Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Lead Generation

How I Lost a Great Client…

By Charlie Cook   |   April 16, 2008

Ever have a client you really liked working with quit? You know how upsetting it can be.

This week, one of my favorite clients, wrote me to let me know that he wanted to stop working with me after just two months.

Did I blow it, tick him off or what? You be the judge.

Kris Simmons, of FireEye Productions owns a web and video production company. In 2007 he’d seen a devastating slow down in business and been forced to layoff most of his staff. Kris had signed up as a mentoring client in early February of 2008.

He thought his business was a victim of the slowing economy but believed there were still plenty of clients out there if only he could get their attention and their business. Then 8 weeks after signing up Kris quit!

Why? Why did Kris quit as a mentoring client?

From the start, Kris jumped on each strategy and idea I provided him and put as many of them as he could to use. The result?

Kris sold 30 projects in less than two months, which in his words “Is HUGE!” In fact it was more than he’d ever signed up in any two-month period since he started his business eight years ago and to boot he did it in the midst of a recession.

Kris wrote me to say that he had to stop working with me because even with outsourcing 90% of the new projects, he was working around the clock to keep up with the demand that I’d helped him tap. With all the new clients he’d landed he didn’t have time to keep up with the mentoring program and wanted to stop working together, at least for now.

I’ll miss working with Kris. He was fun to work with and most importantly followed through on the strategies and ideas I shared with him.

Want to benefit from my misfortune?

Fill Kris’s spot.

I now have one new space available in my mentoring program and if you act quickly and apply and you’re accepted you could be the next person to discover how to get more business than you ever imagined.

Use this link to apply >>

To your success,

Charlie
www.marketingforsuccess.com

P.S. Be forewarned! Kris had the same complaint that other clients have mentioned in the past. He told me I should have warned him about the tsunami of business that he could expect.

So consider yourself warned. The marketing strategies and ideas I share with my clients can bring you in more new business than you ever imagined.

P.S. II Want to see what Kris had to say? Use this link to view his video comments online >>

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3 Breakthrough Marketing Ideas to Help You Reach Your Goals…

By Charlie Cook   |   April 3, 2008

Running your business often means starting work early in the mornings, working evenings and the occasional Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn’t you like to cut back this year, ease up a little, maybe take a few Friday afternoons off or get away on vacation this summer? How can you do this and at the same time build marketing momentum?

You know that you could expand your business if your marketing was more effective, but you barely have time to keep up with your present workload, much less take on a whole new set of business marketing ideas and tasks.

How can you take your small business to the next level and work less this year?

The secret of course is in the 80/20 rule. For most people 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your efforts. Now imagine you knew where to focus your time so it consistently helped you to get results. You could easily increase your sales by a factor of five.

In marketing most people are using the equivalent of smoke signals or Morse code. They’re using outdated marketing ideas and strategies.

Instead of using a marketing system they’re using bits and pieces.
That’s like trying to go somewhere in a car without an engine. It might look good sitting in your driveway but it certainly won’t get you where you want to go.

If you’re struggling to grow your business the solution is simple. Use a proven marketing system, one that can put your marketing in gear and help you achieve your goals.

Ready to finally discover how to make more and work less? Use this link to get the details >>

3 Ways to Reach Your Business Goals

1. Plan To Get More Done With Less Effort
If you want to make better use of your time start by setting aside time each week get the knowledge you need and to implement the proven marketing ideas you get. Make room for continuous improvement on your agenda.

Take out your calendar and block out an hour once a week, preferably first thing in the morning, when you’ll give yourself a mental vacation from meetings, answering the phone, and email. Use this time to evaluate your current efforts. It’s like stepping the scale each day.

Identify what to do more of, what to change and where to get help.
– What’s working and what isn’t?

– Where are you getting the best results?

– Which keywords are attracting the most prospects?

– Which marketing messages?

– What sequence of information results in the highest conversion rates?

– What follow-up strategy is working?
Etc.

If you keep managing and marketing your business the same way, what do you think will happen? You’ll get the same results. If you want a breakthrough you’re going to need to make a change and more from piecemeal marketing to using a proven marketing system. Interested?

Use this link to discover how to make more, work less and achieve your goals >>

2. Get More Attention With Less Effort
A common misconception is that marketing success is a result of plain old persistence. Most people think that using the same type of marketing message and advertising that everyone else uses will build their “brand” or grow their business.

