Would you prefer being a freelancer who sells one’s skills to gain short term gratifications or an entrepreneur who can utilize those skills to build a highly successful business venture?
We all at some point in our life dreamed of being an entrepreneur and running a successful business but only a few have pursued it. Maybe some of us have already fallen into the freelancer’s trap and not knowing how to come out of it or we are scared to venture into entrepreneurship keeping in mind the risks involved.
In order to run a successful business, one has to take a risk in some way or the other during the journey.
Here with us is Brian Downard talking to us about the ways we could avoid falling into the freelancer’s trap and what we could do instead. Brian is an entrepreneur and can be found on prospectingondemand.com
Podcast Highlights:
00:10 – Introduction
02:44 – My personal story
07:44 – Taking on random clients
12:00 – Advice for new entrepreneurs
14:15 – An important tip to get out of the freelancer’s trap
16:40 – Go find mentorship
19:35 – Finding ideal clients online
22:08 – Approaching clients without sounding spammy
22:55 – About asking the right questions to clients
28:10 – Targeting the right clients and dream clients
30:25 – How to automate client acquisition?
32:00 – The most important part of client acquisition
Guest
Special thanks to Brian Downard for joining this amazing episode. This is incredibly advantageous if you have your own podcast to promote, since the audience is already listening to podcasts, meaning they’re much more likely to subscribe to your own podcast.
Brian Downard
Co Founder, prospecting on demandHelping Marketing Pros Build Profitable Six-Figure Agencies They Can Systemize & Delegate
Transcript:
RK: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Growth Launchpad Podcast, where we present to you some heart to heart conversations with influencers and thought leaders who shared their journey with us. This is RK, the founder of WebNamaste and your host.
In today’s episode, we have someone really really special to me, who I have admired for a very long time. I discovered him through his laptop empires initiative that offered a huge curation of premium swipe files resources, and some examples of best performing campaigns. It had everything like graphics and client acquisition playbooks, etc. Now he works with his partner, Alex Schlinsky, at prospectingondemand.com So I present to you Brian Downward from prospectingondemand.com. let’s hear from Brian on how to avoid falling into the freelancer trap and what to do instead. It’s all yours, Brian, welcome to the show.
Brian: Thank you so much. for allowing me to be here, that was a very generous introduction. I appreciate that very much and again, I’ve been an admirer of yours for a long time as well. It’s funny this morning, I was just posting about how if you’re not willing to invest time and money into yourself, then why should you expect your clients to and what I admire so much about you is, even though we’re a world apart, literally, you’re willing to go seek out mentorship, go invest in yourself, spend that time, spend that money, learn from the people who you want to model your business in the form of and, obviously, the results spoke for themselves, because you’ve done really well and I’ve been really proud of your journey. So mutually at mutual admiration club here. Um, but yeah, I’m very excited to be here because we are talking about getting out of the freelancers trap. Um, you want me to just dive right in and do my thing because I could go for a while.
RK: I know, that’s why we all are here for Brian to listen from the hottest mouth of how, you know you were able to transform your business, your agency and your journey first, you know, the personal journey.
Brian: So stop me anytime if you got any questions, I’m more than happy to go into it. Um, but yeah, I don’t really want to talk too much about myself. I want the listeners and the people who are watching want to see and hear are, how they this matters to them and how they can grow their business but I will share my personal story to this very briefly and why I think it’s important you can probably relate to this. When I first got into marketing, we’re actually making iPhone apps and I thought that I needed to do everything. I thought I needed to go find the clients I needed to sell with, like pitch the clients, I had no idea how to sell. I was like pitching like, I was trying, I was so desperate to sell anything. Um, then I thought when I got a client Wow, now I have to do all the work. I have to do all the communication. I have to make sure it’s perfect.
What really happened is I created a case for myself, I created this track, we call the freelancers trap where now I’m stuck doing everything and I can’t really scale my business because I’m working in the business, not on it and I’m doing all the things. So what would happen was we get a client, we’d start the project, maybe you’ll make, you know, $ 6000 – $10,000 for a project. But it would take us a team of two or three months-ish to develop, and it would be done. The money had dried up. And because that’s all we spent those three months on. We had no opportunities, we had no new leads, we had no new clients, and the money dried up.
