How To Build A Client Acquisition Machine-The 4 step Sales pipeline that generates steady streams of leads, appointments and revenue 24-7-365
Professional service providers and sales pro's have 3 potentially business ending problems in the modern market place, they are:
- Old school "belly to belly" prospecting and referral generation is slow, inefficient, and unpredictable. Put simply, it doesn't scale! You can't create predictable leads, appointments and revenue this way period.
- Traditional forms of marketing are more expensive and less effective. Buying traditional advertising, such as print ads or radio spots is extremely expensive and can't be tied directly to revenue. In other words, your taking shots in the dark with no real way to track and verify that your getting a positive return on your marketing investment.
- Online marketing seems complicated and ineffective. Most "online marketing agencies" and consultants simply do not deliver verifiable return on investment! Instead they sell you generic services like "social media management" and try to wow you with vanity metrics like: reach, engagement, likes on Facebook, visibility, clicks and so on. But they can't show you verifiable return on investment if their lives depended upon it!
These realities have left many business owners and sales pro's to throw up their hands and say "ah, screw it!"
There's nothing more frustrating than spending thousands of dollars on advertising that returns little or no new clients or revenue!
You feel helpless and taken advantage of by slick talking sales people selling advertising that doesn't work! You feel resigned to slow growth or worse, stagnation in your business!
Every day feeling your spending more time and effort chasing down just one more client instead of taking care of your current clients.
Reluctantly wasting your advertising dollars on marketing that delivers sub par results because you don't feel like you have any other option.
What's Possible Now
Now imagine this scenario...
Checking your voice messages and email every morning to see 10-20 new leads have entered your sales pipeline since yesterday and 3-5 of them have booked into your calendar and submitted full contact information and requested to have a consultation with you!
Imagine a completely automated sales pipeline that goes out and prospects fro your ideal client for you.
Imagine an automated sales process that follows up with leads via voice message, text and email on autopilot, so that you only step into the sales process when its time to close!
Imagine your entire market seeing you as THE expert authority in your market and actively reach out to you begging you to work with them!
Sounds too good to be true doesn't it?
Maybe 10 years ago this scenario was a pipe dream but no longer!
With the right technology and marketing expertise creating an automated client acquisition machine that generates steady streams of new leads, appointments and sales 24-7-365 on autopilot is within reach of any small business owner!
Why Hasn't The Problem Been Solved?
The reason expensive and ineffective marketing both on and off line is the norm these days is because very few truly have the expertise to advertise at a profit.
Even fewer know how to apply formidable marketing expertise to the ever changing and at time complicated world of online advertising.
The cold hard truth of the situation is there's a lot more money to be made by selling small business owners on generic and ineffective online marketing services that don't really work in boiler room style sales floors than there is in creating real profitable advertising and sales pipelines for businesses because it takes more time and work.
Me personally, I've been a small business owner looking for solutions to these problems and felt the same frustrations. And since I'm a solo consultant with a small teach behind me I don't have a lot of overhead or shareholders to answer to.
I'd rather work with fewer clients and get them market dominating results, rather than play the high volume turn and burn sales game.
so here it is laid out in plain english...
How To Build A Client Acquisition Machine
Here is a brief summery of this 4-step unstoppable selling system:
- Shameless Bribery!
- Give em’ a little taste
- take it from high tech to high touch
- Keep em coming back for more
lets break these steps down in detail...
Step 1: Shameless Bribery!
Here's how to generate leads online, quickly predictably and affordably,
Shameless BRIBERY of course!
Ok, thats a bit dramatic, what I really mean to say is, offer your prospective clients valuable information in exchange for their contact information. Many times thats just a name and email address but can also include phone number and other information depending on your market and offer.
Some tried and true “Ethical Bribes” For Generating Leads:
- free Report or White Paper
- a "market watch" newsletter
- Video Training
- Product Demo
- Tool’s and resource like: spread sheets, resource lists, software
After a prospect opts-in to your email list you have an autoresponder message sent to their inbox giving them instant access to your helpful free content.
