Is Money Lying Around Your Practice?

The following was a short conversation between one of our former clients and a current one.

What do these guys do?

Well, they found money lying around my business that I didn’t know was there.

Existing practices, even fairly well-established ones, need to start somewhere. Many clients assume we are going to find this magic, low-hanging fruit and create some big marketing deal from nothing. While everyone makes that assumption, the place to start is with your current resources.

Money Lying Around Your Practice

Most companies have money lying on the floor, so to speak. This money often comes in the form of lists, in the CRM, on Excel files, or names on pieces of paper from people who raised their hands at an event. Some even have potential money hiding in former client lists—people who used to be a client and who might be interested in working with you again? Or perhaps former clients from whom you could generate referrals, rather than parting ways completely.

When taking on business with a new client, the first thing we aim to do is get them to a place where they can get results quickly. The ideal plan is to build a really robust system for them to get more clients on a regular basis, while ensuring they get the most efficiency with each client, make the most per client, get the most assets under management per client, and keep the clients as long as possible. One of the first steps in achieving this should be deciding the quickest way to get new clients.

Look Internally For A Quick Start

Often, people are too obsessed with going outside the business to get new clients. However, the important thing to realize is that everything you need is often already there in your past leads, prospects, and clients. You just need to understand the basic concepts of marketing to make the most out of this. Plenty of people have told us that they did some marketing, collected some leads, made some calls, and picked up a few clients.

While that is fantastic, it should not stop there. Just because some potential clients did not answer the phone or did not call back does not mean they are not interested in working with you. There could be a million reasons why they didn’t pick up the phone.

Maybe they were busy. Perhaps you caught them at a bad time. There is a chance they did not need your services then but do now in the present day. Or said a different way, they’ll be ready in 3 months or even in 24 months. There are endless reasons and scenarios as to why these contacts could become future clients, even if you were not successful with them in the past. These contacts are gold mines, but we have to get back to them in the right way, which is always our first plan of attack.

Follow Up Again and Again and Again…

One prime example comes in the form of a client of ours, a very intelligent client at that. He was learning about direct response marketing and set up a series of 29 emails to send to his prospects. They would get one email a day for 29 days. Each one was designed to look and feel personal and conversational. On the surface, this sounded great, but then we asked him what happened after 29 days and he revealed that if they had not responded yet, he would then remove them from his list assuming they were not interested.

This is a common mistake when it comes to marketing. He was essentially basing his entire system on them either being “interested” or “not interested” in 30 days. Either they needed his services or not. Just because a potential client does not need you in September does not mean they won’t really need you in December. In the past, we have sent potential clients emails and updates for over seven years. You never know when you are going to catch someone at just the right moment. It is important to keep in mind: just because someone hasn’t reached out or responded with interest does not mean they are not interested or won’t be at some point. It may simply mean that you have not reached them effectively or they just do not need you quite yet.

When we asked this client what else he was doing beyond the MailChimp style email marketing, he looked puzzled. Email is one thing (we’ll talk A LOT about email in Chapter XX,) but what else are you doing? Are these potential new clients getting sequential autoresponder text messages? Are they getting a package in the mail? The term ‘snail mail’ often has bad connotations but it is actually a very effective form of marketing if done correctly (see Chapters xx & xx). The truth is that most people are not taking advantage of it.

Spend a Little Money, Find a Lot More Money

Unfortunately, this client in question did not have any kind of direct mail set up, whether that is sending potential clients his book, a postcard, a newsletter, etc. When we asked him what a client was worth to him, he revealed that on average, over the length of time they used his services, a client would spend around $50,000. More immediately, he claimed they were worth around $5,000 to $7,000 in the short term. We questioned why he wasn’t willing to pay for a first-class stamp and send a postcard to someone who was potentially going to be worth upwards of $50,000 to him.

You can send a postcard for next to nothing. You can mail a book for a few bucks. You can call them. You can text them. You can leave voicemail messages. While, as we explained before, email marketing can be extremely effective, it should not be your only form of marketing. Each person gets around 200 emails per day, so the chances of them not seeing or even ignoring yours are quite high. So, if you have a lead, why not follow-up sequentially forever?

You can email, text, voicemail, call, send direct mail, and retarget on Google and Facebook. That way, not only will you definitely be seen by them, but you also stand out from that email crowd. After all, an email can get lost in a junk folder. Most everyone does answer phone calls from unknown numbers. That means you need to email & text them your contact record to add to their phone. Texts can be missed. If you get in touch via all these avenues, you guarantee eyes on your message.