The Pull Method for Generating Clients — Sales Training that Works
(There’s a full video that goes with this article — check it out here.)
Today I am talking about answering the eternal question: What do you do if you are geographically isolated and you can’t get somewhere easily to meet new clients? How do you make money?
Or what do you do if you have young children and it is hard to get out during the day, or if you are taking care of a sick parent and need to be homebound?
Today I’m going to answer those questions with my PULL Method, a 4-step system for generating clients no matter where you are, and an integral piece of sales training. Without these steps it is so much harder to get clients and increase business profits.
If you want to watch an amazing video on this very topic, head over to my Facebook group, join, and enjoy!
I think that you are going to love some of the things I have to say, and I think that you are going to hate some things I have to say — but either way I am here to give you the truth as I see it.
Here’s the PULL Method.
P – Planning
The first piece of sales training is to focus on the top activities to pull clients in and increase business profits.
The top three ways to pull clients in are 1) speaking events, 2) sponsorships, and 3) doing webinars.
The webinars piece is going to take you a little while to get off the ground because you need to build your list first.
Now, you might be saying, “Monica I can’t do speaking events and sponsorships because I live really far away from anything.” That moves us into the U.
U – Understanding
An essential piece of sales training is understanding that you get leads from two sources: offline and online.
Offline sources are actions such as: local networking events, speaking events, sponsorships.
Online sources are getting leads from actions such as: social media, webinars, videos.
When you are first starting out it is difficult to pull in warm leads from online because those people don’t know you as well. Even if you do a sales call with an online lead you are not as likely to convert them into a client.
When you get a lead from an offline connection you get eye to eye connection and it builds trust so much faster. As a result, your conversion rate is going to be so much higher from an offline source than an online source.
What that means is that if you are dependent upon online sources to build your business it is going to take you a lot longer to get clients, and you are going to have to do a lot more sales conversations. For example one of my clients has a conversion rate of 1 out of 12 or 15, and that can be hard. You have to have a tough skin to withstand so many Nos!
Some of my other clients that get most of their leads from offline sources are able to convert 1 out of 3 or 4. That is a lot less frustrating. And depending on where you are in your business you made need the confidence that comes from getting more Yeses.
What’s important to understand is that even if you are geographically isolated you are going to have to find a way to get out there and get speaking events and sponsorships. Which leads us to L.
L – Locate
Locate speaking events and sponsorships that are geographically within driving distance or flying distance from your home. This is a surefire way to get more clients and increase business profits.
One of my clients lived in Miami, and there were not many people in her target market there. So every quarter she would get on a plane and fly to a major city and do three speaking events, a sponsorship, see some friends, hang out, have fun, get a bunch of leads, and then go back home to Miami.
Then she wouldn’t travel again for another three to four months. The key is to locate speaking events and sponsorships that are all in one area and group them around the same time period. (For my tips on how to fill your events and find sponsorships, check out these linked articles.)
You don’t have to spend a week or two in one place – a lot of my clients do this from a Friday to a Monday and then they are back home with their families.
Some of you might be thinking, “This sounds too expensive – I can’t do a plane ride right now.”
And that is ok. Do something within driving distance. I have one client who drives 3 hours and does a few speaking events and sponsorships and then drives back. She normally does one night in a hotel so she doesn’t have to drive back.
I want you to know that this is going to take some work ahead of time. It will take research and planning to locate the events and get them planned. For me, we start planning 6-10 months ahead of time. I do this all the time. Whenever I go visit my dad in Cincinnati I like to plan events in Cincinnati. A lot of these events are looking for speakers 10-12 months before the event, so you have to look for them early. You have to think through what trips you want to take 6 months from now, 10 months from now, 12 months from now.
Sneaky Sales Training Ninja trick: You don’t have to have official events! You can just connect with people that live in that area and do what I call a living room event.
Find someone who will be willing to host and invite people over who are in your target market, and do a presentation. Even presentations where you have 4, 6 or 8 people are worth it!
That brings us to L, and just in case you hate the advice so far…I think you’ll fall back in love with me here:
L – List building
Often I get new clients and I ask them how big their list is and they say, “it’s huge!” and I say “that’s great, how big is it?” and they say “500!” Now, I want to honor you because 500 is great, but in the world of online marketing 500 is a drop in the bucket and you are not going to see much impact until you hit 1,000. Really what you want to be hitting is 5,000 and 10,000 or more to make a real impact.
When you send out an offer in an email to your entire list you are lucky if you get 1-3% of your list to act on that offer. If you have small numbers on your list, very few will act on your offer.
If you are someone that has the intention of being able to work from anywhere in the world, of being geographically isolated, of not leaving your home for whatever – then you really need to focus on building your list.
There are a lot of ways to build your list. Organic ways are things like speaking and sponsorships. There are paid ways like getting leads from Facebook through paid ads.
You need to focus on building your list now, because down the road you might want to focus on expanding your business, staying home more, traveling, and not being trapped geographically.
Building a large list takes several years, so getting started sooner rather than later is so important.
PULL stands for P—planning, U—understanding, L—locate, and L—list building.
Plan out your events, understand that you need to get out to speaking events and sponsorships to find the clients, locate events close together, and build your list.
My wish for you as always is to use this material, take action, make tons of money, and make this world a better place!
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Photo: flickr, Gilbert Sopakuwa
