One of the most effective ways to generate new clients is through positioning yourself as an expert – and one of the best ways to do that is through public speaking.
I’ve had quite a few requests for more information following this post – and in response have developed an e-book “How To Use Public Speaking To Get More Clients“.
This e-book takes you step-by-step through the process of finding, approaching and booking speeches and generating quality leads. Includes sample letters, booking forms and much more…click here for more
Hope it is of some interest.
Brendon
I’ve just come from a meeting with a client who we signed up today. The client wants a web site for her business.
We’ve won the job despite being 10 times the price of our competitor’s quote. That’s right – 10 times the price.
As we do with all of our clients, I asked why our proposal won the job. The client’s answer was pretty much what I hoped.
* We assessed her needs
* We provided a solution
This client needed a web site up and working asap, she needed us to write the copy for the site and she needed an idea on how to market the site.
We addressed all those, gave her some examples and got the job.
(P.S: The client told me the competition basically said, “How big do you want the site? What do you want the buttons to say?” And that was the assessment!)
Have a good day.
Brendon
(from August 2003 blog on www.tailored.com.au)
We’ve been in our present offices for 18 months. But until today, we had never marketed to our local area.
Today Bianka walked around the neighbourhood, distributed our newsletter and introduced herself (and us). The feedback was very positive and already a couple of people have requested more information about how we can help them.
Geographical proximity is a big choice factor in choosing almost any product or service. Marketing to those closest to you will usually yield the best results.
18 months……takes me a while to catch on!
Have a good day.
Regards
Brendon
(from August 2003 blog on www.tailored.com.au)
We ran a display ad in the closest big city newspaper on the weekend. Click here for the ad (it’s a pdf file).
Three- (3) things we considered when we ran our ad:
* A professional services firm needs to generate leads
* A firm like ours doesn’t generate leads via advertising
* We do generate leads from our web site
Having said all that, we always try different things so we tried advertising to generate visitors to our web site which would, in turn, generate leads for our business.
It worked well (which surprised me a bit. I actually think the ad is way too cvheesy.). We have meetings all this week and next with potential clients interested in marketing and web work.
Who saw our ad – we advertised in the business section of the newspaper. Obviously those more likely to be interested in business will read the business section.
We did a few things differently with this ad. We didn’t give a great call to action. We didn’t provide an incentive. We didn’t talk about benefits.
But what we did do was generate the type of people we want as clients to our web site (from where they contacted us). And getting business is what you want your advertising to do.
Regards
Brendon
(taken from www.tailored.com.au August 2003)
1. Call 2 old clients to say hello
2. Send out a newsletter detailing some offers you have
3. Post out 10 postcards to prospects
4. Send out a media release a day
5. Write an article for an industry magazine within your speciality
6. Send 3 clients an email offer of some sort
7. Send an offer with every invoice you send
8. Send a prospect something of interest (such as a press clipping)
9. Write to 1 industry organisation and offer a speech on your speciality
10. Read 1 web site like this one every day for fresh ideas
Business is about developing relationships. If you keep in contact with your clients they will continue to buy from you. If you get in contact with people who haven’t heard of you before, then they might buy from you.
Good luck.
Brendon
(from www.tailored.com.au August 2003)
The team here at Tailored have a drink after work on Friday afternoons. We finish up about 4 p.m, open up the fridge and have a drink and a bite to eat in the boardroom.
During this time we shoot the breeze on anything from weekend plans to work issues.
We often have some terrific ideas during these relaxed chats and last week…..
We had a magnificent idea!!
Now, I know we are a marketing business and we deal with marketing issues every hour of every day. And I’ve done this for years and years. But this next idea has never entered my head. Until last week. And what an idea it is!
A simple twist has made a huge difference!
As you probably gather from this site, we use a variety of marketing strategies to generate leads and clients. And I’m more than happy to share these things with you, for a couple of reasons.
1. I’m sure you are smart enough to realise that we are giving away the tricks of our trade. This stuff is valuable intellectual property and can be incredibly valuable if used the right way.
2. I have every confidence that you don’t read and think “Oh the sneaky little person!” I’ve even had a person email me and tell me that I would never get a client from this site because I show too much – wrong! This site simply demonstrates our expertise.
