Dan Kennedy, is one of the most brilliant marketers and copywriters of our time. Dan teaches to build a list and sell to that list. Marketing is not much more complicated than that other than to say that if you have something that will solve a problem in the marketplace and you find those who need that problem solved and they trust you, you will get a customer.
My friend and one of my early sales mentors, Chuck Bain used to say, if someone likes you they will listen to you, if they listen to you they will believe you, if they believe you they will trust you and if they trust you they might buy from you. But someone will not buy from you unless they trust you on some level.
The more people that trust you, because you are trustworthy, the more people there will be who will buy from you. When you have lots of people ready to buy from you, you can set your price, terms and you will never have a problem staying out of the commoditized world of low bid work.
You want a list of prospects who know who you are, what you do, why they should trust you and the bigger that list the wealthier you will become. Your first goal should be to build a list to 10,000 prospects.
Here’s how to generate your first 10,000 leads. With 10,000 leads you will have a client list of incoming calls that you don’t have to beg for their business, they will request your services and pay you a premium for doing so. I will show several examples of how to generate leads. I like to use the law of 10,000 to build a list.
The law of 10,000. Let’s say you want to learn to play golf. First you hit 10,000 balls (not in one day or your hands will bleed, a lot), then you play 10,000 holes, then you play 10,000 rounds, then you play 10,000 tournaments and on and on and on.
You do the same with leads. You learn how to generate 10,000 leads, then you get 10,000 customers then you get 10,000 customers who refer you, etc. Always striving for the next level but it starts with the leads. But it can’t be just any leads, these leads need to be highly targeted leads of your ideal customers. This is where we will start. But first it starts with one.
We’re going to focus on just a few areas. But the question becomes where do you start. There’s Facebook, LinkedIn there’s e-mail there’s direct sales webinars, letters, actual mail, TV, radio and so many more. There’s so many places that that you can go to generate leads. My philosophy on this is actually pretty simple and it really works. You need to be good at two of these. This strategy is the most effective in the short term to generate leads.
Building a direct marketing response campaign to build your list of 10,000 is actually easier than you might think. You are here because of direct response marketing. You were brought to a landing page or my blog by some sort of advertisement that made you click on a link. That advertisement could have been on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube or Google. Once at the landing page or my blog I offered you some type of information that you were seeking in exchange for your name and e-mail address. Whether that was a free webinar, a free e-book, free report or a free 4 day course. All of these are items I use to build my list and to filter out the clients that I would not want to work with.
If the landing page was not what you were seeking you would leave without requesting the information because either you were not in the target market or it was not the type of information you were seeking at that time. No sweat off my back because I only want the right prospects when it is right for them. You are going to build your filter in the same fashion to generate your first 10,000 prospects. For instance, when you are reading my blog posts you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to business. There is no theory in what I’m saying because I’ve been at this game for over a ¼ of a century. I know that my personality will turn off some people which makes them go away. That is fine. Eventually those who read what I have to show them want more and that is when they usually purchase my coaching. When the student is ready the teacher will appear.
So my favorite method of list building is to give something of value away for free in return for a name and e-mail address. In other words, I give something of value and you give me the right to offer you additional products and services that might provide you additional value. The ball is always in your court and you can opt out at any time so it is win-win. If I stop providing value you will tell me to go pound sand. If I continually provide value you will want additional products and services that I offer because they help you to make money.
Let’s face it, if I don’t help you make more money than you won’t be interested in anything I have to say.
If the content I provide for you is a fit you will keep wanting more until you get what you want. This is critical to understand. The marketing is about you not about me. I prepare content that is helpful to a specific group of people in the marketplace and when they find it they know it is right for them because it is exactly what they were looking for at the time.
You are going to learn to do this very thing with your business. You are going to provide content that your prospects want in exchange for their name and e-mail address. That content will lead them to an offer which will allow the prospect to make a small purchase from you in exchange for more information. The more information will be followed up by a series of e-mails and other messages designed to get them to make a decision. A direct response. Every step is another direct response until the final step is the profitable sale.
Watch for more upcoming blog posts on lead generation. This is the lifeblood of any business.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney