Getting prospects to the 30 minute consultation...

In my opinion, I just can't see people committing to a 30 minute consultation. I think most of them are going to view a 30 minute 'consultation' as a 30 minute sales pitch. Asking a business owner for 30 minutes of time is crazy unless you already have a relationship and are doing Q&A or strategizing over something really important... and even then you're probably talking 20 minute appointments that get extended by however long it takes.

The only time I've gotten 30 minute prospecting consultations are for brand identity, which is expected to be an involved process, and I've only ever gotten those from referral.

I just can't wrap my head around any business owner setting aside 30 minutes for what they know will be a sales presentation.

I'd definitely shoot for a 5-10 minute appointment and if they're interested... believe me they'll make all the time needed for you. I, like nearly all brick and mortar owners,never have enough time for anything, but if you can hook me on something for a few minutes I'll suddenly find the time.

Are these local businesses, or are they across the country? In other words, do you see them in person, or is it all on the phone?

Right off the bat, here is a thread that is right up your ally. Look closely at MRomeo's funnel in particular. (under the "How to Market to These Companies" section ) http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...r-clients.html

Generally speaking, if a funnel is not producing leads... the funnel has leaks. I would say that the portion that is highlighted is an indicator of such an issue. I could be wrong.. it happens, but I think you are so caught into selling YOU, that you have left the prospect out of the equation.

If anything your "Free Report" should be a pre-sale piece that identifies issues, and features your benefits. On this piece alone, you SHOULD have prospects calling YOU... and it doesn't sound like that happens.

For me personally I would look at developing a funnel in any of 3 different methods.

The first would be your basic low end trip wire. What service could you offer inexpensively, to get in the door? Be it a G+ setup, facebook for business set up, or anything that can potentially show RESULTS.

The second option would be to turn the game a bit and come at this from a consulting perspective. I personally offer a $100 1 hour consult on a companies advertising. I look at their website, Their newspaper ads their letter head, business cards, basically anything that has their name on it and is handed or seen by the public. Within that hour, I start mentioning key high notes your average business owner wants to hear. I talk about consistency of message, consistency of image, and consistency of overall brand development.

This meeting is a definitive pre-qualifier. I get to understand their thoughts and methodology towards advertising, and I get to share mine, and how it may or may not help them proceed forward to greater success.

The third method much like MRomeo's, developing that MULTI touch multi document approach. If you look at MRomeo's approach, you see a pattern. Send / Call - repeated over an over. Need more here.. call and set the appointment. Not enough? here... call and set an appointment. Still need more? Here... call and set the appointment. Its straight up relentless.

No offense to you, but you are as annoying as a fly, and MRomeo's approach gets it into that level of as annoying as a disturbed beehive. - Just set the meeting already! haha

The other issue at hand, is to whom you are communicating with. I know based on MRomeo's many posts here, he targets industries. That funnel he has described is targeting <insert industry> and that's it. You, like myself target "local business" so its a shoe store one day, an electrician the next, and a pizza joint the day after.

The depth of our communication will not be as great as MRomeo's. His is I am more than guessing industry specific, where as mine is geo specific. The implication is the results I can get for the shoe store can also be obtained for the pizza place and the tradesman. The endorsed letter is from fellow community business member. The Case studies are again, other community business'. Its effective... but probably not as effective as industry specific.

I think after all of that, the biggest piece of advice I can offer is to "Stop Selling" and start connecting. The moment you transition talking AT your prospects, and talking TO your prospects, you will see an increase in conversions.

Didn't read the whole thread but here are some of my thoughts.

I would change the way you are approaching the whole "30 minute consultation". That's rather generic and doesn't do much in the way of benefiting the client.

So they're probably going to assume it's some sort of sales call.

I would try and change that around so that the 30 minute consultation is actually a 30 minute session ALL about them, their business & how you would improve it.

So if you go in there and offer a limited 30 minute marketing strategy session, where you'll look into what they're currently doing, rip it apart and give easy to implement and actionable suggestions that they can implement in the space of a week - then I think you'll get a lot more takers.

Basically, what's in it for them.

If they get on the phone to you for 30 minutes, what are they going to walk away with in the worst case scenario?

And make that end outcome irresistible to them.

Then when they get on the phone to you and you actually help them in the way you promised, more than likely they're going to see so much value out of that short phone call that they will naturally ask you, "so, how can you help me do this".

At that point, they're willing and asking you to help them. That's when you can look into taking the sale to the next step.

