The Secret To Finding Prospects & Getting Clients

Where is your next client coming from? Do you know? If you are tired of chasing down prospects in hopes of getting your next client then check this out. We are with Tobin Slaven from Book Your Experts today and he's got some awesome tips to share with you.

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The Secret To Finding Prospects & Getting Clients

Tim Fitzpatrick: Where is your next client coming from? Do you even know? If you are tired of chasing down prospects in hopes of getting your next client, then stay tuned. Our guest today has a client getting methodology that you do not want to miss.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm really excited to have with me Tobin Slaven from Book of Experts. Tobin, welcome and thanks for taking the time.

Tobin Slaven: Tim, I really appreciate you having me on. This is great to reconnect. Actually invited you and hosted you on our podcast as well to talk about the work you're doing. So great to reconnect with you.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, absolutely. I've been looking forward to this conversation. So before we jump into it, just tell us a little bit more about what you're doing with Book of Experts. You've got some other companies as well. Just tell us what you're doing and how you're helping business owners.

Tobin Slaven: So the Book of Experts for us as we call it a COVID creation project that didn't exist until April, I think was when it all came together. And we launched it last spring. And we really, for the work that we do, the company behind how we pay our bills is called a sales map. We build sales teams for expert based businesses. So if you think of coaches, consultants, agency owners, authors, folks who are really good experts in their space, but maybe not experts in the sales and marketing space, and they want someone to come in and do that piece for them.

Tobin Slaven: That's what we're doing with the sales map. And we create a Book of Experts really for two reasons. One, we've met the most interesting people this way. We're building really, really an amazing community of folks, which is important when you are an expert. By definition, that means you're not an expert in everything. You can't be a jack of all trades and be an expert as well. So having that deep bench of other folks that you can call upon, maybe someone is great with copywriting, they're great with SEO or video marketing or something, that that's not your area of strength.

Tobin Slaven: But you can pull them in for your clients, for yourself. We think that's so important. So we wanted to build that really robust community and meet awesome people that way. And it's just been a lot of fun. And we have some big, really big updates coming in the next few weeks we're excited to share.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Fantastic. Love to hear. So let's talk about finding prospects and getting clients. Without it, you don't have a business. So, you know, you can have the greatest product or service in the world. But without prospects, without new clients, none of it really matters. So how do people find their perfect prospects?

Tobin Slaven: Yeah. So this sort of cause or mission? This purpose is near and dear to my heart because one, it has been me. This was my own personal story. But I also see it in this space that we work with these really intelligent, really gifted people who are not making their biggest impact in the world. And the reason why they're not is there honestly, they're struggling to get that consistent, steady stream of new clients in. So when you're focused on the bottom line, you're focused on finances.

Tobin Slaven: You're probably not doing your highest and best work. So that's really how we come at it. That's the basis of the work that I've done and the stuff that people are honestly that's being taught out there. It's the right strategies, but at the wrong time. Let me give you an example. If you talk to most experts, they'll say if I asked them how they are getting their clients now, they'll say, I get referrals. Well, that's great.

Tobin Slaven: A referral means that you're doing really good work. You wouldn't get them otherwise, but it's probably inconsistent as well as probably you're not getting as many referrals as often as you'd like. It's not bankable.

Tim Fitzpatrick: It's not predictable.

Tobin Slaven: Yes. One hundred percent in the second thing people are doing is they're going out with content marketing, what content marketing also called attraction marketing, inbound marketing. But there's a lot of folks out there that are saying, look, you just do the social media, do your video marketing, put your information out there and they will come. Build it and they will come. And that also there's a terrible inconsistency in that, because I always use the analogy.

Tobin Slaven: It's like being like Johnny Appleseed, right? You're planting your seeds, but it might be decades before they start to bear the fruit. Content marketing is important. I do it. We teach it in our process, but we don't teach it first. Instead, we go directly. So the methodology that we teach is called the four years of marketing. And the fourth year is like the funnels that everyone when you think of digital marketing, that's mostly what people paid traffic, buying ads, using automation, creating webinars.

Tobin Slaven: That's all for your strategies. Works great. But if you try to drive out of the parking lot and fourth gear, you're just going to stall your car. Other referrals we have already talked about that the great to get them, but unless you have an engine built for that specifically, it's inconsistent second year content marketing, first year, which is where we're going to focus today, is all about conversational outreach. That's actually going out and talking to exactly the right people, creating more conversations and with the right people.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, I love that. So one is conversational outreach. Two is content.

