PNWgrl

Hi there warriors,

I've been lurking for a couple of months and have gotten invaluable insights and help concerning my recent interest in MM, so thank you to everyone here!

So, I decided to join the WF in the hopes that I can get my registration money's worth in honest advice before I go any further. Sorry about the length of the post!

I was approached in early October this year by a company (to remain nameless) to sell their SMS and mobile marketing services to businesses in my area as a 1099 (I'm not new to 1099 so no worries there). After listening to the pitch of the sales guy I was intrigued--I'm not a real tekkie kind of person so not real "up" on the latest thang, but I definitely saw potential in this kind of marketing. After about 2 weeks researching and talking with the guy, my decision to go for it boiled down to one thing...I work full time in an office where I'm virtually chained to a desk for 8 hours a day. I have NO available time for calls or meetings except during my lunch hour. This seemed to be a pretty big obstacle in my mind, having had over a decade in B2B sales experience.

He assured me that while I probably wouldn't make the kind of sales they advertised, it was not out of the question that I could make 6-8 sales a month by calling on my lunch hours and after 5. They supplied the platform and training for new clients--all I had to do was sell the packages. So, I went for it. In the contract they were to provide training materials, a presentation folder, business cards, and mock-up signage.

I got the package, no training materials, no biz cards, no company email address, and the presentation binder absolutely SUCKED EGGS. I made my own presentation binder and have yet (now mid-December) seen biz cards despite numerous promises that they are in the mail.

I was able to find another agent who signed at about the same time, and this person is also having the same issues with non-communication and misleading info from this company.

In the meantime, I have tried like the devil to get sales to no avail--the main issue being that I am not available to even talk to the DM's because I am working when they are available. I even bought a FANTASTIC WSO from Warrior Will (thanks Will!) that I thought would be great for emailing but have been having some "spam" issues either with my hosting site or free email account I set up. So I haven't been able to send much via email.

I thought about taking a part time job that will pay some of the bills while allowing me to build my business, but I am now discovering that maybe I DON'T want to be selling through this company (I found out that this other agent has one sale, and the platform is beyond frustrating, "training" is directions printed on a sheet of paper, the mobile coupon they are trying to send is not working and no one is available to help).

Here's my dilemma...I'm pretty much hooked on the idea of Mobile Marketing--I really WANT to be involved in this, but I am not sure how to proceed. I am thinking of going to whitelabel with Lime Cellular (or some other), but since I'm no software geek, nor have I ever run my own business, I am a bit unsure about how to go about it. I am not just starting out in life, so I have a mortgage (2 actually) and a lot of debt to deal with so it's beyond a risk to just leave the job and start without any previous experience.

My choices now seem to be go big, or go home. My heart is screaming to go for it, but my head is telling me to give it up.

Any advice from anyone who's been there? Let me know, and thanks in Advance!

Steve Solem

Welcome to the forum and sorry to hear about your situation here.

I really don't get how someone could sign you up and not support you - as ideally the more business you bring them the more money you're both making, but it is what it is and I give you credit for looking for other options.

If it's just SMS or mobile web design services you plan to offer, there are some great WSOs here that are affordable with great training and sales materials provided. Do a search in the WSO forum for things like "mobile", "sms" or "mobile marketing" and that should get you started - and while it's not out yet, I'm aware of a new wso coming out soon with all kinds of great materials from someone who's been doing this for a while and I'll send you a link to that when it's released.

In addition, most SMS companies like Lime or Avid offer sales and marketing materials in addition to mobile web builders and training to use everything.

Also, definitely don't jump ship from a steady job until you're well on your way to supporting yourself with a second income. Selling mobile websites and sms marketing can easily be started weekends or evenings, and you can find time to call back clients without jeopardizing your current work.

HTH ~ Steve

Need Offline Leads? Get them more easily with two great Lead Gen reports and 65 pages of quality PLR PLUS flyers, postcards and other marketing materials. Starting at under $5!

PNWgrl

Thanks for the replies so far...I'm open to more!

Hi Steve,

This is where I'm having my biggest problem...I haven't been able to sell anything because I can't reach anyone during lunch and after work, and owners on weekends (if they are there) are busy with customers.

Restaurants: "Best time of day is between lunch and dinner"
Salons: "Can you stop by around 2 or 3"
Spas: "The Dr is only in in the mornings around 10".
Bowling Alley: "Best time to reach the GM is between 2 and 3"

This is what I'm coming up against. It's so frustrating! Any thoughts?

gamescorpion

Hey PNWgrl,

Honestly do it yourself if you can (Unless you need their services, but then just grow your business without their help other than just administrative stuff)! From the looks of the deal, it seems that they didn't even give you any form of training! At least they should have given you some steps to start off, what to do, etc.

