However, even the most savvy small business marketing consultant often falls victim to the trap of trying to sell far too early in the process. There’s an enormous temptation, once we learn that a prospect has a problem, for us to bring out our great big solution bat and just wack the poop out of the poor person. To hell with relationship building-let’s book some business! Unfortunately, it’s this lack of patience that kills marketing efforts that otherwise could be extremely successful.

So let’s think about the first step in the process-how do we get someone to pay attention to us? Let’s assume for the moment that this person whose attention you want is very busy, lots of responsibility and frankly, really isn’t all that interested in building a relationship with you. How do we go about getting that person to engage?

If you ask anyone who has spent any amount of time in the small business marketing consulting field, you’ll hear one consistent answer; appeal to their self-interest. At the very early stages-when you’re just trying to get someone’s attention, they’re really not interested in what you do.

What’s going to hook them is if you can communicate that you understand the types of problems they face. Lead with the problem-not your solution.
I know this probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard this but the reality is that most services providers are terribly wrapped up in how great their system/process/approach is. Even if we assume that your approach is in fact the absolute best one available , it makes no difference when you’re marketing your services to someone who doesn’t know you. The excellence of your system isn’t going to be known and appreciated until after you’ve been hired.

Thus when you lead with how great the service is, it just sounds like so much Blah, Blah, Blah to your listener. They’ve heard it all before. Everyone says their system or solution is great so you won’t stand out.

This isn’t to say that your solution isn’t important. Of course it is. At some point in the sales process your prospect is going to be very interested in learning about it. But, it’s not the hook that’s going to them to pay attention to you. I’d estimate that after working with owners of services businesses, consultants and advisors for over 20 years, 90% don’t get this and it’s one of the key reasons they struggle.

It’s showing that you understand the problem that’s going to hook their attention. And it’s for that very reason why free reports are still one of the most valuable weapons in your arsenal. The right report that focuses on that critical issue of pain, will get the people you want to do business with to pause and say, “OK tell me more.”

While networking, lunches, seminars, and even cold calling can produce results, they require that the individual actually do the prospecting. Thus it’s no huge surprise that when these labor intensive methods yield new business, prospecting comes to a screeching halt as the focus shifts to servicing clients. Thus the inevitable feast of famine business cycles.

So, how can a leaders of business advisory services get out of this seemingly never-ending cycle? The key is to shift from labor intensive client attraction methods to a system that works consistently, regardless of how busy one is. One that runs largely on autopilot. The good news is that such a system is easy to set up. Yes, it requires a bit of an investment of time in order to establish it, but once that’s done, it can literally run for years without any further effort.

The key to any highly effective client attraction system is to remember that it has two parts. The philosophy of the system is to first build a relationship with your prospective client and only sell your services after that relationship is in place. Although most of us would acknowledge that this makes logical sense, in our desire to sell services as quickly as possible, we pay short shift to this important point. While it’s certainly true that using a two step process does add time to the selling cycle, over the long haul it’s a far more effective strategy. This is particularly true when selling high value services which are hardly an impulse buy.

So they next question becomes how do we go about developing a relationship, especially with someone who probably doesn’t have a lot of interest in getting to know us. This is where we need to shift our communication from “This is what I do” to “Here’s why you should be paying attention to me.”

That may sound like a small difference, but it winds up having a huge impact on the success of your marketing efforts. If you can master this one thing (and I’m going to show you precisely how to do just that) you’ll end one of the largest challenges facing those who offer high value service.

The term came into prominence as a result of a best selling book by Jay Conrad Levinson. It’s evolved into a series of books that tackle “Guerilla Marketing” for all sorts of niche businesses. (In the spirit of full disclosure, his team contacted me a few months back about doing a book in the series. I declined since I felt it would conflict with my next book, The One Week Marketing Plan: The Set It & Forget It Method For Attracting New Clients.) In essence, his books teach low cost or no cost methods for prospecting.

There’s a lot of good things in the books and they’re worth checking out.

But here’s the cautionary note. I think you do yourself a HUGE disservice if you think that client attraction should be free. (And lots of people do.) We all know that it’s never free. Even for people who get their business through networking, they have to spend money-and even more importantly time-in the process.