Tobin Slaven: Correct. Yep.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Three is referrals and four are your funnels.

Tobin Slaven: Yeah. So we use just for sake of alliteration, we say conversations, content collaborations is the third year and clicks as the fourth year. But you hit the four big categories. So they're all the right strategies but you have to get them in the right order. And if you start out trying to just survive on referrals or just survive on attraction marketing by putting your content out there, you're going to go through some lean times and you're going to be in survival mode instead of thriving.

Tobin Slaven: And what we found is that when you can go out and directly talk to people and start conversations with them in a very human to human based way, not this sales the leg humper stuff that you see a lot of this is happening on social media where someone writes a really long message and at the bottom there's a link. And hey, would you book a time with me? And you're thinking, who is this person?

Tobin Slaven: That is like, why? Why do they think I want to book? It's like I'm not going to get married on the first date. So why do they think this works? Well, people are doing that because it's easy. It's easier to run automation like that. And also, I think they're not sure how to do a couple of the questions that we're going to talk about today in the first one is how do I find my people?

Tobin Slaven: Every marketing program, coaching program, every coach and mentor that I've ever worked with. A lot of folks start with your ideal client, like who's the person that you most want to work with? And they talk about avatars and personas. And that's one way of tackling this. But I think part of it is thinking about real people like who are the real people, clients that you've actually worked with, or maybe if you're just getting started and you don't have that work history or maybe your shifting market is shifting into a new space or working with new clients, can you actually point to people that you actually want to work with?

Tobin Slaven: Think of it like a shopping list. Can you name four people that you look at their business that I would love to work with those guys like they're doing really cool work. It speaks to me. If I could support them in their mission, I'd feel good about that. That's a real person. And that's where we start with, like, how do you find those people? And the interesting thing is birds of a feather flock together. Once you find one or two like that, you'll find a grouping because that's just as humans. That's what we do. We tend to gather together with other like minded people.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, yeah. I like that. So. How do you get to that point where you can identify that real person? Specific strategies that you talk about with that or?

Tobin Slaven: Yeah, so some of this is trial and error. So I think it depends on the stage of your business. So if you're an existing business and you're not getting as much throughput of new clients, not that steady stream of new clients that you need, I would want to hear more about the folks that you're already working with.

Tobin Slaven: So if you've got a dozen clients there who are the ones that you've really enjoyed, you've made a great impact for them. They paid you well, like it was a great experience. Can we double down on that and find more like them? Whereas if you have other folks that in this happens, I understand you take clients on, it wasn't a great fit. Maybe the results were lackluster for their reasons or your own or whatever happened. But where are the gems?

Tobin Slaven: Where the really great experiences that we can focus on to expand that part of it. And if you're new and you're getting started, you also can go out. It's really through trial and error, which is you have an idea, I think, that it's this kind of person. I think I'd love to work with him. I love that. I see what they're doing at Rialto. I'd love to work with him. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to start a conversation, a real human to human conversation with him, get to know him a little bit better and feel him out, whether there might be something there or not.

Tobin Slaven: You know, we do some work together and we figure out that is not for whatever reason, it's not the right fit. That's OK. That's a data point. It's just data. But now we understand better and we start to triangulate and really dial in that best fit the people that you should be talking to sue.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So that leads us into the next question. Right? I've identified who some of these perfect prospects may be. Now, how do I actually strike up that conversation with those folks?

Tobin Slaven: So here's the interesting thing again, I'm going to point out to a couple of things that people have been taught. We've all been taught this. It's not wrong, it's just the right strategy at the wrong time, but one way that people say would teach us to enter the world of another person is they say will bring the value. And I made this mistake years ago. I used to I was doing some marketing in the with attorneys, with counselors, legal lawyers in the legal space and so I was helping them with their local SEO.

Tobin Slaven: And I would go in and I'd say, look, you know, here's your Google places and here's how you're underperforming. And basically, I was walking in the door to talk to these folks and saying, you're screwing up, you're making all these mistakes. Let me show you how to do it right. What kind of first impression do you think I actually made on them? It wasn't very effective. I thought I was bringing value for them.