Of course, it helps to make sure your prospects are qualified before you hand out that 30 minute consultation.

And for those who say that someone will not give you 30 minutes of their time, it depends. If it looks like they are being asked to sit through a 30 minute sales call, then it's unlikely you'll get them to do it.

However if you're "donating" 30 minutes of your time to focus on their business and improve it, then you'll probably get too many inquiries and you'll need to qualify to make sure you're not wasting your time.

Also, you really don't need to even do a 30 minute consultation.

How about a brief discovery call to first see if your services would even benefit the client. This call can take around 10 minutes and in that time you'll find out if they're a good fit (plus a bunch of other useful information). At the end of the call, if they are a good fit, schedule your strategy session (or next step of the sales process).

I'm going to look at this from a completely different angle. It seems to me you're targeting an awfully big market...retail "brick and mortar"...Can you narrow it done a bit for us? What is your ideal client? Can you offer results in advance? Risk reversal? You know Jay Abraham...What would Jay do???

No offense but I think your funnel is weak. The problem is from the very beginning, selling them on the idea of a free report. Now if this was an inbound strategy, I understand, but you're mixing outbound tactics with an inbound strategy but it simply isn't effective in the way you're doing things.

First thing... if you're cold calling them, you're already selling them on yourself by allowing to take up time to talk to you right then. Your initial focus is generic, and really not focused on disqualifying them. I would bet a lot of people that agree to receiving the free report is because they want to get off the phone.

I think you'd be better off by cold calling and gauging the interest in whatever the service is you're offering. Send information to them to look over and schedule a follow up call... While waiting for your follow up call, enter them into an auto responder to nurture the lead or at least keep you on their mind and build trust in the process while you're waiting to speak with them again.

I think selling them on the idea of a free report, in order to sell them on the idea of a free consultation in order to sell them on the idea of using your services, is making things more complicated than necessary as well as adding additional time to your average sales cycle.

Make it easier.

Everybody has great suggestions. Get your own IM funnel right, and get your cold calling process right - and they are distinct processes. I'd suggest studying Perry Marshall and Rich Schefren's funnels for internet marketing your business. Modify and use your nicely done free report as a free download from your website for prospect's email addresses to build your email list and get incoming calls. Add it to your YouTube channel as well - then build up to webinars. (Personally, if it does not cost too much, I'd leave the webinars up so people can watch or listen when they can. If they run a business, they almost always get interruptions...)

Also, for internet marketing or cold calling, try to focus on retailers who already have web presence so there is not so much of a learning curve or resistance to internet marketing - royal PITA. Then you can focus on their needs and goals and such things as better shopping cart, improvements in traffic and conversion and your reliability... Don't have to sell and educate about Internet Marketing so much.

I had a friend/prospect who just had a small local store. She just wanted people to call her from her website so she could offer her personal touch on all calls. There was not going to be e-commerce. She was going to do provide us the photos, which she never got around to because sunlight or traffic was never right. (And it made us look bad to other locals because her website was taking soooo long and she did not explain she was the hold up...) After about four months, she asked about the free websites she saw advertised on MSN - and her ex-husband was a web designer. LOL

Dan

Some great advice from all contributors to this thread.

I'm a business owner that would be your ideal prospect. We sell customised products that are best sold face to face and are generally harder to ship yet we do a considerable amount of online business and have many different online funnels set up so I speak from some position of being both on the side of the prospect side and as I consult to other businesses I have also been in your position with prospecting.

The market is full of noise and clutter so cutting through that to actually get a focussed business owner is difficult particularly in the marketing space as all my gatekeepers have strict instructions to filter cold-call and even warm-call marketing type phone calls and even walk-ins.

Everyone is promising online improvements.

There are several observations I've made and some are just observations and others are where I've had results with getting consulting clients for various IM stuff.

There are numerous business functions where some of the respected government funded organisations or business groups present various pathways for businesses to have success online.

I've attended a number of these both as a guest speaker and as just attendee with the motive of both learning and prospecting.

The key takeaway is when I've attended as a speaker I've been inundated with prospects, leads, requests etc but when I've attended as an audience member I always get hit on by wannabe marketers and when I try to prospect, the prospective client always ends up speaking to said presenter and then it becomes difficult to even establish a time to even meet for a social type follow up.

I would suggest you become the authority or engineer some authority via webinar as suggested in other posts or by just holding real seminars where you can get in front of prospects.