Why Providing Valuable Content Up-Front is HUGELY IMPORTANT!
- No one know who you are!
When no one knows you, your expertise or the value you bring to them you will be perceived as a commodity in the mind of your prospective client!
Commodities are all the same and compared on price point alone! If you want to be the Ford Pinto of your industry go strait for the sale.
If you want to be a respected expert in your industry, build leads First! Which leads to the second reason why you want to generate leads first…
2. You raise your value in the eyes of your prospective clients, build good will, expert authority and trust through genuinely helping people with valuable content!
When you educate your prospective client, you set the buying criteria, you help them avoid all the shady players and common mistakes often made by people in your industry.
And because you already helped them up front, you are THE AUTHORITY everyone else is compared to and now you can set your price’s at the top of the market!
3. You now have permission to follow up! Without the ability to follow up your screwed because only about 1% of people who enquire about your services are ready to buy RIGHT NOW!
If you can follow up in the future by providing more valuable content on a regular basis, you raise your chances of doing business with that prospect by 3x or 300%!
4. Offering valuable information in exchange for a leads contact info lowers your cost per lead dramatically!
In my experience, I can get a lead for one half to a third of the cost compared to when I attempt to go strait for a consultation!
Step 2: Give'm A Little Taste
If your selling high end services you need to bring people off line into a one-on-one conversion where you can close the sale.
This is where your “low barrier offer” comes in! Or as I like to call it, giving em a little taste of the goods!
This part of your marketing funnel will generate consultation appointments automatically 24-7-365 so efficiently you may have to start a waiting list!
Why you need an automatic appointment generating machine
No one goes into business with the hopes of spending the majority of their time desperately chasing down new business!
Once you know how to market yourself using this client acquisition machine your going to be busy working with high quality clients, leaving little time to deal with tons of manual follow up and sales appointments.
Your marketing process must deliver only qualified prospects to a 1-on-1 meeting where you can convert them to a client on an automated basis.
What that means is your low barrier offer should attract only prequalified, predisposed to buy prospects so you don't waste time and effort talking to unqualified leads.
Here are some low barrier offer examples:
- a customized strategy session
- an audit or consultation
- a customized product demo
- free calculation of some sort (home value, loan rate comparison, pre-qualification)
- a small easy to render service that gives the prospect a low dollar/time commitment to take advantage of to help them get their feet wet and make buying your core offer afterwords a no brainer.
How to deliver your Perfect Prospect to an appointment automatically
This is where your low barrier offer comes in! This is what your prospect will see the moment after they opt-in for your free bribe.
This low barrier offer can be presented with a long form “sales letter” style page or a video sales letter (VSL).
How to structure your pitch for your consultation:
It's extremely important that you understand that you must present your low barrier offer in a more compelling way than most professional service and sales people do!
Most will offer a "free consultation" but all your prospective client hears when you say that is "free sales pitch".
When presenting your low barrier offer you must clearly articulate the value of the conversation to the client weather they decide to do business with you beyond that point or not!
The well known marketing consultant John Carlton has a simple 3 step system for structuring a compelling offer:
lets get into the steps:
- Here’s what I got: your consultation, strategy session, product demo, audit…
- Here’s what it will do for you: tell your project the valuable outcomes your help can create both in tangible and emotional terms. (resist the urge to talk about your service, they don’t care, talk about benefits to them, NOT features or procedures)
- Here’s what to do next: tell them how to start the process of taking you up on your offer and what happens next so they don’t have to feel nervous about how its all going to work.
- Risk reversal: Give your prospect a guarantee that they will come away from your conversation with real value-whether you ever work together or not- or you will compensate them some how for wasting their time. Because when you say “free consultation” all your prospect hears is “free sales pitch”
- Qualify: Ask your prospects to apply to make sure they are a good fit to work together by having a short application.
- Here’s what to do next: tell them how to start the process of taking you up on your offer and what happens next so they don’t have to feel nervous about how its all going to work.
Use these simple elements via the written word, a slide presentation or by just speaking into a camera and you will have a process that generates appointments with prequalified, pre interested prospects on an automated basis!