Tobin Slaven: But what it was really doing is conveying that I thought I was a know it all, that I could do something better than them. And it really left a bad taste in their mouth. I only understand this now in hindsight, at the time I thought I was bringing the value as says. So what we really focus on in our program, something we actually teach with, with the teams, the sales teams that we're building is find the awesome in the other person.

Tobin Slaven: Like, can you actually look at what they're doing and find something to applaud them on? I love I saw what you did with your podcast last week. I saw the guest that you have out. You've had an amazing run of guests in the last six weeks. That's really cool. Like, what are the little things that you can tap into? That's the way that we want to show up in someone else's world, because that's how we start to build rapport.

Tobin Slaven: We find the awesome first in that other person and then we anchor it with an ask. We get curious about the other person. Like genuinely want to understand them as a person. And, you know, here's the thing. I'm going to go back to those sales numbers. If you're asking the same curious questions to everyone, like we all know when it's copy and paste. We can feel it if there's no genuine interest in who another person is, you can read between the lines.

Tobin Slaven: So you actually have to. One of the things I'm going to do when I message and converse with people, I want them one hundred percent to understand that the message I'm sending them is for them and them alone. It's going to mention things that could not be about anybody else. That's the kind of connection that I'm trying to create to start the conversation. It's not about me. It's not about my business. I might be asking some curiosity questions about their business.

Tobin Slaven: Just try to understand it more. But it's really trying to connect on that level in recognizing, hey, I'm asking these questions because I read through your profile and I think I get it, but I'm actually not sure. So can you clarify on this?

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love this. So find something to applaud them on, do the outreach, whether it's wherever it may be, could be via email, it could be on LinkedIn or some other social profile, but you're finding something to compliment them on. Then you anchor that same message with some type of ask. Can we dig into this ask a little bit more? So what to some people I think might think that ask is about their business. Right. I'm thinking that this ask is more is still more focused on the person you're reaching out to.

Tobin Slaven: Yes, that's right. Yeah. You read that right, Tim? So the curiosity question is really getting that, giving them a chance to talk about what they care about most, which is their business, what they're doing, maybe the content that they're I'm trying to figure out, is this a person that I want to spend more time? Do I want to invest more in this conversation? Because I'm really feeling them out the same way that they're feeling me out, but there's no talk about who I am or what I'm doing because it's premature at that point in time.

Tobin Slaven: When you use the term ask we the phrasing that we have in our program is we make a hand raising invitations. So at some point in that friendly chat, there's going to be we want to make the turn into a sales conversation if it makes sense. And we do that with the thing it's permission based, it's a hand raising invitation. And it's when someone on the other end you ask a question like, hey, I noticed that, you know, when I was looking at your guests a podcast, you haven't had anyone talking about sales teams.

Tobin Slaven: Would it make sense? Do you think your community might be interested in something like that? When someone can raise your hands, say, yeah, I'd like to know a little bit more, what would that look like? That is a hand raising invitation. That is essentially the crossroads where we stop, we look at this traffic and then we move forward. And you're giving the other person an opportunity to say, yes, I'd like to know more about that or no, I'm good right now.

Tobin Slaven: Like, that's not something I need. And because they are because you're giving them that opportunity to say no, it becomes more of a two way dialogue, a real relationship builder.

Tim Fitzpatrick: If they don't raise their hand with that question, do you guys typically follow up with another question or you kind of dropping that conversation?

Tobin Slaven: I appreciate you asking that, actually. So when we ask a hand raising question and we don't get the go ahead signal that we're looking for, the last thing you want to do is blow through those signals and continue to talk about what you do or try to, you know, like it's kind of like if you hit someone on a busy week, there's no sense trying to get through, like they're dealing with a lot and that is just not the right time. So if I run into that, most likely what I'm going to do is loop back to folks a little bit later or I'm just going to build and invest in that relationship.

Tobin Slaven: I'm playing a long game because I know ultimately all businesses, it's relationship based and it's this is becoming more so because the technology is forcing us to appreciate and prize the really good relationships that we do have. So I'm not going to try to force it. I'm not going to try to ignore those signals. And sometimes that might mean I'm just going to watch this person for a week or two. I'm going to see what's going on in their content.