If you are a potential client you might recognise some strategies we use, but I believe most people see the strategies for what that are – good and decent ways to get new clients (I’d love you to use us of course, but I’d equally love you to follow the examples and do it yourself and make your business a great success).
Get on with it Brendon!
Okay, okay! Here it is.
We were discussing the results of the latest postcard mail out (we did 3 last week). One of the mail outs generated us 4 leads from 90 cards.
Bianka mentioned how funny it was that all of the people who responded have their businesses located very close to and knew personally one- (1) of the two- (2) people who we quoted in the testimonials.
My reply was pretty simple
“The biggest barrier to buying is the perception of risk. Every purchase is a risk. If you can remove the risk of doing business with you – maybe offer a 100% guarantee – then you will get more sales,” I said.
“Because these new clients know the people we quoted on the cards, they can very easily check up on us and be reassured about the perceived level of risk. Thus, people who know other people we deal with are far more likely to contact us.
It’s the very same reason that the vast majority of our business is provided by word-of-mouth referrals,” I said.
Stick with me here……it’s gold!
The response rate of that 90 card mail out was 4.4%. Not bad for a mail out.
We talked about that and a few other things.
Then it hit me like an arrow between the eyes!
We would, just like we did last week, generate a much better response to our mailings if we quoted testimonials from people that the person reading the card knew!
We would greatly increase our success rate by sending cards quoting businesspeople around the place of the person providing the quote.
So that’s what we did!
The results?
Spectacular!
We’ve only sent our forty- (40) cards so far, but we’ve already had four- (4) responses. That’s more than double the previous response. And a quick assessment of those four- (4) clients tells me that it could be worth $10,000.
All because of an easy chat over a wine and following a natural progression of thought. It seems so obvious now!
Regards
Brendon
(taken for a www.tailored.com.au article – article has since been removed)
Tonight my wife (Mel) and I are going to dinner with friends. Ange is one of my wife’s best friends and they haven’t seen each other for about a year.
Ange and her husband (Nick) are flying into town for a few days and we are going to a local BYO restuarant at 7.
Mel went out and did some shopping today and bought some beer and wine to take with us tonight. She purchased her favourite bottle of white wine – a fairly inexpensive drop at $10 a bottle.
But she was worried.
* She was worried that the wine wasn’t good enough.
* She was worried that she hadn’t spent enough money on the wine.
* She was worried about the perceived quality of the wine.
My question to her was:
“So you think you should go and buy a bottle of wine that is more expensive and that you probably won’t like? And this is because you don’t think you have spent enough?”
Different types of consumers
When you market your products there are different segments of buyers. My wife, because her special friend is visiting, has turned into an ‘aspirational’ type. She aspires to something better. In this case wine.
It’s the very same reason Mel has spent the day cleaning the house from top to bottom and that the kids aren’t allowed to make any sort of mess at all!
Ange and Nick are coming at 4 p.m for a chat and a drink before we go to dinner. Mel wants the house to be perfect for them, so they are impressed (That aspirational focus again).
The important marketing aspects I’ve been reminded about from this simple story are these:
1. Many people equate price with quality. There are different markets for your product or services
2. There are different consumer ‘types’ buying your products or services (and consumers can jump between them)
3. There are different motivating factors when buying your products or services
4. My wife is nuts
Take the first 3 aspects into consideration when considering your marketing positioning. For example, you might market to aspirational consumers – you may not need to market yourself as the lowest price within the market. That could actually turn your target market off!
P.S: Mel darling, if you ever read this I’m just kidding about you being crazy! I’m just doing it for dramatic effect! Please, please forgive me.
Regards
Brendon
(originally posted on www.tailored August 2003)
You know how you do things and then afterwards think “That is so obvious, why haven’t I done that before?”
I’ve had such a moment with a recent newsletter (offline) that we sent to a niche. One of the newsletter articles was a strong recommendation to readers to put a decent statistics program on their web site.