Is using the same approach your competitors use helping you get all the attention you want for your business? Probably not.

Your marketing message is the first place to start. Replace it with a message that clearly and succinctly explains how you help your clients. Prospects respond when you speak to their needs.

On average, my clients report that composing and using a client focused marketing message increases their response rate by 400 percent. That’s 4 times as many leads generated with the same effort.

3. Generate More Qualified Leads and Sales with Less Effort
Getting attention is the first step in marketing; getting qualified prospects the second. You want more prospects so you can convert them to clients and increase sales, but you don’t have time to make more calls or write more emails or letters. But you can get more people to contact you and buy from you each month and reduce your long-term marketing costs.

Establish systems for prompting prospects to contact you. Then automate every function of your marketing you can.

Want to increase your marketing reach and your sales while reducing your marketing costs and efforts? Use this link to get the details >>

I leverage the web, related software and a set of proven systems to manage my marketing and my sales. The result is that I can manage a continually growing enterprise with less effort. You can do the same.

You deserve some R and R this year – and you can get it and still grow your small business with the above three strategies. Start by setting the time aside, making a plan to implement your marketing ideas and a vacation plan so you can enjoy your life while steadily increasing your revenue.

Best,

Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Save You Time and Make You Money

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What’s The #1 Lead Generation Small Business Marketing Mistake…

By Charlie Cook   |   September 11, 2007

“My business is like a roller coaster. When things are going well, I’m too busy working on projects to do any marketing. Then I finish those projects and don’t have enough leads to market to.

How can I smooth out these ups and downs and grow my business even more?”
– Bill, a management consultant Cambridge MA

Ever wish you had more leads to pursue when sales take a dip or you finish a project?

Or, even better, leads to pursue before sales take a dip or the work slows down?

With a steady flow of business, you could manage staffing and cash flow better and significantly increase your annual revenue.

When I asked Bill what he did to follow up with the hundreds of senior managers he worked with each year, he sheepishly told me, “nothing”. He didn’t have a follow up strategy. I asked him how many business cards he’d collected at the last talk he gave to over 50 senior managers. His answer? “None”.

Don’t be mislead; Bill is a successful consultant. He works with CEOs and top-level managers at Fortune 500 companies. But he was making one big mistake, and it was keeping him from being as successful as he could be.

What’s the mistake Bill was making? Bill didn’t have a lead generation system or a follow up system. When there was a drop in the demand for his services, he had to start his marketing from scratch.

Want to avoid making this common marketing mistake?

Use this link to find out how >>

How can you get off the roller coaster and bring in a steady stream of business?

Think like a squirrel.

As fall approaches here in Old Greenwich, CT the dozens of squirrels in my neighborhood are busy doing what squirrels do; they’re collecting nuts and storing them away. They instinctively know that the more food they gather, the happier and fatter they’ll be, come February.

They have a system for collecting nuts each fall that gets them through the long winter.

Weathering the ups and down of the business cycles requires the same kind of planning. To come out on top, you need a marketing system for collecting leads, storing them and following up on them. The more qualified leads you have in your database, the happier you’ll be.

What’s the easiest way to generate more leads every month? Use this link >>

A lead generation system gives you an organized way of contacting prospects, qualifying them, prompting them to contact you and helping them make the decision to buy from you.

Is your lead generation system working as well as it could be to bring in a steady stream of new clients? Is it providing you with new sales from long-standing clients?

Put Your Lead Generation Marketing System to the Test

1. Do you have a system?

Bill had no system whatsoever for generating leads. He was getting occasional referrals, but referrals alone weren’t growing his business.

2. Does it work to prompt 10% of all people exposed to you or your marketing to contact you?

Whether you are giving talks to large gatherings of your target market, as Bill is, or marketing online through your website, the basic concept behind a lead generation system is the same. You want to motivate as many qualified prospects as you can to contact you.

Most small businesses and service professionals have websites, but few sites generate more than a trickle of leads. The graphics, content and marketing messages on your site should prompt a minimum of 10% of site visitors to contact you. If this isn’t happening, your site is broken and you need to fix it.

3. Do you have a sequenced system of communication for converting prospects to clients?

In my experience, only 1 out of 10 small business owners have a system for converting prospects in place. So if you don’t you’re not alone but if you want to grow your business you need one.

Once a prospect expresses an interest, you’ve gotten them to take the first step in the process. It doesn’t mean they want you to sell them. Usually that is the quickest way to kill the sale.

