Let’s not prat about here. You know why you’re reading this post.
Know who I’m targeting
Above all else, I know who I’m targeting. I know who is likely to spend $10k. My goal is a $10k funnel, so I’ll research my ass off looking for businesses that can afford a $10k funnel.
I’ll segment by industry, company size, marketing budget, product price, number of customers and previous purchases. If you can’t find this information out, you’re not searching hard enough.
Checkout my post on Facebook insights if you want to learn how to find data on companies and people.
The biggest mistake people make, when looking for a $10k or $100k project is skipping this step. WHO is going to give you the money you want. Because it’s boring, slow and hard work to research businesses that could afford you, people skip that step.
That leads to tactics being wasted as they become busy work. It’s all effort towards a goal that is always shifting. Unless you know who you want to target, you’re never going to reach them.
To learn more about who to target, check out my post on niches or my other post on choosing a target customer.
Know what they want
Next, I’ll figure out everything I can about what that customer wants. What their goals are, who they look up to, what their problems are and the results they want to grow.
I’ll call customers up, interview them, ask referrals, follow blogs and magazines. Again, this is dull, boring, repetitive slow work. That’s why people give up at this stage. You have a niche or market? Great! What is the #1 thing that market would pay for?
Don’t know? Get the hell outta here!
If there’s one man who knows how to get rid of something, it’s Hank Scorpio.
You must know what those companies are looking to achieve. How they want to grow. What problems they’re experiencing. Do SaaS companies suffer from small email lists, or a lack of traffic?
Industry magazines, blogs, LinkedIn groups and interviews can tell you everything you need to know. As soon as you know what a market needs, you have a chance to help them.
Note: Will they pay $10k to solve that problem? Will they pay $10 000 for a marketing funnel to reach their goals? Well, your previous research should tell you that. Ask them how much they spend on websites, traffic, PR, advertising, product development and content.
Know how I can help
We know who we’re going after, we know what they want. So how can you help?
We’re going to make 3 lists.
- Things I’m good at
- Things I want to offer
- Things I’ll offer for $10 000
1. Write out everything that you’re great at. What have you delivered and done in the past? What are you experienced at? Be realistic, truthful and unabashed. Don’t think of it as blowing your own trumpet, think of it as a skill based inventory.
Don’t worry about whether you want to deliver these things yet. I’m pretty good at SEO, but I don’t care enough about it to deliver it. I still write it down as something I’m good at though.
2. Write out what you want to offer. What do you want to provide to other people? Don’t worry about experience, what’s realistic or even possible. What are the results and skills you want to show off? What excites you? What are you obsessed with?
A good indicator of what you want to deliver, is what you like to learn about. What do you consume content on and what do you like to follow?
3. What will you offer for $10k. Let’s say I bank $10 000 into your account tomorrow. What are you going to give me? What are you going to give me in exchange for that $10 000? This was the question I had to ask myself when I knew I wanted a $1 million dollar business.
What was I going to give in exchange for that $1m? What was I going to give the world, in exchange for $1m in revenue?
You’re now looking for overlaps in those 3 lists. You might have to do this exercise a few times. It might not come naturally or even easily. But you want an overlap in those 3 lists.
Finally, that overlap has to align with something the market wants. If you decide that you’re good at talking to customers, you want to deliver email automation and in exchange for $10 000 you’ll set up a 25 email sequence and segmentation campaign in ActiveCampaign, does you market want that?
Check out my post on the $25k drop for more on delivering against a cost.
Look at what we’re doing, we’re flipping the entire model on it’s head. Convention tells us to pick a product we like, find a customer and negotiate a price.
Instead, I’m telling you to find a customer, identify what they want, pick a price and sell something for that price.
Offer value upfront
Now we start the real work. You need to give value upfront. There are no two ways about this. Blog posts, videos, articles, webinars, training, software, books, workshops, networks, groups. You must pick a value channel and repeatedly and regularly provide outstanding and valuable advice.
The first, second, tenth and twentieth post, video or podcast will have no reach and no impact. But that’s not the point. You’ll building a library of proof. Exerts and authorities have content and materials. You’re proving your an expert by BUILDING your library of expertise.
I 100% promise you that if you stick with it, one post a week, one video a week (one THING at a week minimum), you’ll generate interest.
But more importantly, any one you reach out to and call/talk to, can be shown all this useful content. In fact, we’ve won more business talking to prospects and sharing our blog content with them, than our portfolio.
Only experts would spend time writing stuff and publishing it.
Secondly, what you’re doing is proving you can help. You’re proving you can provide help and for free. Imagine the results you could get people if they paid you!
If you want to learn how to create TONS of regular, repeated content, check out this post here.
Get them on a call
Inbound marketing. Positioning. Waiting.
Fuck. That.
That list of potential prospects? Get them on the phone. Book meetings and calls with anyone and everyone in your target market.
When we first started our agency, I wanted as many conversations on appear.in as I could. I just wanted to talk to my market.
I emailed my friends, old colleagues, teachers and new network contacts to ask if they knew anyone in those industries. Or if they knew anyone who know’s anyone.
You’d be staggered at how quick your diary fills. We’re not booking calls to pitch or sell. We wanted a meeting to ask about what they needed.
That’s the big killer difference. I wanted to find out more and I was willing to pay for the 45 minutes. I put my money where my mouth is.
“Hey Bill, our agency helps online course businesses keep members paying for longer. Do you know any course businesses or anyone in that industry that you could pass my details onto?”
That was it. That was the call or email.
Here’s the deal. People will naturally reward motivation and go-get-em attitudes. People WANT to help people, who want to help them. People WANT to help enthusiastic people.
It’s as simple as that. I knew I could help and I wanted to help.
“What have you done in the past?”
“I’m not interested.”
“We don’t need anything.”
I heard that a lot. No worries. I moved on. For everyone that said no, someone said yes. Get on with it and book more calls.
More conversations = more opportunities. YOU find opportunities and the more you find, the more you’ll see. Eventually opportunities will flow to you without even trying.
Paid discovery/consultation
Finally, we understood as much as we could about that customer. I spent time at their office, on calls, anything to understand their business.
Then, I repeated back my favourite 7 words.
Would you like some help with that?
Let’s say after 3 calls I’ve discovered that an online course business struggles with keeping members longer than 8 months. That’s their biggest problem. So…would they like some help with that?
99/100 they say yes. And I’m the one who’s asked them. And I’ve understood their business. And I’ve spent time with them. Who do you think they wanted to help them?
So, we set up a paid discovery and consultation session. At Sell Your Service, we have a consultation process (which you can learn here). It sets up their marketing process, funnel, sales process and market hook.
We charge anything from $997 to $25 000+ for the discovery, depending on the delivery.
Remember, don’t ask “what should I charge?”, ask “what should I deliver for $25k?”
I’ve never delivered it before…
Look, if you’ve got the end of this post and you’re now thinking “I can’t do this because I don’t have a consultation/discovery process”, then I want you to read it again and see where it says you have to deliver a consultation/discovery process before finding a customer.
Right. It doesn’t.
I tell you what. If you get to the point where you have a customer willing to pay you for a consultation/discovery session, email me michael [at] sellyourservice.co.uk and I’ll show you how to put a program together.
So that’s it. Rinse and repeat. The good news is that you only do the first half of this post once. Then the rest gets easier the more you do it.
What’s your favourite part of this process? Let me know in the comments below?