Tobin Slaven: I'm going to check in and I'm going to show some real interest in what they're doing to show them that I'm not just going away because I wasn't thinking transactionally just to show up and sell something. I was looking for my kind of people that I can build relationships with.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I love this. So we've got you find your prospects right. Identify the real people. Right. We always talk about ideal clients. I think it's good to have those ideal client profiles. You understand in general who you're trying to reach, but dig a little bit deeper in that first step and actually identify the real people within those profiles that you want to do business with. Then in step to your outreaching to those people to strike up a conversation by finding the awesome and what they're doing and dig in a little bit deeper with some type of ask. Then we're turning that casual chat into a sales conversation by asking them some type of question where they can raise their hands or not.

Tobin Slaven: Yes, and it's in Tim. It's not hard to be curious about other people because as experts wear terrible at describing who we are and what we do. If you read people's profiles, it's not very clear because we're too close to the work. So usually my curiosity questions are. I was reading your profile and it looks like you work with this kind of business, but I'm not quite sure I think you're doing this. Can you? And you're just getting them to clarify. And at that point in time, they don't know if you're a prospect for them or they're trying to fill you out as well.

Tobin Slaven: You really get to know each other prior to getting on a call. Any of this, I'm just usually I don't care if it's LinkedIn or email or whatever. I'm just conversing with them back and forth, trying to make their world a little better.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love that. So once they raise their hand. Kind of leads to the next question, which is how do you get the sale by leading the way instead of chasing? I think we've all felt that chase before, and it's never a good place to be.

Tobin Slaven: Yeah. So if I had to sell by sort of the way a lot of people think about sales conversations, smashing objectives and sort of manipulating people using all these tricks and strategies, I'm not a good salesperson that way. What I'm trying to do in every conversation is really listen, which allows people to tell you what they want, what they need. And because of the work we do in a book of words, which is a lot of referrals, passing referrals back and forth, it's easy for me to get to know someone here, what they already are looking for and what they need, like they know where they want to go.

Tobin Slaven: Maybe they know what's going to get them there or they don't. I can share my perspective because I'm talking to so many people. But one of the ways is where we're constantly checking in, asking permission, like, hey, does this help? Is this helpful? Does this make sense? Could we talk about this? I'm checking in. So it's always a dialogue. And two, I'm really listening to what they're saying so that I can connect them to the resources that they need.

Tobin Slaven: If it's something that I do, I'll share that with them. And usually I'll literally say if there's something that I do or a resource that I have, I'll be the first to tell you. But at the same time, that's not my number one agenda. So my sales conversation is a lot about listening to the other person and just asking questions and answering what questions they have for me as well. But only when they're asking. I'm waiting for them to ask. Otherwise they might never know what I do, because if they're not asking, they're not interested.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Right. I love. So you are bringing value. You're just bringing value in a different way than a lot of people do. Right. So people try to lead with value without first understanding the prospect. You know, I get this on LinkedIn all the time, and I'm sure you do, too. It's like I connect with somebody and then they're immediately starting to blast me with what they're doing. And it's like, dude, you know nothing about me. You're wasting my time.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So I love this approach that you're taking, whether it's, hey, we're connecting and then we're just striking up a conversation. Let me learn more about you first before I start jumping into all these things that I can do, because right now I don't even know enough about you to know whether I can help you.

Tobin Slaven: Yeah and just one caveat I would add to that is we're all busy. Tim, I know you're super busy. I am as well. So one thing that I'll often tell people is I'm asking these questions. I'm trying to understand who you are because and then I give them a reason the I have to value their time, because if people are just asking you to jump on a call with anybody, jump on it, get to know you call. I don't have time for that.

Tobin Slaven: You don't have time for that. But for example, I might say I'm trying to understand who you work with because honestly, I do outreach every day like it's part of it's like for me, it's like going to the gym. This is just something I do every day. So I'm talking to a ton of people. I'm probably talking to the people that you want to talk to, but I don't know. So can you help me understand a little bit more? And that's the context that makes it a conversation with having.

Tim Fitzpatrick: And my guess, too, is that people actually appreciate that because they know it's very clear why you're doing certain things rather than just asking these questions. And they're like, oh, my God, what's where is this going?

Tobin Slaven: Yeah. If people are wondering where it's going again, we just don't have time for that. So they'll bail. It'll be a waste of your time and my time and just you've got to honor people up front and tell them why you're asking. And again, because it's kind of a magic word. So use that magic word and give them a good reason.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I love that. So I think the other important thing to highlight here is what you are talking about here. This is not very scalable. I mean, it's somebody has to do this work. You know, you can't have some AI-based thing doing this, which I think is really important because as business owners, we often we want to do things that. That is easier, right, than me, so we can scale, but there are some things that just aren't scalable.

