The most valuable asset you have in your business is your client and prospect “house list" -and the relationship you have with those on it. These are the people who keep you in business by purchasing your services. The money they pay you finances your mortgage, your health care costs, your car note, your children’s educational expenses, your vacations, your business overhead…everything.
In addition to their direct contribution to your ability to sustain (and improve) your standard of living (and that of your employees), every person who has experienced your business in some way is a potential indirect contributor to your lifestyle because they can refer others who pay for your services.
Other than your family and closest friends, NOBODY is more important than your clients and prospects*.
*NOTE: I define a prospect as someone who has taken some action to learn more about your business: come in, called, completed an online form, “liked” your Facebook business page, etc. It’s vital that you capture contact information for as many of these people as you possibly can, so you can follow up and convert them from a prospect to a client. We’ll discuss how to do that in this training.
The second group of people most important to your business success consists of your strategic partners. These are other business owners in your local area who you know, like and trust. They are generally (but not always) businesses that sell services or products complementary to yours. Therefore they (generally) serve clients similar to yours, and can be excellent referral sources for you.
We’ll discuss more about establishing and leveraging strategic partnerships later in this training (they can be hugely productive when done right).
These two groups – your clients/prospects, and your strategic partners – comprise your business’s acres of diamonds (read Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell).
Every single business I’ve ever consulted with has un-harvested acres of diamonds.
Every single one.
This is where your biggest opportunity exists…discovering how to harvest your acreage.
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this 30-day program.
It’s essential you understand that this is an ongoing process. It never stops. Ever.
You will do this for the lifetime of your business. You’ll advance through stages (which get progressively easier and more productive), but you’ll never stop…at least not if you want to realize your full potential to truly help the largest number of people possible, while earning the largest income possible.
With that in mind, your first, absolutely critical step is to corral and control the contact information for your clients, prospects and partners (both existing and prospective partners).
Because without contact information, you have no way of communicating with these people (unless they happen to come in, and relying on that is the #1 reason why otherwise good businesses struggle).
If you’re not already using a client relationship management (CRM) software or some other tool to manage and control data about the people most important to the success of your business, then here’s how to get started:
Download the ReferralSurge™ Excel house list spreadsheet and begin filling it out.
You’ll discover as we progress through this training just how important automating many of your marketing processes is. Automation gives you leverage, and leverage is awesome (that's why it's in the name of my business).
You get automation with technology. So I’m going to recommend some technology to you. You obviously don’t have to take my recommendation. It’s your call. But I know more than a little about what’s available and what works best for local service businesses. So I encourage you to at least investigate the resources I recommend.
I have to keep the lights on around here somehow, so in some cases I am an affiliate for the technology I recommend. That means I get a small commission if you decide to use it (my affiliate commission NEVER increases your price – you pay the same whether you buy using my affiliate link or not).
My being an affiliate can make some people uncomfortable because they will think my recommendation is based solely on my ability to make a commission. I understand that concern, but it’s not valid. My relationship with you is FAR more important and valuable to me than a small affiliate commission. So if you’re uncomfortable, just don’t use my affiliate links.
However – and this is important – if you want to invest in the technology I recommend, but don’t want to use my affiliate link, you will miss out on any added value I provide exclusively to those who purchase through my link. That added value can be additional training on the technology, or it can be additional tools I provide to be used with the technology.
The bottom line is that my objective is not to “pitch” things to you solely so I can generate additional revenue. My objective is to direct you to the BEST resources that I KNOW can help you, and then add value to those who take advantage of my recommendations. I hope that makes sense to you, but if not then post a question in the Facebook group.
With that little disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about the two most important pieces of marketing technology every local service business MUST have:
#1. A conversion-focused, mobile responsive website with blogging capability. If you don’t have this yet, then my recommendation is Thrive Themes and Thrive Content Builder plugin. Inexpensive, easy to use, and simply outstanding.
If you already have a website that’s decent, don’t worry about this now. It’s a project you can work on after you’ve completed The Referral Challenge.
#2. A client relationship manager (CRM) with automated email marketing (broadcast, autoresponder, form builder, list segmentation, etc.). You need to be able to track, manage and “score” clients and prospects based on activity in your CRM, and communicate with them via email, whether one-off, broadcast or autoresponder.
If you don’t have this yet, then my recommendation is Active Campaign. Very affordable and very powerful.
Many local businesses use automated email marketing solutions like Constant Contact or MailChimp. And these are fine for now. But in the long run they are lacking because they don’t have the CRM capability you need for more personalized tracking, managing, scoring and communication.
To my knowledge, there are only three CRM + automated email solutions available to local businesses that are less than $500/month. Infusionsoft and Ontraport are the first two. They are both very good, but not cheap, and the learning curve is steep. You can expect to pay around $300/month for either of these. Plus you’ll pay an additional amount for any training on how to use these systems.
By comparison, Active Campaign has all the really important features that Infusionsoft and Ontraport have, and none of the more confusing and often superfluous features that inflate their price.
The Active Campaign “Plus” account (which is the one you want because it contains the CRM functionality and free one-on-one training) is just $49/month. You can take a free 14-day trial of the basic account to see if it’s something you may want to use going forward. I strongly encourage you to look into this because this technology is the command center for all your marketing, both online and offline.
