When I speak to business owners, they tell me a couple of things…They want a method for gaining new clients that can be repeated. To price on value and not appeal to the bottom of the market. They see Sales and Marketing is the necessary evil and they’d rather do the client work. Avoiding the hard sell, pushing their services on people. I’m sure some of you reading this will feel the same. In this article, I’m going to outline how one PDF could answer all those problems.
Inbound Vs Outbound
When you need to bring on some new clients, the first thing everyone does is switch to outbound mode. To stir up some business, they’re reaching out to their contacts and network. Becoming overly active on social media.
Urgency forces you to act. You run advertising, emails, and direct outreach because, as they say, “needs must.”
Spending a lot of energy and money on outbound activities to plug the hole in your client list or revenue.
What many people miss is that it’s quite hard and ineffective to outbound in this way. The success rate is less than 1%. We never remember this, because usually a massive assault of activity can plug the hole, so we feel like it worked out.
When we look at inbound, we see it as a difficult or almost elusive prize that everybody, but you can achieve.
Outbound is easier to start, but inbound is easier to convert.
What do I mean?
If you focus on creating inbound leads, you do less selling and close more clients.
Your sales skills are less important when closing inbound interest. In other words, if someone registers their interest with you, closing the sale is easier.
One final thing on Inbound…
It isn’t as sexy as outbound. Outbound feels good. Outbound feels productive. Inbound has a totally different vibe…. It works in the background and doesn’t feel like the world changing thing for your business.
Let me tell you now…. If you build an inbound engine in your business, it will be world changing financially.
You have less pricing objections, spend less time selling and enjoy a higher close rate.
Inbound is the silent and quiet process that if implemented consistently in your business will yield compounding gains over time.
Inbound conversion can be as high as 50%. That is, from interest expressed to closed client.
Inbound today might seem like a lot of work, but in 6–9 months’ time, when you are less reliant on outbound…. You’ll be glad you took the time.
You Just Need One PDF
You can build a profitable business using one PDF. I have about 4 or 5 PDFs which generate me consistent inbound interest from potential clients.
If you have a £5k service, your PDF could be the key to unlocking 30 or 40 new inbound leads each week — even if you have a small audience.
At a 50% conversion rate, that is £75k — £100k per month in new clients.
Even at 25% it’s £37k — £50k per month of new clients
All from one PDF.
This PDF can work for you for the next year. I’m sure you want to know what is in the PDF right? Well, it is simply a PDF that helps in 3 ways.
The PDF qualifies your prospects
99% of your success with the one PDF formula comes from the title. The title of this PDF and its content has to speak to people who have a need that your service can fix and have the money to pay for it.
You’d be surprised how many people have tried this strategy, but then got all confused and wrote the vaguest, unfocused PDFs…. Then wonder why it isn’t working.
Three Facts
· You can’t sell your services to someone who don’t have a NEED.
· You can’t sell your services to someone who doesn’t have any money.
· You won’t sell anything if you don’t position your service for the two above.
Coming back to the PDF….
This PDF offers value, it provides insight (not stats and facts), you can give value and insight to the audience…
You need to help them understand –
· Their Need
· Their Goals
· Actions they can take
· Solutions you can bring
In our Inbound and Organic programme, we help people construct their £100k PDF using their AVP — Audience Value Proposition.
The AVP is a tool to help you see the audience and their need from their perspective. Get into their heads so to speak.
Then you can construct a £100k PDF that appeals to people who have a need your service can solve and the means to pay you for it.
The PDF Elevates Your Authority
This PDF is simply a tool which helps the audience signal to you that they need your help.
It offers practical advice and do-it-yourself information, as well as helping people connect the dots and better understanding the problem.
Why is it important you help your prospects understand the issue they have in a deeper way?
Diagnosis is the key to authority. Helping people understand the problem they have (that your services can fix) in depth can help people see the importance of resolving the issue.
If people understand how this problem will get worse if not attended to…. If people see how this is affecting other areas of their lives and business… if people see the lost opportunities, it helps them understand their situation better…. AND helps them see how valuable your expertise is.
People hire service providers to benefit from their expertise… in this scenario your PDF can help people understand their issues better and as a result you elevate your expertise.
People respect and trust people who helped them understand their challenges better…
Why?
Helping people understand their problems better helps them think more clearly about their situation. Diagnosis brings clarity.
Don’t worry about the risk of people fixing the problem themselves…. Your role is to help the people who can’t or won’t do it themselves.
I don’t know anyone who has had great success working with a DIY mindset client.
They don’t have to be done exactly in that order, but the PDF must weave those issues through it. It can be as long or as short as you like but would advise it is in total less than a 10-minute read.
The PDF starts a process
In that moment when people choose to download the PDF from your website or ask for it on social media, you have a window of opportunity to start a process.
Instead of just dumping people in your email list, give them a personal follow up. It could be as simple as offering to give them some tailored advice on a call or even asking them about their issue and offering to send some additional resources.
Get into conversation quickly.
You have a window of a less than a week before they forget about you.
Don’t just dump people into your email list.
A key mistake everyone makes is dumping people into an email list without trying to converse with the prospect first.
People could be ready to buy, why push them into a newsletter?
Offer them a conversation BEFORE you dump them into your nurture process.
This £100k PDF can be floated on social media weekly, sent to some of your contacts as a resource without any push or ‘buy my stuff. You simply want people to access it through a method where you can see they accessed it.
Using LinkedIn and Instagram, each week even the smallest of followings could be strategically developed to leverage your £100k PDF.
Again, in our programmes we go through the whole process real-time and launch £100k PDF’s.
We have a testing period and then launch them together…all step-by-step.
As you follow the process, you get smarter… As you share the PDF with people and get into conversation, you learn about your prospects.
That PDF can be improved and adapted as you learn. This means your PDF converts better.
There is no doubt the conversion process needs to be improved to, but by doing this yourself, you find the process that works best for you… you don’t have to be a slick salesperson and you don’t have to push people.
Why?
Most of our clients aren’t looking for 10 clients per week. They need 1 or 2.
If you have a flow of people expressing interest, you can follow up the ones that you want to work with.
If you have a flow of people expressing interest, you don’t need to push people over the line.
What about all the ones who aren’t ready to work with you?
Build an email newsletter, connect on social and nourish them with your content.
Inbound, like I said is a process.
But within 6 weeks, in our Inbound and Organic Programme, we have our programme members closing new clients using this process.
The best bit is… it is repeatable…. One bit of work can feed you for the next year.
