How entrepreneurs can find new clients

Learning How to Find New Clients

Jerry R. Mitchell 1

Jerry R. Mitchell 2

First, You're Probably Asking Yourself: "Why Should I Listen To Him?

That's a fair question. Why Would You Listen To Me?

Jerry R. Mitchell 3

I have sold in a shorter period of time more products that any other sales person I know.

Not once but many times for many different companies.

That is the reason my partners selected me as a partner.

Jerry R. Mitchell 4

In my consulting business I have developed for many clients very successful international channels of distribution.

Have provided strategic guidance for my clients that enabled them to increase their business through the acquisition ofcompanies servicing different markets.

Jerry R. Mitchell 5

My background:

Been in high tech industry since 1961

Jerry R. Mitchell 6

I meet few people who truly understand the fundamental difference between sales and marketing. So lets get clear on both. At the most basic level, marketing is everything that makes the phone ring, while selling is actually collecting the money

Jerry R. Mitchell 7

Your question should be “What's the difference between Marketingand Sales, and how can I integrate the two to build my business?”

Jerry R. Mitchell 8

Do I have to sell? Yes! As you will find out, selling is an important part of any business activity. If you are already in business you know it. If you are just starting out, much of your success will depend on your sales skills.

Jerry R. Mitchell 9

In reality, salesmanship is persuading others to your viewpoint. Nothing more. There is no mystery to it only hard work and a lot of rejection. Just think of selling as successfully asking someone to do something.

Jerry R. Mitchell 10

As an entrepreneur, you will begin your sales career the moment you give birth to the idea of your company. You will need to sell your idea to your spouse, your sources of money, your suppliers, your landlord, and your new employees. You may not call it selling, but that is what it is. You have a message and you want others to buy it


In your enthusiasm, you do not question your sales ability you just do it. The moment the first person that signs on to your plans is the moment you have debunked the sales myth. You have made a sale without being a phony, without imposing on others, and without lying. You made a sale, because your message makes sense and you believe in it.


You and your ideas and your vision are your products. How well have you been selling them to those you need to reach?

Never before in the history of the world has the potential to do extraordinary things been this big for the smallest of teams.


The reach of the net, the low/no-cost of infrastructure, and rise of fiercely-productive environments have empowered those with passion near superhuman strength in business, by last century standards.


It's no longer necessary to be big to do big. It's optional.


Are you struggling to attract clients? Have you heard about Content Marketing, but aren't yet sure what it is, or how to implement it?

Would you like to be able to stop spending money chasing prospects and asking them to do business with you?


Back in 1985 when I started Jerry R. Mitchell and Associates, the business landscape was radically different than it is today. There was no social media.


By 2007, when cold calling stopped working for our company social media had taken off in a big way. So had WordPress and email marketing. Plus, mobile was also starting to gain in popularity as well.


What did all this mean to our company? It meant that getting people's attention was becoming increasingly difficult, and as a result, traditional outbound marketing was starting to lose its effectiveness.


Fast forward to 2013 and, for our outbound sales force, things had become even more difficult.


Potential Buyers Are Now Invisible


Now, potential buyers remain invisible and nearly impossible to reach until they want to be found. I say they are invisible because, prior to contacting you, they are stealthily performing all sorts of research using Google,reviewwebsites, and social media.

You cannot reach them at any point during this phase, unless of course they happen to find your blog or one of your social profiles along the way.



What does this mean for you?


Content is Now Your Most Valuable Asset


How Content Marketing Has Forever Changed! How To Attract Clients And How You Can Take Advantage Of This Shift?


It means that content has become your most important asset. Blog posts,videos on You tube, white papers, free reports, newsletters podcasts, et al are now the way that you are going to attract your prospects so that they find and connect with you.


Put simply, the company in your niche that creates the most content is going to become the dominant player in that market.


Why? Simple. People are using Google to search for answers to theirquestions, and if you create a lot of high quality content, people willshare it on their social profiles, and each time they do, Google is going tobump your content up just a little higher in the search results; each timeyou rise in the search results, you get more traffic, more shares, andbetter rankings. The cycle simply repeats itself.


Or, you can just keep making those cold calls and annoying the heck out ofpeople.


Outbound vs Inbound


To really drive this point home, let's use an example with two entrepreneurial companies looking to attract new clients. The first one still has a teamof salespeople who are charged with finding new clients. They are coldcalling and attending local networking events. For simplicity, we'll callthis firm Outbound Marketing.


