How I Get my Six Figure Contracts...

by LMC
17 replies
Hey Guys,

It's been a while since I contributed to the forum, so he is something that might interest you.

I feel this is the same for everyone, that in the beginning of creating an offline business in our industry you tend to take on the small jobs first. The cleaners down the street... maybe the friend down the road... $300 here, maybe $1,000 there.

What you will learn fairly quick is that if you count all your hours, I'm talking about from the initial contact, to closing, to producing, to delivering... I've seen $500 jobs take up to 20 hours.

What if the same amount of work hours produced $10,000... what about $100,000

Wouldn't that be more enticing?

Over the years I learned one thing about my offline customers. They will pay for what they can afford. If you walk into a cleaners, they are not going to toss you $3,000 that easily regardless of the business you can get them.

A lawyer... you probably can get $3,000-$10,000 for a handful of services as your leads that you would create using the web would be valuable to them.

With this simple logic above, I said to myself, what if the company can gather a lead from the web that is going to produce $25,000, $50,000, maybe even $250,000 of revenue for them? They could definitely afford a six figure fee for services.

The answer is ..... industries

Manufacturers, Suppliers.... the raw material companies that produce our goods that we use everyday.

Story Time

I found a company within my 60 mile radius that had a circa 1997 website. Their business was manufacturing aluminum cylinders. I did some research on the "lingo" of the business and called them up to ask them some questions regarding their services. When I called, I called as a representative for a client.

Note: A lot of small to medium sized industrial businesses are family businesses. When you are interested in a contract with them usually you get to speak to the owner of the company or someone up in the decision process.

Anyways... after much talk with the (John) the decision maker I get his personal email address. As he will want to know what my client thinks of their service.

I email him back a few days later with some unfortunate news:


My client for some reason backed out and that I'm terribly sorry but really appreciate his time and will be on the look out for more buyers for him.

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I go to Alibaba.com and head over to the category of buyers and search out aluminum cylinder buying leads, and print out the leads one by one.

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I drove over to the office and asked to speak to John and I introduce myself, of course he remembers me, and I show him the prospective leads I have for him.

I then proceed on my pitch, explaining the Internet, and explaining how we will produce more business for him.

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Several types of contracts have come about over the years... some have been straight high five figure, six figure contracts for about 3-6 months time.

Others have been five figure contracts with a performance incentive on the leads that we produce, this is a great option to pitch, as it shows your integrity with the prospective.

$50,000 + 5% commission on leads that turn into sales
$100,000, 6 Month contract

You will produce:

- a better looking website that is more dynamic
- a lead generation setup
- PPC setup
- PPV/media Buys on industry sites
- Buyers from sites like Alibaba

You are pitching not just a website, but a sales system for his company.

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The above is just an idea of how this is done and how you get your foot into the door of these big pockets that are fairly not being reached by marketers.

I've used the similar method of delivering value and getting my foot into the door 18 times now, and have seen a 30% conversion rate on it.

Hope it helps put some lights on!

Talk soon,
Steve
#contracts #figure
  • Profile picture of the author Stranger Danger
    You're either completely full of B.S. or the busiest man on the planet - or both.
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    • Profile picture of the author digichik
      Originally Posted by Stranger Danger View Post

      You're either completely full of B.S. or the busiest man on the planet - or both.
      Whether you realize it or not, this is just an online twist to a way business has been conducted for centuries. Putting buyers and sellers together, and getting paid on both sides of the transaction. Everybody's Happy.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ericparke
      Originally Posted by Stranger Danger View Post

      You're either completely full of B.S. or the busiest man on the planet - or both.
      It was an entertaining read none the less
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  • Profile picture of the author sdentrepreneur
    Great idea, Steve, I like the way you think. I tell clients I will provide them a trackable Lead Generation System. They like that lingo...
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    • Profile picture of the author abelamorales
      Originally Posted by sdentrepreneur View Post

      Great idea, Steve, I like the way you think. I tell clients I will provide them a trackable Lead Generation System. They like that lingo...
      How do you track leads generated by SEO?
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  • Profile picture of the author qu4rk
    Ok. Great post, I must say. This is gold. I know you don't have time to hold our hand on this one, but I want to make sure I'm understanding correctly:

    So you print out the leads from Alibaba, I'm assuming you make it look like they emailed you.

    And then you pretty much drive traffic to their site via SEO, PPC, etc.?

    The lead generation would be something like a landing page with a detailed contact us form?

    And I'm not clear on what you would do with "PPV/media Buys on industry sites"?

    Any clarification/elaboration would be appreciated.
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  • Profile picture of the author KyGunator
    the way you went about it is a bit on the more "dishonest representation of oneself" side ... in my opinion anyway.

    But the part about higher priced clients i will def take into consideration
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  • Profile picture of the author liindsay
    You animal.
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  • Profile picture of the author somacorellc
    This is good advice - many people don't have any idea how much money goes through some companies. For instance back in 1998 or so I was involved in a site redesign for a weird industrial company.

    Take a look at this, it's basically a giant metal spool used for heavy duty cable:


    This company I was working with would get these spools trucked into them, where they would repair, sand, and paint for future use. This was far cheaper for the companies than buying new spools - the company I worked for refurbished these spools at a price of $60,000 per spool.
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  • Profile picture of the author Stranger Danger
    Yeah, I understand the general concept, I'm just not sure I believe the story.

    It doesn't really matter, though. People will either be inspired and act, or they won't.
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  • Profile picture of the author sdentrepreneur
    SEO is more difficult to track than PPC, Social Media and Content Marketing (blogs, articles and videos)
    One way is to have a lead capture page on main website only with a ?t=web tracking code.
    This way we know which leads from from main website. Mini-Sites and everything else is easier to track.
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  • Profile picture of the author SB274
    Thanks for sharing some great insights. Its always nice to hear other warriors offline ideas.
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  • Profile picture of the author DennisM
    Yes, a classic bait and switch. Did you bother telling that C level executive you met that you really never had client you were representing?

    I'm surprised the company didn't sniff that out right away but we all can have our guard down when desperate. If anything, you found a company that's really hurting to make sales.

    Just my opinion, for whatever it's worth.
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  • Profile picture of the author econnors
    Could we be just as successful if we skip the whole "deceiving" part of things and print the leads off and send it to him? Then pitch from there?
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    • Profile picture of the author Prince Vegeta
      Originally Posted by econnors View Post

      Could we be just as successful if we skip the whole "deceiving" part of things and print the leads off and send it to him? Then pitch from there?
      That's exactly how I'm going to approach this idea, seems like the deception is unnecessary. If you show these guys the leads you could be bringing them in every month, then they are going to jump all over it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Niks24
    Really a nice idea to approach to the big market buyers who are still unaware of thing and produce them with quality leads.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Re; OP

    Wow. I could swear I heard John Durham share these exact same ideas! Amazing!
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