3 Golden Tips About Offline Consulting - And why I almost hate the "offline craze"

There are some good marketers on this forum, and I hand it to those that are doing well. Though, I have a little qualm with the offline craze and how it is being portrayed to those out there.

I've been doing freelance offline consulting for awhile, and some web design things, but I'm just now starting a legitimate practice and business through it.

There are piles upon piles of products that people are selling about "Land a $5,000 client with NO WORK in ONE DAY!" and it's all good and swell, for the one out of a hundred people that get lucky like that.

I've found, throughout my journeys at least (which have been quite successful) that this isn't the case. It bothers me that there are people selling pipe dreams to others about offline marketing and consulting businesses and how "easy" they are to start.

Let me let you in on some things: It is not easy (at least not in the sense they make it out to be, I consider it easy vs. working a 40 hour/week job, but I refuse to work for someone else). It is not fast. It is stressful. Your customers will be your biggest headache.

I'm writing this thread to share the top three tips that I've found to be true when trying to garnish clients and trying to build a reliable business helping other businesses. Implement these alone, and you should see some productivity and income increases in your offline ventures.

1. Pre-qualify the dickens out of every lead.
- If you are taking the time to do offline marketing, then your time is precious. Many consultants and SEO firms charge upwards of $100 an hour (conservative number...) to offer their services. Every minute you waste on a client or lead that was dead from the start and was never going to give you a dime, was potentially $100 an hour you could have been charging someone else. Make sure that the services you are offering them coincide with something they are already doing, whether it be marketing or selling things on the internet.

2. LISTEN TO YOUR PROSPECTS
- This should be common sense but unfortunately for many people it isn't. Listen to what your prospects and clients tell you. When a potential customer says something like "Yeah, I actually already have a guy doing that for me, well kind of. It isn't really his thing... but there are a few issues like X, Y, and Z."

This client isn't telling you they aren't interested. They are telling you to convince them that you will do a better job than the "guy" that is doing it, even though it's not his "thing". Sell the person. Tell them what you can do. Be confident in your skills. If that "guy" is doing web design, get in contact with him, tell him you'll take a workload off his back and do the SEO for his sites he designs. Network, make money, but more importantly LISTEN. Then repeat back to your client what they told you they want, but only this time in the terms of how you are going to give them what they want.

Most communication is nonverbal, and in business, it's no different.

3. Make sure that you are actually QUALIFIED to do what you are offering.
- This is the one that kills me the most. I see tons of new to internet marketing people try to start this venture, somehow stumble their way to their first client, then... WHOOPS. Nothing happens. They don't know how to actually do proper on-page WHITE-HAT SEO (yes, the SEO needs to be white-hat for real life businesses, not this massive blog commenting scrapebox backlinking crap...) so then they try to outsource it. Then, all of a sudden, a business owner's website disappears from the rankings, and you have their $1,500... but they don't have a ranking anymore.

Don't get yourself into trouble like this. If you tell your person you are going to do the work yourself, and you will succeed, then do the work and succeed. If you tell the person you might have some of the linking and footwork done by outsourced labor, then be up front about it. If you plan on outsourcing all of it, do so, but make sure that you know how to correctly outsource, do the work, or figure out how to get the work done, before you take on your first client.

Be transparent in your business and open with your clients, and in return the relationship you build with them will be much stronger, and your value will appear much higher.

In closing:

Hopefully these tips will help open your eyes to this business.

I don't want to discourage anybody that has the ambition to go out and do this. It's definitely lucrative and is an income source that allows me to "do as I please" if you will, even when I'm sitting around for weeks at a time on a golf course in ____________ (throw a dart at a board of vacation spots).

Just do me a favor, don't make it seem easier than it is, and definitely don't get yourself into trouble and potentially ruin a business' chance at a successful marketing campaign. I've spoken with too many clients that have been stung by what amounts to nothing more than a scam artist and I'd like to have clients for years to come that are willing to let me help them in a real world setting.

More importantly, I'd like there to be clients for the others that decide to join in on the craze.


To your success!

Good luck, and happy marketing.

- Brenden Clerget