Prospects want to get to know you, trust you and discover the value of your product and services. Whatever media you use, your follow-up communication should accomplish this.

What’s involved in setting up your lead generation system? Use this link to get the details >>

You don’t have to go nuts to develop a solid lead generation system. With a simple, strategic marketing system in place, your business can grow every month, whether you’re immersed in a project or on vacation.

If you don’t already have one, put your lead generation system into place this fall and see your business continue to prosper this winter.

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work

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Can You Teach Your Small Business Prospects to Buy?

By Charlie Cook   |   August 9, 2007

Can you teach?

Is there an inner teacher in you that could help grow your business?

I’ve been a teacher ever since I graduated from college – literally and figuratively. My first post-college job was as an elementary school teacher and then I moved on to teaching children with behavior problems as a special education teacher. Later I graduated to working with big kids, with senior executives as a management consultant.

For the last couple of decades I’ve found my true passion as a marketing coach developing marketing ideas. I love providing marketing solutions and helping people transform their businesses.

When you know something that can help someone else it’s satisfying to share that knowledge and it’s good for business too. One of the most effective ways to build credibility with prospects and to help them see how valuable your products and services are is to teach.

You may never have trained formally as a teacher or graded papers but if you’ve been in business for a few years you’re an expert and your clients would be impressed if they realized how much you knew.

One way to convince clients of your expertise is to tell them, “Twenty years in business” or “America’s best”. You could do that but it wouldn’t impress many. Instead you can effectively demonstrate your expertise with articles, newsletters, audios, videos, etc. Do this regularly and your prospects will see you as the go to expert in your field.

You may be asking yourself – “Aren’t there tons of others in my field who know as much as I do or more? How can I differentiate myself from them and stand out from the competition?”

You’re 100% right. In most service professions or product areas, there are lots of competitors, people who have the same amount of experience as you do or more, but there is one difference…

Most small business owners don’t use their marketing to educate their prospects and to capture their loyalty and their business.

Regardless whether you sell advertising, concrete plants, hearing aids, real estate, design, or consulting services, there are tons of ideas you can give away, ideas you can teach your prospects that don’t cost you a dime and make you look smarter and better than your competitors.

If you use this simple strategy you can easily stand out from your competitors and be seen as the expert in your niche. Isn’t that what you want to stand out from your competition and get the greatest share of the business?

If you’ve ever wanted a simple and honest way to market your business and see your profits grow I’ve detailed what to do in the ‘Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing‘. Use this link to claim your copy >>

I’m always teaching whether it’s with my clients or my friends on the ski slope or out sailing and there is a point where you should drawn the line. Don’t try teaching your wife or husband. Even if I know exactly what my wife should be doing to make the perfect ski turn, she’d much rather hear it from a ski instructor. The same goes for your kids once they become teenagers.

Even though your family may not appreciate you as a teacher – your prospects do. They do want to discover the great insights and tips you may take for granted, ones that will help you build a long-term winning relationship with them.

You’ve worked hard to become as wise as you are – now tap your inner teacher and leverage all that effort by marketing your knowledge with the ‘Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing‘ and get all the business you deserve. Use this link to claim your copy >>

You can teach your prospects to buy and grow your business!

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Work

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Is Your Small Business Marketing Message Locking You Out?

By Charlie Cook   |   August 8, 2007

Are you losing business because of your small business marketing message?

Ever misplace an important key and get locked out?

It was the first summer weekend we’d owned our vacation home in the mountains of Vermont when I returned from a hike to discover my wife, who was off doing errands with my in-laws, had the key. We didn’t have a spare and the place was locked up and I couldn’t get in.

Fortunately it was a pleasant summer day and after a half-hour of waiting, my wife returned and I got in. (Yup, I made a spare the next chance I could.)

Your marketing message is like a key. With the the right one, you can unlock doors to new business and start the process of converting them to clients. If you don’t have the right one or the one you have is the wrong size or poorly crafted you’ll be locked out in the cold, wondering why your business isn’t growing faster.

While I felt foolish when I got locked out of my VT. vacation home, it didn’t cost me a dime. When you get locked out of new business because your marketing message doesn’t open the door, you’re losing big bucks, especially if it happens again and again.

Unfortunately too many independent professionals and small business owners market with marketing messages that just don’t work. They may be too long, too short, too common, too dull, or too self laudatory. The result is they don’t open enough doors to new business.