The other entrepreneurial company , we call Inbound Marketing, and unlike Outbound, they do not have a dedicated outside/outbound sales team. Instead, they have chosen to use the massive amount of money that they've saved by not having this team to create compelling content that will answer all their potential buyer's questions, as well as to publicly display their work withClients which, of course, positions them as experts in their field.


As you might guess, Inbound Marketing is getting much better results thanthe other firm. This is because they are getting plenty of traffic to theirblog, many of those visitors are becoming subscribers, and those subscribersare finding their way through Inbound Marketing's well-crafted sales funnel.


Their funnel allows their prospects to segment themselves based upon what they are interested in and what phase of the buying cycle they are in. This is pretty easy to do


This process is working so incredibly well, in fact, that Inbound Marketingdoesn't ever call their prospects. Instead, their prospects actually callInbound once they have consumed enough content to actually be pre-sold onworking with Inbound Marketing.


I don't know about you, but to me, that sounded like it would be a pretty nice idea to start using inbounding marketing in my business.


A Real Life Example of Success


Here's what worked for me.


We now never cold call prospects. Instead, we have put our effort into creating content (blog posts, free reports, newsletters, videos, etc.) that attracts people to our company's website. As each prospect is continually exposed to their message via their marketing funnel, the ones that are a good fit inevitably make contact with our firm, and when they do, they are ready to do business.


Let me show you how working with 2 More Profits changed forever our companies strategy

Look at these amazing results!


How we attracted interest


We have found the way to attract interest is with high quality video content.


The way that we found how to attract interest was to focus on the problems that our target customers are trying to solve, and then create content (blog posts, free reports, news letters, podcasts, videos, etc.) that helped them to find a solution to their problems.


Once we succeed in attracting someone's interest by placing content ina place where they found it, the next thing we did was to capture their contact information; which, in most cases, is their email address.


This is what we called lead capture at the top of the funnel. You may getplenty more information from them later on, but for now, we just want their first name and email..


There are plenty of ways to do this but what we have had the most success with sending a free report.


Remember one thing, however; just because someone has given you their email address (small amount of trust) does not give you the right to spam the hell out of them!


In fact, all it takes is one irrelevant email and the small amount of trustthat you have earned will quickly be eroded. This is why it's absolutelycritical that you set expectations early on as well as give them a way to'self-segment' themselves in your database.


How well you nurture your prospects is very likely the single most important factor in whether or not those prospects ever become customers.


We have created great content that generates new leads and have sales people call and follow up on them. This is still inbound marketing. It's just getting people involved in closing deals. If your product has any level of complexity that prevents it from being completely self-service, you're probably going to have to build a sales operation


Converting inquires into sales is where the real talent is required.


We have found while inbound marketing or content marketing is a great way to build our brand and generate lots of inbound leads, the only way to grow predictably - that is have complete control over our distribution – was continuing to use our outbound sales organization.


Today, as I've just pointed out, the nurturing you do prior to the sale isreally where all the skills are needed. Get the nurturing right, and thesale is the natural conclusion to that conversation.


To illustrate this point, I'll give you just one quick example now. AtJerry R, Mitchell and Associates , we have a mastermind group for entrepreneurs marketing agencies and consultants and the only way people ever find out about it is via our blog, marketing funnel, and our podcast. We don't spent 10 cents to advertise it, and we definitely aren't making cold calls to solicit new members.


Given that these people have already consumed a fair amount of our contentbefore they ever visit the sales page, the level of trust is fairly high.

Once they read the sales page, they see that part of the process of becominga member is to book a 15 minute call with me, during which time we'll have aconversation to determine if there is a good fit.


When I do these calls, I generally start off by getting them to sell me onwhy they want to be a part of the group. The first question out of my mouth is always, "So why do you want to join?"


Next, I ask them some more qualifying questions to ensure that theirparticipation would actually benefit the other members, and if there is amutual fit I send them a URL to make the payment.


On each call, I simply assume that they've already decided to join, and, I'mhappy to report that 80% of these calls result in the caller becoming a newmember of the group (assuming there is a good mutual fit, that is).


That's it. Oh, and by the way, these calls generally take less than10 minutes.


Now, let me ask you this: how much success do you think I would have if Iwas cold calling entrepreneurs to try and convince them to join mymastermind? Let's go with..um..how about ZERO.


Why? The recipients of my call wouldn't know who I was, they wouldn't trust me, and they would most likely be wondering if the group was so good, why the hell was I making cold calls to attract new members?


My point is this: the sale happened with very little "closing ability"because my prospects were already 99% of the way to the finish line before they ever booked the call with me.


Once you have a new customer, the fastest way to increase profits is to getthem to buy more from you. In fact, the very best time to sell someoneanother product or service is right at the time when they are buying thefirst product or service.


Is upselling harmful to your relationship with your customer? Not if you do it correctly. Get it wrong though, and the effect on trust can be quitedetrimental.


For example, suppose you go into a men's clothing store to buy a suit. Doyou walk out with just the suit? Of course not. Why? Because, while you are trying on the suit, they are also showing you shirts, belts, and ties that will look very good with your new suit.


Most business owners aren't getting as many referrals as they'd like.

Do you ever wonder why you aren't getting as many as you'd like?

Would you like to receive more?


If you've done everything right up to this point, you are undoubtedlygetting some referrals. The key is to put systems in place to ensure thatyou are receiving the maximum number possible without resorting to making those annoying calls where you put your client on the spot by saying, "Who do you know who would like to buy my stuff?"


The truth is that most people don't really want to receive (or make) a calllike that. Instead, they, if sufficiently impressed with you, will want tosend you as many referrals as possible because doing so makes them lookgood.


Here at our company , we use a combination of the measure of customersatisfaction using automation to ensure that we are asking our happiest customers to refer us more. By using email to reach out to these happy folks, we are accomplishing a few really important things.


First, it's completely automated, so my team doesn't have to 'remember' toask.

Second, by using email, we aren't putting our customers 'on the spot likecalling them would do.


Before we wrap up, there is one last point that I want to draw yourattention to and that is this: the Internet is FULL of "free" information,but in reality, it's not actually free at all.


To illustrate this point, let me give you an example. Consider the CEO of acompany who wants to improve his marketing. To do this he asks a member of the staff to go and conduct research on the Internet and that stafferproceeds to spend the next two weeks Googling for information, watchingvideos on YouTube, and listening to podcasts.


There are several problems with this particular approach.


The first problem is that it took two weeks of the staffers time to go andfind, read and assess all this information. If this person's salary is $5000per month, the cost to the company for all this free information wasactually $2500.


Worse, the information took a long time to find, it's not organized in anymeaningful way, and as it comes from a wide variety of sources the qualityof the information is sure to be in question.


So was all of this free information actually free? Definitely not!


As a content marketer, this problem translates into huge opportunity foryou.

If you choose to create high-quality content, and then you create astructured way of delivering content, you are going to save your perspective customer a significant amount of time and frustration.


If you've done a good job of setting expectations upfront, your prospectwill now immediately see that they don't need to spend the next two weeks oftheir lives searching every corner of the Internet to get all of the information that they require to improve their marketing program.


Instead, they will spend more time consuming the content that you havecreated, and they will consume it order that you deliver it to them. Andbecause you are a smart marketer, you're going to deliver that content tothem in order that makes it most likely for them to transition from beingjust a prospect into a paying customer.


This is yet another example of the immense power of content marketing and marketing automation if done correctly.


Are We Too Stubborn To Embrace Social Media?


Well, are we? Does it make us uncomfortable because we don't know how it works? Or, are we just too lazy and brush it off as belonging to another generation?


The official definition of social media refers to the means of interactionsamong people which they create, share and/or exchange ideas and information in virtual communities and networks - Well, that's the boring section out of the way!


Whether we accept it or not, understand it or not, the fact is, it's anawesome tool to get your message out in a way that has never existed before.You may want to promote the local fate. You may even have a politicalviewpoint that you are desperate to share with the nation. You may be justtrying to find your lost dog. Regardless, using these mediums can 'spreadthe word' in a way never experienced before. And, to make things even worsefor us who pretend social media is someone else's problem, this ultraeffective interacting doesn't cost a penny.


Perhaps it's time to stop hiding from this. Perhaps it's time we accepted itas you would a new friend. Like anything in life, pay a small price at thebeginning, but reap the rewards in the long run.


Social media is here and here to stay. Let's greet it with open arms and use the power for our own personal gain. After all, we are allowed to be selfish at our age.


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How entrepreneurs can find new clients

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