5 years ago I came back to New Zealand with my young family for a great job.
After a failed foray into entrepreneurship I had built up some great experience with large, online businesses.
I returned here to work on the travel business of GrabOne, NZ’s 2nd largest ecommerce business.
In short order I was the Marketing Director and central to driving every last bit of performance and sales.
We did that. 100,000 units a month. $112 million in revenue. We sent 60 million emails a month.
But the entrepreneurship bug had bitten. Despite failing the first time round the basic skills I had developed to build websites and online performance had served me well and I knew there was demand out there.
I went out there and knocked on doors, cold called, networked – all the usual stuff.
But I quickly realised something.
Everyone else was doing the same things.
Despite a great track record and real results I couldn’t stand out.
I was a commodity.
I thought to myself: Everyone is chasing the same business, what if there was a way I could get clients to come to me?
I needed to turn the model on its head.
I set to work building an inbound machine. At first it was slow going but there were glimmers of results. Then they came. One, two, three clients at a time.
Finally the floodgates opened.
Now I have a predictable, repeatable system to get clients to come to me.
I even moved to Waiheke Island as I don’t need to use up any shoe leather chasing clients around.
How was I able to do this?
By getting out of the bubble.
You see the entire marketplace is bombarded with messages telling you to do 1001 different things. The old stuff – cold calls, networking, even flyers. Plus the new stuff – Start a Facebook page, have a website, run some adwords.
But guess what? Everyone else is doing them too.
Consultants, advisors and agents in your marketplace are all slurping from the same cup. Drinking the same Kool Aid and all looking the….same.
You’re in a war.
A war for attention.
But everyone in the market is fighting the war with the same weapons.
Trying to shout louder than the other guy.
The noise is deafening.
It’s creating a stalemate.
So how was I able to break out of the bubble?
Three reasons:
First, I ignored the ‘old way’ of doing things – cold calling, proposals, networking – and adopted the new way. A lead generation system that attracts, captures and qualifies leads in a predictable, scalable way.
Most businesses depend on one strategy. Hope – hope the phone rings, hope they get a referral, hope the client finds your website. Sometimes it works but most of the time you can serve many more clients and are leaving money on the table.
Second, I positioned myself as an authority. People prefer to deal with authorities. They will pay more. They will refer more. I built an ‘Authority Architecture’ that positions me as the default choice for people and businesses in my market. When someone is offered the chance to work with me they jump at the opportunity.
Third, I adopted a predictable way to convert prospects into clients. Most businesses change their approach to every client. They have no idea when the client is going to commit – if at all and no idea how many clients are going to close in any given month.
You must have a proven process to conduct appointments, display expertise and make the natural answer from the customer ‘yes’.
Do you recognise the scenarios above?
The truth is that if you are making just one of these mistakes you are limiting your income, freedom and potential.
The world is changing and the old methods of doing things are going the way of the dinosaurs.
If you don’t change your ways you fade into obscurity – or worse – look like everyone else with the only differentiation being a lower price…
However, if you want to position yourself as the authority and default choice in your market I have good news.
Book a free 45 minute strategy session with me or one of my team.
We will give you a framework to stand out and get a flood of clients coming to you: http://go.jameskemp.co/aa-schedule/
