During last week’s Startups Live, we talked about developing your pricing strategy, and how asking customers for money is an important step in building an actual grown-up company.

If only it were as simple as flipping a switch on a revenue stream and then watching the sales pour in. That would be a beautiful world to live in. But we don’t live in that world, we live in this world – and in this world, if you want customers, you have to go out and earn them.

We tend to think of lead generation strategies as this very rote, transactional thing: you herd as many people as you can into your funnel, and then you shake the funnel and hope that enough people fall through to paying customer.

“Driving traffic is different than turning someone into a...