Your marketing message needs to be irresistible to your prospects to open doors. This idea may seem like a small part of your marketing effort, but in fact it is one of the most important elements and costs the least to fix.

If your marketing message helps your prospects understand how you can help them, you are in business. If it doesn’t then you’ll never reach your revenue potential.

Interested in opening more doors to new business? Ue this link >>

Want an Irresistible Marketing Message to Attract Clients?

Whether you are talking to someone in person or in your marketing materials, your objective is to engage them, to get them thinking about their needs and wants. Do this successfully and they’ll soon be wondering how they can’t live without your products or services.

Your marketing message should be the catalyst to conversation. When you use it a connection should be made between your services and your prospect’s needs. If you had a brilliant marketing message that resonated with your prospects wants and needs you’d have more and more qualified prospects contacting you and more and more business.

Want to discover the fastest way to grow your business? Use this link >>

Does your current marketing message:
• Tell people what you do?

• Start a conversation?

• Create a perception of need?

My marketing message is, “helping small business owners attract more clients and be more successful”. When I use it I get one of two responses. If I’m talking to someone who isn’t a small business owner, they usually want to know how I do what I do. If the person is a small business owner they want to know how I can help them and I’m on my way to converting a prospect into a client.

If you want to attract more prospects and grow your business, the first step is to create a brilliant marketing message, one you can use in the elevator, on your business card, on your web site and in your voice mail message.

It is not easy to describe all you do in a sentence or two. Capture the essence of who you serve, the problems you solve and the solutions you provide and you’ll have a brilliant marketing message.

Don’t let your current marketing message hold you back. Make sure you have one that works as a key to attracting attention, engaging prospects and opening the door to new business.

Ready to find out how to get more attention and generate more business? Use this link >>

Don’t get locked out with the wrong marketing message. Discover instead, how to create one that works like a master key, opening every door in sight and see your business take off.

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Are You Using the Right Bait to Hook New Clients with Your Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   August 6, 2007

Is your marketing bait working?

Funny Marketing Ideas #1 The Goldfish
This is one of the 5 ideas I had for a marketing lead generator video.
– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That Gets Results

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Who Needs A System To Market Their Business?

By Charlie Cook   |   April 2, 2007

What’s the benefit of using a small business marketing system?

If you live in an area where it rains sporadically but you want to keep your lawn green you may have or have considered installing an automatic sprinkler system. When you have one, your lawn and shrubs get the amount of water they need every week and keep growing.

Your business is the same. Without a small business marketing system the flow of your leads and sales is beyond your control. Install a simple system for growing your business and instead you could have a constant flow of new business every month. Isn’t that what you want?

The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing gives you a simple system for growing your business so that you generate more leads and sales each month with less wasted effort. Use this link to discover a business building system that works for you >>

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How Do You Know When Your Marketing Articles Are Any Good?

By Charlie Cook   |   March 27, 2007

Articles are a great way to generate credibility and leads and new business. How do you know if yours are any good?

If you write small business marketing articles it’s easy to get them in ezine article directories but what you really want is for publications to pick them up and use them in their ezines – with proper attribution of course. Or you want magazines to do the same, again with your contact information included.

What you want to avoid is having other sites steal your content, post it and claim it as their own. I’ve had sites steal my small business marketing articles causing the following problem. When another site posts your content without a link back, the search engines see it as duplicate content and may not list the article when you add it to your own site.

It’s a good idea to regularly search the web to see who is posting your articles and where. You may want to send out some to be shown on other sites, provided they link back to your site. While sharing articles is a good idea, keep most of your content on your site and check periodically to make sure that it’s not getting ripped off and damaging your own search engine ranking.

How do you know if your article strategy is working?

a. If others are stealing your small business marketing articles its an indication you’re a good writer. I found one site with an article ripped off from Tom Hopkins the marketing guru and with one of mine, both attributed to the site owner not there rightful authors.

b. If your articles are helping your search engine ranking and generating leads, you know your marketing ideas are hitting home.

Want to know the best way to use your articles to grow your business? Discover the Secrets to Opening Doors With Your Articles >>
– Charlie Cook
Small Business Marketing That Works

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Should I Try and Market to Everyone Or Target My Marketing…

By Charlie Cook   |   March 23, 2007

Small Business Marketing Question
“My marketing question is about my target market. I am re-structuring my business. I monogram (embroider) on items. I could market to anyone and everyone needing promotional wear but should I or would it be better to narrow down my target. At the same time I don’t want to miss an opportunity.