Relying on these “labor intensive” client attraction methods only works for so long. At some point, you lap the track and run out of people who can refer you business…growth is usually very slow…and most importantly, you leave yourself vulnerable to the feast or famine business cycles. (Not to mention that when the labor intensive methods do pay off, what you no longer have is time to continue doing them.)

If you’re serious about running a business, you need to establish a marketing budget, much as the same way you set a budget for office expenses, accounting services, ect. If you do that, then the discussion shifts from “I don’t have any money for marketing” to “Where can I get the greatest ROI for my investment in marketing?”

That’s a very important shift in thinking.

Obviously, I have skin in this game because I’m a marketing consultant and I’ve made a nice living over the past 20 years selling marketing services. So you may have a temptation to just dismiss what I’m saying.

So don’t take my word for it.

Look at the super-successful people in your field. (Not your networking buddy who says she’s doing great.)

What you’ll notice is that they all have a marketing plan that is both funded and implemented. It includes a great website that makes a strong free offer, a drip marketing system, a blog that both spreads their message and helps with SEO, and a plan for driving traffic to their site.

The beauty of having a lead capture and drip marketing system in place is that you can then focus on spending your dollars on adding people to your network. It’s those people that become your clients and customers. So, rather than trying to spend money getting strangers to buy from you, focus instead on using your money to get people to opt-in and join your circle of relationships.

That’s money well spent.

Food for thought
Mark
Additional Information

It’s easy to caught up in all the things that you feel you should be doing. When you get feeling overwhelmed remember, if you make a great offer on your website that resonates with people who visit, you’ll get a large percentage who will opt-in. And if you stay in touch with everyone who opts-in, you’re positioned to turn a large percentage of them into actual clients.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

But it does leave unanswered the question of, Who’s going to write the free report or article? Who’s going to write the stay in touch messages?

Well, one option is for us to do it for you. Read more HERE

So why are only a few of us great chefs?

The key is that they understand how the ingredients fit together. They know when to add a “touch of this” and a “dash of that.” There’s a science to it, but there’s also an art.

I’m not sure the art can be taught, but the science certainly can. I firmly believe anyone can master the art of of telling great sales stories and on May 17th I’d like to show you how.

Let me make you a great (and persuasive) story teller.

More here

If you focus on just 2 things you can have as many new clients as your business can handle. Remember the over-arching philosophy of Gentle Rain: “Build relationships first. Sell stuff second.” Or as my Dad would say, “Never try to sell to strangers.”

OK, so here’s how you do that.

First, take a look at your website. Is there a great free offer that would motivated visitors to opt-in and get it? Here’s why you need that. According to Direct Marketing News, between 95%-98% of visitors are not ready to make a decision to buy when they come to your site. Even if you offer a “free consultation”, the number of visitors who will take you up on that is still only 3-5%.

What this means is that most people are simply bouncing off your website without leaving any record of who they are. As one might guess, it’s a bit difficult to develop a relationship with people if we can’t follow up with them.

That’s why making the offer of some sort of “hooky” free report is crucial. However, the trick is determining what’s a great “hook”, one that will get people to request it. If you get that right, then the fist part of the equation is done. (You still have to put an eye-catching opt-in box on your website, but I’ll share a link that will show you how to do that.)

This leads to the second step of the process…convert these prospects into paying clients. We do that through the automated messages that go out after the visitor has requested your free report. But, here’s the speed bump people run into.

The messages need to have a tone of intimacy to them. They need to be written so that it sounds like you’re speaking personally to the reader. This is why traditional newsletters don’t produce the conversion results you want. They’re impersonal in tone, and what we want to do is build a relationship.

Secondly, people tend to send out messages too infrequently. Once a month just isn’t enough. Think once a week. And to answer the question that pops in your mind, “If the messages have the right tone & content, you’ll engage people, not turn them off.”

Nothing I’m discussing here is complicated. If you have both the time and the writing skills, anyone can do this. However…if you would like for someone to do all this for you, the information HERE is going to be of great interest.

Talk soon
Mark
PS: Remember if you’d like for us to set up and run a totally kick-ass lead capture and drip marketing system for you, GO HERE>