So it was a very difficult lesson to learn that if you really want to be able to grow your business, you actually need to do less. It’s pretty counterintuitive because I think there’s a big culture around hustle, hustle, hustle. Um, and I’m not gonna lie to you, There’s a lot of hard work involved in growing a business but When you start to do less things in your business, and you focus in on your area of genius, and then build a support team around you, that’s where the magic starts to happen, because you can really start to remove things from your plate. Um, so what I want to do, I’m going to just actually, it’s fun, like, I don’t want to just talk about this talk, I want to give actionable information and advice. So I’m not going to share my screen just yet. I could if we want to later, but it’s gonna be a podcast, so I won’t do that actually. But I do want to pull this one thing up because I want to make sure I say it right.
We have in our programme something we call a weekly delegation. Essentially, what it is, is you as a business owner, identifying at the end of every week, what took my energy, what non-co activities that I do, what can be delegated, what systems do I need, what can I stop doing? And then by starting to this, this is actually taking that one little bit please is how we help our clients scale. Everyone listening, watching use those five questions and ask yourself at the end of the week, again, what’s my energy? What non-co activities, what can be delegated? What systems do I need? What can I stop doing? And you’ll start to identify these areas in your business where you’re spending too much time, where you could hire help. So you can then focus on opportunity creation, generating revenue, hiring and scaling the business. So I think the big overarching lesson here is to stop doing all the things in your business, find a team to support you. I would love yours and I can talk about you know, some of these systems later the things we’re going to need. But I would love your take on this and how you were in a freelancers trap possibly and how you got out of that. I’d love your take.
RK: Absolutely. So I actually started doing freelancing and doing a day job at the same time. So the entire day time I was working as an SEO analyst in a company in Bangalore and the entire night I was working with my clients in Canada. So, you know I hardly slept. But my I felt like I was doing something really meaningful and it’s so interesting that I started my business like my freelancing and I quit my job and started my own agency during the recession, 2008 recession! You know.
Brian: That’s crazy. Well, everyone was going
RK: From acquisition to now another. Absolutely. So that was the best time for me to start because people were investing a lot of money online from traditional marketing because they can get measurable results. So that is when I started doing SEO and as you said, you know, before, I like this analogy of a lemonade stand. You know, for running a business of a lemonade stand, You just need sugar, some lemon and some ice-cold water. That’s it! and every morning, you just have to think about how to get new customers. That’s it! There is nothing else to figure out. You don’t have to figure out you know, like, What flavour can I add tomorrow? Or if Should I bring new ice creams to the store? Or should I start serving pineapple juice? you’re like.
Brian: I’m really glad you brought this up. This is really, really important. Thank you. I love that analogy. Um, what I see another big part of the freelancers trap is taking on random clients that don’t align with like what you said a system, If you can niche down pick an industry to serve, I’m just going to say, chiropractors, if you’re new, don’t go work with chiropractors, please, It’s just an example.
But having a repeatable process to once they sign up with you get them this, this, this, this and they’re going to get the result and it’s repeatable. versus if you sign a chiropractor and then a dentist or whatever restaurant, and then a hair salon. And one of these Facebook ads and one the social media one is SEO and one doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, then you’re like, Oh my god, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. And you need to have that lemonade stand needs to be a repeatable process. So that’s another way to really escape the freelancer’s trap is pick an audience you want to serve, go deep, integrate yourself into that community and figure out how you can really serve them.
I think another interesting part of the freelancers, traps a lot of freelancers tend to only offer a part of the solution, Hey, I’ll build you a website, or Hey, I can do copywriting or Hey, I can make I can do design work. But that’s only a piece of the solution. And when your client doesn’t get the whole solution, they’re going be a little upset and probably not want to work with you again. And if you’re on a retainer being paid monthly, once they start to realize they’re not getting the whole thing that they need or once you’re going to be fired, they’re going to move on with someone who can provide In that whole solution, and again, at the freelancer level, you’re really competing on price like you go on to these websites or people like the job boards free up, not free up, but on any site like that, you know, and then you’re competing on price, instead of value where you should be competing on value, how much value can you bring to your clients and they will allow you to charge a premium and now you can deliver a premium service if you’re trying to deliver a premium service and a complete solution, you know, for a couple of bucks an hour, it’s not going to be successful long term. So really start to look at the industry and niche you want to serve and ask yourself how can I create a complete solution for this person?
Let me give you a really specific example. A lot of agencies out there they do lead generation right like hey, we’ll do pay per click ads or Facebook ads and we will get you leads. It’s great. A lot of businesses they get leads and they don’t close and what happens when you do your job great, you got those leads but your clients didn’t close them it doesn’t matter, you’re going to be fired so you need to focus on how you can provide the whole solution.
How can you convert leads, How can you automatically nurture them through texts and emails? How can you have a system that actually gets them from a say elite on the internet to a phone call with your client? I’m going to give you a quick example, a powerful technique. We have clients that have people on their team who call their clients leads on their behalf so they’re sitting in front of the thing as leads are coming in my agency would call my clients leads say hey, thanks so much for checking out jams realtor business I saw you’re interested in buying a home let me connect you with Jan.
and we’re providing this invaluable service and now they’re converting now you’re not just the lead agency, your conversion agency and you’re providing the whole solution. This makes you invaluable. So when something crazy like a global pandemic happens, and the world just goes into a spiral you’re now invaluable, you’re not just nice to have, if you’re just nice to have, they’re going to fire you when shit gets bad, or they realise you can provide the whole solution so really start to think about who you can serve the best how you can provide the whole solution and how you can develop a repeatable system around that solution.
RK: Absolutely. This is some great insights. Thank you so much. So if you have to drill down, you know the entire thing into just three easy steps, what would you choose?
Brian: Sure. So, I will say that there are simple steps, but they’re not easy steps, right? It’s simple in concept, but I think before I share them with you, the most one of the most important things I can express to every entrepreneur out there that are or you want to be an entrepreneur, or you are an entrepreneur and you’re trying to grow that business right now. You need to not worry about having this. First of all, don’t ever look for the easy answer and don’t expect it to be perfect the first time. Its never ever going to be perfect the first time. There are very few one-hit-wonder companies out there and those people I don’t want to say got lucky but most people will never be an overnight success. You need to earn it. You need to put in the time, the effort, you need to optimise need to measure elite athletes, the top athlete’s football, NBA cricket for you over there. They train daily, they know their numbers and they track how much calories they’re intaking, how much calories they’re burning all these things so they can be at peak performance and be a top-performing athlete.
If you want to be a top-performing business, you want to make real money and grow a real business you need to know your numbers. You need to be okay with imperfect and know every day you’re going to get better you’re going to measure, you’re going to optimise you’re gonna get better. I want to say that on the front end before I share these because I would say they’re simple to understand these three concepts, but the execution is difficult because a lot of people give up too soon. They give up right off right before they get to the top and they’re finally going to get some momentum because they just aren’t willing to stick with the journey. So let’s break it down three things. Very simple. It’s only three words, prospecting, sales, fulfilment.
These are the three core tenants of any agency and pretty much any business really. And the idea is one prospecting. You need a mechanism to attract leads and clients sales, you need a way to actually convert them, what is your offer, what is your pricing? And three in a way to actually fulfil that? How are you going to get results? How are you going to keep clients how are you going to retain them, make them happy and actually grow the business because frankly, if you are every month getting a couple clients lose a couple of clients getting losing it, you’re going to be stuck, you need to retain clients. That’s how you scale because two thousand dollars recurring for 10, 20, 50. And now people are paying you you’re invaluable and you have that income.
So those are really the three core tenants of any business, prospecting, sales, fulfilment. And if you can lock those things in, you’ll be very successful. So let me give you guys another really tangible tip right now that you can go run with right now this is exactly one of the first things we do when people join our program how we help them get out of the freelancer’s trap, is find a white label agency who you can pay to do the work for your clients. So for example, if I have a dentist paying $2,000 a month, I haven’t seen elsewhere in the world that I can pay $500 a month and they’ll handle it for me. Now, I’m pocketing 1500 dollars, and the work is being done. It’s hours and hours a week that I no longer have to do.
And I can go back and focus on the business, get another client $2,000 a month 500 to them 1500 more for me and you can keep growing, now you’re not stuck doing all the damn work and if you’re like Brian, and I’m the best Facebook advertiser in the world, no one can do better than me, or whatever the skill is shut up. That’s not true. You can hire someone because that’s a bad mentality to have. First of all, you need to believe and know there are people just as good, if not better than you that you should hire to help you be better.
With that said, if you’re already really good at Facebook ads and like, why would I hire someone for $500 a month, I can do this, you need to create what we call the SOP’s, a standard operating procedure, which is just a document and some videos, a documentation of how you do a process. And there can be SOP’S for anything your sales, your prospecting your fulfillment, but now if you’re a ninja at Facebook ads or SEO or whatever, you have a document, an internal document for your business that now I can go hire someone $10 $20 $30 an hour who can execute this standard operating procedure on my behalf. So there’s that is right there. Also, another critical element is those standard operating procedures that once you have them in your business, the sky’s the limit I’m actually going to show is this can I share my screen here? Is that okay? Yeah,
RK: Of course. Yes, absolutely.
Brian: Yeah, I wasn’t gonna I wasn’t planning on sharing this now that I bring it up. I think it’s really important. Um… You guys are going to love this.
RK: Actually, I really love that you are condensing like years of your learning into a 30-minute episode.
Brian: Please guys, listen to these words do not learn the hard way I spend years and years they’re going to shut out the hallway, go find mentorship, if or whether it’s free for now. And then you make a little money and then reinvest back into mentors. It’s critical. My business took off and I started investing in mentorship. Um, let me hear it is right here.,all right, quick screen share. So we call this our infinitely scalable agency roadmap. This is actually from a worksheet we did at our own event and we have these channels alongside so I talked about prospecting. So prospecting is really this area, prospecting and qualifying sales is your sales and offering and then your fulfillment is onboarding clients’ success and your value ladder. So these elements, I was talking about SOP’S, you need an SOP and a process for each one of these things like right like your lead might come from Facebook or Facebook ads. So these are just three examples.
LinkedIn is a fantastic process. But having an SOP for prospecting channel, that what’s your process for qualifying? What is your sales process? Where are your offers documents and what is the cost? What are they entail? What are the benefits? What is included? What is the expectation for clients, when you onboard them? How are you onboarding? What are the emails, the videos, the expectations you’re setting? How are you ensuring they’re getting results? So all of these pieces, you essentially need a standard operating procedure around. But again, you might look at that and feel like oh my god, it’s so wrong I don’t have these things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, shut up, who cares? You can work towards it. They’re not supposed to have this overnight. And you know, when you do have those elements, again, like an athlete, you measure to optimise and get better.
You have to acknowledge, this is an infinite game we call, we call business an infinite game, at least in our coaching programme. Because when you get to that goal you set for yourself, you’re just going to send another one, you’re just going to keep going and going and hurt, you might have a setback or two, then you’re gonna have to get that back. Maybe you’re just it’s a game that has to keep going and if you’re not willing to play that game and ride the roller coaster, you’re not going to cut out the entrepreneur. So you have to start perfect action, get things done. This is how you get out of the freelancer’s trap.
RK: I just did a post today on you know, success is always messy and you know, it’s like a tip of the iceberg that people see success, but they don’t know what lies beneath it. So success is not easy it’s always messy. So with that said, I think you know, we can get to the most important segment of our social, which is the heart to heart conversation. I want to ask you three questions and each of the questions are something which the entrepreneurs in general, they are always struggling to figure it out and would like to hear from you on how you would handle it, or how you already tackled it.
Here is the first one- Where can I find my ideal clients online?
Brian: Wow. So this is going to greatly depend on who your ideal clients are. Now, a lot of people I’d say 80 ish percent of the industries are on LinkedIn. But frankly, there are some industries like honestly, like the makeup, for example, like hair salons and stuff. They’re not on there, they’re on Facebook, they’re in Facebook groups, and they’re on Instagram.
Oh, exactly. So, again, it’s why it’s so important to identify an audience to figure out who you want to serve so you can start to identify where do they hang out online? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Facebook groups Instagram? Is it online communities, niche forums, online associations, even offline meetups? Where are they meeting up? Like, if you wanted to go work with marketing agencies, you should have came to our event at pod live in Tampa, Florida was 130 successful marketing agencies there, right? And you would go become a part of the industry now and make connections and friends.
So you first have to figure out who the audience is, then you need to identify where they are online offline and then that’s when you can start the process and then I know and I meant to say, what we’re gonna go into next, but I’ll let you ask that question. So that’s what I would say and if anyone is unsure, we have a free Facebook group. I can maybe drop a link to that or you can plug that later and check that out, ask us we’re more than glad to just give you a quick tip like Hey guys, my audience is this, Where can I find them now, I want to be very clear, there are some audiences, especially the ones that are hit up a lot, gym, dentists, chiropractors, that are very, very, very, very, very, very difficult to get in front of no matter what you do.
I can talk about some strategies on how to get to them. We call this market infiltration, which is kind of where you go back door a little bit. Not anything unethical, but earning the I’ll kind of explain that in a minute. I don’t want to get too far ahead without getting in to understand who your audience is, and then you’ll find those places online.
RK: Absolutely. I will add the links in the show notes when the podcast is released.
Which brings me to the next question, which is, what’s the best way to approach them? After you find out here are the ideal target audience, you don’t want to sound spammy when you reach out to them because probably they’re getting a dozen other people reaching out to them in the same way. So what is the best way to approach them without sounding spammy?
Brian: Alright, so you might not love the answer, but I will share some stuff with you, it’s going to be the same thing, it greatly depends on the niche you’re working in, we call the blue-collar space, which is like kind of like construction, home Improvement like guys who are working out in the field, those people you need to be really, really direct with. People in the white-collar space like lawyers, doctors, you need to be a bit more casual and you can’t be as direct. I’m gonna actually share, you can drop this link to this is one of my all-time favourite resources. It’s like five LinkedIn outreach scripts and frankly, they work on any platform, not just LinkedIn. I just happen to call LinkedIn when I made this almost a year ago. I’ve updated these a few times, but this is one of my most popular resources.
So have a casual connection request. I’m not going to go through the connection requests, we’ll talk about how to reach them, one of my favourites so in industries where people like to network, a lot Like realtors and mortgage brokers, we have this support and referring angle. This is basically approaching them with a mutually beneficial conversation with “Hey, we’re in the same space, Let’s see how we can help each other”, open-ended question,this one is powerful because when you can ask the right questions, now you’re not making it about yourself, you’re making it about them and you’re identifying a way you could possibly help them. I don’t want to go too deep into this. I’m gonna actually, um…
You guys are gonna get some goodies here… You guys are getting some goodies.
RK: It’s like Christmas at
Brian: a really valuable so this is how we set appointments from an open-ended question. The idea is you connect with them, then you ask a qualifying question like hey, how long have you been in real estate for work? They say if they say like two weeks like whoa, you’re not qualified. They say two years, five years. 10 years Okay, maybe this person is probably qualified,Great. Now pain question, Awesome! So where are you typically finding most of your clients? Most of my clients come from referrals. Now you have you’re qualified to have a pain because you know, there’s a better way than just referrals. Now you can extend an olive branch. Hey, would it be cool if I shared a couple of ideas with you around how to get clients without referrals? Now you asked for permission to serve them. And they come back, say, Sure. And you can do that. Do you see this? By the way? It says, Yes. All right. I think I think I wasn’t sharing the full screen.
This is what I was trying to show you. This is the process of qualifying questions, pain question. And that’s a big thing. I think we do wrong as marketers, we assume they want our help, instead of us asking for permission. So it’s so subtle that we’re working with our clients on some of these open-ended questions the other day and, um, one of the questions was the client worked on us, Hey, can I send you more local people that need roofs? we tweaked it very slightly that’s making an assumption that they need it right? So instead we tweaked it, it’s so subtle that says, hey, do you need help getting more people that need roofs redone? We asked for permission. Do you need help? Not Hey, can I send you if you’re making an assumption? It’s like going into a doctor’s office and they throw pills at you and say take it and they walk out versus a doctor saying, hey, Where does it hurt? Where’s the pain? and then they prescribe you. That’s what people want, they want to be prescribed. They do not want a one size fits all solution.
This is a great way to get them to open up about what their unique pain is. And I want to Yeah, so that’s, that’s it right there. Cool. Is prospecting offer. This is like, I don’t want to talk about this one. This one. A lot of people get wrong. I’m gonna move past it. But then we have the community builder. This is my favourite. I actually invite them off of LinkedIn into a Facebook group, where I then engage them with an open-ended question, check this out. That’s a powerful shit. I’m going to show you here, Kundera Khedira, join my group. I asked her open-ended question, what’s the number one focus in your business right now? She says booking more meetings. I said, Hey, would it be cool if I connected you with someone on our team who can give you more ideas about how to book meetings? She said, Sure.