Step 3: Going From High Tech To Hight Touch
Now that we have successfully made an offer to allow your prospect to avail themselves of your expertise in a way that is low risk for them, its time to have a "prescriptive sales conversation."
NOTE: I know that many established service and sales pro are already very comfortable with the sales and on-boarding process once your on the phone or talking in person. If thats you feel free to scroll down to step 4.
What your conversation should consist of is not unlike a conversation you would have with your doctor.
You are learning about their current situation and their goals and providing a prescription as to how to bridge that gap in their lives or business.
Here’s how to provide value and enroll new clients without being a pushy ass about it…
A prescriptive enrollment conversation consists of 5 parts:
- Prep the call: ask for key information in your application form you can then use to do a bit of home work so you have some basic info before your conversation.
- Precise outcome and time line: by asking probing open ended questions, you must understand the precise outcomes your prospect hopes to accomplish by working with you.
- where are they now and implications: Now that they have talked about what they want, you must understand their current situation and get your prospect to say out loud how long they have struggled, what they have tried that hasn’t worked and the negative impact of not getting their problem solved.
- Prescribe solutions: This is where most sales people start spewing features and benefits but not you! Instead you prescribe your solution in an easy to understand step-by-step manor. Then ask your prospect questions to make sure they understand why you’ve made the recommendations you have and understand the positive implications of your solution.
- the low key close: by the end of step 4 you will have outlined a step by step plan of action that will get your prospective client to their goal. The only thing left is to ask if they’ed like your help implementing the plan and if they say yes, give them the logistical information so you can begin the on boarding process.
Step 4: Keep Em Coming Back For More
Remember step one, bribery!? Well, the whole purpose of capturing leads first is the ability to follow up! As anyone in sales and marketing will tell you, “the fortune is in the follow up!”
Why go through all that trouble?
Because 80% of sales are made after 7-12 touch points!
Out of the 50% of people who enquire will buy…eventually. Allow me to explain…
as mentioned before, only 1-3% of people who enquire about your services are ready to buy now.
15% of those who buy will by some time within 90 days, and…
85% will buy some time in the next 18 months.
This makes the follow up the most important part of your marketing funnel!
How To Follow-up & Win 85% More Business
Unlike your competition, you do not want to follow up with a relentless borage of pushy sales messages.
This will just piss your prospects off, and they will unsubscribe from your list, bad mouth you to everyone in your industry, then forget all about you!
Instead you want to create more valuable content and create systems to automatically drip feed that content out to your email subscribers on a regular basis.
Just like your ethical bribe, your follow up content builds expert authority, trust and good will by providing real value!
Not only that, but because your providing value on a regular basis your building a trusted relationship so that when your prospect decides to move forward, they feel like they already know you!
What To Do Next
if your like most of my clients you have a number of questions like:
- How do I implement all this stuff online? I’m not technical!
- How do I get attention online? Social media, blogging, paid advertising?
- How do I understand what my market wants?
- How do I create compelling content that will get my prospects to take action and make appointments with me?
- I hate sales, how can I on-board new clients without being a pushy salesman?
If you want a clear path to creating an client acquisition machine that gets you more clients than you can handle I think you’ll really like what I have for you next…
Would you like me to Create a Customized Client Generating System For Your Business…For FREE?
I've set aside a limited number of appointments to jump on the phone for 45-60 minutes and design custom marketing funnels with smart ambitious business owners like yourself.
If you’d like know more about how we might do that together you can send me a message and we can connect!
During our conversation we will create a step-by-step actionable plan that you can either take and run with on your own or we could both decide we are a good fit to work together and me and my team will knock it out of the park for you.
Obviously this is how I attract new consulting clients, with that said, I want to be very clear…
This is NOT a sales pitch in disguise, You get real value from our strategy session or I pay you 2x your hourly rate to compensate you for your time!
There is short application process to make sure we are a good fit to work together, then you will be able to book into my calendar.
contact me via my linkedin profile today!
I will look forward to helping you build a client generating machine soon!
To your success,
Paul Corral