Thank God you found Warrior Forum, at least here you'll find a lot of solid users who know their stuff, so at least you have that side covered.

Firstly, everyone starts in the NOOB world so don't worry. I like to consider myself a FULL TIME NOOB as I'm always learning something new. The industry of Mobile Marketing and Mobile Apps is growing DAILY so its not something that you can just learn overnight or with information from many years ago. What worked in 2007-2008 does not work now.

I'd say 2013 is DEFINITELY the year of businesses who are looking to go mobile. If you're looking to start marketing, then listen, read my blog post on LOCAL marketing to get yourself growing (As from the looks of it you are planning to sell to local businesses). STOP COLD CALLING, it just does not work.

LOCAL MARKETING OF YOUR APP BUSINESS: Local Marketing of Your App Business! | Game Scorpion Inc.

Cold calling has a horrible closing ratio. But in person local live relationship building will help you score more deals. Join the BNI chapter in your local area (It will cost you around $500 and around $15/lunch for the lunch fee). Then you meet every week and start GROWING your business. YOU NEED BUSINESS CARDS AT THE VERY LEAST!

So here is the steps I recommend you take:
1. Go to Staples/Business Depot and get $15 business cards printed out (They'll print like 1000 basic cards for you)
2. Join the local BNI (WHERE MANY OF THE BUSINESS OWNERS YOU SEEK WILL MEET FOR LUNCH EVERY WEEK!!!) and find out when your local Board of Trade/Chamber of Commerce has their monthly evening mixers or meetings. Any networking events you can do after work will help you spread the word on your business.
3. HAVE A COFFEE MEETING OVER WEEKENDS AND EVENINGS! Meet with people, learn about their business and how you can refer them business and vice versa you can train them about your business.
4. GROW YOUR MAILING LIST! Always ask if its ok for you to add a person to your mailing list. Then create a weekly/bi-weekly newsletter about your industry and business with factual information and start sending it.
5. Check out where local business owners you would like to target are located. Are you targeting SMB (Small to Medium Businesses)? Resturants? Corporate offices? Mall Vendors? Clothing Retailers? Boutique Shops? Real Estate Agents? What's your target market?
6. Do this for about 4-6 months and not only will you see sales and business coming in, you may be able to quit your day job like the many of us here who now run an App Business full time Thank God!

After years of doing things like this I've been able to build up a solid business now myself where I teach this stuff, but I can assure you, not only is it the most exciting time when you first start out with literally nothing in your pocket...its also the most challenging time.

Keep yourself positive and KEEP AT IT! If you have a dream, then DREAM BIG!

You can also read my other blog on having a great mindset as well: Successful App Developer Mindset | Game Scorpion Inc.

Hope that helps!

God Bless!

Abhinav

Steve Solem

Sounds like you're just using cold calling then? How about following up your calls with an email? A subject line of "Sorry I missed you when I called" would be truthful and more than likely be opened, and a message along the lines of "i missed you earlier so I thought I'd send an a quick email to see if we can connect here..." might help you schedule a meeting at a time that works best for you both.

Also, I'd suggest starting with businesses you already do business with, like restaurants or salons you might already go to. Who's more likely to take a few minutes to listen to you...a restaurant owner you've cold called on the phone, or a restaurant where you just finished a meal and asked to speak with the owner/manager to compliment them on the food and service?

I understand setting things up during the week may be hard, but if you could use your time during the week to setup a few meetings on a saturday that could help you get going there.

And if cold calling and email aren't working as you'd hoped, you could try direct mail to help you setup some weekend or evening appointments.

I'd start with those you know first and once you can get a few clients under your belt, you should be able to start getting referrals to other businesses that you can help.

Need Offline Leads? Get them more easily with two great Lead Gen reports and 65 pages of quality PLR PLUS flyers, postcards and other marketing materials. Starting at under $5!

Dmagnet

If you are selling SMS then your best client's will probably be restaurants. People eat more than 1000 meals each year. By using SMS properly we can increase the frequency of visits, increase the average ad spend, etc. In other words it is easy to show a restaurant a good return on investment.

Unfortunately, with your current job it would be quite a challenge to contact restaurant owners. If you call during their busy lunch hours they will probably get irritated with you.

Also, in regards to SMS marketing, getting the sale is only part of your success. How will you retain them as customers? Are you just going to sell them access to the service and let them promote and send their own messages?

Back in 2009 we started selling SMS this way. We sold a bunch of businesses and thought that they would aggressively promote their "VIP Club" and we thought they would consistently send the right kind of messages. We were very wrong and we lost a lot of clients because they did not see a proper return.

