Cool so I've learned a few services I can offer! But....Now what?

I'd start with a thousand cold calls and familiarize yourself with the selling process, and get some initial clients along the way.

Next, start incorporating some form of direct mail and keep that phone ringing.

Before hiring anyone on commission it's vital that you know how to bring in customers yourself, and how to handle them.

Whatever you choose it may pay to focus on that method and that method only until you have nailed that technique. Anything will work because it's about what you do, but rather who you are that will make the difference.

You can pick up any book on cold calling, direct mail, networking et al - but the responsibility ultimately falls on you and your ability to persevere and adapt. It's not the tool itself, but the person using the tool that determines how well you will do in this field when it comes to making sales.

It is maybe 80% attitude in my opinion, something which is completely in your control but often hard to assert or even accept for most people.

Scattering your attention and focus over multiple channels is probably the most common mistake marketers make when starting their businesses.

I'd suggest thinking about where your talents and strengths lay and assess yourself realistically, you'll likely come to one core skill, and that is probably what you should be doing.

You've gotta get setup and be professional - there are thousands of competitors in the marketplace and if you aren't a real business then not only will the business owner not take you serious, you won't take yourself serious.

Along with this, any type of marketing you do needs to be personalized to an extent.

Someone above mentioned 1000 cold calls. I cannot imagine ever making that many cold calls, and I think you'd have a hire success rate making 50 calls that were all personalized.

For example: You can call 1000 people and say, "Hi, I'm John, here is what I do" and your ROI will be low.

But if you research specific businesses in detail, and call and say, "Hi, I'm John, I'm calling because I saw your ad in this month's XYZ Local Magazine. I checked out your website, and there was a couple issues I wanted to discuss with someone in charge of that."

This won't always work, but once you get that person on the phone, you can tell them "I know you are pitched all the time, but I took the time to study your site because I know you are marketing in XYZ Local Magazine, and your website is listed there so I thought you would want to address these issues so you get an optimally return from your magazine ad."

Then find a few points they could improve upon, ie. no contact form on the homepage, no call-to-action, whatever.

You will have more success doing this than randomly sending letters or calling people with no USP.

Also, make sure you have providers in place for all services, reporting in place and invoicing in place.

These are all things you need ready to go.

Imperfect action is good, but being completely unprepared is not.

Congrats on getting the ball rolling!

Don't worry too much about how young you look if you're selling print media, most business owners will love the fact that they've got a young talented designer willing to work for them. Most people understand there's a lot of youth out there with good design skills, and obviously it doesn't matter if you're outsourcing it all on the back end.

Start off with offering simple things like business cards and brochures.

I wouldn't suggest that you go out there with all guns blazing.

Do some proper market research. In other words, get out there and talk to business owners.

Simply, say someone on the lines of, "I am thinking a starting a digital marketing agency, I was thinking of offering these range of services, which service/product do you think would help local businesses like yourself the most?"

First of, it will help you to overcome your nerves because you're not actually selling you are doing market research and you might have the added benefit of finding a potential client.

NOTE: Never try to turn a market research call into a sell call. Keep it separate.

If they indicate any interest in any of your proposed products or service, just say something like:

"If I decide to go ahead with that X would it be OK, if I contacted you?"

Congratulations, you are now in the spot many techies find themselves: I know how to provide a service...now what?

If you are going to make sales calls, you should understand the expectations or you'll end up getting frustrated.

Then, you must begin your calls differently than other people. Most prospecting calls start off so badly that there is no rest of the call.

You need a consistent sales process, rather than "winging it", to manage and measure your results.

And you must put in consistent effort. How much? Probably more than you think.

Making calls correctly and consistently gives you the means to quickly have conversations with decision makers. Use other marketing methods as well. But even if you never make a prospecting call, you are still going to have to sell, in person or over the phone...and if you don't start getting experience now, what are you going to do then?

Two quick things I'll add to what's been said:

1-If you are looking into selling mobile websites, it'd be a good idea to think of folks you know personally (friends, family, church members, old colleagues, etc.) that have their own website which is not mobile optimized. Let them know the benefits of a mobile site, what you are looking to do, and offer to do their site for free to start building your portfolio. Doing this will help you go out there to the "big scary world" armed with some credibility.

2-In terms of finding clients, a couple things you might try. I've done both and made some sales from each. The first is to look for groupon and livingsocial deals in your area. These are companies already paying for an online service so you know they have marketing dollars to spend. Check out their website on your phone and if it is not mobile, go get ém. The second, which has yielded greater results for me, is mobile renegade.

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ine-sales.html

Not an affiliate or associated with in any way, just like the product and have made it a major part of my lead gen arsenal.

Good luck.

Edit: Ok, adding a third.

3-One thing not to do is to avoid cold-calling. If for whatever reason you refuse to cold call yourself, find someone good you can hire who will. Tons of great info on the forum around this topic but one resource that has been really helpful to a lot of warriors, including myself, is John Durham's free telemarketing report:

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...rting-now.html

I don't think this question has been addressed, so will tell you what I do.

For me it depends on their hosting. If they use cpanel hosting (bluehost, hostgator, etc.) and they are ok granting me access, then I use their current hosting and set up a subdomain. If they have some weird or archaic hosting that I can sense is going to be a nightmare working through, I set up a .mobi domain and host it on my hostgator reseller account.

I never give them an option if I can avoid it. (Why let THEM decide when I am the one that knows what's going to be best for them?) Just ask the questions to determine which route is best, then when explaining the process, go in that direction.

In the new marketing we start by making gift, by helping people so we build a TRIBES...
with the connection comes trust and with trust comes the GIFTS

Somes ideas
Tribe building tactics

Have lot of success
Yvon

I'd recommend starting with cold calling, and just keep going until you get a meeting arranged. Once you have that first meeting arranged, you will be on a high and this will drive you on to keep dialling. Just remember and don't be disheartened by the no's, eventually you'll get the yes you are looking for.

You have multiple skills you need to master but probably the
most important is learning how to talk to business owners so
you can get hired.

So whatever you do that gets you into a conversation with
business owners where you learn to ask questions and listen
is going to help you enormously.


Some things you didn't mention in your first post were business
networking meetings, talking to business owners you already know,
talking to the business owners your friends know (in other words
ask them if they could introduce you to them).

The more business owners you talk to and the deeper you get into
conversations the more you're going to learn about how to
communicate with them and what they really want and need.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

agreed 100% cold calling as scary as it might seem, is the most effective way to close deals