The risk reversal method although you say takes several months is one that you should consider more deeply.

Perhaps offer some 12 month rebate. If we don't achieve XXX in 12 months then you get 6 months support free or $4000 in your account no questions asked. It shows you are serious and committed to a long term relationship

Usually the best businesses can afford to pay but in today's climate when everyone has used reachlocal
or any number of other larger marketing firms...BTW the Jay Abraham approach was first executed on me back in 1991 and although it is still valid the value attached to the offer has to be scaled up to really grab today's business owner.

Maybe offer a FREE Internet summit at some resort for all prospects after they have been a client for 4 months. You could do a bring a business friend to the event. Strike up a deal with a hotel and get the attendee to pay and the friend to pay to stay-over. Offer a free package if other referred business owners attend.

Business owners like when people have skin in the game. If you are good at what you do and you can deliver results then the guarantee can be strong.

I get hounded by my staff because our Guarantee is "be totally delighted or it is changed for FREE" and we do end up backing up this guarantee on occasion but usually the client feels guilty when you've done a good job and they feel the poor result is their responsibility so I would strongly suggest looking at a big guarantee as it does re-assure and if structured correctly should not cost too much.

With most marketing initiatives presented by companies being so weak or poor in ROI there is definitely room for strong guarantees if you can actually deliver results.

The other thing is to get some BUZZ happening around your business so prospects know you exist before you contact them.

Advertise locally before you approach local businesses and it will be easier to break through.

Attend business functions and just network without selling. This does work over time.

Buy products from prospective businesses and ask the questions of the business as to why they can't do it online or why they can't help you with whatever it is you are trying to sell them on.

You can always say you bought a similar item from a competitor and they could do such and such which impressed you because it was in your area of expertise.

Businesses like it if you are actually a customer first...just a hint.

Hope this helps a little along with the other great content that is already suggested

Great post Oziboomer... that last part is VERY true. In fact, I personally refuse to donate to any organization or buy from a business that solicits me, unless they're willing to do business with me first. If you're going to ask me for money unsolicited, unless you're a customer you're not getting a dime.

15 minutes or less will get you one identifiable course of action to start increasing your gross sales today.

That popped into my head while reading the thread. LOL Kinda catchy and make them think of you know what...? right?

Anyways in my mind 30 minutes defaults to 1 hour automatically.

I'd shoot for a 10 minute consult that you've already prepared a topic on so you can get straight to the point. For example how their home page could be restructured for more clarity and possibly better conversions.

Trust me, if you can get them on a 10 minute consult and if what you have to say peaks their interest it can easily turn into a 60 minute conversation. It's happened to me countless times.

Also consider mentioning the offer for the consult at the beginning of your package instead of the end?

I don't see the point in giving the free report, especially by mail. Why not get their email address so you can begin drip campaigns as well?

I think you go in and ask for the presentation from the beginning. Your conversion numbers will drop as a percentage, but will be higher overall, and will be much cheaper (I am assuming the package you are mailing is a bit of an investment).

For those that say this won't work, our cold call to presentations is about 42/1 right now, and our live pick up to presentations is about 12/1. At 300-400 calls per day, you should be able to fill the pipeline fairly quickly.

Can I share something funny with the OP.

I just saved this thread using the WF's thread tool and in this post title it reads"Getting prospects to the 30 minute consultation"

I changed the computer generated title that happens when you email an individual thread to yourself to 10 from the number 30 in the original title because I know that when I refer back to this thread I would be attracted to 10 minutes in the subject line and uninterested in anything referencing a 30 min. initial consult myself.

So yeah, like others have said push for an initial 10 minute pow wow versus 30.

Business owners want leads and customers, not reports, and believe it or not most small business owners do not want some 30 minute consultation. I will sell a lead gen system for a few hundred dollars with video proof it works. From there its all trust and easy upsells. I show them (in the video) what the system does for my personal business, suggest it is helping another ______ in another town, that I developed it for him for $xxxx (4 figures), and they can have it for a huge discount of just $xxx (3 figures).

Semi bulk email, video embedded on web page, payment button embedded on video (and under it). Very little sales text, and NO WSO type sales text for God's sake.

I always think the best approach is to tell them they are missing something with their business and you can come to their business and set it up for them for free.
This could be Google places, Foursquare, Facebook page.

Once you have given them some value for free you can then follow up with them at a later date. Or in turn for giving them something for free they opt in to your email list.

They will now trust you and you can continue marketing to them in the future.