Here’s the article in full:
======================
# 1 Recommendation For Web Site Owners
Our number 1 recommendation for managing a web site is simply this:
Use a quality statistics package
A good quality statistics program for your web site needn’t cost a fortune. The statistics program we use on our own web sites, and many client web sites, can be purchased and installed for just $80 + GST.
This is a statistics program that tells you:
* How many visitors you have each day
* What links they clicked on to find you
* What search engine they used to find you
* What search term they used to find you
* What pages they looked at
* How long they stayed for
…..and much more.
That’s vital information. Information that can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year.
We’ve had a number of clients experience just that. A web site the client has advertised with for a year previously contacts our client.
“Would you like to renew your link on our web site for $400 a year?”
After a quick look at the statistics we can see that over the previous 12 months that web site had provided just 4 visitors.
Make Your Web Site Accountable
A good statistics program on your web site makes the site, and your web manager, accountable.
Let’s say you spend $2,000 on search engine optimization — that is, you’re trying to get higher search engine rankings.
Armed with your statistics program you can tell if the
expenditure has resulted in higher rankings, increased visitors and/or increased sales.
It’s the perfect way to measure the effectiveness of your advertising expenditure — helping you to cut costs where necessary or allocate resources where it helps the most.
Don’t be left in the dark. Know exactly what’s going on. Install a quality statistics package today.
==================================
That’s not so great, but it has worked fantastically well.
10% purchase rate so far!
Only $80 each, but the best thing is that every one of those 3 have said to me “We’ll need you to look at fixing up our web site too.”
Selling statistics packages looks to be an absolutely fantastic way to generate high quality leads for web site design/redevelopment.
(BTW, I have started to move across posts from the www.tailored.com.au site.)
Regards
Brendon
Cashflow is critical for any business. We try a few different techniques to increase the speed with which we get paid (it’s usually 50% deposit and the balance on completion).
Send the invoice with a Reply Paid envelope – surprisingly, this simple technique decreases the average time we wait to be paid.
We’ve also just added our bank and account details to the bottom of every invoice. This means that every client can pay us via Internet banking very quickly and easily. Early indications are that this will reduce the time we wait for payment by 2 days. And that can be important for many businesses.
Just a quick tip on sending invoices. Also send a flyer or letter or some sort of offer at the same time. It’s basically free and can be a terrific sales tool.
Take care.
Regards
Brendon
(from August 2003 blog on www.tailored.com.au)
It’s been my experience that public speaking generates new customers better than just about anything.
There’s a range of reasons for that, but mostly it’s down to 2 factors:
1. You are getting yourself known to your target market
2. You are perceived as an expert when you speak publicly on a topic (unless you’re the worst speaker ever)
Immediate Credibility
If your speech is good you’ll immediately establish credibility with your target market.
The personal nature of a speech also puts you in immediate contact with your market – to meet you they don’t have to make a call, write a letter or send an email. The person simply has to come up to you at the end and say hello.
And it’s that face-to-face meeting that’s important. Now you’re just not another web designer/developer but a real live person who they (hopefully) like and trust.
Speech Tonight
I’m giving a speech tonight to a business group.
The speech came about because I approached them and asked them if they’d like me to speak on Internet business.
My speech is specifically structured to be informative and entertaining.
Importantly the speech is structured very, very carefully to position me as an expert with loads of credibility. Every single part of the speech has been developed to perform a particular function.
1. Funny and self-deprecating
2. Demonstrate web expertise via a Case Study
3. Demonstrate industry credibility
4. Demonstrate experience
5. Demonstrate out-of-box thinking that create a success
6. Draw attention to the usual problems
7. Lead towards the solution
8. Offer proof of the solutions
9. Lead them towards how they can get the same result
10. Show how they can get the desired result
Information Available
At the end of the speech I’ll have handouts for the audience, a list of resources they can request, information about us and what we do and a link to a feedback survey they can take.
From all of that I’d guess we’ll generate 2-4 strong leads and will pick up 2-3 sales (web site jobs).
We’ll then use the testimonial I’ll be provided to generate additional speaking jobs within the same industry (and beyond).
Public speaking works at generating new clients better than just about any technique I’ve ever used. Is it something you can do too?
Regards
Brendon