I connected her with Alex, My business partner, she says, Hey, thanks for reaching out, ask her a couple qualifying questions. She answers , she books the call now she is a client. This was a less than a 10-day process of joining the group, messaging her that, now she’s a client. I want to show you how powerful this is to um, now she’s already in our groups promoting us and she’s barely been a client for that long like this person here. So, Chris, I’m sure it wasn’t, might have in a minute. Anyways, she’s already an advocate of our program, which is amazing and then the fifth and final one, which I’m just going to share my screen is basically a research angle, this can run really well to get people’s guards down and you’re basically saying, Hey, thanks for connecting with me, I see you actually doing really well in the roofing space.
I’ve actually got a project for roofers, but I’d really love your feedback on, Would it be okay, if I asked you a couple of simple questions, and now you’re playing with their ego, making them feel good, you don’t have a pitch, you just have something that you’re working on that now their interest is piqued. And all you’re gonna do is ask them a few questions, get on a phone call, and now you have an opportunity to really learn your industry and still make an offer to make sense. Now, I’m gonna have one half before we move on to the next question. Um, by the way, I’m just real quick. I know I told you I’d like to hop in a little bit. Okay, on time we can go a little over totally fine. If you’re okay with that. Good. We got time.
RK: Yeah, absolutely.
Brian: Great. I want to make sure I get all this content for you guys. Um, so one of the most powerful offers we have is called the interview offer. A lot of people when they’re prospecting, they want to go wide in terms of they just reach out as many people as possible mass message masses. It’s okay if your messaging is on point and you’re doing it the right way but we also encourage you to be very surgical and specific, on a weekly basis, identify five people who could be a dream client like a dream cleanse as I could like, they’re not just gonna randomly stumble upon them on LinkedIn, and then they’re gonna connect with you, you need to go to them, find them on LinkedIn, seek them out and then now reach out with what we call the interview offer exactly what you did to get my time. I’m a very, very busy guy.
I don’t normally just talk to people for a half-hour an hour unless they’re paying me money. I will, however, get on interviews because I know I need to promote myself and I love to help people. So when you can approach dream clients in dream referral sources with this interview offer. Now you have a relationship with someone who you could now possibly see how you could support each other, powerful and a great example of this, So Shopify with e-commerce clients, Shopify plus is a platform for only like premium people to pay you to make a certain amount of money make this stuff, I just google the estimate, what are the top retailers using Shopify plus a list went on Google typed in marketing as a title ruin a couple of business days. Now to the list of the top e-commerce clients that could be dream clients.
I know we’re spending money and making money. I know how to forge a relationship which is so powerful and yeah, that’s all I gotta say. It’s my favourite, but it’s like being it’s like going wide and his at the same time because so many people like it’s like just doing the randomness and connecting like it can work to a point but you need to take your business and life by the horns and go to the people you want to serve and really work with. That’s how you’ll be successful
RK: The dream, the Dream 100 list.
Brian: We felt that was overwhelming, We call the dream five, just rotates every week, taking an hour, identify people for 10-15 minutes, take 45 minutes to reach out to them.
RK: Perfect. So you actually touched upon this point so I’m going to ask you the third question anyway, How can we automate client acquisition, where, you know, we have so many tools that we have these days, like apolo.io, seamless.ai, and so many other like, find their needs, and there are so many automation tools out there. And also built with you know, so using a bit with.com search, we can actually find out who are using certain technology to power their business like Shopify or WooCommerce, or MailChimp, or whatever it is.
So we have so many tools out there and a lot of people are stuck and so many people don’t even know that they can automate this. But yeah, how would you recommend someone to go get started in this?
Brian: Yeah, this is a loaded question because it’s really going to depend on the price point of what you’re selling and the trust you already have in your audience, I’m going to be really honest with everyone here listening, you can automate most of the client acquisition up to a point If you have a new offer, even if it’s cheaper, like under 500 a month, like even a few hundred bucks a month, it’s very, very, very difficult.
Even once you’ve automatically started a relationship with someone to get them to trust you enough to buy from you. We’ve been doing this for years, we got a big audience, getting like, our sales pages still only convert maybe three to 5%. That’s the industry average, right?