We immediately changed the way we ran our SMS program. We started creating and printing all of the signage and we physically went to each of our client's locations to make sure that the signage was placed were it needed to be.

Then we would have the client schedule a mandatory employee meeting (or meetings). Sometimes two are required and while we are conducting one meeting the other employees are working.

We started educating the employees on how the "VIP Club" works. At the end of the day most servers want to know what's in it for them. So we may have a sign-up contest, etc. If the server understands that we can send a message when it's slow and we will get more customers. More customers mean more tips. So, we have found that having the employees buy into the concept is critical to growing the opt in rate.

I am sharing this info with you not to discourage you. I just want to share my learning experience in hopes that it will shorten your learning curve. Bottom line...When you sell SMS marketing, in order to be successful, you must make the time to ensure the program will be a success.

If you are selling mobile websites this can be done over the phone. You can make calls to another time zone during your lunch hour or after work depending on the time difference. I know many may disagree and a few years ago I would have too. You need to be able to "show" the customer so you can prepare the "visuals"

Also, when selling over the phone you need to get right to the point. What is their pain? They are losing potential business. Or XXXX number of people are searching for your business on mobile devices and they cannot access your page.

In the beginning I'd recommend focusing on a specific industries so you have the industry "patter" down. You will begin to use words that make them feel like you know what you are talking about, For example, we like to mention "Food Costs" and "Margins." When you begin to speak their lingo they begin to see you more as a professional consultant as opposed to some salesperson.

Finally, in the beginning try to go after the "low hanging fruit." For example, most Flash sites won't work on iPhones or iPads. Search for Flash sites using
"filetype:swf" then the city and business type.

Using "filetype:swf" in the search will pull up only Flash Websites. So if you live in Atlanta you could search for Atlanta Restaurants with Flash Websites by typing this into the Google:

filetype:swf atlanta restaurants

These are just a few thoughts that may help you make an educated decision on how you want to proceed. Like they saying goes, "There's more then one way to skin a cat." So I am just sharing my opinion based on my own experience. There are many more methods that may work while you keep your current job.

Best of Luck.

Steve Solem

Fantastic advice fro Dmagnet there - especially the part about not letting the client manage things themselves. By managing the sms process for them not only can you charge more and profit more, but I think they benefit more too and will see a better ROI than if they just ran things themselves.

And great advice too about educating servers in restaurants to see the benefits of promoting the list. Just as most servers are trained to offer diners appetizers and dessert, it should be second nature to offer diners the option to sign up the their VIP list.

Need Offline Leads? Get them more easily with two great Lead Gen reports and 65 pages of quality PLR PLUS flyers, postcards and other marketing materials. Starting at under $5!

PNWgrl

I agree, but I'm kind of a self-starter and just GO. That may be part of my problem--now if I go into this on my own I'm going to have to stop and P-L-A-N. Not my strong suit. :p

It can, but as I've learned you do need to make 100-150 calls a day and that takes a) time I don't have, and b) a hefty list.

I did that kind of calling for insurance sales but you really need at least an of hour of calling just to hit your stride. I don't have that at present. By the time I feel like I'm "in the groove" I have to stop because lunch is over.

Thanks for the link, it was a helpful post.

The one I have been to meets at 6:30 AM and doesn't end until 8:30 or 9. I really liked the group and would have liked to join but you're right, the money was an issue, as well as having to be at work at 8 leaves out any possibility to network. I'll see if there are any others like it that meet at different times.


Thanks for the encouragement



Great idea! Now to just get those email addy's...I have been cold calling because I have no contact names or emails yet. The cold call is either for talking to the one who matters, or finding out who that person is.

That would be ideal. Don't know too many or go out much (lack of funds) but I do keep asking around in case someone knows someone who knows someone...I have a couple of leads this way, and now I'm holding off talking to them because if I'm not going to use this company I should wait until I'm operational to approach them. Is this part of my problem?:confused:

Networking may be my best bet on this one.

I appreciate the input--I agree with all that you've said. I think I've got a decent handle on all that you said, it's the execution that I'm stumbling over.

It isn't the "selling", it's the obstacles that I'm facing even before I can even get to the "sell" part that has me discouraged. For me, selling is fun--what I'm dealing with right now is NOT.:rolleyes:

But I am taking it all in, thank you.

I guess I'm asking if anyone has really done enough with this while working another full time job to be able to transition to tell me if I'm expecting too much, or if the amount of time/money/dedication it takes to do it this way is really practical.

I've gotten some really good insight on this question though, thanks. I think I am leaning the direction of starting from scratch, rebooting, and going it alone. Maybe I can use my tax refund to fund the start-up.