Your advice would me most appreciated.”
Cynthia

Answer
Pick a niche or a couple of niches and you can focus your marketing, charge more and make more.

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing Ideas That Make Sense and Make Money

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Which Things Make the Difference In Small Business Marketing?

By Charlie Cook   |   February 23, 2007

Want Success With Your Small Business Marketing? Find out which things make the difference

Last week we got the big one.

We got our first big winter storm and up north in Vermont where I ski, the mountain received over 48 lovely inches of fresh snow, enough to even convince my wife to leave a day early for the holiday weekend. Here on the coast in Connecticut where I live the same storm produced 2 measly inches of rock hard frozen crud.

What was the difference? Just a couple of degrees.

Your business is the same. Small shifts in how your small business marketing can make a big difference in your results and your profitability. With the right marketing strategy you can get an abundance of business or with a slightly different approach hardly any business at all. Here are four little changes which can yield big results for your business.

1. What You Do With Your Goals
Everyone has goals for themselves and their business. Some keep them in mind and only a few commit them to paper. A small difference but it turns out the people who regularly identify and put their goals on paper end up making over ten times as much.

What are your small business marketing goals for this year? Do they include discovering how to attract more clients?

2. Where You Focus Your Marketing
If you’re like most people your small business marketing touts your good name and your products, it’s focused on you. Typically this approach yields only minimal results and limited sales.

Your prospects’ biggest concern is their own needs and wants. Change a few words in how you talk about yourself and your products and services. You’ll find that instead of just getting a luke warm response you’ll be generating a ton of hot leads with your marketing.

This simple shift from a focus on you to a focus on your prospects could help you attract as many clients in one month as you did in the last six as it did for Denise Annunciata of Leaplaw or help you get your next $200,000 sale as it did for Bill Orser of SafePlay.

3. What You Do With Leads
Last week I got a call from John, a builder in Oregon who after ten years was still struggling with his marketing. I asked John how many names he had in his prospect list. He said he had a dozen or so.

Over ten years anyone in business will have helped, talked to and met 1,500 people or more unless they live in an isolated village in Alaska. Imagine instead of just giving someone your business card you asked them for theirs. Then take the next step and ask them to tell you either what they want and need relative to your services or for the name of one person they know who could use your services.

Do this small task and you’ll have more leads than you ever imagined.

Over ten years, using this easy marketing technique you could have built a database of thousands of people to contact with information about your services.

With the help of any contact management system or database program it’s easy to build your business network. It may seem like a small thing to do each week to take 2-5 minutes to add in the names of prospects but without this simple action, ten years down the road you could still be struggling like John.

4. How Often You Contact Your Prospect List
80% of sales are lost due to lack of follow-up. Personally this drives me crazy when I hear a client tell me about their low lead to buyer conversion rate. More than 9 out of 10 times the problem is they don’t have the simple follow-up systems in place.

Think about it. You’ve done all the hard work to identify a qualified prospect. You know they want what you sell – yet all too many don’t buy. Don’t be satisfied with this!

I asked one client why they didn’t follow up inquiries by interested prospects with a series of helpful emails to engage their interest, help build credibility and create a sense of urgency. Their response was they didn’t want to pester the prospect and they already had a once a month follow system of contacts in place.

When someone contacts you they’re indicating an interest and what they want is to get all the information they need to get know you and trust you and buy from you. Wait a month and the prospect will have completely forgotten why they contacted you in the first place. It’s during the first week that they want to hear from you, again and again.

It may seem like a small difference, waiting to make contact over and over or doing it the first week, but it is often the difference between losing a prospect or adding a new client.

Can you see that if you made these four changes you’d be more successful? Now imagine if you made a few more.

There are hundreds of little ways you can change your small business marketing that will make a big difference in your profits including ad copy, pricing strategies, product bundling, use of ezines, etc,. Each one could help you make 10-20% more this year.

Put a few of them together and you could easily see your income double from $750,000 to $1,500,000 in less than a year.

Small differences in temperature can result in over 36 inches of new snow versus 1 or 2 inches of frozen crud or 36 new clients versus 1 or 2 duds. While I can’t control the weather and have to take what mother-nature dishes out, you can control what you do with your small business marketing and how successful you are, it just takes making a few changes.
– Charlie Cook

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