Just Had A Meeting With The Market Leader In My Local Town, Here's His Advice

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I met with the leading web designer in my town (roughly 350k people) today to discuss a joint venture.

I thought I'd explain what the joint venture was (since he was very interested and basically accepted the offer and it could work out great for both of us) and also some great little tips he gave me in our brief meeting.

The Joint Venture

If you know anything about Internet Marketing, you know affiliates are a big, big deal. The leverage can be amazing and that's exactly what I offered this guy.

The deal was essentially this : If he would send me any and all leads his business received that never ended up converting, in addition to recommending my company to future leads that don't buy from him, I would split the profit of any sale that resulted from his leads, 50/50 with him.

He was all too happy to oblige, since he was extremely busy and couldn't fulfil all the requests for websites he was getting.

Now, I knew going in that even if he didn't want to do the deal (and hey, he still hasn't sent me a reply after I emailed the deal in writing, so it might turn into nothing) that I could get some great tips from him in our brief meeting.

Here were the nuggets he shared with me :

- His response to 'how did he get the business started?' COLD CALLING. To give you some perspective, his business has done work for over 500 clients in 4 years since he started it. He said at the start, he would just cold call all day for a week straight, then block out the next week for appointments.

And guess what? He hated it! He said it made him depressed! He would get the same excuses we ALL get, straight from his mouth. "Yellow Pages do my website" "I don't need a website" "My brother/cousin/aunty/dog can do websites" "Too much work as it is" etc etc

But he soldiered on, UNTIL....

- He started getting referrals. "Oh great, the magical, elusive, referral" you might think...Which I did, until he told me where he got 12 referrals from the ONE CLIENT...

I immediately asked what that client's business was...

"Financial Advisor"

PFT!! It seemed so obvious, it's amazing I didn't think of it. Why not leverage your efforts by specifically cold calling business owners you KNOW will be in contact with a load of other business owners?

Business coaches, financial advisors, accountants, graphic designers. You know what's absolutely stupid? I have never targeted this niches in my year and a half in business!!

The leverage is RIGHT THERE! I am starting on these niches next week.

- Finally, his last nugget...Now this might be a bit controversial, and I really didn't believe it fully to be honest...So who knows...But when I asked him what he believed was his big reason for success was that most of his clients raved about the results.

Now, when I say results, I don't mean the actual design and look of the website. His websites actually look REALLY templated. I mean, they all look exactly the same, only some of them are really customized.

But he told me (controversy warning) that virtually all his clients were on the first page of Google for their keywords in our town, and ALL that was from on-page SEO. No backlinking. Ever.

Of course, this means his clients would be getting tons of traffic FOR FREE, and this will of course cause them to rant and rave about his service (and explains why he's so busy). But I think the point stands...

The key point here, I believe, is that he OVER DELIVERED. He gave them a website AND first page of Google FREE. No big monthly fees. I'd be interested to here what you SEO guys think of this, but I am still skeptical.

Anyway, his business is booming, and maybe its just because he put in the hours with cold calling, or because of this and that. No matter which way you slice it, he did the HARD YARDS. He hated calling, did it anyway, and succeeded. THIS is what they talk about when they say 'HARD WORK'.

Thanks for reading, hope you guys got something out of this
#offline marketing #advice #leader #local #market #meeting #town
  • Amazing. See last sentance of post 3.

    http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...de-things.html

    Generalising here but:

    Call 100 homes to sell your jam and get 1 sale.

    Call 100 shops to sell your jam to and get 1 sale.

    Guess which one will get you more jam sales? Especially if it is a Tesco, Waitrose supermarket type of operation.

    Same work, same conversion rate, same time, yet astronomically different results.

    Dan
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for pointing that out Dan, I missed that line obviously but sometimes in these threads (not to mention the TONS of marketing stuff I watch and read and listen to on a daily basis) I forget some concepts and remember others.

      That's why it's great to come back and refresh myself on what's being discussed, even if it has to be repeated!
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • If you're B2B CPA's and financial advisers are the best group to befriend.

    The guy a business owner trusts to help hide his money, or create an account no one else knows about (happens more often than you'd think), is absolutely the person he's going to trust when he needs a recommendation of other services.
  • Hey Payoman,

    I'd be interested to hear you elaborate more on what you mean when you said his designs mostly look templated, with the exception that some are customised.

    I know all about templates and themes, but are you saying he makes a very similar looking websites for all of his clients?

    I have sold a website recently and I want to keep using the same theme when selling further websites, but have been thinking about the ethical side of things when considering to re-use the same theme and keep chugging out somewhat similar looking websites.

    To me I don't see it as a problem, but I think clients might - as they may not understand that the fundamental goal of the website is to generate more business, rather than to try and make your website look 'unique' compared to others.

    So, essentially, how "similar" are the websites he builds for various businesses? Are they all using the same theme/template, in a way?

    Thanks!
    • [1] reply
    • I'm not sure if it's how he packages his services, but the vast majority of his websites that I look at in his portfolio follow a very similar theme.

      Left hand navigation menu, header with logo and static image and phone number, footer with his company logo in it. The layout is basically exactly the same, the variations are mostly in color and sometimes custom headers.

      As long as you tell clients that they are paying for a template in some form or another, they won't care. And if they DO object, just tell them a custom design costs more. Then again, I customize each one of my sites enough that they don't look very templated, and it barely costs much extra.

      Just use a few different Wordpress themes, it's not hard to get a custom look.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [2] replies
  • Sorry Don, but there's nothing wrong with cold calling. If you get disheartened after only 3 calls, then I can see how you may not like cold calling.

    But other people do and it's a surefire way to bring in sales. While you enjoy leaving the office and seeing people in person, I'd rather make calls and subsequently sales without having to waste time travelling to meet people.

    Everyone has their own preference
    • [1] reply
    • He's not saying he gets 'disheartened'. He says he simply retools his pitch until he gets a response rate of 33%.

      If he's willing to share how he does this, I'm all ears.
      • [1] reply
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