2 “Paradigm-Shifting” Business Reads that have had my thoughts spinning lately…matched betting explained
All leads are not equal.
How to go from a 10% to 70% Close Ratio
Change your market, not your price
How to aim better in your marketing
These are by Justin Brooke / Justin Brooke from his daily edge newsletter.
I’ve also had similar ideas enter my mental space lately, and get reflected back to me by new roomie Alex J Moscow
I think it’s time for me to start taking this information in and stop working with people/markets that I’m not super excited about, and that don’t easily lunge forth to work with me either. Nor see or get my full value. This ends soon. Fuck.
[Article Starts]:
All leads are not equal.
There are good leads and bad leads. And the whole game of lead gen is about separating the two.
Right? With me so far?
::rubs goatee, cracks neck, and takes a deep breath::
Then whyyyyyy does everyone think a “free strategy session” is a good lead gen tool?
Wait, scratch that, it’s too much of an absolute.
If your target customers are broke newbies who have free time to sit in on “free strategy sessions” hoping to just get a few questions answered before the call turns into a pitch they can’t afford…
If that’s your good lead…
Then never mind, you’re good, stop reading, and keep doing free strategy sessions.
To each their own, but my idea of a good lead is someone who is rich enough to afford my fee and too busy to do what I do him or herself.
The other day I wrote about aiming your marketing for better customers and it applies here too.
I don’t like FSS’s for the positioning. It kinda says you have time to give away.
Usually successful people don’t have time to give away for free. It just doesn’t send the right message.
I prefer a case study that outlines your strategy, its use case, and the results.
Same goes if you sell hockey pucks, flashlights, software, or services.
What’s the big diff?
Now when we get on the phone they already know what they are buying. They know what my strategy is, how I use it, and the type of results it can generate. They know whether it’s right for them or not.
I don’t have to “sell” them. They come onto my call already desiring my product.
Not to mention I’m not trying to transition the call from FSS to sales. Talk about an uphill battle.
My leads know going into the call that it’s a sales call. They’re calling me to buy, or share some concerns before they buy.
It’s a much different call now. They’re doing all the talking now. And my positioning as an expert is still in tact, more so I think.
It’s this tiny re-aiming of my marketing that took me from 10% close rate to 70% close rate.
To each their own though. I’m gunna keep doing it my way. Would love to have you on my team though.
We can wear shirts that say “F&@$ Free Strategy Sessions, We Get Paid” hahahaha
Your #1 Fan,
Justin Brooke
Founder of AdSkills.com
P.S. If you want to read more about this type of “aiming your marketing” stuff, check out Positioning and Marketing Warfare by Al Ries & Jack Trout. Two of the 20 books I saved from Irma before I left. Tomorrow I’ll tell you the other 18.
[Part 2]
Yesterday I sent an invoice to someone for $20k and today they wrote back asking when to start.
$20k just look over their ad accounts once and month and make sure they are doing everything correctly – as well as suggest improvements.
Now I know what you are thinking.
Your brain is immediately trying to come up with arguments for why it’s not possible for you to do this, but it’s easy for me. Or maybe you’re thinking I’m an ass for charging that much.
Maybe your brain is saying “Well yeah if I had his past clients I could do that too.”
Or maybe yours is saying “Yeah easy to say when you’ve spent $10,000,000+ on ads.”
You’re right and you’re wrong.
About all of it.
Let’s discuss…
First let me tell you about the beginning of my career as a traffic guy for hire.
I was an unknown when I started selling paid traffic services. I had the confidence, the skills, but just not the recognition.
Maybe you can relate?
Maybe you’re a civilian, to me a civilian is a regular business owner. Someone who might hire a media buyer like me or one of my customers.
If you’re a “civilian” don’t drift off, this will hit home for you too.
What do you do when you don’t have the credibility, but you still want to earn top dollar? Well, you DEFINITELY don’t do what I did.
I thought I was such a hot shot that I would undercut everyone, steal they customers, and takeover the planet industry. Didn’t work out like that.
Instead what happened was I attracted all the broke people that my competitors were happily turning away.
Joke was on me.
The hard part about selling your products for too low of a price is it becomes harder to support that product. Every dollar you take away from the price is a dollar you take away from your marketing budget, from your customer support budget, etc.
And because I attracted a cheaper clientele, combined with less money to support that clientele, I ended up slowly getting a bad rep.
First it was one customer who wasn’t happy.
Of course I blamed it on them. They didn’t have the right cart, the right tracking, the right funnel.
At the end of the day I learned it was still on me. It doesn’t make the client feel better knowing that it was their fault. That doesn’t make them tell their friends “Oh he’s great to work with, I just effed it all up, and that’s why it didn’t work out.”
Noooo…
They still go tell their friends “Nah, didn’t work out with that guy. I spent more than I made. Was a loss.”
Thankfully I changed gears quickly.
That’s a reputation that spreads faster than a chubby kid picking up a dropped donut.
It was only when I raised my prices that I was able to put in the right amount of time and support to make my customer thrilled to be paying me. Because I was getting paid enough I was able to take less clients, which meant more time for the ones I had, which meant better results.
And that’s the reputation that’s helped me get where I am today.
So how did I raise my prices?
How did I still convert 70% of my sales calls while charging double, even triple what I was before?
I just moved where I was aiming my marketing.
Most of you that feel like you can’t raise the prices of your products or services, it’s because your marketing is aimed at a market that will only pay up to x dollars.
My friend Jim Whelan comes to mind.
Jim sells $3 bottles of fabic softener for $30 on Amazon. He does it because the market of the store he buys them from is to discount shoppers. Then he buys them cheap, points his marketing at a market who can’t easily get out to a store so must pay $30 to get the same product.
The morale of the story is don’t change your price, change your market.
This client who’s about to pay me $20k, he’s not in the same market where consultants are struggling to make $2,000. In fact, he thinks my price is low. He thinks he’s getting the better deal.
And yes, because of his business and his market I’ll make him an extra $100k – $1mil this year. He sells financial newsletters, and I’ve gotten quite good at that market, so it’ll be very much worth his investment.
That’s what you need to look for.
Who would think your high price is low to them?
And who would think your high price is an awesome investment.
Change your market, not your price.
I love you all, have a great weekend.
Your #1 Fan,
Justin Brooke
Founder of AdSkills.com
adskills.com/edge is where peeps can subscribe for free.