It’s Monday — that means it’s time to open up the mailbox and answer YOUR questions!

Today’s issue is a bit of a “hot seat.”

A reader wrote in with a question, and I’m approaching the answer from a few different angles, looking at all the best approaches to solving the challenge he’s facing.

And remember: to have you question answered in an upcoming Mailbox Monday issue, send it to me at [email protected].

Today’s question…

Roy,

We are small B2B boutique telco consulting company with a focus on companies with 100-5000 employees.  We are struggling with our marketing and sales initiatives.  The business has been built off of one sales guy in in Pittsburgh PA.  We need to expand beyond this market.  I am trying to find the right growth engine for the company.  I am hiring a second sales executive in Denver, CO, but I don’t want to put all of my eggs in this one basket.

I would like to test direct response advertising like PPC.  The problem is I am not an expert in this arena at all.  I know how it works, but I don’t know how to do it right.  If we could source 5-6 new clients from the internet it would be a game changer for our business.

What I would like to figure out is should I hire someone who is an expert or try it on my own, if I hire someone should I go with a freelancer or an agency, and once I decide on this how do I find the right expert – Google, LinkedIn, etc?

Any help, thoughts or guidance would be most appreciated.

M

First, I want to commend you on what you’re doing right…

You have a proven pitch and selling system (not scalable, but it’s there!).  That’s THE most important thing to get right in growing your business.

Now it’s time to replicate that success.  To build on what you know works.

There’s an old trick that Gary Halbert used to teach.  You record your star salesperson, as they speak on the phone with customers.  (Consult your local regulations for recording phone calls.)

Then, transcribe that.  And edit it into a rough draft of sales copy.

Now, I’m not saying that’s exactly what you need to do here.  Because you’re asking a lot more than that.  I’m merely pointing out the asset you have at your disposal.  That salesperson likely knows a TON about what your customers care about, and could help you answer many of the questions I’m going to raise in the rest of this post.

Now: clarifying and defining the issue and ideal outcome…

From the sounds of it, this would be an ideal scenario:  You have a steady stream of new qualified leads coming in the door on a regular basis.  They’re educated about the problem you solve, and about your solution.  And they’re motivated to get a solution in line with what you offer.

Now I’m guessing right now, from the way you described it, that none of that is happening.  In fact, I’m guessing your one sales person is particularly good at pounding the pavement, reaching out to companies, getting in the door, and making the pitch.

But what if you broke that down?

What if you said, “What could our website do, that would make that salesperson’s life easier?”

So, for example, your website can do…

— Early stage lead generation (getting the coldest leads to raise their hand)…

— Educating prospects on the problem you solve, and your solution…

— Building trust and rapport with your company…

— Nurturing leads as they consider your solution…

— Giving leads an opportunity to book a consultation…

And since yours is a primarily consultative sale (from the looks of it, on your website), I think this would be a great place to start.

Every one of the above that your website (and/or an email autoresponder sequence) could cover would make each salesperson’s job easier.  AND it would make it so you were less reliant on high-skilled salespeople, because the marketing would do much of the work.

First, you need to ask yourself a bunch of questions…

— Who buys a service like yours?

— What are they looking for before they buy, just as they’re starting to shop for it?

— What challenge are they trying to have solved?

— What’s the earliest indication that someone would be a good lead?

— Where does the initial conversation start?

From doing my homework, it looks like you help businesses save money on their telephone bills.

Is there a tool or some other calculator you could offer that would help them get an idea of their potential savings?

For example, when we signed up for Ting, we used their calculator that let us put in our last 5 months of phone bills, and it told us how much we would have saved on our cell service by being with them.

Now, I know your business is a bit more complex because you’re dealing with a much bigger account than a handful of devices on a single cell plan.  But you get the idea…

Ideally, you could offer them a clear tool or checklist that would help them analyze how much they’re currently overpaying on their telco bill.  Or even, just understand their bill in the first place.

Turning the tables: I’m in your customer’s shoes…

I’m guessing this falls under the IT budget at a company of the size you work with.

Maybe it’s the IT procurement manager.  (I’m sure your salesperson knows.)

If that’s me, my main job is to make sure I’m understanding where the money is going, and if we can save any money.

And so I’ll occasionally review our telco bills.  I’ll want to understand every line item, and make sure I know what the bill says, why the charge is there, and if there’s any opportunity to reduce the expenses.

But, I also have dozens of other bills I review per month, and don’t necessarily have time to become an expert on all the line items on all the bills.

That said, if I can find big savings in the budget, I have the potential to be a hero, and maybe get some recognition or reward from my employer.

So a service like yours could feel like a great thing, if I really understood it.

Back to your selling system…

So, if I’m that customer, when I arrive at your website I need to know:

— This site is for me, to help me deal with my telco billing challenges…

— You’re reputable and look like you have a believable and credible solution to my challenges…

— And I have clear next steps to take if I’m interested in moving forward.

Here are some ideas:

— A calculator to determine how much I could save on my monthly telco bill.

— An educational report on “The top 3 ways telcos overcharge SMBs, and how to spot them on your bill.”

— A telco expense analysis with one of your qualified analysts.

If I were building this, I’d start by offering the first two.  One would be a calculator (even just a spreadsheet) to help me determine a rough savings amount, based on averages of other clients like me.  The other, a free report.  And both would be something you had to sign up to receive.

Doing that would trigger an email autoresponder that would be designed to educate the customer about how to save money on their bill, along with case studies of others like them.

And the calls to action in the report and in the emails would be to book an expense analysis.  (Which I’d use a service like Book Like A Boss or one of the other ones that lets you manage team bookings.)

Ideally that would go out over a couple weeks, if not longer, and the same list could also receive a regular telco money saver update email, sent out as a newsletter.

That would be a good start for the CONVERSIONS part of the equation.

If you’ll notice, up to this point I haven’t really said anything about buying ads, etc.

But if you don’t have a decent system in place to convert people when they come to your website, spending a bunch of money on traffic won’t do anything for you.

On the other hand, if you were to do the above and it were to work reasonably well to convert those leads?

Well, then you’re able to reach out and get someone to scale it with paid traffic.

The other question: in-house or external?

If you haven’t figured out how to get at least some conversions from your website, you’re going to run into issues with almost anyone you’d go to.

It will be very expensive to have someone else figure this out for you.

Once you do have this in place though, you should be able to reach out to a number of different agencies and start asking questions:

— What other campaigns have you worked on with similar goals?

— What traffic platforms are you most familiar with?

— How have you found buyers in my industry through them?

— Tell a story of where you scaled a successful campaign?

— Have you ever had to turn around a lagging campaign?  How did you do it?

In general, you want to interview them.  Then, I’d recommend doing a starter project.  Perhaps it would be an initial analysis and action plan, which you could evaluate to see if it passes the smell test.  Maybe they’d give you a few recommendations, which you could implement as a way to test their expertise.

And then, you have to experiment.  Like any good hiring decision, think about the first 60 days as a trial period.  Make them prove their worth early.  And have a clear out if they don’t.

And test small, then scale.  The great thing about the internet is you don’t have to spend a fortune to test campaigns.  You can usually get data for less than $500 (if not a lot less) that will tell you if what you’re doing is working.

Oh and one more thing: consider offline-to-online…

If you’re legitimately able to target a specific job title in a specific size business, you may be a candidate for reaching out to prospects via direct mail.

Send them a letter that makes the initial offer, and drives them to the website to get more information.

Done right, this could have a much higher ROI than any online-only approach.

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr