1. business and industrial

How to Find
New Clients
and Business
Prospecting your
way to success
Frank Furness
Notice: This booklet is licensed to the original purchaser only.
Duplication or distribution via email, floppy disk, network,
printout, photocopy, or other means to a person other than the
original purchaser is a violation of international copyright law and
subjects the violator to fines and/or imprisonment.
Copyright © 2008 by Frank Furness. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced in any form, by any means
(including electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-9540484-0-2
Published by:
Nicholson Smith Publishing
Koutaki House
1a Meadowbank
Watford WD19 4NP
United Kingdom
Tel +44 (0) 1923 248200
Editing, proofreading and typesetting by Word4Word
www.w4wdp.com
What they are saying about the
book...
“This is a simple-to-read book full of practical ideas that you can
put to use immediately to increase your sales and make more
money. You can’t afford not to take the time it takes to read this
book! A sure-fire hit!!”
L a r r y Wi n g e t , Th e P i t b u l l o f P e r s o n a l D e v e l o p m e n t ™
“Some people talk about how bad things are. A few people do
something about it. Frank Furness gives you a seminar in a book,
How to Find New Clients and Business. Read it, then do it. Final step;
take the money to the bank.”
W Mi t c h e l l C P A E , a u t h o r o f I t ’ s N o t Wh a t Ha p p e n s To Y o u , I t ’ s
Wh a t Y o u D o A b o u t I t
“Having worked with clients in a dozen countries on five
continents, and having sold everything from commercial
equipment to advertising, from electronic systems to training and
consulting services, I would say this book is the Hope Diamond of
‘gems of ideas’. Anyone in the selling business who can’t get much
better, much faster, by following Frank’s system, should seriously
consider a bookkeeping course instead!”
Wa r r e n E v a n s , F o u n d i n g C h a i r m a n o f t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l
F e d e r a t i o n f o r P r o f e s s i o n a l S p e a k e r s ; Tr e n d s A n a l y s t a n d
B u s i n e s s S t r a t e g i s t , To r o n t o , C a n a d a
“This book overflows with practical, intelligent ideas that will
work for you every time! Frank Furness tells you how he has
found worldwide new clients who all refer more business to him
every day! His ‘What is in it for them?’ viewpoint is champion. I
suggest that you purchase as many of these books as possible for
your own staff, your clients, and your children moving up into
your business. Handing them a copy of this wonderful book is like
giving them a golden success wand. Frank Furness is one of the
great ones.”
D o t t i e Wa l t e r s C S P , I n t e r n a t i o n a l S p e a k e r , A u t h o r , C o n s u l t a n t
P u b l i s h e r /P r e s i d e n t , Wa l t e r s I n t e r n a t i o n a l S p e a k e r s B u r e a u ;
Pu b l i s h e r, I n t er n at i o n al D i r ec t o r y o f S pe ak er s B u re au s F o u nd er , I n t er n at i o na l A s s oc i at i o n o f S p ea ke rs B ur ea u s
“What a great idea-generator, Frank! Your book, How to Find New
Clients and Business, is packed with relevant, real-world
information that can generate business immediately at low or no
cost.This is just what every entrepreneur and salesperson needs.
Not only is it packed with idea-popping, money-making concepts
but it is quickly read. I woke up this morning and read it in less
than 60 minutes, giving me ideas to make sales today! Thank you,
Frank, for putting so many powerful ideas into this book. It is a
must-read for any serious businessperson today!”
Te r r y L . B r o c k , C S P , P r e s i d e n t a n d C E O, A c h i e v e m e n t S y s t e m s ,
I n c . Or l a n d o , F l o r i d a
“Whether you are a battle-hardened sales person; or still a little
unsure as to how you sell yourself, I am sure you will find
something in this book that will enhance your ability to grow your
business.”
M a r c Wo o d s , P a r a l y m p i c G o l d M e d a l S w i m m e r a n d S p e a k e r
Table of Contents
Ab out Fran k Furn es s
Keynote speeches and training programmes
What they are saying about Frank’s speaking
I n troducti on
7
9
Finding new clients
11
Basics of prospecting
14
The sales cycle
T h e Fun damen tal Pros pecti n g M eth ods
12
Telephone calling
17
Centres of influence
31
Your elevator speech
40
Referrals
Networking
Voicemails
23
34
45
Clubs and social activities
47
Group prospecting through seminars
53
Introducers and professional connections
Working with top executives
Prospecting through speaking engagements
M ark etin g an d Promoti n g Your B usi n ess
51
53
57
Trade shows and exhibitions
63
Christmas, birthday and special occasion cards
64
Novelties such as pens and calendars
Press releases and feature articles
Media interviews
Newsletters and ezines
63
64
64
67
Lists
73
Creative marketing
76
Advertising
T h e I ntern et
73
Websites
79
Marketing with articles on the internet
91
Advertising your services on the internet
Linking strategies
87
97
Blogging
100
Marketing with video
106
Online sales and marketing
Marketing with ebooks
Prospecti n g T oolb ox
105
111
Prospecting management
117
Great websites and software to grow your business
120
Products to help you grow your business
117
About Frank Furness
K ey no t e s peec h es and t ra in in g pro gr am m es
Frank Furness CSP is an international speaker who has
entertained, inspired and educated audiences in 40 countries. Let
your organisation benefit from his 100-mph entertaining talks
laced with humour, anecdotes and stories. Frank’s expertise in
sales, leadership and motivation will elevate both you and your
employees onto a new playing field of peak performance. Frank
has helped audiences around the world to shine with improved
sales, leadership and communication skills.
Keynotes
Walking with Tigers
Share the secrets o f to p sales p erfo rm ers fro m aro und the w o rld w ith the
p ro ven success p lan.
Selling for Fun ... and Profit
Num ero us sales id eas and scrip ts in this entertaining and ed ucating talk
co uld bo o st yo ur sales p erfo rm ance im m ed iately.
Sales and Technology – the Vital Connection
Disco ver ho w to use yo ur w ebsite, blo gs, o nline vid eo and aud io and the
latest in so ftw are and techno lo gy to d rive sales and create lead s.
Business Predators
Reaso ns businesses fail and ho w yo ur o rganisatio n can avo id them .
It’s All About YOU
Secrets o f go al setting and sto ries o f excep tio nal p eo p le. Unleash the
m agic insid e yo u.
Finding New Clients
Secrets, tip s and id eas o n ho w to find new clients and business.
How to Gain, Train and Maintain a Winning Team
Share the 21-p o int p lan to find , m o tivate and get the best fro m yo ur sales
team .
Creating Excellence through Magical Customer Service
Strategies, case stud ies and tip s o n ho w the to p o rganisatio ns use
excep tio nal custo m er service to m aintain and attract new clients.
7
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Workshops and training events
Finding New Business and Clients
Pro ven id eas o n p ro sp ecting, netw o rk ing and referrals that w ill p ut yo u
in fro nt o f m o re qualified clients m o re o ften.
Providing a Magical Customer Service
Case stud ies o f three to p o rganisatio ns and ho w yo ur o rganisatio n can
benefit fro m their success fo rm ula.
Gaining, Training and Retaining Top Performers
Pro ven id eas to help yo u build a w inning sales team .
Presentation Magic
Ad vanced p resentatio n sk ills. Vid eo exam p les o f to p sp eak ers and their
success fo rm ula. Sk ills that w ill tak e yo u to ad vanced levels o f ability in
m ak ing p resentatio ns.
Sales Success Strategies
Disco ver ho w to use yo ur trad itio nal, unreco gnised and unseen sales
fo rces to o p tim ise sales.
Multiple Sources of Income Masterclass
A o ne-d ay m asterclass sharing strategies, to o ls and so ftw are to m ak e yo u
m o ney w hile yo u sleep . Harness the p o w er o f techno lo gy and the internet
to create m ultip le so urces o f inco m e.
Speakers Bootcamp
An intensive tw o -d ay bo o tcam p o n ho w to beco m e a p ro fessio nal
sp eak er. Disco ver the essential strategies that m ak e great sp eak ers as w ell
as m ark eting sk ills to k eep the d iary fully bo o k ed . Over 600 d elegates o n
fo ur co ntinents have attend ed the bo o tcam p .
Frank is available for:
Keynote speeches
After dinner talks
Full-day and half-day workshops
Business consultancy
Coaching
8
About Frank Furness
Wh a t t h e y a r e s a y i n g a b o u t F r a n k ’s s p e a k i n g
“I’ve now seen Frank have an impact on three separate audiences
from chief executives to people in their first sales role. He is always
stimulating – with a great combination of practical sales knowledge,
constant confidence-building, and an energising presentational
style.”
P au l V i tt l e s , D i r ec t o r, A C N i el s e n A u s t ra l i a
“Frank came to our recent sales conference in Athens and gave an
energetic and informative presentation on ‘Hunting with Tigers’,
this was excellent as it fitted perfectly with the theme ‘Hunting to
Grow’. A very insightful view on how top sales people work and
many key lessons were presented. Thoroughly enjoyable and I
would recommend to any sales organisation.”
A n d y D a v i e s , S a l e s D i r e c t o r E u r o p e , G E He a l t h c a r e
“Frank is one of the finest speakers you can hire to entertain and
teach your salespeople how to produce better results.”
Th o m a s P o w e r , C E O, E c a d e m y
“Two months after the sessions with Frank, the performance and
revenue achieved by the call centre were tremendous – August
73% increase and September a 70% increase.”
He m a M o r a r , HR M a n a g e r , V i r g i n A t l a n t i c S o u t h A f r i c a
“Frank did an unbelievable job. One of the best presentations ever.
Great content.”
R an d y Y o s t , C h ai r, V i s t ag e , S ac r am en t o
“EO Kansas City were fortunate enough to have a long visit with
Frank Furness recently. As President of the chapter and one who
attends EO events globally, I can honestly say that Frank’s presentation is right on target. As entrepreneurs we must take advantage
of the best time management, technologies and services. Frank
provides us with a wealth of techniques we can use. Frank is
charming, dynamic and full of energy ... clearly of EO calibre.”
Wi l l i a m J B r u n k h a r d t , P r e s i d e n t E O K a n s a s C i t y
9
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
“The highlight of the Infinity Financial Solutions January 2007 Sales
Conference in Phuket was unquestionably the session delivered by
Frank Furness. Our consultants have been buzzing since this session
– as well as a vastly improved sense of team spirit, individuals have
adopted a ‘back to basics’ approach that I am sure will deliver
rewards immediately. We can’t wait to book Frank again for the
next conference and look forward to getting even more value.”
B en B en n et t , D i r ec t or , I n f i n i t y F i n an c i a l S o l u ti on s A s i a
“Everyone was appreciative and enthusiastic of your presentation.
There has been a great deal of genuine learning and motivation.
Your presentation made everyone feel involved, and one of my
team remarked that, although you were presenting to a large
audience, he felt that you were actually teaching him and communicating with him individually.”
K ar a n F B i l i m or i a, Ch i e f Ex ec u t i v e , Co b ra B ee r
“Frank Furness injects his presentations with a genuine passion for
the subject bringing his message to life with real-world examples
drawing from blue chip businesses he has helped to grow. Never
boring and always informative, Frank is one of the best speakers I
have seen in a long time. Highly recommended.”
S e an F ar n el l , B u rg i s & B u l l o c k C ha r te r ed A c c o u nt an t s
“You gave a brilliant educational keynote talk at the Entrepreneurs
Conference.”
Mi c h a e l O g a l v i e , Ma n a g i n g D i r e c t o r , T h e P r o f i t T e a m
“Your very accessible style made the information you shared with
our team intelligible and easy to assimilate, and we still talk about
the incredibly ‘simple’ approach you adopt to what is often
considered the complicated process of doing business. Not without
the elements of fun, your presentation was well targeted and well
received, and we thank you for your insight and for presenting
your ideas in a way that each delegate believed that they could
take back with them, and move towards personal and professional
growth and success.”
J o n a t h a n G e r b e r , Ma n a g i n g D i r e c t o r , A m e r i c a n E x p r e s s a n d
S e e k e r s Tr a v e l S o u t h A f r i c a
10
Introduction
Fi nd in g ne w cl i ent s
Getting started
Do you ever walk into your office and
wonder just where your next client is
coming from? Do you ever sit waiting for
that phone to ring and all that prevails is
silence? When all else fails, you realise that
all there is left to do is pluck up the courage
to cold call. After being rejected three times,
leaving four messages on answering
machines, you begin to wonder, “Where to
from here? How can I find those new
clients?”
If you have ever been in that position,
then this book is for you. I have been there
and felt the pain. Fourteen years ago when
we moved to the United Kingdom from
South Africa, I was promised mountains of
leads. Unfortunately when I arrived, I
found that all the good leads had been
taken and I had to fend for myself. By
applying a number of techniques – shared
in this book – I was able to produce £14,000
commission in my first month and £20,000
in my second month without knowing a
soul. I then went on to qualify twice for
“Million Dollar Round Table, Top of the
Table”, placing me among the top half
percent of salespeople in the world. Having
worked with organisations in 40 countries
over the past six years, the one factor that
has stood out for me is that the most
successful people are those who are master
prospectors. In this book, a number of
methods are covered that will help you find
new clients; some of these methods may be
Master
increasing
yo ur KASH
Kno w led ge
Attitud e
Sk ills
Habits
11
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
relevant to your business, some not. Just
take those that will work for you in your
business and apply these consistently.
The degree of your success in sales is
mainly dependent on four factors:
knowledge, attitude, skills and habits.
Master all these areas and sales will rocket.
Th e s a l e s c y c l e
The sales cycle in most businesses covers
the following process:
The k ey to
success in
selling is m o re
to d o w ith
yo ur
p ro sp ecting
ability than
any o ther sk ill
•
Prospecting;
•
The first interview/appointment;
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Telephoning for appointments;
Analysing needs/the discovery
process;
Preparing the correct solution for the
client;
The second and subsequent
interviews;
Presenting solutions that meet the
clients’ needs;
Negotiating;
Overcoming objections;
Closing; and
Service and follow up.
Throughout the sales process, you should
be continually:
•
Asking questions;
•
Qualifying;
•
•
12
•
Listening;
Discovering hot buttons;
Building rapport;
Introduction
•
Establishing trust;
•
Developing credibility;
•
Addressing objections;
•
Confirming the understanding;
•
•
•
•
•
Developing a relationship;
Planning action steps;
Asking for referrals;
Evaluating positive and negative
responses; and
Affirming decisions and minimising
buyer’s remorse.
What most businesses want to do is
increase their profits. Sometimes we think
we need to increase the number of clients,
but the easiest way to increase profits is to
use a three-prong approach.
•
•
•
Increase the number of clients;
Increasing
sales by 33% is
no t that
d ifficult
Increase the number of times your
clients buy from you; and
Increase the average amount they
spend with you.
The numbers are really interesting if you:
•
•
•
•
Increase the number of clients by 10%;
Increase the number of times they buy
by 10%;
Increase their ‘average spend’ by 10%;
then
Your turnover increases by 33.1%
They become even more interesting if you:
•
•
Increase the number of clients by 30%;
Increase the number of times they buy
by 30%;
13
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
•
Increase their ‘average spend’ by 20%;
then
Your turnover increases by 100%
In this book we will be looking at the
how to increase your number of clients.
Bas i c s of pro s pec t i ng
Your success in sales depends on three
factors:
•
•
•
14
Your ability to maintain high new
prospect awareness on a daily basis;
Your ability to obtain the information
about these prospects; and
Your ability to organise the
information.
Introduction
K EY S UCCES S FACT O R S
How salespeople spend their time
Poor salespeople
Prospecting
Sales presentation
Service
Administration
Travel
Self-improvement
Successful salespeople
Prospecting
Sales presentation
Service
Administration
Travel
Self-improvement
10%
23%
15%
30%
20%
2%
25%
35%
Beco m e a 110%
salesp erso n
15%
5%
10%
10%
The 110% salesperson...!
Analyse your activity
Prospecting
___%
Sales presentation
___%
Administration
___%
Self-improvement
___%
Service
Travel
___%
___%
15
The Fundamental
Prospecting Methods
Te l e p h o n e c a l l i n g
To me, cold calling was the price I paid for
not doing all the other things I should have
been doing. If your diary is empty, you pick
up the phone and cold call. Put yourself
into the right frame of mind. Have only
your diary, your telephone and your list of
prospects on the desk and focus only on
results. Some people feel more comfortable
‘warm calling’. Warm calling is when you
send out a letter, brochure or introductory
email before you call, but the basic rules
remain the same. Find out more at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/fnb
Analyse yo ur
success ratio s
Key points on making calls:
•
•
•
•
Plan your calls and know what to say;
Analyse your success ratios;
Create the right environment, clear
your desk of anything that could
distract you from phoning;
Decide on a set number of hours that
you will phone and stick to them;
•
Focus only on results, not negatives;
•
Know what objections to expect and
how to answer them;
•
•
•
•
•
Concentrate on your voice tone;
If possible, phone every day;
Phone when your energy levels are
highest;
Know your script;
Be organised;
17
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
•
Be enthusiastic; and
Maintain a positive attitude.
Some people believe in scripts, some don’t.
I have used scripts in the past and found
that they work best when you know them
off by heart. Then you can put in your
enthusiasm and passion and not sound as if
you’re reading from a book. I have found
many scripts over the years and here are
some of the most effective:
Script 1
To m e, co ld
calling w as the
p rice I p aid fo r
no t d o ing all
the o ther
things I sho uld
have been
d o ing
“Peter Jones please.”
“Peter, this is Frank Furness from XYZ. Do
you have five minutes to speak?”
If they are a referral I would say:
“Peter, David White was kind enough to
refer me to you, and…”
If the call is a fo llo w up o n an enquiry o r a
m ailing, I w o uld say:
“Peter, I’m just following up on your
enquiry…”
OR...
“This call is regarding the letter we sent
you, did you receive it?”
The main body of the call would be:
“Peter, as you may be aware, XYZ have
recently developed some ideas on vacation
planning/financial planning (your main
benefit) for doctors (or whatever their
business or profession) like yourself.”
(The close)
18
“What I would like to do is meet up with
you to discuss the various options
available. When would be a good time for
us to get together?”
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Script 2
“Hello, is this Mr Jones? My name is Pete
White from XYZ. How are you today?”
“The reason I’m calling is that I specialise in
helping engineers to:
Plan their financial affairs
Plan fo r their retirem ent
Plan fo r their child ren’s ed ucatio n
(Yo ur best benefit)
“...and I thought I’d give you a call to see if
you’d be interested in chatting about the
various options available.”
Is (repeat benefit mentioned above) something
to which you’ve given much thought?
(Whatever they answer, you stand a good
chance of making the appointment. If they
say ‘yes’, that’s great. If they say no, they
need to give it some thought and get
together with you.)
Co ld call w hen
yo ur energy
levels are
highest
Script 3
“Hi Pete, this is Frank Furness from XYZ.
How are you today?”
“The reason I’m calling is that Mike and
Jane (referrer) are clients of mine. Since I
work strictly with referrals, they were kind
enough to mention that you had expressed
an interest in (your main benefit).”
19
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
“What I would like to do is meet up with
you to discuss the various options
available. When would be a good time for
us to get together?”
Overcoming objections
There are hardly ever more than five or six
common objections. These might include:
“I’m hap p y w ith m y existing sup p lier”;
“I’m no t interested ”;
“I d o n’t have tim e”;
There are
hard ly ever
m o re than five
o r six co m m o n
o bjectio ns
“I d o n’t have the m o ney”.
...and there are a couple more. When I first
started in sales I was given a list of all the
common objections, and another list of how
to overcome the objections. This was really
cumbersome, so I was really pleased when I
discovered a script to overcome almost any
objection. It was developed by Alan Pease
who is a master at cold calling. Over the
years I have changed it slightly to suit the
market I was phoning, but the basics
remain the same. Never try to be clever,
rather just agree with the objection and then
overcome it. Here is how it works:
“Mike, that’s fine, I find this is the case with
most people even before I ring. All I’m
asking for is the courtesy of 20 minutes of
your time, so that if you have any areas of
interest either now or in the future, you will
know what is available. When would be a
good time to get together?”
20
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
There are some excellent resources
available. Take a look at:
How to Make Appointments
Telephone by Allan Pease
by
w w w .frank furnessreso urces.co m / p ease
Telephone Sales Skills for Winners by
Frank Furness and Ian Rose
w w w .frank furnessreso urces.co m / p ho nesk ills
Rem em ber, it’s
yo ur attitud e,
no t yo ur
ap titud e that
d eterm ines
yo ur altitud e
21
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Write out your action plan for telephone calling
22
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Re f er ra ls
The most successful people in sales are
those who ask for referrals on a consistent
basis. Ensure that you obtain at least three
referrals from every satisfied client. Keep all
of these organised in a book or on a
computer system with a programme such
as Outlook, ACT! or Goldmine. It’s also
important to put yourself in the position of
clients and understand the psychology of
why they may not like to give referrals.
What stops clients wanting to give
referrals?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
They are afraid of upsetting friends
and relatives;
They feel their purchases are personal
in nature;
They do not want friends to think
they’re being talked about;
They tend to qualify their friends by
income or class;
Clients, in general, look down on
salespeople;
Alw ays ask fo r
referrals in a
m anner in
w hich the
answ er w ill be
a nam e and
no t a “yes” o r
“no ”
They may believe in the product but
not the salesperson;
They fear that the salesperson won’t
be around in years to come; or
They may not know anyone to refer.
23
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
What is the best way to get referrals?
SIMPLY ASK FOR THEM
Why don’t we ask?
FEAR OF REJECTION...
WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO ASK!
Always ask for referrals in a manner in
which the answer will be a name and not a
‘yes’ or ‘no’.
The wrong way of asking
“If w e w ere to
sw ap jo bs
to d ay, w ho
w o uld be the
first three
p eo p le yo u
w o uld call
o n?”
“Mr. Smith, do you have some names of
people who may be interested in doing
business with me?”
The right way of asking
Referral script 1
“Mr Smith, I find that all successful people
have something in common and I’m sure
you are no different. I have found that all
successful people like to see other people
grow, improve and become more
successful. Mr. Smith, who do you know
who has just been promoted – has relocated to
the area – is a member of the local golf club – is
a major supplier of yours?.” (Or any other
prompts that will suit your business.)
Referral script 2
“If we were to swap jobs today, who
would be the first three people you would
call on?”
Thi s scri pt works i ncredi bl y well a s t here i s
no pressure.
24
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Key points
•
•
•
•
Ask for as many names as you can
possibly get and then start qualifying
them by getting more information on
each name;
Ask for permission to use the name;
Contact the referral as soon as
possible;
Inform your client of the outcome;
•
Prospect for referrers.
•
integrity;
Three keys to successful referral
prospecting are:
•
•
Pro sp ect fo r
referrers
informing your clients what they
should expect from you; and
telling your clients specifically what
you expect from them in the way of
referrals.
Only 42% o f
sales and
business
p eo p le ask fo r
referrals
ONLY 42% OF SALES AND BUSINESS
PEOPLE ASK FOR REFERRALS
Remember that:
•
•
•
Clients are flattered when you ask for
referrals;
They have just purchased your
product, they trust you; and
They trust your company and they
want to help you.
25
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Identify your ideal prospects
A) List your 20 best clients
B) List the characteristics of your best clients
26
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
C) List your 5 worst clients
D) List the characteristics of your worst clients
27
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
E) What prospecting methods can you use to get more ‘best
clients’?
F) List your ‘best clients’ that you are going to phone in the next
three days to ask for more referrals
28
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Success stories
When I was a manager for a large life
insurance organisation, I recruited a lady
into the business who was a real dynamo.
Right up front she told me that she was
going to work only with referrals and her
target market was going to be senior
executives. She then went to a private wine
estate and had cases of wine bottled with
her name labels. Every time she delivered
the policy documents, or when clients
celebrated birthdays or other special
occasions, she would take them a case of
wine.
As you can imagine, when these senior
executives had dinner parties with other
executives, questions were asked as to
where the wine with the strange label came
from. This resulted in a huge number of
referrals and as a bonus the wine estate
became her biggest client.
Successful
p ro sp ecto rs
alw ays
co ncentrate o n
the end result,
w hile o thers
get stuck o n
fo cusing o n all
the reaso ns
w hy so m e
things d o n’t
w o rk fo r them
Success results
m o re fro m
attitud e than
ability
29
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Write out your action plan for referrals
30
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Ce nt res of i nf lu enc e
Centres of influence are people who may
not even be clients of yours but who like
you and your business and want to support
you. These people could be schoolteachers,
secretaries or anyone else who you can
develop a business relationship with and
who could be passing on potentially
excellent leads to you.
Key points
•
•
•
•
Identify as many centres of influence
as you can;
Find out about them, their interests
and their hobbies;
Ask yourself, “How can I help them
in their business?”
You must make the first move ... they
will act to balance the debt.
Yo u are in
business fo r
yo urself, but
yo u are never
in business by
yo urself
Success stories
I knew a very successful general insurance
broker who had an incredible client base
that I really wanted access to. Every time I
asked him, he told me to get lost. I then
thought about turning things around and
giving to him first, knowing that the law of
reciprocation would come into effect. I
asked him out for lunch on the proviso that
we wouldn’t discuss business.
At lunch we discussed his favourite
subjects, his two sons and his favourite
football team. That afternoon I went back to
the office and realised that five of my big
clients had opened new businesses and I
telephoned them and recommended the
insurance broker to them. They all became
31
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
To d evelo p
great centres o f
influence,
alw ays give
first and help
them in their
business, it
w ill alw ays be
rep aid in so m e
fo rm o r o ther
32
clients of his. A month later he invited me
to lunch and afterwards we went back to
his office. He had 2,000 leads for me, and
even better, he had written to all of them to
introduce me.
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Action planning
Write out your action plan to develop centres of influence
33
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Net w o rk in g
Successful networking can help you
incredibly if you stick to the basic rules.
Networking involves attending meetings
run by organisations such as Chambers of
Commerce, Toastmasters, chief executive
groups or anywhere else where you can
build your profile, meet other business
owners and exchange business cards.
When m eeting
strangers, get
them to sp eak
abo ut the m o st
im p o rtant
p erso n in their
life,
THEMSELVES
34
You also need to “work the room”. The
biggest mistake I see at network meetings is
people speaking and socialising with
people they already know. If you’re going
to attend a network meeting, set yourself a
target of meeting a certain amount of new
people, speaking only to strangers and
having fun.
There are many great networking clubs
and organisations springing up all over the
world. My advice is to join two or three of
these clubs and really work them. You also
have to approach these meetings with a
different mindset. If your approach is,
“Who can I meet and sell to immediately?”,
you might find yourself a little isolated.
Rather approach with the attitude of “Who
can I meet where there are areas of
common interest? Who can I help with their
business and who can I make a new friend
of and build a relationship with?”
Remember, many of these people will not
be potential clients or even need your
product or service, but if you make a friend
they could become a centre of influence or
refer business to you.
Success results more from attitude than
ability. Whenever you meet someone new
and build a relationship, your chances of
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
success increase because of their vast
network that you may have access to
sometime in the future.
When meeting strangers, always get
people to speak about themselves (the most
important person in their life).
Also know what kind of questions to ask
them to get them to open up to you. One of
the most important things I learned in
selling was to use the “Past, Present and
Future” question. It goes something like
this:
Past
“Bob, this is a great accounting practice that
you have built up, how did you get
started?”
Present
“Tell me about your current situation, how
are things going at the moment?”
Future
“Bob, what are your plans for the future
and where do you see your business in five
or ten year’s time?”
The gro w th o f
yo ur business
w ill be in
d irect
p ro p o rtio n to
the num ber o f
p eo p le yo u
netw o rk w ith
o n a regular
basis
Suggested networking questions
What is the best thing about your business?
What are some of the unique features of
your business that set you apart from your
competitors?
What are some of the biggest changes that
have taken place in your industry over the
past few years?
What makes you so passionate about your
business and is the real driving force that
makes you so successful?
35
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
How do you go about finding new
business?
How does your customer service and
products differ from your competitors’?
Write a list of questions that you will
ask at your next networking event
Netw o rk ing is
lik e p lanting
bam bo o , yo u
seld o m see
im m ed iate
benefits
36
The triple CD series ‘Finding New Business
& Clients’ is filled with practical, usable tips
and ideas that could increase your bottom
line immediately, to find out more, go to
www.frankfurnessresources.com/fnb
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Key points
Before you attend your next event:
•
•
•
•
Ask the organisers to send you the
delegate list beforehand. I always do
this and most of the time they will
oblige (after all, it is a networking
meeting). Now I can study the
delegate list and target those that I
would want to meet before I go to the
meeting. You might even want to
volunteer to help at the registration
desk, that way you’ll meet those
people when they register;
Find out who the key people to meet
would be;
Set a target to meet six (or more) new
people;
Don’t spend all your time with people
you already know;
•
Mix and meet with strangers;
•
Take plenty of business cards – many
people forget this basic rule;
•
•
•
•
Use ‘Past,
Present and
Future’ to
stim ulate
co nversatio n
Be proactive and engage everyone in
conversation;
Take a small notepad and pen to
make notes;
Take some breath fresheners and
deodorant. There is nothing worse
than speaking to someone with bad or
coffee breath. (What is it about these
people? They always want to get close
to you!);
Arrive early and see if you can assist
the organisers. This will also help you
to strike up conversation with the key
people that you’d like to meet;
37
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
•
•
Sp end tim e
sp eak ing to
strangers
rather than
friend s at
netw o rk ing
events
38
If given a name badge, wear it on the
right side so that when you shake
hands, your badge is in their direct
line of sight;
Remember, people would rather do
business with someone that they have
met at a networking meeting and
developed rapport with, than a
stranger they’ve had a cold call from;
and
Develop your elevator speech. An
elevator speech is a brief introduction
for whenever you meet anyone at any
social or business occasion. This is a
brief description of what you do and
whom you do it for. It describes how
you offer value, benefit and quality to
your clients.
Success stories
About five years ago I was doing some
training for an organisation in Hong Kong.
A new salesperson joined the company and
said that he was only going to do business
with Chinese millionaires. I was rather
surprised, as his previous occupation was
as an import/export manager and he did
not have an ‘in’ to that circle. He borrowed
money from friends, banks and relatives
and with this money joined the two most
prestigious clubs in Hong Kong. Soon he
was meeting, mixing and socialising with
the millionaires and business followed. The
good news is that he is now well on his
way to becoming a millionaire himself.
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Action planning
Write out your action plan to develop your networking skills
39
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Yo u r e l e v a t o r s p e e c h
Netw o rk ing is
no t selling, it is
fo rging
relatio nship s
Whenever you are at a networking meeting
or even a social occasion you are likely to
start a conversation with someone you
haven’t met before. The stranger will
normally ask you what you do; your
answer is your “elevator speech”. The term
“elevator speech” comes from the scenario
of meeting a stranger in the elevator of a
building. In the short time it takes to travel
up or down in the elevator, you should be
able to describe who you are, what you do,
and how you can help the person you’ve
just met (or in other words, find out
“what’s in it for them”). The speech
describes how you add value, benefit or
quality to your potential client. It must be
short and concise and you must know it so
well that the words just roll off your tongue
and you could repeat it in your sleep.
You must also realise the difference
between an elevator speech, which sells you
and explains how you can help other
businesses or people, and a statement
which will inspire no further conversation.
Introductory statements that are not
elevator speeches include:
“My name is Michael and I am a financial
consultant.”
“My name is Mary and I work as an
accountant for XYZ.”
“My name is David and I’m a marketing
consultant.”
40
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
None of these statements stimulate any conversation and will probably drive potential
clients to the other side of the room, saying
to themselves, “So what?”.
Remember every potential client is
thinking “How can you help me in my
business?” If your elevator speech leads
someone to say “So what’s in it for me?”,
you are selling benefits.
So change your introductory statement
to something along these lines:
Think in term s
o f w hat yo u
custo m er d o es
w ith yo ur
p ro d ucts o r
services after
they’ve been
p urchased
“My name is Michael and I help clients
with their mortgages/retire early/maximise
their investments.”
“My name is Mary and we help clients with
proven, practical ideas so that they can
increase their profitability.”
“My name is David and our organisation
helps businesses improve the way they
promote and market themselves, so that
they can close more sales and find more
clients in a cost effective manner.”
Remember your goal is to keep the conversation going and to stimulate a response
from the person you are speaking to. Your
goal is not to talk about yourself and what
you do but it is to find out what the other
person does and what is important to them,
i.e. “what’s in it for them”.
Create a great
elevato r sp eech
and all k ind s
o f d o o rs w ill
o p en
To prepare your elevator speech, first
identify how you can help your potential
clients. List at least five things that you
could do to help your clients, and then list
five reasons why people should be doing
business with you.
41
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
List five things that you do to help your clients
List five reasons why people should be doing business with
you
42
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Craft your elevator speech in two parts.
Part 1 describes what it is that you do, i.e.
“I help clients to maximise their
investments in the most tax efficient
manner”. Part 2 describes how they would
derive benefit from what you are selling
them, i.e. so that they may retire earlier; so
that they may have their mortgage paid off
in ten years time; so that their children’s
education at top universities are taken care
of. Part 2 should always include a phrase
such as “so that””.
Yo ur elevato r
sp eech sho uld
alw ays
stim ulate a
resp o nse fro m
the p erso n
yo u’re
sp eak ing to
“So that they can increase their
profitability.”
“So that they can close more sales and find
more clients in a cost effective manner.”
Key points
•
•
•
•
•
•
Your goal is not to be talking about
what you do and who you are. Your
goal is to find out more about the
other person and what’s important to
them;
Discover needs by asking questions;
By encouraging others to speak, you
become known as a great conversationalist;
You can use your elevator speech any
time, even on the phone;
It’s fine to have different elevator
speeches for different products or
services;
Always get their business card and
follow up with a call within two days.
Strive to be
w ell received
by tho se yo u
ap p ro ach by
setting
yo urself up fo r
a friend ly callback
43
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Write out your elevator speech
44
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Vo i c e m a i l s
We are all constantly plagued with
voicemails and often in a quandary over
whether we should leave a message or not.
Try using your elevator speech the next
time you leave a message. It could be
something like the following:
“Hi Mr Jones, this is Frank Furness on
8526039051. I help businesses to improve their
internet security so that they cannot be attacked
by hackers or people who can access confidential
information. I would like to meet with you and
was wondering if I could take a few moments to
tell you a little more about what I do. I will try
calling you again on Monday to see if we can
get together late next week. My phone number
again is 8526039051 and I will be in the office
for the rest of today and tomorrow. I am looking
forward to working with you.”
Do n’t let call
reluctance and
the fear o f
rejectio n sto p
yo u o n yo ur
ad venture o f
build ing yo ur
business
Key points
•
•
•
•
•
Speak slowly and clearly so that they
can understand what you are saying;
Leave your telephone number twice,
once at the beginning of the message
and again at the end. This makes it
easy for them to write down your
number;
State the nature of your call so that
they know why you’re calling;
Try using yo ur
elevato r sp eech
the next tim e
yo u leave a
m essage
Leave a time when you’re available
for them to phone you;
State what it is that you would like
them to do.
45
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Prepare your plan of action for answering voicemails
46
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Cl u bs and s oc i al a c ti v i t i es
When I arrived in the United Kingdom in
1994, I didn’t know where to start. I needed
to meet business people and successful and
wealthy individuals. To do this, I decided
to join a number of clubs. I joined a golf
club as well as a prestigious cricket club.
The cricket club was very snobbish, but a
great thing happened within a month of my
joining. They asked me if I would assist
with the coaching of the juniors and every
Friday evening the parents would come to
fetch their sons after practice. We would
soon strike up conversation, I would give
them my elevator speech and the business
followed.
I also joined an upmarket health club,
where I was known as the mad South
African because I would speak with
everyone, but once again the business
rolled in. My best friend and training
partner was the top sports lawyer in Britain
at the time and he really networked the
health club and got an incredible amount of
business for his practice.
I had been involved with Toastmasters
International for 13 years in South Africa.
They are one of the largest non-profit, selfdevelopment organisations in the world
and many of their members are senior
executives and professionals wanting to
improve their speaking skills. When I
arrived in London, I approached them and
asked if I could set up a club in the town
where I lived. They agreed and within two
months I had 25 members in the club who
were exactly in the target market that I was
working.
Set yo urself a
target o f
beco m ing
invo lved in at
least tw o clubs,
charities and
selfd evelo p m ent
o rganisatio ns
47
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
My advice to everyone is to become
socially mobile and give your elevator
speech all the time. You can also get
involved in great charity organisations such
as the Rotary Club and Lions that do so
much good for society and at the same time
allow you to meet and develop relationships with people in your target market.
Develo p stro ng
relatio nship s
w ith k ey
o rganisatio ns
in yo ur area
Most recently, I have developed a strong
relationship with the Chambers of
Commerce and Business Links in my area
and have done business with or through
them at least six times in the past year.
Key points
•
•
•
•
•
Set yourself a target of becoming
involved in at least two clubs,
charities or self-development organisations;
Join your local Chamber of
Commerce;
Attend meetings at least weekly,
network and develop relationships;
Volunteer to be part of the committee
or management. Get into a position of
power and help others;
Have fun.
Success stories
48
A chap that I knew in South Africa was
incredibly successful at sales due to his
innovative way of finding new clients. His
target market was wealthy individuals,
successful businesses and executives of
large corporations. His typical working day
was to have sales appointments at 7.30am,
9.30am and 11.30am. Every day he would
then have lunch with one of his existing
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
clients who was celebrating a birthday – on
the proviso that that person brought along
someone else of equal stature to join them
for lunch. Every afternoon at 3pm he would
play golf with another of his clients who
was celebrating a birthday – on the proviso
that they brought two people of equal
stature to make up the four-ball. He said
that he was living a dream lifestyle, having
lunch and playing golf every day, but more
importantly, the three new people he met
each day became appointments in his diary
and many became clients themselves.
Have fun
w hile
p ro sp ecting
and
netw o rk ing
49
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Write out your plan of action to develop more relationships
through clubs and social activities
50
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
I nt rod uc er s and prof es s i o nal
co nnection s
Introducers and professional connections
are people who can provide you with an
endless source of leads. Think of anyone
who would be able to provide you with
leads and who you can reward either with
similar leads, or financially. Make it a part
of your target each month to meet with two
potential professional introducers and
prepare an excellent presentation of how
you can work together and what would be
in it for them.
If you develop enough professional
connections providing you with an endless
source of leads, your business will sky
rocket.
Key points
•
•
•
•
Arrange monthly meetings with
your professional introducers with a
view to cross-referencing clients;
Educate them in very simple terms
on what you do and how you can
help them;
Place articles in their newsletters;
Arrange
monthly
meetings w ith
your professional
introd ucers
w ith a view to
crossreferencing
clients
Copy the introducers on all correspondence relating to mutual
clients.
Success stories
When I was involved in financial services, I
would meet up once a month with a
partner of a large accounting firm, law firm
and commercial insurance brokerage. Each
of us would bring five good referrals that
we would give to the others. The benefit for
each of us was that we left the breakfast
51
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Daily activity
d eterm ines
m o nthly
p ro d uctivity
52
meeting with 15 qualified referrals from
trusted professionals. We would then
phone, meet and develop the relationship
with the referrals and business would
follow. Think about who you could meet
with each month to develop your network.
Action planning
Write out a list of potential introducers and
professional connections and an action plan
for how and when to approach them.
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
G roup pros p ec t in g t hrou gh
s em i na rs
Some questions to ask yourself before you
start are:
•
•
Where do my prospects gather in
groups?
How/what can I contribute to them
The advantages of group prospecting are
that it saves time, it is much more
productive and it’s a lot of fun.
Wo r k i n g w i t h t o p e x e c u t i v e s
Secrets of working with top executives
When prospecting, one of the biggest
problems most of us face is trying to get in
to see a top executive. They all have welltrained “protectors” who are excellent at
shielding these top executives. Before you
approach any chief executives you may
want to know what some of their favourite
business discussion topics are. These
include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
As yo u gro w
p erso nally, so
w ill yo ur
business, and ,
as yo ur
business
gro w s, so w ill
yo u
The company’s image and what it
stands for;
The company’s mission statement;
The team and its products;
Staying ahead of the competitors;
Measurable and tangible results;
The success of the company.
These are things that should be spoken
about during the meeting. But how do we
get in front of these top executives?
Normally a lot of research would need to be
done before phoning, mailing or making
53
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
any contact. I would recommend that you
contact the company, take a look at their
catalogues, brochures and annual reports
and study their website. This can give you a
lot of information and a good feel for the
company.
Develo p the
sk ill o f
build ing
business
rap p o rt
The next step would be to send out a
pre-approach letter to the chief executive
marked, “private and confidential” and for
their attention (this will still be opened and
checked out by the protector). Start with a
headline statement of 40 words or less –
you find that if you read any magazine
such as Time, Newsweek or any
newspaper, you normally look at the
headline first and if this grabs your
attention, you will read further.
•
•
The headline statement should:
Address the needs and relevance to
the organisation;
Establish your credibility;
•
Be based on factual information;
•
Refer to other credible clients.
•
Highlight the benefits of doing
business with you and your company;
and
Spend a lot of time on preparing this
headline statement. The letter you’ll be
sending will be made up of one page with
this statement, some bullet points and a call
for action. Remember, busy executives
don’t have time to trawl through pages and
pages of information. They want to take a
quick look at what you’re doing and then
you can follow up with a phone call to set
up an appointment.
54
A great idea is to add a postscript at the
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
end of the letter, as most people will read
this. In the PS write, “I’ll call your office on
Wednesday the 11th of May at 8am.“ At
that time when you phone and get through
to the protector, you can confidently state,
“Mr Jones is expecting my call and I’m
running a few minutes late. Please connect
me.” This way you’re not lying and if the
chief executive likes what you are offering,
he will be waiting for the call.
One word of advice. Always phone
exactly on time.
To reach VIPs,
establish
relatio nship s
w ith their
secretaries and
p erso nal
assistants
55
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Write out an action plan to get to those top executives that can
help grow your business
56
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
P r o s p e c t i n g t h ro u g h
s p eaking e nga gem en ts
Most people fear speaking more than
anything else. Many years ago I joined
Toastmasters International and the very
first time I spoke my mouth dried up and I
froze. Now I am a professional speaker and
I present in 47 countries. I have an
incredible lifestyle and visit exotic locations,
but it took a lot of practice. Speaking is like
anything else, the more you practise, the
easier it gets. The best part of speaking professionally is that I am constantly in front of
qualified prospects who will buy my
products and services.
You need to do the same; here are some
basic rules to follow:
•
What are you good at?
•
What do you know that many other
people would want to know about?
•
What are you passionate about?
Mo st p eo p le
fear sp eak ing
m o re than
anything else
This will determine your topic. Here are
some other pointers:
•
•
•
•
Have a great opening and ending to
your talk;
Tell stories, people love to hear
stories;
Use humour;
Include the 7 Es:
Energy
Excitement
Entertainment
Emotion
Enthusiasm
Education
Ending.
57
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
How to market yourself as a speaker
locally and internationally
Identify clients you have spoken for in the
past that have international offices. Get a
referral to the decision maker in the
overseas office. Email or send a letter and
follow up with a phone call.
The best p art
o f sp eak ing
p ro fessio nally
is that I am
co nstantly in
fro nt o f
qualified
p ro sp ects w ho
w ill buy m y
p ro d ucts and
services
Dial and Smile – pick up the phone and
cold call. When I started out, I identified
companies and banks that had international
offices and phoned the president. One of
those calls resulted in a business relationship with a company that spends between
$50k and $100k each year sponsoring me to
speak to their clients around the world.
Find five clients that will provide you
with 50% of your work each year. I have
five large international companies that each
book me for between six and 30 talks each
year. I also have two or three companies
that I am developing should any of the ‘big
five’ drop out.
Actively prospect when speaking
abroad. When speaking overseas, I will
scan the local papers, magazines and
yellow pages for potential clients. I’ll then
phone and establish who the decision
makers are and endeavour to set up a
meeting and sell my services. A lot of these
companies are open and receptive to
meeting with you.
Always ask for referrals. Apart from
existing clients with whom I do repeat
business each year, I have over 200
potential clients that have been given to me
as referrals. If you leave the client satisfied,
they will always give you referrals – if you
ask!
58
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
When working abroad, add on an extra
day to meet with potential clients.
Wherever I speak in the world, I add on an
extra day to see potential clients and
bureaus. I can normally fit in five appointments during that day and this always
results in at least one extra booking. On a
recent trip to Singapore I managed to give a
keynote speech to a large insurance
company and in the same day have five
meetings with potential clients. One of
these meetings was a cocktail party where I
met with 20 of the most influential business
leaders in Singapore.
This was only achieved because I had
developed a centre of influence in
Singapore who had arranged the talk and
all of the meetings. He was rewarded with
a percentage of the fee, which made it a
win–win situation for everyone.
Find the client’s other offices. When
speaking internationally, find out where the
international client for whom you are
speaking has other branches around the
world. Find out who you should contact at
the other offices to do the same talk. In
January last year I spoke at a large software
company in Dubai. The CEO from London
was in Dubai at the time and heard me
speak. After the talk he asked me to contact
him to replicate the talk to their other international offices. They have offices in 33
countries.
Network and socialise. Before going on
an international talk, surf the net to see
what social events are happening while
you’re there. Then arrange an invitation, as
you’ll always meet potential clients at these
events.
Have fun and
tak e a to ur – if
I visit a
co untry fo r the
first tim e, I’ll
alw ays tak e an
extra few d ays
to see the p lace
59
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
I have o ver 200
p o tential
clients that
have been
given to m e as
referrals. If yo u
leave the client
satisfied , they
w ill alw ays
give yo u
referrals – if
yo u ask !
Have fun and take a tour – If I visit a
country for the first time, I’ll always take an
extra few days to see the place. This
normally includes a half-day bus tour. It’s
amazing who you can meet on these tours.
I’ve met and become friends with the VicePresident of one of the largest insurance
companies in the USA and a grand old lady
who turned out to be the wife of the owner
of one of the UK’s biggest supermarket
chains.
Find out who the speaking bureaus are
internationally and meet with them. When I
spoke in South Africa five years ago, I met
with the leading bureau. This resulted in
bookings to speak in Sun City, Mauritius
and Cape Town.
Optimise your website. By doing this I
have just secured a talk with a large multinational for their conference in Athens. This
has also generated three other enquiries,
one with an international company who
needs someone to speak in five different
countries.
A lo t o f
co m p anies are
o p en and
recep tive to
m eeting yo u
60
Always meet with the decision maker at
the event. I was recently booked to speak in
Scotland to a company who had just
merged with a German telecommunications
company. After the talk we spent some
time with the German CEO, which lead to
presenting the same talk to the German
counterparts.
Take a look at my 15-CD programme
Coaching for Speakers at
www.coachingforspeakers.org
The Fundamental Prospecting Methods
Action planning
Write out an action plan to develop and market your talk.
61
Marketing and
Promoting Your Business
There are many ways to market and
promote yourself and your business using
sales promotions and public relations.
Tr a d e s h o w s a n d e x h i b i t i o n s
These are excellent places not only to
promote your goods and services but also
to spend a day or two walking around.
Many people at these exhibitions will be
exhibiting their goods or products and this
is a good time for you to strike up conversations with them and see if they could be a
potential client, a professional introducer or
a centre of influence. Do not approach them
with the attitude of “What can I sell them
immediately?”, but rather think to yourself
“Are there any areas of common interest?”.
Nov elties s uch a s p ens an d
calen dars
Everything
abo ut yo u o r
yo ur
o rganisatio n
sho uld be
selling yo u in
so m e fo rm
Everything about you or your organisation
should be selling you in some form. Small
novelties such as pens work fairly well but
what I have found to be excellent are the
small a-framed calendars that you provide
to clients at the beginning of each year. This
way they are subconsciously studying their
calendar at least 20 to 30 times a day and
your name is in front of them all the time.
63
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Chris tm as , birthd ay and
s pec i al oc c as i on c ards
Everybody likes to feel special. Why not
send cards to your clients, their partners or
spouses and their children? Also call your
clients early on the morning of their
birthday and congratulate them. Most times
they will be in a positive frame of mind and
this is a good time to ask for additional
referrals or even to get together to review
their own business situation. Remember to
keep in touch with your clients all the time.
Rem em ber to
k eep in to uch
w ith yo ur
clients all the
tim e
Pres s rel eas es an d f eat ure
ar t icl es
Build your profile and exposure in the
community with articles in magazines and
newspapers. There are thousands of publications in circulation. Find out which relate
to your industry and area of expertise,
write articles and submit them to the
editors.
Always remember to include a
photograph of yourself as well as your
contact details. Find out who your biggest
clients are and whether they have an inhouse magazine. If so, get your articles
published there too. Should your organisation launch any new or updated products,
create a press release so that clients and
potential clients can find out about these
immediately. Remember to always keep
building your profile.
Media interv iew s
64
Find out which are the local radio stations
and approach them with a view for a radio
interview. For the radio interview, be
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
confident, be prepared and have three main
points that you want to get across to the
listeners. One organisation that I work with
has a one-hour radio slot every week and
this has built tremendous exposure for the
organisation and keeps the phone ringing
constantly. If your area of expertise fits in
with any of the television stations, i.e.
Bloomberg, CNN or any other local
television stations, once again approach
them as they are always looking for
interesting people to interview.
Success stories
Some years ago I wanted to get some
exposure through the press. I approached
the Financial Times with a view to having an
article published in one of their international publications, but was rejected. I persisted
and this resulted in me having my own full
page column with my contact details in this
publication for two years. I could not have
afforded this kind of advertising, but
getting the full page free resulted in huge
amounts of business and helped to build
my exposure globally.
Be co nfid ent,
be p rep ared
and have three
m ain p o ints
that yo u w ant
to get acro ss to
the listeners.
65
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Write out an action plan to attract some press and media attention
for you or your company
66
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
N e w s l e t t e r s a n d e zi n e s
Develop a monthly, weekly or quarterly
newsletter or ezine (internet newsletter) for
your clients. This does a number of things:
•
•
•
•
•
It keeps your name in front of your
clients all the time;
It helps to establish you as an expert
in your field;
It gives you a massive online
exposure;
It gains you further credibility with
your current clients; and
It also forces you to package your
knowledge into concise articles on a
regular basis, which you can recycle
for many other marketing uses.
At every networking meeting that you
attend and with every potential business
contact that you meet, you should be
collecting business cards, capturing these
and then obtaining permission to send out
newsletters or ezines to these people. The
newsletter or ezine puts you in front of
your clients and potential clients all the
time and helps to sell more products and
services.
Co llect
business card s
at every
o p p o rtunity
Key points
•
•
Ensure that you have a main article
that always provides a lot of
information that your readers will
find valuable;
Have links to related articles and
other sites that may be of value to
your readers;
67
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
•
•
•
•
Mak e yo ur
p ro sp ects an
o ffer they can’t
refuse
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
68
Offer tips to your readers such as
books, reports or anything else that
can help them in their business;
Market your own products, services
and workshops through your ezine;
Have an editor’s note at the
beginning of each ezine or
newsletter;
Incorporate power words;
Have links to products that you
want to sell;
Offer testimonials from satisfied
clients;
Give real life examples and show
how you’ve helped clients;
Case studies always position you as
the expert in your readers’ minds
more effectively than you coming
out and saying so;
Jot down eight questions your
clients have asked you in the past
and answer each one in a short
article, as there may be many other
clients who have the same questions
in mind;
If you have been to any industry
conference workshops or seminars
where you’ve picked up some
helpful hints, share these with your
readers;
Offer a list of your top five to ten
tips on a certain subject;
Recommend books or resources and
offer reviews on some of these
books;
Include stories and photos from
clients.
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
Last year, someone suggested that I start a
newsletter as I have so many contacts. I
made a lot of excuses, saying that I wasn’t
any good at writing and did not have the
time. Eventually I relented and send out my
first newsletter to about 3,000 people. The
very next day, I received a phone call from
Singapore from someone who had been
forwarded my newsletter. He said that he
liked what I was doing and had two sales
teams in Singapore and Australia. He then
enquired if I could travel out and train the
teams. This turned into multiple
assignments in Asia and if I had not sent
out the newsletter, I would have missed out
on massive potential income.
It is also important to monitor your
newsletter. My list has now grown to 15,000
subscribers and increases weekly. It is very
important for me to find out how many
people actually open the newsletter, how
many unsubscribe and how many click
through to my website
www.frankfurness.com
Give real life
exam p les and
sho w ho w yo u
have help ed
clients
To automate everything, I needed to find
a system that would automate everything,
insert audio or video and monitor the flow
of traffic and clickthroughs. I now use
Constant Contact
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
constantcontact
You can try a demo as I did. I now find
it the most cost effective way of keeping in
touch with my clients and subscribers on a
monthly basis. Take a look at their site and
try them for free at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
constantcontact
69
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
In my newsletter I cover four topics,
Sales and Marketing Tips, Technology and
Emarketing Tips, Motivational Tips and
Speaking and Presenting Tips. If you would
like to receive my newsletter with tips,
resources and free ebooks, software and
video tips, please go to
www.frankfurnessresources.com/newslette
r
Use so ftw are
to auto m ate
and m ark et
yo ur
new sletter
I also use an excellent tool to build my lists
and market my newsletter on the internet.
Take a look at this useful and easy to use
software at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
ezineannouncer
This is a great product. I bought it and
saw the results immediately. It will help
you to:
•
•
•
•
•
70
Automate your ezine marketing by
up to 100% using one software
product – not two or four;
Instantly access over 1700 resources to
promote and market your ezine – you
could easily waste 12 months
wandering around the internet trying
to find this information yourself;
Suck in 50–700 subscribers in a single
week by sending one 17-line e-mail!
Advertise your ezine to thousands
(even hundreds of thousands) of
potential ezine subscribers for free –
without using free classified ads;
Create your own “ezine virus”, let it
spread the word about your ezine
automatically – just sit back and let it
go!
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
•
•
•
•
Get high rankings in all the major
search engines – automatically! (takes
you no more than 30 minutes of work
per month;
Find all the content you’ll ever need
for your ezine. In fact, you’ll have
new content e-mailed to you every
day/week!
Get more subscribers – guaranteed! I
don’t care if your newsletter targets
gardeners or small business owners –
it doesn’t matter;
Get hundreds of new leads every
week utilising a few simple, proven
tactics.
I have produced a short video to
demonstrate how I develop my newsletter
each month, take a look at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/news
Take a look at the archives of my
newsletter at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/nla
Develo p a 10to uch p lan fo r
yo ur clients.
The easiest
w ay to co nnect
w ith them at
least ten tim es
a year is w ith
yo ur ezine
71
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Develop an action plan for your newsletter or ezine
72
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
Lis ts
Lists can be purchased with contact details
of “opt-in” prospects that may have an
interest in the products or services that you
offer. A word of caution, ensure that these
are not spam lists and that the list brokers
are reputable. Also make some initial
checks that the lists have up-to-date contact
details.
Adv ertis ing
Advertising has been and always will be a
great way to keep your name in front of
clients and potential clients. Some questions
you need to ask yourself before placing an
ad are:
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is the message you want to
convey?
Who is your target market?
What is the most effective way to
reach your target market?
What is your budget?
Stro ng
relatio nship s
w ith yo ur
clients are
m o re
im p o rtant than
p rice alo ne
When is the best time to advertise?
Where is the best place to advertise?
Key points
•
•
•
•
There are many ways that you can
advertise;
Brochures – professionally designed
and written on high quality paper,
they increase credibility significantly;
Direct mail – good for name
recognition and exposure;
Novelties – inexpensive and
constantly remind your clients of you;
73
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
•
•
Print ads – expensive and effective;
Radio and TV – expensive but reaches
the demographic group you desire;
Website – for millions of online users,
the shopping centre of the future.
Factors to consider
Always test and measure. Advertise in
different publications, on different days,
using different scripts. Measure and see
where you get the best results.
Alw ays test
and m easure
Avoid advertising on the left hand page.
Think about when you open any
publication. Where do your eyes go first?
To the right hand page.
Words are important. You have to give
them some reason to take action now.
Great headlines are crucial. Whenever
people open any kind of publication,
newspaper, magazines, or website pages,
the first attention grabber is the headline. I
use a great little package to create
headlines, it is simple to use and in four
steps it will create 100 headlines for me to
choose from. Take a look at
www.headlinecreator.co.uk
74
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
Action planning
Write an action plan for advertising
75
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Creat i v e m ar ke ti ng
About 90% of beautifully produced colour
brochures end up in the bin, so what can
you do to promote your business in a
different way? Putting all of your goods
and services onto an interactive CD is an
excellent and innovative way of providing a
huge amount of marketing information in a
creative way. This can include video clips,
photographs, articles, product ranges, order
forms, links back to your website and
sound files.
Successful
p eo p le o ften
d o the things
that failures
hate and avo id
d o ing
Advantages of using creative marketing
are that they are normally passed around
from person to person, rather than
discarded: they are interactive; they convey
a mood; and they are able to provide video
and sound.
There are many companies that provide
this kind of service and the company that I
have found to be excellent and whom I
have used often in the past is 1 Vision in St
Albans in the United Kingdom. Their
website is www.1viz.co.uk. (Mention that
you got their contact details from this book
and Dave Simmons will send out a free
sampler CD.)
Success stories
When I first started speaking, I used
expensive brochures as a marketing pack
and very soon realised that they were being
thrown in the bin or put aside for when
someone had the time to study them. I then
decided to have a video produced (at great
expense) but found that I didn’t like it once
it was delivered. I also had to have different
formats for different countries.
76
Marketing and Promoting Your Business
Success came when I had a marketing CD
developed. This had everything on it to sell
me and my services. We live in a
multimedia society, so I included:
•
Video clips;
•
PDF files;
•
•
•
•
Audio clips;
Client list;
Client testimonials;
Client feedback videos;
•
Biography;
•
Word documents;
•
•
•
•
•
Photographs;
Speeches;
Products;
Fee schedule; and
Media interviews.
All this was on one CD that cost less per
unit than a colour brochure and produced a
95% success rate after being sent out.
Key points
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Have a brainstorming session to think
of how you can put your products or
services on to an interactive
marketing CD;
Have a brainsto rm ing
sessio n to
think o f ho w
yo u can p ut
yo ur p ro d ucts
o r services o n
to an
interactive
m ark eting CD
Video your products;
Video testimonials with satisfied
clients;
Put your order form on the CD;
Have links back to your website;
Show a list of satisfied clients;
Display a list of comments from
satisfied clients.
77
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Develop an action plan to create a marketing CD
78
The Internet
We b s i t e s
When speaking to audiences around the
world, I always ask who has websites and
most of the people raise their hands. I then
ask who generated a large or even small
proportion of business from their website
or generated some decent leads. Very few
hands are raised.
What is happening is that so many
organisations have developed websites that
are really worthless. It is like receiving the
glossy brochure in the mail that goes
straight into the bin. Most of the time, the
organisation will have a decent website that
is not seen by anyone. Or it does not market
the company’s goods or services effectively.
Perhaps clients don’t return because the
website is not updated with new
information. Or perhaps they are simply
not given any reasons to return.
Not only must your website act as an
online brochure, but more and more this
must become a prospecting, marketing and
sales tool for you. Is it attracting more
clients, selling more products or services
and establishing you as an expert in your
field? Nowadays with millions of people
shopping online every day, your website
needs to look good and be a magnet that
attracts potential clients to you.
You will normally need to find two web
specialists with different skills: a designer
and someone with the technical abilities to
get you to the top of the search engines.
You will also need to find somebody who
knows about emarketing and affiliate
Internet service
p ro vid er AOL,
has m o re
subscribers
than the ten
largest
new sp ap ers in
the USA
79
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
selling. Research shows that there are in
excess of 515 million people online with
millions each day searching the web for free
information.
Some questions you need to ask yourself
about your own website are:
•
Is your website updated constantly?
•
Do you have free giveaways, i.e.
articles, booklets etc.?
•
Research
sho w s that
there are in
excess o f 515
m illio n p eo p le
o nline w ith
m illio ns each
d ay searching
the w eb fo r
free
info rm atio n
•
•
•
•
•
•
Is there a reason for people to return
to your website?
Do you track the number of visitors?
Are you set up to take orders online
with a secure banking facility?
Can your goods, products or services
be sold through affiliates?
By using other affiliate programmes,
i.e. Amazon, could you increase your
sales?
Does you website rank highly enough
to attract visitors there in the first
place?
Do you have goods or services that
you can promote and sell to bring in
passive income. (Most companies can
do this. I even know of one
accounting firm that brings in a large
income through selling articles over
the internet.)
If you have answered yes to all of the
above, your website is definitely a
marketing tool. If not, a lot of work needs
to be done as an effective website can
potentially increase your business substantially.
80
The Internet
Some of the essentials for a good website
are:
•
•
Great content – provide good
valuable information;
Links – develop a linking strategy.
Have all your clients link to your
website and in return you link to
theirs. Also, develop a strategy to link
to other sites with high Google
rankings. I use a great piece of
software that finds me linking
partners based on keywords and then
automates the complete system for
me to develop links.
Take a look at www.tinyurl.com/pmcfo
I also discovered an incredible ebook on
linking strategies and search engine optimisation that has really assisted me in getting
high rankings for my sites. It is written by a
recognised expert and if you would like to
receive a free copy, please download it at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/SEO.pdf
Key points
•
•
•
Most people online nowadays are
looking for free information. Give
away free articles and information
that is updated monthly. This
establishes you as an expert in your
field and will convince potential
clients to use you over your
competitor;
Establish m any
link s to o ther
high rank ing
sites and this
w ill help yo u
to go higher in
the listings
w ith m any
search engines
Have contact details on every page,
make it easy for clients and potential
clients to find and reach you;
Monitor the flow of traffic to your site
and the various pages and see how
81
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
A high search
engine rank ing
fo r yo ur
w ebsite is so
essential that if
yo u have the
slightest d esire
to actually
succeed in
yo ur business,
there is no w ay
yo u can
co ntinue to
avo id the issue
long visitors stay on each page. If they
are leaving very soon after they’ve
come in, you may consider redoing
this page;
Establish many links to other sites
and this will help you to go higher in
the listings with many search engines.
One of the things that I discovered when I
first built my website was that every time I
made any change to the site, I was sent a
bill and this mounted up over time. (My
wife asked if I had shares in the website
company!) I changed website providers and
now use an organisation called Advenzia,
see www.advenzia.com.
The biggest advantage to me is that I
now have a back office system where I am
in complete control of the site. I can make
changes, add articles and add products at
any time. I also have a full ecommerce
system for selling my products as well as a
great affiliate system where people can sign
up as affiliates to market my products and
earn healthy commissions for doing so. If
you would like to become an affiliate,
please sign up now at:
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
affiliate
The system I have on my website tracks
all affiliate traffic, commissions and is
simple to use. Take a look at a short video I
produced that demonstrates my back office
system:
www.frankfurnessresources.com/backoffic
e
82
The Internet
Getting your website seen
There are many ways to get your website
seen and drive traffic, opportunities and
sales for your business.
•
•
•
•
The main techniques are:
Proper keywords;
Articles;
Linking strategies; and
Pay per click.
The methods employed to increase your
search engine rankings may seem like
rocket science to you, so you have probably
avoided dealing with this issue. I am here
to tell you, the time has come to face your
website! A high search engine ranking for
your website is so essential that if you have
the slightest desire to actually succeed in
your business, there is no way you can
continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods
and services on the internet find websites
through search engines such as Google,
Yahoo and MSN. The reason for optimising
your pages for high search engine rankings
is to attract targeted customers to your site
who will be more likely to make a
purchase. The higher your page comes up
in search engine results, the greater the
traffic that is directed to your website.
That’s what search engine optimisation is
all about.
You can immerse yourself in all the
technical information available online to
figure out how to optimise your web pages
to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look
at a few simple items on your pages, make
some small adjustments, and most likely
Alm o st all
search engines
use link
p o p ularity to
rank yo ur
w ebsite
83
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
see improved rankings quite rapidly. The
first item you should examine is the title
bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the coloured bar at the
top of the page. Look at the words that
appear there when you access your home
page. To increase search engine rankings,
the words on your homepage’s title bar
should include the most important
keywords or phrases, one of which would
be your company name.
Search engines
list sites that
co ntain quality
co ntent, no t
scintillating
grap hics
Then click on all your links and examine
the title bars on the pages you access. Each
title bar on every single page of your site
should contain the most important
keywords and phrases taken from the page
itself. However, avoid very long strings of
keywords, keeping them to six words or
less. Avoid repeating keywords more than
once in the title bars, and make sure that
identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your
microscope is your website content. Search
engines generally list sites that contain
quality content rather than scintillating
graphics. The text on your site must contain
the most important keywords – the words
that potential customers will be typing into
search engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each
page, but if this is not desirable due to your
design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen
words. If you want to achieve a high
ranking in search engines, this text is
essential. However, the search engines must
be able to read the text, meaning that the
text must be in HTML and not graphic
format.
84
The Internet
To find out if your text is in HTML
format, take your cursor and try to
highlight a word or two. If you are able to
do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not
highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In
this case, ask your webmaster to change the
text into HTML format in order to increase
your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta
tags. I know this sounds like something out
of science fiction, but it is really just simple
code. Many people believe that meta tags
are the key to high search engine rankings,
but in reality, they only have a limited
effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the
event that a search engine will use meta
tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with
meta tags, you must access the code. To do
this, click the “view” button on the browser
menu bar, and select “source” This will pull
up a window revealing the underlying code
that created the page. If there are meta tags,
they usually appear near the top of the
window. For example, a meta tag would
read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If
you do not find code that reads like this,
ask your webmaster to put them in. This
may not do much for your search engine
rankings, but any little boost helps.
Link
p o p ularity is
an extrem ely
im p o rtant
facto r in term s
o f search
engine
rank ings
Lastly, we come to the issue of link
popularity. This is a factor that is extremely
important in terms of search engine
rankings. Almost all search engines use link
popularity to rank your website. Link
popularity is based on the quality of the
sites you have linked to from your links
page.
85
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
A go o d w ay to
check the
p o p ularity o f
yo ur w ebsite is
to use
w w w .alexa.co
m
If you type “free link popularity check”
in a popular search engine, the search
engine will then show you what sites are
linked to your site. In the case that there
aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that
the sites that are linked up have low search
engine rankings, consider launching a link
popularity campaign. Essentially, this
entails contacting quality sites and
requesting that they exchange links with
your site. Of course, this requires checking
out the rankings of the websites you want
to link up with. Linking to popular, quality
sites not only boosts your search engine
ranking, but it also directs more quality
traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely
important for a successful internet
marketing campaign. Before you go out and
hire a search engine optimisation company,
try taking some of the simple steps listed
above, and see if you can’t boost your
rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this
all-important factor in internet marketing.
Remember, the higher your search engine
ranking, the more quality customers will be
directed your way.
A good way to check the popularity of
your website is to use www.alexa.com
Type in your website and it will provide a
lot of basic information.
86
The Internet
Adv ertis ing y o ur s erv ices on
the inter n et
Advertising your services or products on
the internet is both extremely effective and
extremely competitive. There are several
ways to go about attracting traffic to your
website. Pay-per-click is one of the options
you can choose, along with developing a
search engine optimisation (SEO)
campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are
targeted to get your website placed as close
to the top of search engine results as
possible. One of the differences is that it
takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click
campaign versus months for a good SEO
campaign.
Pay-per-click advertising
Pay-per-click is a simple type of paid
advertising that most search engines now
offer. You bid an amount that you will pay
on a “per-click” basis and then each time
the search engine directs a visitor to your
site you pay the bid amount. There is the
added bonus that when a per-click site
sends your website traffic, your site often
appears in the results of other prevalent
search engines.
As with all marketing campaigns, there
are advantages and disadvantages. If you
understand the process and monitor your
pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be
very effective. One of the greatest
advantages is that you never have to tweak
your web pages to change your position in
search engine results, as you must do in a
typical SEO campaign. What you do have
to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a
fee.
Pay-p er-click
d o esn’t
d em and any
sp ecific
technical
k no w led ge
87
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Another advantage is the simplicity of
the pay-per-click process. You just bid and
you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand
any specific technical knowledge, though
the more you know about search engines
and keywords, the easier and more effective
the process will be.
The downside is that pay-per-click is
essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than
yours will lower your position on search
engine results. This means that you will
have to raise your bid to regain your
position – which can obviously become
quite expensive, especially if you are
bidding on a popular keyword.
In order to determine if pay-per-click is a
cost effective form of marketing for your
business, you must do some computing to
figure out how much each visitor to your
site is worth. You can compute this value
by dividing the profit you make on your
website over a given period of time by the
total number of visitors for that same time
period. For example, if your site made
$12,500 in profits and there were 25,000
visitors, each visitor would be theoretically
worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits
divided by visitors.
The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the
point at which your business breaks even.
The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not
to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you
are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per
click.
88
Be aware that the most popular
keywords often cost considerably more than
50 cents a click. The only way around this is
to bid less for these phrases or you will be
paying too much for each individual hit.
The Internet
The key to success is to learn everything
you can about search engine keyword
research. (By the way, please email me at
frank@frankfurness.com and I will send
you two ebooks on search engine optimisation and Google Adwords for free. They are
written by a top expert and are 80 pages
each.)
The good news is there isn’t a limit to
the amount of keywords you can add to
your bid because additional keywords do
not add additional cost. This translates into
a lot less hassle for you because there is no
need to optimise your site to index a
particular set of keywords.
Obviously, some keywords are much
more effective than others, but they will not
cost you anything except the time to set up
your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of
the popular search engines that offer payper-click, one called Overture (now Yahoo)
provides an online tool that will give you
the data on how often particular keywords
are entered into their search engine. They
also offer suggestions for keywords after
you enter a description of your site.
In pay-per-click, this written description
is crucial. You must understand that the
object of your description is not to generally
attract visitors, but to be as specific as
possible so that only those visitors who are
likely to buy your service or product go to
your site. You must use expert marketing
copy to guarantee that your description is
both precise and enticing enough to attract
ideal candidates to your site. This
description is your most powerful tool to
ensure that your bid is profitable.
Another essential element of pay-per-
Yo u m ust use
exp ert
m ark eting
co p y to
guarantee that
yo ur
d escrip tio n is
bo th p recise
and enticing to
attract the
m o st id eal
cand id ates to
yo ur site
89
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
click advertising is that you constantly
monitor your bid. It is very important that
you bear in mind that the results of the top
search engines providing pay-per-click
advertising, which are Overture and Google
Adwords, usually appear on other popular
search engines. Because of this, the
competition for top ranking is intense, and
very often you will find that the bidding
price escalates too high for pay-per-click to
yield a profit.
Co nstantly
m o nito r yo ur
bid s
If this happens, it is advisable to
withdraw your bid on that particular
keyword and try another one. Remember:
when you pay too much per click to make a
profit, you are in essence losing the bidding
war. It is advisable to monitor your
keywords on at least a monthly basis.
Not only is careful monitoring
important, but the analysis of visitor
behaviour can produce invaluable
knowledge about consumer motivation,
habits and trends. Expert monitoring and
consumer analysis is essential to your
overall business needs and will also ensure
that your pay-per-click campaign is a
success. Take a look at the video I produced
on keywords at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/keywords
Take a look at one of the best tools
available to analyse keywords:
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
wordtracker
90
The Internet
M ar ke ti ng w it h a rt i c l es on
the inter n et
A great way to drive traffic to your site is
with articles. As stated earlier in the book,
you must be writing articles and getting
them published both offline in magazines
and newspapers and online. Whenever I
speak to audiences, I ask how many are
looking for free information online. Almost
everyone raises their hands. The truth is
that the internet was originally set up as a
medium to share information and almost
everyone who has a computer today looks
for free information. Right now, someone
could be looking for information that you
could be providing, whether it is to do with
business, relationships, hobbies, sport or
hundreds of other topics. What is it that
you know that everyone else would like to
know?
Share this information in articles
Right no w ,
so m eo ne co uld
be lo o k ing fo r
info rm atio n
yo u co uld be
p ro vid ing
Articles dictate a lot in the success and the
drive of traffic to your site. They create
links back to your sites and build your
credibility and branding. Article writing
and submitting has become a key element
in making a site work and earns you a
profit. Anyone with a website must have
the good sense to include articles on their
site that will work for them and earn them
the many benefits articles can give to their
site.
Articles play a massive part in giving
site high rankings in search result pages.
The higher a site ranks the bigger slice of
the traffic flow pie you get. With a huge
number in traffic flow, there are more
profits and more potential for other income
generating opportunities as well.
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
But, it is not just about stuffing your site
with articles; they have certain requirements as well. These requirements must be
met to obtain the maximum benefits. A well
written article will catch the eye and
interest of your customers and keep them
coming back for more. They would also be
able to recommend your site to others.
There are four things all articles must
have to make them successful in making
your site a profit-earning and trafficoverflowing site.
Whenever yo u
read a
new sp ap er o r
m agazine, the
first thing that
cap tures yo ur
attentio n is the
head line
Headlines
Whenever you read a newspaper or
magazine, the first thing that captures your
attention is the headline. If it looks
compelling, this will encourage you to read
further. It is just as important with sales
copy, brochures, websites and any other
marketing materials that promote you or
your business. I use a useful piece of
software www.headlinecreator.co.uk that
enables me to create 100 headlines by just
completing four sentences. Take a look at it,
I find it invaluable.
Keywords and Keyword Phrases
Articles must always be centered on the
keywords and keyword phrases. Among all
the visitors that go to a website, there are
those who are not just browsing but are
actually looking for specific information.
The important thing is that you have an
article that has the keywords that are
related to your site. For example, if you
maintain a recruitment site, you must be
able to have articles about recruitment,
conducting interviews, how to prepare a
92
The Internet
CV, etc. There are many tools on the
internet that provide services in helping
people determine what keywords and
keyword phrases are mostly sought out. I
use many of these, but one of the best is
free and can be downloaded at
www.goodkeywords.com
Some of the others you can use are:
•
•
Overture
Dowser
Keyword density
Now that you have your keywords and
keyword phrases, you must use them fully.
An article must have good keyword density
for a search engine to “feel” its presence.
Articles should at least have 10-15% of
keyword density in their content for search
engines to rank a site high in their search
results. Getting a high rank is what articles
do best for a site.
Good article content
Articles must be able to entertain people as
well as provide good information and help
for their needs. Articles should be written
well with correct spelling and good
grammar. If you want people to trust you,
make your work good and well thought
out.
Articles m ust
be able to
entertain
p eo p le as w ell
as p ro vid e
go o d
info rm atio n
and help fo r
their need s
The body of the article must contain
information that is valuable to your reader.
People respond well to figures, facts and
statistics. Try to get great information and
as many facts as you can. A well written
article will boost your reputation as an
expert in your chosen field or topic. As
more people believe in you, they will be
able to trust you and your products.
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Top writers around the world will
write for you – outsourcing
The content of your articles or website tells
a whole lot about your business. They will
basically describe what your site is about
and also tell people what your site has to
offer. Articles and website content makes a
whole lot of difference to your site because
they can catch the attention of your website
visitors and keep them in there.
Use o nline
reso urces to
help yo u w rite
yo ur articles
With good website content you get the
benefit of clearly depicting what it is you
want to share with people. Also, good
content and articles can lead people to your
site. With more traffic, you get to earn more
from your site, making it profitable. A site’s
success, be it for profit or not, is the amount
of flow of traffic to your site.
So how does good content and great
articles get you traffic? Well, many search
engines rely on the keyword and keyword
phrases of a site to put it in their results list.
If your content contains a good number of
keywords and keyword phrases, it may be
chosen to be a part of the top listed sites in
the search result pages.
But before you think of just plastering
your site with all the keywords and
keyword phrases it could hold, be aware
that search engines also filter out that
abuse. You must have good well written
articles that incorporate the keywords and
keyword phrases properly in their content
and articles.
94
There are many who cannot afford the
time to write their own website contents
and articles. While writing content and
The Internet
articles specifically designed for the internet
may take some getting used to and some
researching and learning, there are many
writers that can be found all over the world
who could do it for you.
Many of us do not have the time to learn
web content writing and article writing
designed for the internet. There are writers
who have great experience in doing this
and charge only a minimal fee for such
work. Writers like this can be regarded as
experts in this style of writing and can
greatly help your website to get that
coveted spot in the search engine rankings.
Other than getting your site in the web
results page of search engines, they can also
provide your site with meaningful articles
and content that can impress your website
visitors and entice others to view your site.
Every website could use the extra traffic
website visitors could invite.
Then there are those who need papers to
be done either for their school or office
work. Top writers around the world are
very knowledgeable and do extreme
researching to get a job done right. They are
also very adept in many writing styles that
best suit the client’s need.
Yo u m ust have
go o d , w ell
w ritten articles
that
inco rp o rate the
k eyw o rd s and
k eyw o rd
p hrases
Many writers around the world charge a
minimal fee depending on the type of
writing job needed and the number of
words needed in the content. Usually, a
250-word article would cost from 4 to 8
dollars depending on the writer’s
experience and ability. This is a small price
to pay for having a content rich site or for a
well-researched and written paper.
There are also many sites that can offer
you these services with their team of well-
95
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
trained and experienced writers. They offer
many writing services to cover any writing
needs. A writer can be based anywhere in
the world and they guarantee to offer good
content and articles. Each article is doubly
checked, edited and proofread so that you
get your money’s worth.
Find ing a go o d
w riter o r a site
that o ffers
w riting
services is
sim p ly d o ne
by searching
fo r them in
search engines
Finding a good writer or a site that offers
these kinds of services is simply done by
searching for them in search engines. Type
down your keyword or keyword phrase
(e.g. content writers, article writers) and
you will see a long list of sites that offer
these services. Some that I use include:
www.elance.com
www.craigslist.com
www.rentacoder.com
The top sites would probably be the best
since they have done a good job of keeping
their content at a high quality to get them
high rankings. But you may also want to
shop around and read some of their sample
work to get an idea of how much it will
cost you.
Linking Articles
96
If you are going to submit articles to ezines
and/or contribute your articles to
newsletters and other sites, don’t ever forget
to include a link to your site. A little
resource box with a brief description of
your site and yourself should always be
placed right after the articles you have
submitted. If people like your articles, they
will most likely click on the link directing
them to your site. Google also places a lot
of importance on link popularity, and this
is the easiest way to get links back to your
site.
The Internet
Submitting your article to article
directories
You must submit your article to as many
article directories as you can. I submitted 12
articles to one directory and to date they
have been downloaded 1232 times. It can be
a laborious task submitting to the various
article directories. I use a great piece of
software that makes the submission process
quick and easy. Take a look at
www.articlesubmittingsoftware.com
This software allows you to submit one
article at a time to 163 article directories
and will save you a great amount of time
and effort.
Article resources
I use many resources to promote my
articles and have put together a valuable
software` package for my readers and
subscribers. Take a look at
www.netsalessecrets.com
Peo p le
resp o nd w ell
to figures, facts
and statistics
Linkin g s trategies
If you want to increase your website’s
rankings in the search engines, you will
need to have inbound links to create link
popularity. To do this, you can use link
building directory submission services or
promote link building by submitting to
article directories manually.
Link popularity is crucial for search
engine rankings. Search engine bots automatically assume that the more back links
there are pointing to a particular website,
the more popular and valuable the website
is. Search engines love back links from
content rich pages, such as article pages; in
the previous section I detailed how to do
97
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Yo ur w ebsite
m ust beco m e a
p ro sp ecting,
m ark eting and
sales to o l fo r
yo u
this.
There are article submission services and
software programs that can make the
submissions for you. I use a great
programme called Article Announcer which
allows me to link with high ranking sites
that are complementary to mine. For more
information please see
www.frankfurnessresources.com/seo
If you want to do it manually, try and
devote a few hours one to two days a week
just focusing on building links. It takes a lot
of effort, but the results more than
compensate.
98
The Internet
Action Planning
Develop an action plan for your website, articles and linking
strategies
99
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Blog ging
Everyone should by now have their own
blog. It is so easy. In 10 minutes you can
have your own blog published, and the best
part is, at no or low cost and with no
complicated knowledge needed. The two
most popular places to start are
www.wordpress.org and
www.blogger.com
Blo gs are a
great w ay to
get yo ur
m essage acro ss
o n the internet
and have it
p ublished
alm o st
im m ed iately
100
Blogs are a great way to get your
message across on the internet and have it
published almost immediately. It is the
ideal way to provide information,
education and, if done well, can create
wealth and multiple sources of income for
you.
For your blog to be effective you need to
ensure that it either solves someone’s
problems, removes their pain or increases
their pleasure.
To me, it is the perfect online selling tool
that will drive business, leads and sales. I
have found that the best way of having an
effective blog is to make it conversational
and interesting, with valuable content,
while also engaging and involving the
reader. I started my blog three years ago
and now have 20 blogs covering different
subjects and all producing me money one
way or another (I love that word...!)
Initially, I just published my existing
articles to my blog. Now each month when
I produce my newsletter, I also include
those articles as well as other information
that may be of interest. The search engine
spiders love blogs as they always have new
and interesting content. I try to share a
combination of personal stories and high
The Internet
content business articles so that the blog
will appeal to a large audience.
I have a lot of links within the blog
articles back to sections of my websites and
my products. The quick tips section in the
blog drives traffic to the
www.frankfurnessresources.com website
where there are videos, tips, resources and
a subtle sell to my products (there we go
again…!)
I also use the blog to drive traffic to the
section of my main website with free
ebooks and software. This takes them to a
form that also signs them up to my
newsletter and in turn I get hundreds of
new subscribers each week. I submit my
blogs to the many blog directories and
whenever I add articles I ‘ping’ the blogs to
www.pingomatic.com
I drive traffic to my blog from a lot of
other sources, the most popular right now
being YouTube. I have 70 videos on
YouTube and at the end of each video I
have a message offering free information or
ebooks that drives a ton of traffic to my
blogs.
By using blo gs
and article
subm issio n
strategies, I
no w have
tho usand s o f
link s back to
m y sites
I recently learned a great traffic strategy
for my blog. I search for very high ranking
blogs in my niche and then add a comment
to articles on those blogs with a link back to
my website. This is great for the spiders as
they now see high ranking sites linking
back to my blog and this pushes me up in
the rankings and drives traffic.
A lot of people ask me what the
differences are between blogs and websites
and the most common are as follows:
•
No need for a webmaster for updates;
101
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
•
Publish directly from your computer;
•
No complex uploading;
•
•
Don’t need knowledge of HTML;
•
Customer interaction; and
•
•
Subm it yo ur
blo g to blo g
d irecto ries to
increase yo ur
exp o sure
Content changes instantly;
Automatic archives;
Instant syndication .
By using blogs and article submission
strategies, I now have thousands of links
back to my sites, get more bookings, sell
more products and build my newsletter
subscriber list. The best part is that I’m not
a “techie”. All I concentrate on are simple
sales strategies, although I am learning the
more advanced strategies that include
trackbacks, permalinks and how to get the
best from RSS directories.
So remember, for the businessperson, a
blog has many practical applications. It will:
•
Increase targeted traffic to your site;
•
Boost your search engine rankings;
•
Increase the lifetime value of clients;
•
•
•
•
Build rapport for increased sales;
Prove your expertise;
Complement your newsletter;
Generate press coverage .
I would suggest that you also submit you
blog to the directories. Some of the more
popular directories to submit your blog to
for a free one way backlink include:
102
http://dir.blogflux.com/
www.blogcatalog.com/
www.bloghub.com/
www.britblog.com/
The Internet
www.blogarama.com/
www.blogwise.com/
www.blogdirs.com/
http://blogs.botw.org/
www.blogrankings.com/
www.bloggeries.com/
www.blogtoplist.com/
www.bestblogs.org/
www.findingblog.com/
http://blogannounce.info/
www.blogtastic.com/
www.addurlblog.com/
www.blogoozle.com/
www.blogsweet.com/
www.blogfinds.com/
www.spillbean.com/
So don’t wait, whatever your hobby,
business or passion, share your stories with
the online world. Take a look at my blog at
www.blogger.frankfurness.com
Take a look at my video interview with
Mike Stewart who is an expert on audio
and video and how to maximise your blogs
using these tools in Wordpress:
www.frankfurnessresources.com/audiovide
o
Co m bine
o nline vid eo
w ith blo gs and
create a vlo g (a
vid eo blo g)
103
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Develop an action plan for blogging
104
The Internet
On l i n e s a l e s a n d m a r k e t i n g
I realised some time ago that I was the
business and that if I didn’t work, there
would be no income. I then developed a
plan of action to produce products and
market them both to existing clients and
online.
Along the way I have made many
mistakes that have cost me a lot of money,
but now products form a large part of my
income. Over the last few years I have
produced 32 products and resources
including books, ebooks, CDs and DVDs.
Take a look at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/products
At first I found that very few sales were
being generated online because I was
confusing potential clients. I was promoting
speaking, training and products so left
potential buyers in a state of confusion
from where the easiest option was to do
nothing. I now have over 200 domain
names and I am developing a one-page
website for each product. It is a one page
sales letter that gets the potential buyer
involved and focused on only one product
and then encourages them towards the
action of buying. This has really worked
well and has generated sales of up to $7,000
in a week. The best part of this is that it is
passive income. I earn it whether I’m
sleeping or sitting on the beach.
I used a number of tools to create my
one-page websites. One of my favourites is
an online service that helps you create long
copy sales letters very quickly. Even people
already good at copywriting use this
because it saves lots of time.
If yo u sell
p ro d ucts o r
services o n the
internet and
m ess up the
ad vertising
co p yw riting,
yo u w ill fail
m iserably
105
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
If you sell products or services on the
internet and mess up the advertising
copywriting, you will fail miserably. You
must be able to write the words that move
people to action . . . in most cases we want
them to pull their wallets out of their
pockets and give us money. The 60-second
sales letter saves enormous amounts of time
and helps you organise your thoughts
quickly.
Create
ed utainm ent –
ed ucatio n
co m bined w ith
entertainm ent
It used to take me a week or more to
write a good sales letter and this tool has
reduced that time to a few hours at most.
Take a look at this software at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/saleslette
r
Header Generator is a new tool that
gives you the winning edge over your
competition. If you are looking at how to
aesthetically enhance your site to give it the
extra edge for your soon to be customers,
this new software, is a great solution.
Take a look at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/headers
Using these tools to generate my one
page sales letter (take a look at
www.walkingwithtigers.com), I generate an
ongoing income that is independent of me
and develops multiple sources of income.
You can generate the same.
Marketing w ith v ideo
106
There has been a virtual explosion of video
on the internet in recent times. You only
need to take a look at the success of
YouTube to realise that the new
phenomenon in low-cost, no-cost marketing
is video on the web.
The Internet
All it takes is a webcam or video camera
and some software and you can be seen by
millions in hours. The easiest software to
use is Microsoft Video which is free and
easy to use.
I use a number of other programmes
which are excellent.
Pinnacle Pro is an inexpensive video
editing programme that I have been using
for years. I also use the more advanced
Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier Elements.
If you really want to have special effects,
for instance an interesting background (you
could be seen to be speaking in Moscow,
outer space or on the beach), I use Visual
Communicator from Adobe. The software is
brilliant and it comes with a green screen,
good microphone, great software and an
extensive manual. Take a look at my video
on how it works at
www.news.frankfurness.com/greenscreen
The new w ay
o f m ark eting is
vid eo o n the
w eb
If you receive my newsletter, you’ll
know that I send out regular video sales
tips using this software. I have also
uploaded these tips to internet video sites
including, YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo
Video and Metcafe Video. So far I have had
close to 500,000 viewings.
Take a look at
www.youtube.com/salestips
This is truly free marketing. The results –
product sales, speaker and training
bookings and thousands of new subscribers
to my newsletter and hits to my sites. You
can do the same for your business.
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
My favourite piece of software is
Camtasia.
www.frankfurnessresources.com/camtasia
This captures the screen of your
computer while you speak. I use it to
promote products, explain and show how
different pieces of software work and
explain any technical concepts. Take a look
at an example at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
headlinevideo
So m e sites o n
the internet
w ill p ay yo u
fo r yo ur vid eo s
Once again I use this to show video hints
and tips on Microsoft products, software
programmes, view PowerPoint presentations and much more. Anyone can use this
software – there are just so many applications for it. You can also upload the videos
you make to your website or put them in
your one-page sales letters.
Now that you have made the videos,
there are plenty of video sites on the
internet that you can upload them to. Some
even pay you. Take a look at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/tipstricks
to see the various sites.
I recently bought an excellent ebook for
$37 on how to use video with YouTube to
generate traffic, lists and sales. To my
surprise I found that after I had bought it, I
now had the full resale rights so only had to
sell one copy to recoup my investment.
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This was over and above the brilliant
tips and strategies that I picked up from the
book. I immediately put five new strategies
into place on YouTube that had already had
a dramatic effect on my business. Take a
look at the book on
www.youtubestrategies.com and if you buy
it you also receive the resell rights.
The Internet
Brilliant…!
You can also have your own channel on
Youtube. Take a look at
www.frankfurnessresources.com/
videosites.pdf to see the various sites.
Online
m ark eting w ill
create m o ney
w hile yo u
sleep
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Develop an action plan for online marketing
110
The Internet
M ar ke ti ng w it h e boo ks
Ebooks are a great way of marketing
yourself, your organisation or your services.
It is low-cost/no-cost marketing and
establishes you as an expert in your field.
Once someone has read your ebook, if they
see you as the specialist in your field, the
phone will keep ringing and sales will
follow.
Ebooks are part of the new frontier of
cyberspace. They are an entirely new
medium for sharing marketing information,
ideas, techniques and expert knowledge.
Each day the number of people accessing
the internet grows, causing the exposure of
your ebook to increase incrementally. It’s
obvious why electronic self-publishing has
become so popular so quickly.
The publishing industry, I hope, does
not intend to forever banish the printed
word to the dustbin of history. Books in
print have their own special qualities and
merits, and the world would be diminished
by their disappearance.
Ebo o k s are a
great w ay o f
m ark eting
yo urself, yo ur
o rganisatio n o r
yo ur services
Having said that, let’s look at what
makes ebooks so important and so unique.
Ebooks have certain abilities and qualities
that other mediums do not possess.
For example, ebooks are fairly easy to
produce and their production cost is
inexpensive. Just think about it: you don’t
need a publisher, an agent, a printing press,
offset film, ink, paper or even a distributor.
You just need a great concept, the ability
to write it or to hire a writer, and the right
software.
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Additionally, ebooks are easily and
rapidly distributed online. They are also
easily updated; they do not require a
second print run. All you need is to go into
your original creation and modify the text
or graphics. Because of this flexibility,
ebooks can change and grow as fast as you
can type.
Ebo o k s are
easily and
rap id ly
d istributed
o nline. They
are also easily
up d ated
Ebooks are also immediately obtainable.
You don’t have to go to a bookstore or
search through endless titles at an online
bookstore. All you have to do is download
the ebook from a website, and hey presto!
It’s on your computer, ready to be read.
Ebooks are interactive. This is one of the
most unique and specific qualities that
ebooks offer. You can add surveys that
need to be filled out, order forms for
customers to purchase your products or
goods, sound and video that draw your
reader into the virtual world of your ebook,
even direct links to relevant sites that will
expand your ebook outwards. The potential
is virtually limitless.
Ebooks have a particular kind of
permanence that other mediums do not
possess. Television shows and radio shows
air once, and then may rerun a few times.
Ebooks remain on your computer for as
long as you choose, and they can be read
and reread whenever you wish. They can
even be printed out and stored on the
shelves of your traditional home library.
112
Another wonderful quality is that
ebooks have no barriers in terms of
publishing. You don’t need to go through
the endless process of submitting your
manuscript over and over again, and then
once you land an agent, having the agent
The Internet
submit your manuscript over and over
again. Nor do you have to shell out
thousands of dollars for printing a selfpublished book. All ebooks require is a
writer and appropriate software.
Figure out your market, write your book,
post it on your website, and with the right
business savvy, your audience will come to
you.
Ebo o k s have
no barriers in
term s o f
p ublishing
Finally, you have creative control over
your ebook.
You don’t have to compromise with an
editor or the publishing trends of the time.
You don’t have to haggle with a designer or
wait for proofread galleys to arrive by snail
mail. You are in complete control of the
design and the text.
How to use ebooks for marketing and
promotion
There are innumerable ways to use ebooks
to promote your business and drive quality
traffic to your website. Once posted on your
site, you can turn them into a daily course,
which brings your customer back to read
the next chapter. You can use them as a free
gift for making a purchase or for filling out
a survey. Put your ebook on a disc, and you
will have an innovative brochure. Blow
your competition away by inserting the disc
into your sales packages.
The most effective marketing products
are those that are unique. Copyright your
ebook, and immediately you have a
powerful tool that you, and you alone, can
offer to the public. People will have to visit
your site to acquire your ebook, which
increases the flow of quality traffic and the
potential of sales and affiliate contacts.
Ebo o k s
p ro vid e yo u
w ith an
invaluable w ay
to gather
m ark eting
info rm atio n
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
The m o st
effective
m ark eting
p ro d ucts are
tho se that are
unique
Use yo ur
ebo o k to
d isco ver w hat
the sp ecific
go als and
p ro blem s are
in yo ur
ind ustry
114
Make sure that you keep your ebook
current. Update it frequently as the market
and trends change. Add new advice and
techniques to show your prospects how
your goods or services can enrich their
lives. By constantly keeping abreast of new
trends and techniques, you can continue to
see profits from your ebook for years after
your original creation.
Another phenomenal advantage of
ebooks is that you can test their marketing
potential without spending hardly any cash
at all. You can even produce an ebook one
copy at a time, each time you receive an
order, eliminating the need for storage and
inventory. By this method, you can gauge
the saleability of your ebook, and make
adjustments as necessary until the orders
start pouring in.
Ebooks allow you to learn about your
market and your customer habits and
motivation over a period of time, without
risking your precious financial resources.
They also provide you with an invaluable
way to gather marketing information,
which you can use in many different facets
of your business.
Use your ebook to discover what the
specific goals and problems are of your
specific industry. Then figure out how to
solve these problems, and publish an ebook
with this invaluable information. This will
increase the value of your business,
upgrade your reputation and get you
known as an expert in your field.
You can extend the value of a single
ebook by breaking the book down into
chapters for a serial course, into special
reports available on your website, or into
The Internet
audio or visual tapes. Ebooks can be broken
down into several different promotional
materials by taking some of the articles and
using them to promote your product.
You can include a catalogue in your
ebook to promote all the products or
services you sell. You can include a thankyou note for reading your book and an
invitation to download a trial version of
your product. Or you can include a form
for your audience to contact you for further
information or with questions, thereby
building your business relationships and
your mailing list.
Print yo ur
ebo o k s to
beco m e
bo o k lets o r
self-p ublished
bo o k s
Using ebooks in this manner helps to cut
the cost of individually producing separate
promotional materials.
You can use a single ebook to attract
new prospects and to sell new products to
your current customers.
No other medium has this kind of
flexibility and ability for expansion. Think
of your ebook like a spider spinning a
beautiful and intricate web. Now go and
create that web, and see how many
customers and prospects you can catch!
115
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
Action planning
Develop an action plan to market using ebooks
116
Prospecting Toolbox
Pro s pec t i ng m a nag em ent
There are many systems for organising your prospects and clients
and these include software programs such as Outlook, Goldmine,
ACT and many others. In some ways a very simple system also
works whereby you keep the details of all your prospects on 3x5
cards. Have as many details as possible of the prospect on the
cards and rate these prospects either A, B or C. Then just keep
them in a box in various sections:
•
•
Hot leads – these are clients you should be phoning
immediately;
Prospects and leads;
•
Current month’s appointments;
•
Clients;
•
•
Future months’ appointments;
Not interested.
The secret is doing whatever works for you, but more importantly
getting a system and following up on it.
Pro duc t s t o h elp y ou g row y ou r bus i ne s s
Walking with Tigers
This trip le aud io CD set co vers the secrets o f success o f the to p
salesp eo p le in the w o rld . Frank interview ed o ver 500 to p salesp eo p le o n
ho w they achieved such great results. The d etails o f the research as w ell
as a 21-p o int p lan to achieving greatness in sales w ill give yo u id eas to
m o ve yo ur business fo rw ard .
Finding New Business and Clients
This trip le aud io CD set shares num ero us id eas o n p ro sp ecting and ho w
to find new business. Everything is co vered fro m netw o rk ing, referrals,
sw ap clubs, article p ublicatio ns, centres o f influence, co ld calling and
m uch, m uch m o re.
Selling for Fun … and Profit
This is a co nd ensed series o f Frank ’s w o rk sho p w hich has been p resented
in 40 co untries. Everything fro m the basics o f selling to ad vanced id eas is
shared in this series. Includ ed are: the sales cycle, p ro sp ecting, telep ho ne
117
Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
sk ills, interview ing and nego tiatio n sk ills, clo sing, p erso nality styling and
custo m er service. The series includ es m any p ractical scrip ts o n p ho ning,
d evelo p ing rap p o rt, o verco m ing o bjectio ns and clo sing. Trip le aud io CD
set, Single CD, Vid eo and DVD.
Business Presentation Skills
One o f the m o st effective and fastest w ays to bo o st yo ur career success is
by co nsistently d elivering excellent p resentatio ns that really engage the
hearts and m ind s o f yo ur aud ience. Yo u m ay be p resenting o ne-to -o ne, to
a sm all gro up o r a large aud ience, ho w ever, the co re sk ills that m ak e yo u
an engaging and insp iratio nal sp eak er are the sam e. In this trip le aud io
CD set, m aster p resenters Frank Furness and Hilary Wilso n share co m p rehensive and highly p ractical d etails o n all the k ey asp ects o f beco m ing
a first-rate sp eak er.
The Secret Power of Questions
In this aud io CD Frank Furness and Keith Banfield share id eas and
p ro ven questio ning techniques that w ill enhance sales, business and relatio nship s if used effectively.
Secrets of Successful Consulting
In this trip le CD aud io series Frank Furness and To m Lam bert share
p ro ven id eas o n ho w to attract m o re business and run a successful
co nsultancy p ractice. To m ’s ten bo o k s are glo bal best sellers in 13 m ajo r
languages. This series shares id eas that w ill enable the d ed icated p ro fessio nal to build a p erso nal p ractice cap able o f earning a six-figure sum .
Coaching Fundamentals
Get the info rm atio n yo u need to succeed as a co ach right no w ! This
d o uble CD aud io series is fo r anyo ne w ho w ants to im p ro ve their
co aching sk ills o r w ants to fo llo w a career as a co ach.
How to be More Assertive, Confident and Happy
Get the info rm atio n yo u need to succeed in life right no w ! This 2-CD
aud io series is fo r anyo ne w ho w ants to im p ro ve their relatio nship s, be
m o re assertive, co nfid ent and hap p y.
How to Find New Clients for Speakers, Trainers, Coaches and
Consultants – 21 strategies to Find New Clients and Business.
Get the info rm atio n yo u need to right no w . With three CDs, a DVD and a
CD w ith vid eo d em o nstratio ns, this is a p ractical series w here yo u w ill
learn p ro ven techniques.
It’s All About YOU
This is a trip le CD series w ith an actio n p lanner to help everyo ne to reach
their go als and d ream s.
NLP 4 Sales
118
Prospecting Toolbox
Get the info rm atio n yo u need to succeed in business no w ! This 6-CD
series is fo r anyo ne w ho w ants to im p ro ve their sales sk ills.
Sales and Marketing Toolbox for Small Business and SMEs
Get the info rm atio n yo u need to sell m o re right no w . With fo ur CDs, a
DVD and a CD w ith vid eo d em o nstratio ns, this is a p ractical series w here
yo u w ill learn p ro ven techniques to increase business.
Sales Strategies for Financial Advisors
Pro ven tip s, to o ls and tactics to find new clients and m ark et financial
services.
Speak for High Fees in Many Lands
Frank shares tip s, techniques and co aching o n p resentatio n sk ills,
m ark eting and ho w to beco m e an internatio nal sp eak er.
Telephone Sales Skills for Winners
This trip le CD series co vers all asp ects o f m ak ing ap p o intm ents by
telep ho ne.
Media Tactics – How to Work with the Media
With this trip le CD set yo u w ill share the to o ls, tip s and techniques o f
ho w to w o rk w ith the m ed ia and hand le TV, rad io and p rint w ith ease.
Order now from www.frankfurnessresources.com/products
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Ho w to Find New Clients and Business
G re a t w e b s i t e s a n d s o f t w a r e t o g r o w y o u r
bu s ines s
Video editing software:
www.technologytips.co.uk/avsdemo
www.frankfurnessresources.com/flv
www.videowebwizard.org/
www.frankfurnessresources.com/camstudio/ (free)
Upload all your videos to YouTube and other video sites automatically:
www.technologytips.co.uk/videouploader
Others:
www.businesscardscanner.co.uk/
www.articlesubmittingsoftware.com/
www.youtubestrategies.com/
www.simpleheadlines.com/
www.netsalessecrets.com/
www.internetaudiosecrets.co.uk/
www.frankfurnessresources.com/websitewizard
www.frankfurnessresources.com/directorysubmitter
www.frankfurnessresources.com/peelads
www.frankfurnessresources.com/audacity (free)
www.technologytips.co.uk/peelads
www.frankfurnessresources.com/tipstricks
www.walkingwithtigers.com
www.coachingforspeakers.org
www.speakeropportunities.com
www.saleslettergenerators.com
120