Tobin Slaven: I believe that's true, but that's where the four years of marketing come in. So if you do the outreach and again, I'm going to talk to five people, a ten dozen people every day, it's a small number of people, but I'm building relationship by relationship as I do with it. Then I can expand into content. And now my conversations with people become way more interesting because the content is accentuating the conversation instead of just being trying to attract people.

Tobin Slaven: I've become more valuable to my referral partners because of the relationships that I'm building. And ultimately, if you need to scale, if you need to bring in dozens and dozens of leads every day, you're probably not going to do that without a team approach. Right? That's why we do. We build sales teams and sales maps because we can take a team approach to that. But you can run traditional funnel marketing and generate that scalable model. And it works much better instead of being super risky because we ever tried to build a funnel from the start.

Tobin Slaven: You don't know what messaging. You don't know what people like, what those conversations are going to look like when you when you shift through the four years. By the time you get to fourth gear, you're cruising down the highway.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Yeah. I love how you do that. The other thing that you brought up that I think is really important to pull out here is you said something about having the right tactic at the wrong time. And I see that all the time, as I'm sure you do, where it's like, you know, we come across somebody and they're like, well, I've done SEO and I've done, you know, YouTube videos and none of it worked. That doesn't mean that it was the wrong tactic.

Tim Fitzpatrick: It was just not at the right place. You know, maybe you didn't have a website or a great website. You didn't have good messaging there. And you're spending money on SEO and people are going there, but they're not converting. Doesn't mean that the SEO wasn't working. You were where you were driving them just wasn't right.

Tobin Slaven: Yes. And I think people also model businesses that are in different stages. Right. We work with a coach and we do what the coach says, but they're the coach may be at a different stage of their business.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. So you're seeing tactics from people that are successful and those tactics may be successful for you, just not right now based on where you're at. Love it, you added a ton of value here. I love this thought process, and I think people will get a ton out of this if they want to learn more about YouTube and where should they go?

Tobin Slaven: You know, I'd love for them to look at Book of Experts.com in the reason why is we've got a ton of tools there to help other expert based businesses. So I'm happy to chat. I do exactly what I told you today, which is I connect one to one with folks, LinkedIn, Facebook, email, however you prefer to chat. To me, it's all plumbing. I don't care what the what platform from person to person, but Book of Experts is a really good place to start to understand more of what we're doing in this community we're building.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Cool. And we're the your sales company. What's your sales company?

Tobin Slaven: It's the salesmap.me. You can actually see a little bit about myself and my partners and what we're doing.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So salesmap.me. And with Sales Map, you're building sales teams, so you're helping clients find the right salespeople.

Tobin Slaven: Yes. So we're placing inbound and outbound sales teams with expert based businesses. Usually the business owner becomes the bottleneck in the business. So we're helping build a team around them so they can bring more sales so they can scale their business.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Are you doing any done for you work with that, or is it all just placing people?

Tobin Slaven: We have it done with you program. We're actually helping to hire, recruit, sorry, recruit on board, then hire the teams and put them in place and kind of manage them for a time. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Where do those businesses need to be for Sales Map to make sense? Is there a certain volume that you look for?

Tobin Slaven: Yes. Well if they go to salesmap.me, they'll actually see a little bit more of how we work because different folks need depending on how many leads you're getting now, it doesn't make sense to hire an inbound salesperson if you don't have a certain amount of lead flow. Yes. And what's a great fit for us is someone that's doing a launch, like a product launch. If they want to multiply the results, we can actually bring in a team and help them multiply what they would have got from the launch otherwise.

Tim Fitzpatrick: OK, awesome. Tobin, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. It makes perfect sense to me. I think a ton of people are going to get value from it. So thank you for being here. To those of you tuning in, thank you for doing so. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now, hop on over to our website at rialtomarketing.com.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's our R-I-A-L-T-O marketing.com. Click on to get a free consult button. Guarantee you'll get a ton of value from the call and walk away knowing what your next steps should be.

Tobin Slaven: Tim, thanks for having me.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. Till next time, take care.

Connect With Tobin Slaven

• [email protected]
• Linkedin

Links From The Episode

• Book Of Experts
• Sales Map

About the Host Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.