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More Clients
- the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert Middleton

In This Week's Issue: What's the secret formula for making contact with prospective clients?

 

Making Contact

Last week I was completing a Marketing Action Group for a group of consultants and coaches. And one of the participants shared a strategy for making contact with potential clients that was both simple and brilliant. Maybe it will work for you.

I believe this issue of "making contact" is the biggest marketing challenge for most Independent Professionals. We know intuitively that if we could make that initial contact in just the right way everything would be easier after that.

But we seem to be confronted with insurmountable obstacles.

Where do we connect with the right people? What do we say and when do we say it? What will get attention and get a conversation going? How do we avoid coming off too strong and pushing the prospect away? Is there something we can offer? What's the most effective way to follow up after the initial connection?

And can we turn our approach into a repeatable system that will produce consistent results over time? What it takes is putting a number of elements together and turning them into a very focused client-attracting process.

This is how Rick Weaver of MaxImpact did it:

He made his initial contacts by going to a job fair and, instead of walking the floor, he went into the lunch room, sat down and had lunch with other fair participants.

At the lunch table he had the opportunity to use his Audio Logo with a number of people. He had developed quite an attention-getting one: "I work with people who are tired of hiring other people's rejects."

This usually resulted in a chuckle of recognition and then transitioned into a talk where they typically told him what their worst hiring nightmare was.

Then Rick told them that he was writing an article called, "Are You Tired of Hiring Other People's Rejects?" He let them know it was in the final stages of editing and that he'd be happy to send them a copy by email.

The thing that made me laugh about Rick's story is that he said making these initial connections in the lunch room worked so well that he took a break and then came back, had a second lunch and went through the whole process again.

He actually ate lunch three times that day! Not so great on his waistline, but great for making contacts. He collected 18 cards in the course of the fair.

Rick also had the insight that by involving the recipients by asking for feedback on the article before it was published or even complete, he'd probably get a better response. When he sent it, he asked if they had any thoughts or comments to give him.

Then Rick followed up in a few days by phone to discuss their response to the article and to get some feedback. And of course, this transitioned into them talking a whole lot more about their issues and what wasn't working in the hiring process.

The article, by the way, wasn't a "pitch piece" that talked all about how he could solve a company's hiring problems; it simply brought up a number of real-world issues that stimulated further conversation and exploration.

In the follow-up call, soon after people were showing interest in the issues Rick brought up, he'd suggest they get together to discuss their situation in more depth. And guess what? virtually everyone said, "Yes."

When I talked to Rick last week he had already set up nine appointments through his "lunch room, Audio Logo, send an article, follow-up" strategy. And then, proving it wasn't a fluke, he sent me this message over the weekend:

"Yesterday I met five prospects at a networking event. Three of the five gave me their email addresses so I could send them my article, one asked me to call to schedule an appointment, and the fifth person was with the fourth person. This makes it a 100% success in getting to first base at the event!"

I keep sharing these stories with you, hoping you'll get inspired and discover that making contact might not be as hard as you think. Invent your own contact plan today.

More on "Making Contact" in Marketing Flashes below.

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What if making contact was easy?

It can be, if you have the information and the know-how. Each week in More Clients I share just one idea that can help you attract more clients. In the InfoGuru Marketing Manual I go into a lot more depth to help you be a better marketer.

I think Terry McCarthy of Customer Plus said it better than I can:

"I purchased the manual some two plus years ago and have found it to be more than a how-to. It's more like a program for increasing my confidence. Simple things like the Audio Logo have helped me and my clients stay focused on what's important--what kinds of problems we solve for customers.

"When you're confident, others have confidence in you. Your manual bolsters confidence in many areas. When I get concerned about helping a client with a marketing problem, I know where to go to get good, positive direction--the InfoGuru Marketing Manual. Thanks for keeping it simple, focused and positive."

www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html

Want a quick summary of what's included in the manual? These fourteen points below will give you a good snapshot:

- It was developed exclusively for Independent Professionals such as consultants, coaches, trainers and other service professionals who are great at what they do, but have a hard time consistently attracting clients to their businesses.

- The manual is based on a few powerful marketing principles that, once you understand them will transform your marketing. These essential principles are missed by almost everyone (and implemented by even fewer).

- The marketing principles contained in the manual will help you increase interest in your services, build trust and credibility with prospects, get prospects wanting to learn more about what you do, and create a steady stream of word-of-mouth business.

- It goes way beyond theory, vague generalizations or concepts, and contains hundreds of hands-on marketing strategies and action plans that are easy to implement, even if you have no marketing experience.

- It includes foundational marketing information on things like creating an attention-getting marketing message, and then goes into depth on the most recent marketing techniques of web marketing and eZines.

- You can read it like a book -- you can go through it slowly and do the exercises like a home-study course -- or you can refer to it whenever you have a question about marketing your business.

- It comes with over 11 hours of audio files with teleclasses and interviews on the finer points of marketing your services. These audio files alone are worth the price of the manual.

- I've included a boatload of extras, including 150 pages of articles, dozens of resources and, most importantly, the InfoGuru Support Forum, where you can get any question about marketing your services answered for free.

- The Support Forum can be used to answer questions, provide resources, and get "peer-review" of marketing materials, web sites, proposals and sales letters, as well as explore the more complex and confusing aspects of attracting clients to your business.

- It will help remove the mystery and struggle about marketing and selling that so many Independent Professionals experience, and will help you realize that marketing can actually be fun.

- It comes with my unconditional guarantee. Get it and try it. If you don't think it's worth much more than what you paid, tell me and I'll refund 100% of your purchase price.

- Unlike most marketing information sold on the web, the manual is available in both digital format (.pdf file) for immediate download, and for just a few dollars more, you can get a printed manual as well.

- The InfoGuru Marketing Manual was published in February of 2001, and it's just as relevant today, because I add to it regularly with updates of the manual that can be downloaded repeatedly at no additional cost.

- If you are looking for one tool that will help you attract clients with an approach and methodology that is highly effective but doesn't compromise your integrity, you've found it!

For complete details and to order online go to:

www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html

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Marketing Flashes on "Making Contact"

Here are a few things that don't work if you want to make contact.

* Don't use a boring, generic audio logo. You want to elicit a reaction, and to do that you need to hit a nerve. Test a whole bunch of attention-getters until you find one that gets the response you want.

* Don't do all the talking. The Audio Logo is a conversation starter - for them - not for you. Turn things around quickly and find out about their situation, issues, challenges or problems. Be interested, not interesting.

* Don't offer a published article. You'll actually get more interest if you send an "unpublished" article and ask for their feedback. This makes the follow-up call a whole lot easier: "I'd love to hear your feedback on the article."

* Don't do a selling job on the phone. The purpose of the phone call is to develop rapport, learn more about their situation and see if, in fact, they are a real, live qualified prospect. If so, suggest a face-to-face meeting.

* Don't come with a canned presentation. The biggest job you have to do in the selling process is to listen and discover two main things: what's not working right now, and what would "working" look like to them.? Then you can start talking about your services.

Until next week, all the best,

Robert Middleton

ACTION PLAN MARKETING
Helping Independent Professionals Attract More Clients

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www.actionplan.com

210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-7790

Contact by email

© 2004 Robert Middleton, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the More Clients eZine in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:

"By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert's web site at http://www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses."

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