Can I show you how to get as many clients as you need?
What I’m about to show you is a simple process. A way to reverse-engineer success. A way to set a goal, and plan to meet it, and then work that plan until it’s done.
This is really simple and straightforward. Don’t underestimate it or write it off for that reason. Rather, consider whether you are implementing it. If not, why not? And if so, are you really working it and still not getting results — or are you cutting corners and causing failure?
It may feel, on some level, like Sales 101. And yet, the reality is that too few businesses implement it. Those who do, religiously, are often the most successful. And those who write it off as too simplistic struggle as they chase success in a thousand more complicated ways.
But that’s enough setup… Let’s dive in.
Let’s say your goal is to get 1 new client every week…
For this example, I really don’t care whether you sell widgets, whatzits, or something else entirely. Because this process works for anything.
But I’m going to assume you sell some higher-ticket service that sells through a consultative selling call with a prospective client. More detail on the process below. (Copywriting, coaching, consulting, agency work, and other expert-type businesses definitely all meet this model.)
I’m going to assume your service package — whatever it is — is a $7,500 sale. So if you meet your goal, you’re making $30,000 per month.
And, of course, I’m going to assume you’re actually satisfying those customers, giving them the value you promise, and able to fulfill on one new client every week. (If not, that’s another topic for another day.)
Your goal is 1 client every week — but how do you get there?
In many smaller businesses, the immediate response is, “Yeah, Roy, that would be nice — but how?!”
The secret is in reverse-engineering success. That is, working backwards from the outcome we want to whatever process and actions are required to create it.
Let’s do that…
Our desired outcome is 1 client every week. Great.
What has to happen for us to get a client?
Well, out of every 5 or so qualified prospects we get on the phone, 1 pretty quickly becomes a client. (That’s a 20% conversion rate from call to close.)
Okay, so that’s interesting. So if we made sure we had 5 conversations every week, we’d likely end up with an average of 1 new client every week.
How does that happen?
Well, they fill out a questionnaire and schedule a call with us. And what makes them want to fill out the questionnaire and schedule a call?
Well, they learn about our service, through our presentation or webinar on our website. In fact, for every 5 calls scheduled, we figure out that 34 people have watched the presentation. (A 15% conversion rate.)
So now we’re getting somewhere. We’ve figured out if we want 1 new client this week, we need 5 people to schedule calls with us. And for that to happen, we need 34 people to watch our presentation.
(Let’s see if you’re getting this — do you know the next question?)
How does that happen?
(That’s right!)
Well, people get to watch our presentation on our service when they opt-in on our website, through the funnel we have set up. But not everybody who opts in views the presentation. In fact, it’s only about half of them. So for 34 people to watch the presentation, we need 68 people to opt-in. (A 50% conversion rate.)
And how does that happen?
Simple: about 1 out of every 5 people who land on the first page of the funnel — the opt-in squeeze page — end up opting in. Or, to get 68 opt-ins we need 340 visitors. (A 20% conversion rate.)
And I suppose we could get these visitors in lots of ways. But the quickest, most direct, and most controllable ways is through paid traffic promoting whatever it is we are offering in exchange for them opting in. (Which, if positioned well, might just be the presentation about our service.)
Let’s summarize…
Based on the numbers above…
— If we can get 340 qualified visitors to our landing page, 68 will opt in…
— Of those 68, 34 will watch our presentation, where we give an overview of who our service is for and why…
— Of those 34, 5 will request a call with us…
— And of those 5 calls, 1 will turn into a client…
So, how do you get one client a week?
FIND A WAY TO DRIVE 340 QUALIFIED VISITORS TO YOUR LANDING PAGE EVERY WEEK…
Then, work the rest of the process as necessary (i.e. show up for your calls with prospects, on time and ready to help them solve their problems).
Now let’s imagine you want to turn this up…
Let’s say, for example, that your offer is more scalable. And that you might be able to serve more than 1 client per week.
Well, I threw this all into a handy spreadsheet, and using the exact same numbers…
— If you want 2 clients per week — $60,000 per month in revenue — you need to get 670 qualified visitors to your landing page.
— If you want 5 clients — $150,000 per month — that’s 1,670 landing page visitors.
— If you want 10 clients per week for this $7,500 offer — adding up to $300,000 per month — that’s 3,340 landing page visitors per week (or 478 per day).
More food for thought…
Economics matter — a lot…
If you under-value yourself or are solving less-valuable problems, it may be harder to make a process like this work. $7,500 is a good amount of revenue on a service, and leaves a lot of budget to drive 340 visitors. Even if you’re spending $5 per visitor, you’re still spending $1,700 to make $7,500 — or $4.40 for every $1 spent on ads. But with high-ticket offers, it’s fairly easy to afford to drive traffic in enough volume. Even higher-ticket offers may have even better economics, even with lower conversion rates.
Conversion rates matter, too…
The math above comes from pretty reasonable benchmarks for a service funnel like this. Some will do much better. If you’re doing worse, there’s probably something worth really focusing on improving. Even if you hit the benchmarks though, it’s worth determining what might be improved. For example, if you can jump from 20% to 40% conversion on your initial opt-in offer, suddenly every 170 site visitors turn into a client. Focus on optimizing. Where can you improve? Generally the two most fruitful places to optimize will be at the top of the funnel where there’s the most traffic (that landing page for initial opt-in), and at the bottom where you have the most time investment (the sales call). If you were to double conversion rates on both of those (in both cases, from 20% to 40%), you end up with more than 3X as many clients from the same traffic.
You will also benefit from controlling your traffic source…
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in any business is insisting on ONLY organic or free traffic. They are great, and there’s no knocking when they work for you (and, in fact, you can and should cultivate them as part of a long-term strategy). But your goal should not be to pay as little as possible for leads, but as much as possible. When you’re willing and able to pay more, you have a HUGE advantage. First, you have control over your volume — which, as illustrated above, has a direct impact on your opportunity volume. Second, more expensive traffic is often higher-quality traffic — meaning if you can pay more, you’re often getting better and more targeted prospects, which often makes your entire program more profitable.
One more thought…
This revers-engineering process works on every goal.
It’s particularly fruitful in the sales process, where you can track back the conversion rates at every step to determine the initial amount of traffic required to create each client, and then focus on that.
But there’s all kinds of different ways to reverse-engineer success.
For example, if you need to complete a big project, it can seem HUGE. But what if you break it down into weeks, and then days? If you have a 12,000 words worth of copy to write in four weeks, that’s 3,000 words per week. Divided by 5 days in a work week, that’s 600 words per day. In 3 hours of writing time, that’s 200 words per hour. Could you write 200 words in the next 60 minutes toward the goal? (This essay is about 1,500 words, done in a little more than an hour.)
Most worthwhile goals seem very big, when you look at them as the goal. But if you break them down into component parts and specific next action steps, those steps can be remarkably easy. And step-by-step, you get to your goal.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
