How To Get Offline Clients: A Primer
Finding clients and prospects in offline consulting can be challenging.
Setting yourself apart from the competition can be challenging as well. Especially when there are dozens of people knocking on these businesses’ doors to offer them their SEO and web marketing services.
Over the past week, I’ve received several emails from people telling me that their primary challenges in offline consulting deals with:
1. Finding Clients, and
2. “Convincing” people that they need their services.
So, let me address the second part first.
I NEVER convince anybody. I don’t sell them on it.
I present an idea… if they aren’t interested, I move on.
Secondly, I only targeted businesses that spend money on advertising (because that means they have money to spend with me).
Thirdly, I DO NOT position myself as an SEO or offline consultant… I am a business development and marketing consultant where we leverage the internet as a tool to help companies get more customers (businesses are only interested in increasing their business, so you need to be communicating this from the very beginning).
So now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to what I really wanted to talk about:
First off, to get clients you MUST talk to people… PERIOD. Whether it’s in person or on the phone is up to you.
This business cannot be run on email communciation alone. (you could of course hire people to talk to clients, but you need to create a working system before you get to that point).
Secondly, you must contact A LOT of companies. Approaching a dozen or two companies IS NOT enough to say you’ve actually made an effort in this.
Approaching a few hundred companies are.
But you need to do this in an intelligent fashion (I’ll get to that in a bit).
So, how do find customers?
Obviously, there are tons of different ways to go about doing this.
Some better than others.
Over the years, most products on this subject tend to deal with about a handful of ways:
- Craigslist advertising – this is terribly reactive way to do business. It’s A way to get clients… not THE way. It has its uses but is a slow way of getting customers. (Plus, who goes on Craigslist? Generally people who are looking to save money)
- Postcard mailers – in my experience, this is a very inefficient and expensive way to get clients. (this in my opinion is “shooting in the dark” type of marketing and is not the best way of getting leads)
- Direct sales – can be extremely effective, but not for everybody. This involves cold calling and potential door-to-door solicitations. If you’re going to do this, you need to be properly prepared (with literature, phone scripts etc).
- Circle of influence (some call this your “warm market”) – this is approaching and talking to your friends, family members, acquaintances, local businesses you frequent etc. This method is limited to those who actually have a large sphere of influence.
- Presentations (at your local chamber of commerce, bank etc.) – This can be a very effective way to reach your target audience. But is a very “high touch” way of doing business. Plus, it’s predicated on the fact that you live in an area that have a lot of businesses (but what if you live in a small town?)
At one point or another I’ve used all of these methods. The problem with these methods is that they are predicated on either volume (in terms of how many people you call or contact); attributes (like not being shy of picking up the phone); that you are in a desirable geographic location (if you want to do presentations) etc.
So, what’s the solution?
I personally prefer to use a direct marketing approach and teach my staff to do the same.
But, it needs to be done in a targeted fashion.
One of the first things you need to do is to find the right types of businesses you want to focus on. Knowing who to target will help you get up and running quickly.
If you’re having a hard time finding business types to approach, check out this site.
Also, a good rule of thumb is to target businesses that have a high ticket price on their items and/or have repeat customers.
This means they can spend more money in advertising than those companies that only get a one-time sale or sell small cheap items (or inexpensive services).
Next, you must target companies that actually spend money on marketing their business.
My experience has been that if a business is proactive and spend money on advertising they are open to listen to you.
Now that you know who to approach, let’s talk about…
How to contact prospects
To me this is really simple. I look for companies across the state (for the time being) who fit my criteria.
The criteria for companies I do work for is:
- They spend money on advertising
- They already have a website (not a must, but ideal)
- They don’t have a website that ranks on the first page for their target keyword phrase(s).
So, your JOB here is to cross-reference companies that are spending money on marketing (either online or offline… doesn’t matter) by going to Google and doing searches for keywords that would matter for them.
So, if you were going to target a company that does “heater repair in Santa Monica”, you would first find a company that is spending money and preferably have a website.
Then go to Google and see if they show up in Google Places, Adwords or organic search.
If they don’t show in Google Places or in the Organic search results, we are in business. And at this point I will look for 2 – 4 additional businesses that fit the exact criteria.
Once you’ve done this, I will print out the search engine results for the phrase “heater repair in Santa Monica” and attach a yellow sticky note to it with a hand written message that says something like:
“Where is your company?
If I was looking for Heater Repair in Santa Monica, One of These Guys Would Get My Business”
Here’s an example of what this would look like:
This would be the cover page of my letter to this business.
Would this get YOUR attention?
By simply attaching this type of a cover page to your letter, you WILL get a higher response rate. It will also often help you get around the “gate keeper” (receptionist)… since they will look at and most likely read your letter.
To get a higher open rate of my letter, I generally use a flat rate priority mail envelope. This is a trick I learned during my MLM (network marketing) days, and is something that works remarkably well in getting your pieces of mail opened.
I mean, how often have you thrown away a “priority mail” envelope?
These envelopes only cost five dollars and change to send out and is well worth the investment. Plus, you are not sending out these envelopes willy-nilly. You are sending these out to targeted companies that you have hand-picked.
At this point, you can either be proactive (and call the businesses you’ve sent the letters to) OR you can wait for them to call you.
The trick here is to let these companies also know that you have sent similar letters to other clients (since you should only work with ONE company for a specific industry in each town).
This will create scarcity and self-imposed pressure for them to CALL YOU and really takes most of the “selling” out of the equation.
Want more details on this process?
Would you like to get your hands on the exact letter to send these businesses (including an even better cover letter layout)?
