is the interactive value exchange.
The old journey was: give me your email and I'll give you information. The interactive journey is: give me some details about you and I will give you a personalised answer.
What comes after the personalised answer? It could be whatever you decide. It could be an email, a recommendation in report format or even an invitation to another conversation.
I'm going to give you an example of a lead magnet that I'm working on right now. This is for high-ticket businesses that use paid advertising and sales calls.
Their problem is that they're paying a lot of money to fill in their calendars. They're advertising on Meta and Instagram, for example, in the hope of getting qualified leads.
What happens is that, often, the calendars get filled with people who were never really going to buy. They were maybe tyre-kickers and things like that.
Unfortunately, they find out about that only 20 minutes into the call.
For them, the solution is to create an interactive lead magnet that starts with a calculator or quiz-like interactive lead magnet, just like the types we've seen, and just like the types that can easily be created with a prompt.
Then, of course, the user gets immediate results, and then we take it a step further.
We solve the next problem the user has through an assessment, and we make an assessment with a voice agent.
At the click of a button, the next step of this interactive lead magnet is for the user to speak to the voice AI agent, and then they exchange even further information.
They receive a personalised embedded report on the very page where they were speaking.
So you don't have to worry about the report being sent to spam, being forgotten or never being picked up by email, because everything happens in almost the same breath.
That's how a great lead magnet can become a great user experience.
Your action for this week is this. I want you to leave with a simple exercise. Before the end of today, I want you to write down one question that your best potential customer is already asking.
Not a question that you wish they were asking. It has to be a question that they are already asking.
Do not begin thinking about the perfect build or the perfect AI system. Start by creating one small useful win for that person, the person that you want to serve.
Once you've done that, you can then increase the complexity, and you've just seen how easy we could do this.
We've been together for about 24 minutes. We've got one more minute before the Q&A section. I wanted to reintroduce myself once again.
You already know by now that my name is Bisola, and you may know that I'm the author of the bestselling book The New Voice of Business, which ranked first in the artificial intelligence category.
I'm also the founder of Atel Q, which is a voice AI agent engine and AI implementation agency. I also host live workshops around voice AI and AI adoption and implementation.
My book, The New Voice of Business, can be purchased on Amazon. You can screenshot the QR code.
I'm happy to connect with anyone on the call on LinkedIn. If you've got any questions, you can send them over on LinkedIn, or we've got the session right here, right now, where we've got about five minutes left for questions.
Thank you so much for your time, and I'm expecting Ryan to come back any second.
Ryan: Right on cue. Amazing, Bisola. That was really helpful and really interesting. Thank you.
I would just say as well, Bisola is also the leader for our AI Together monthly catch-up. If anyone wants to join that as well, I'm going to pop the link in the chat because that takes place every month. It's an hour-long session to ask questions related to AI.
Thank you, Bisola. That was really interesting. We've got a couple of questions.
Do you think that traditional lead magnets are completely gone, or do you think they maybe still work in certain industries?
Bisola: I think they still work in certain industries. It's not really the format that matters, but how you're using it.
For example, I'm showing you how to do an interactive lead magnet. But even if you've got a calculator that does something that isn't interesting to people, it's not about the shiny object.
This is the reason why I talked about the framework. When you're doing an interactive lead magnet, there are three things you really have to ask yourself.
Am I creating a lead magnet that will lead people to the next stage in the buyer journey, and bring them closer to me?
It's a little bit like email. People said 10 years ago that email was dead. It's not. So it's in how you use it.
Ryan: Amazing. That's such a good point about emails, isn't it? That's what everyone said, but look at it now. It's one of the best channels.
What would you say are the biggest mistakes that you see businesses make when they're trying to generate leads today?
Bisola: I think the biggest mistake businesses make is that they're not thinking about the user journey.
For example, imagine if I am a fitness instructor. I might create a lead magnet that says "10 ways to eat healthy", but then you haven't asked yourself the question: then what? What's next?
This is the reason why you really want to give them a taster.
You have to ask yourself, in terms of the lead magnet: am I giving them a taster of what I can provide so that the next step is going to be them wanting to work with me?
If I diagnose a problem, then I say: "Now that I've identified what my problem is, like the SEO situation, help me with my SEO."
If I've given a sample of the real thing, what's the natural next step? It's "I want more."
I think people look at lead magnets as one thing, just some PDFs or some email, rather than thinking of the journey that the user should be having, which then leads directly to them.
Basically, the lead magnet you create should then raise a question that you and your business can answer.
Ryan: That makes sense. I think you could say that user journey is so important, isn't it, to really look at that and understand that journey?
We'll do one more question from Sabrina, which has just come in the chat.
If you give your customers the output without going to their inbox to get it, which has made it more user-friendly, what's the best way to get their approval to email them in the future?
Bisola: Usually, you would still have a tick box where they consent. I don't know if you remember in one of the lead magnet examples that there is always a tick button where they can consent.
In the request-a-quote example, where you ask for their name and so on, I would put the tick box there saying they agree to be contacted in the future.
That's how you get your GDPR covered.
Yes, you give them the answer immediately, but you also get yourself covered because then you have your checkbox there.
Ryan: Perfect. Again, that ties into that customer journey, doesn't it? Adding that into that journey.
Thank you, Bisola. That has been really interesting.
I would encourage everyone to reconnect with Bisola afterwards. I've popped in your LinkedIn and Enterprise Nation profile in there as well. So do connect afterwards if you have any more questions.
A recording will go out later on today, so keep an eye out for that. Big thank you, Bisola. That was a really interesting and great session.
Bisola: That's alright. Take care, everyone. Have a lovely day.
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