Article 101

FINDING GREAT CLIENTS. 5 UNDERAPPRECIATED POWERFUL TOOLS.

FINDBIZ QUIZ: What are the two marketing tools used pre-dominantly by the top 10% most financially successful consultants and service providers, that are rarely used by all the rest? See below.

Word count: 980
Time to read: 4 minutes
How you benefit: Gain more knowledge about tools that cheaply help you get clients that most people don't use.

By Scott Channell

If you are trying to find clients... let me share some ideas about tools you can use that are a little bit off the common beaten path.

CONTACT MANAGER
Whether you are a hairdresser, banker or consultant, you need to manage large groups of suspects, prospects and clients. You need to tailor touches and strategies to different segments of these groups and you need to be able to execute with a minimum of wasted time and effort. If you are not using a contact manager like ACT, Goldmine or Maximizer, you are not really serious about client development. You are wasting bundles of time and robbing yourself of focus and efficiency to market cost-effectively. Often your biggest investment is your time. Without a contact manager you are wasting bundles of it. I mention this here only because so many hard working people don't use this tool and lose out on many new clients because of it.

SEQUENCED E-MAIL
When you are selling services and intangibles, this is one of those stupid simple unfairly powerful super cheap tools that enables you to touch suspects and prospects consistently with a tailored message on intervals that you select automatically, without day to day involvement to you. Unlike most e-mail blast tools where everyone on the list gets the same message at the same time, you have the ability to send new opt-ins a pre-set series of messages. All new opt-ins get this. Think of this. You want to make a good first impression. You don't want to take forever for prospects to understand your value. Touch them more frequently upfront so that they understand. To my knowledge there are only 2 companies that offer sequenced e-mail services. Both cost less than $20 a month. If you are on this list you experienced it. A larger dose of messages to begin with, and periodic follow-ups.

PAY PER CLICK
Remember the days when you paid up front for marketing and hoped and prayed enough people responded to make it worthwhile? Gone forever. Remember when you used to wait weeks or months for enough responses to come in to make judgments about how to change things for even better results. Gone forever. With pay per click you pay after someone who is looking for your service has taken some action, and can see in real time what is happening so that you can make tweaks and adjustments quickly to get the results you need. There are some challenges, but if you break it down into pieces, your keywords, your clicks, your opt-ins, your cost per inquiry, your cost per new client, your return on investment, this is an extremely powerful tool to find clients.

AUDIO CD'S
A number of people I work with who sell services and intangibles use audio CD's as a lead generator and love them for a number of reasons. Very powerful lead generator, different than a white paper offer. Inexpensive to create. Inexpensive to send out. Differentiates you from the competition as few use this tool. Enables your potential client to hear you talk and make a judgment about your knowledge and expertise. A quick simple way to create an audio CD is to be interviewed on your subject. I can help you create your own audio CD as part of a coaching program.

WRITING AND SPEAKING
Where do I start? If your immediate thought is " I can't write or speak," you are so mis-informed and so wrong. The problem with these tools is that when people think of writing and speaking they think of publishing a book or speaking in front of large audiences. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Findbiz quiz answer: What are the two marketing tools used pre-dominantly by the top 10% most financially successfu consultants and service providers? Writing and speaking. Many years ago I read the results of a survey which related the marketing
tools used by those who made $110,000+ and those who made less than $55,000. Those who made more than $110,000 used various forms of writing and speaking as their dominant marketing strategies. Those who earned less than $55,000 tended to use cold calling, direct mail and provide no-charge initial diagnostic services.

Hmmmm... those who constantly bang their head against the wall and spend money up-front hoping to get a response from someone they will provide value to up-front for free or little money... earn a lot less than those who have the same skills and knowledge who successfully position themselves as experts. No surprise there.

Caveat. To those of you say "Hey Scott, you teach how to cold call to set appointments and this survey you quote says that cold calling is used a lot by low earners... what gives?" There should be no confusion. Most people who use the phone to set appointments do so very poorly... call the wrong people... use no system or the wrong system... and they get no results. Calling is a tool like all others. Use it correctly in the right places and get results. Use it poorly in the wrong places and waste time and money.

Experts write and speak. Experts are worth more than non-experts. If you want the earnings of an expert you must be perceived to be a writer and speaker... but guess what? You don't have to write much or speak to crowds to be perceived as an expert.

You can be perceived as an expert in your field in as little as 60 - 90 days using a simple building block system.

Best wishes with your sales and marketing,
Scott Channell

Copyright 2005-2009 Scott Channell

Article 35	5 Tools to Find Great Clients
	by Scott Channell