If you answered YES, then check out THIS BLUEPRINT >>>
In it you will get a near identical process that I use to find and get clients laid out with a very thorough step-by-step blueprint on:
- How to find the ideal prospect (and a list of free resources that you can use to make this really easy)
- How to qualify your clients, and why you should always lead with XXXXXXX (and how to qualify their site to see if they are worth going after)
- How to contact your clients including an example of the letter to send along with the cover letter they use (they do it slightly differently… for the better). This section is really good and is worth the cost of this product alone by 10x.
- How to close your prospect (or rather why you don’t have to). The 5 questions you need to ask them before the close and why NOT being a sales person is a good thing.
- Outsourcing – where to outsource the work with a big list of resources and specific individuals you can use for various aspects of your business.
- How to instantly impress your prospects that virtually guarantee they will call you.
- Ever wonder what to offer, and how much to charge for your work? It’s in here…
- And more…
These guys really saved me time in laying out the entire process for me… and in a step-by-step fashion as well.
And the great this is, this works.
I’ve used a very similar approach in contacting prospects that increased my business acquisition dramatically, and these guys have laid it out in simple step-by-step format (and thankfully it’s not video based… but in individual PDF reports so it can be consumed easily. If you want more hand holding, there is is an OTO for more visual instruction).
For less than $10, this really is a no-brainer.
Click Here To Get This Blueprint >>>
Trouble Accessing The Link? Try this one: http://sher.us/occourse
How To Get Offline Clients: A Primer is a post from: SuperSimpleMarketing.com
Automatic Time Tracking with Chrometa
Automatic time tracking sounds like a beautiful thing for a time-based business owner. It isn’t easy to separate out how you spend your time on projects and client work. This is going to sound odd coming from a long time product reviewer, but I was afraid to install Chrometa and learn that I was under-billing on my projects. It would be embarrassing. This review of Chrometa is for the smart (and more courageous) business owner who sells their service in units of time. The professionals out there who need a simple and effect time tracking solution.
Chrometa captures your time as you work on your computer – so that you don’t have to. It acts as your personal timekeeper by noting how long you are working in an application, what you are working on, and for how long. If you are composing an email or working in five different applications (meaning they are open at one time on your system) at the same time, Chrometa knows which one you are actively working in and records the time spent in that program. You don’t have to tell it anything. As an example, it can and does go deeper, too, and shows you how long you spent composing a subject line in Google’s Gmail app.
Here is a sample summary screen to show you how time was recorded.
I’m pretty bullish on this application now that I’ve seen it working. It will allow me to pull all these snippets of time recorded, by category into an invoice. Talk about time savings. In the settings, I can tell it how to round my time, in minute increments. I can import all this data into QuickBooks, too. Or FreshBooks. Or Basecamp.
If you have a lot of clients and projects and don’t want to manually enter all that data (again) from another application, Chrometa offers a clean import tool, a bulk upload tool, via a CSV-formatted spreadsheet.
What I Like
Well, what’s not to like. This simple app is a time-saver for anyone who struggles with keeping track of time spent on a client project.
- There’s a Windows, Mac, and Google Chrome plugin for Gmail. That covers 90% of the business user market. Sorry Ubuntu users, but I guess you can make it work via Chrome.
- Time management without a timer. I know; I’m repeating myself.
- Since legal types, attorneys, para-legals are heavy time trackers, they have export options to Clio and PCLaw. I’d like to see other industries get some love.
- I’d like to see a more in-focus image on the home page instead of a fuzzy screenshot (although I think that’s intentional so you focus on the company name and tagline message). And information right there on the home page that says that it includes a 15-day free trial when you click download. Nitpicky, I know.
Automatic Time Tracking with Chrometa
No More Wading Through Government Websites to Identify Business Licenses and Permits, Says DocStoc
DocStoc, an online source of forms and professional documents, this past week launched a website to help identify U.S. federal, state and local licensing and business permit requirements for small businesses.
Called License 123, the new site aims to be a one-stop source to identify all licenses and permits required for a particular small business. The site is designed to help small business owners and startup entrepreneurs save time, money and legal headaches. Instead of searching all around the Web on various governmental websites wading through dense legalese, DocStoc’s vision is for the business owner to be able to go to one place, insert some simple data, and find all relevant license information (see screenshot).
When you visit License 123, you enter your state, city, industry and type of business. If your city is in the site’s database, you will get a list of all required licenses for your city, county and state. For $9.95 you can download the full report including application forms, instructions, licensing authority contact information, and information about filing fees. The site is not a filing service. You apply for licenses on your own. But the idea is that by doing the searching for you, and compiling all information in one place, License123 saves you time and you don’t have to navigate the maze of legalese in most governmental websites — and risk missing licenses, thereby incurring monetary fines or other legal action.
According to Mike Sheridan, Chief Operating Officer of DocStoc, ”It’s true that a lot of jurisdictions have this information online. However, to find all the information you would need to operate a food truck in Los Angeles, for instance, you have to go to 6 different websites. Being out of compliance can cost $1,000 or more.”
License 123 today covers just 10 states, with the most complete information for California (in some states only one city is searchable today). Says Sheridan, “Our goal in the next two months is to include the top 500 cities in the United States. They will represent all mainland U.S. states (except for Hawaii).” After that their goal is to expand to the largest 1,000 cities.
As to why all cities and states are not included today, he noted that compiling it is a labor intensive effort and technology only takes you so far today. It typically requires 3 to 5 full days of work for his team to research and compile all the licensing information for a large city like New York or Chicago.
License 123 is a product offering of DocStoc, a 5-year old company with 45 employees and 31 million legal and professional documents online. The DocStoc site gets 21 million visits per month.
No More Wading Through Government Websites to Identify Business Licenses and Permits, Says DocStoc