Like, everyone who comes to see something isn’t going to necessarily buy it so you can automate LinkedIn. Great, it’s powerful. There are tools out there like you mentioned, you can automate LinkedIn and automate conversations. You can hire people to respond to the conversations and set appointments for you. But if you are unsure, I actually have a trick question I had to ask. Because if you are unwilling to get on a phone call with someone and actually talk to them and sell them and build a relationship, you’re gonna fail.
If you were sitting by the computer thinking you could automate your client acquisition, especially, especially for high-end services, even if you’re trying to sell a course, but it’s your first time selling it, you’re gonna need to speak to people, you’re gonna need to validate it.
And if you’re unwilling to do that piece, you’re gonna fail straight on. Yeah, you can automate conversation, starting connecting that piece, you can hire people to do this for you and ultimately, how you really, really automate it is you hire people to do it for you, you hire someone to handle your prospecting, you hire someone to handle your sales, but I’m gonna be really straight up because I see this happen way too often.
If you’re a new business owner, or even in the beginning stages, you want to scale and you think you can go pay someone else, a cut-rate, like a cheaper rate, like less than even like under 1000 $2,000 a month, which could be a lot of people, even if you’re paying that. You can’t expect someone else to do something for your business that you can’t do and show them how to do, unless you can pay like five grand out of pocket to go get a sales ninja that does not need your help.
You cannot expect to go hire some guy on commission to close deals for you if you can’t even close deals yourself because you don’t know your audience you don’t know your offer, he won’t he or she won’t either. So you have to be willing to make your own money and opportunities and engage with your audience, truly understand them. If you’re just trying to be an outsider, like it’s, This is so funny, I’m not gonna piss the world off by giving away my masterclass that I’m doing today, but I will show you one funny slide. This is what you look like.
When you come into industries and you don’t actually want to help you look like a crazy person. You’re like, yo, you want marketing services, you bought the buy my shit like, No, you need to be like look what how Okay, I’m gonna say the next slide.
The next slide, it’s funny, even to be part of the band. You need to be like you need to build a large you do know to play an instrument. He knows how to dress right? Like all the things and now you’re an insider If you’re an outsider trying to like make money and decide and not really give a shit or talk to the people you want to work with, understand their needs look like that crazy cannibal, like give me your money. So, guys hear these words, please, This has been powerful, I’ve thrown a lot at you here today, a lot of stuff I crammed into the session.
So take it, to run with it, and I’m here to support anyone who needs additional help along the way.
RK: Absolutely. Thank you so much for it. Actually, this the last question, right? It’s so important because a lot of people try to automate things before even figuring it out completely or getting it right. So I have done this mistake several times in my business as well, trying to delegate things before even I mastered it. Right. So you should start delegating things only after you have complete mastery. So that whatever objection that comes in that journey, you are equipped to answer, you know, to help your team to handle the objection.
Brian: I want to clarify here too. I think the only exception to that is fulfillment, like if you aren’t good at Facebook ads, but the people you want to serve to need Facebook ads, don’t go invest the time money to learn it, hire a white label agency to help you do it. Where I’m really talking about is the sales are even prospecting for the most part. You can hire someone pretty cheap to get you conversations with people like it’s not hard to do that necessarily, but the art of converting that conversation into an opportunity, crafting an irresistible offer is something you have to own you have to know.
RK: Absolutely. So this is great. I mean, as I said, it’s like Christmas all over again.
Brian: You got the group link. Yes, that stuff, guys.
RK: Thank you and how can you know the listeners and viewers find you online? And probably also can tell us what book are you reading right now? You know, or the book that has
Brian: prospectingondemand.com and have a bit of a financial kick lately coming on so I got her mid-70s I will teach you Oh,
RK: yes um,
Brian: Finances are so boring to me. I’m just like make as much money as possible and then you’ll want to worry about that shit. That’s caught how I kind of think. But I think it’s powerful and he really talks about it in a casual fun way. So yeah, that’s where I’m at. It’s my reading but you want a recommendation for all y’all trying to scam? Me.
That’s crazy. I still have to jump to see the top of my it’s probably
RK: The last time we spoke you were reading the Tools of the Titans. Yeah yeah. Great. I always like asking this question to entrepreneurs because that’s really amazing. Great. So find you on prospecting on demand
Brian: Like a month or two plus like what these books are read in but I’m starting to cool, yeah crossing the automate.com. Appreciate you, my man, I gotta hop here but we will catch up soon. Okay.
RK: Absolutely, Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Brian: Of course man. Thank you
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