by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

As I'm preparing for my live (and free) workshop in the SF Bay Area on November 3, I'm developing the material for the presentation on the Outer and Inner Marketing Games. 

You might call this approach, "Integrated Marketing" where you take both the outer and inner games into account. That is, you apply the strategies and tactics of the outer game and then you manage yourself with the inner game. 

There probably isn't a better example of this than in one of the most feared and resisted marketing activities of all: 

Follow-Up!

For most Independent Professionals, the success in their business will hinge on their ability to follow up successfully, and this presents challenges both externally and internally.

Let's paint a scenario with you as the hero. 

You get a lead to a prospective client. It might be someone you met at a networking event, at a speaking engagement, or perhaps as a referral. 

This prospect knows something about you, but is not likely to call you up and make an appointment with you. And you really don't know a lot about them or how your services could help them. 

But it's a legitimate lead and the only thing to do is follow-up, introduce yourself, find out more about them and see where the lead will take you. 

To be successful at the follow up, you need to make several decisions about all of the following:

1. Will you follow-up by phone or email or both?

2. Will you do some research on this lead, and how much?

3. What is the first thing you will say if you reach them by phone?

4. What questions will you ask once you get the conversation going?

5. What is your intention of the follow-up, that is do you plan to send more information or invite them to make an appointment with you?

6. Add any other questions you may have about the follow-up process or strategy. 

Now the answers to these questions are easier than you may think. I did a simple Google search on: "How to follow up with a prospective client?" and got several pages of articles. 

By reading a number of these articles, you're going to get a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't that will enable you to put together a strategy and content guidelines for emails and scripts for the phone. 

And then you just take action, right?

Maybe not. According to one of those articles I found, a full 48% of sales people don't follow up with a prospective client. They just let them fall between the cracks. 

Now perhaps a few haven't learned the techniques and don't know what to do or how to do it, but that's a pretty poor excuse these days with all the information available online. 

No, what's missing is the ability to manage the inner game. 

You see, follow-up is scary. You may believe it can lead to rejection, to embarrassment, or humiliation. And in most cases, those thoughts about what will happen when you follow up are completely imaginary - they rarely happen. Nevertheless those thoughts run the show. 

Let's look more closely at what actually happens. 

1. You think of following up, and one or more thoughts pop up that tell you follow-up is not a good idea (for the reasons above). 

2. You listen to those thoughts and you decide to delay until later, and you do something else. 

3. After some time passes and you don't follow up, you start to feel bad, guilty, perhaps desperate. 

4. You reason that you can't follow-up now because too much time has gone by. You'd only increase the chances of rejection. 

5. You hope that the next time you get a lead you'll follow up more quickly and won't have the same thoughts come up.

Uh, fat chance!

I'll bet you can relate to this or a similar scenario when it comes to follow-up. Ultimately, you may never feel comfortable about follow-up but you force yourself to do it, never enjoying it or getting very good at it. 

OK, time to change the game. 

But it's not the outer strategy you need to change (which is what people do endlessly, to avoid actually making those calls); it's the inner strategy that needs to change. Here's how it might go: 

1. You think of following up, and one or more thoughts pop up that tell you follow-up is not a good idea because of possible rejection, embarrassment, or humiliation.

2. You notice those thoughts, but instead of letting them run you, you decide to look at them more closely. Instead of reacting, you investigate. 

3. You observe that your primary thought is, "They won't be interested anyway so I shouldn't bother them." And you notice that this is a thought that almost always comes up when you need to follow up.

4. This time you choose to really question that thought. You ask if it's really true. Can you absolutely know they're not interested? And you conclude that perhaps you were over-reacting.  

5. You look at the consequences of that thinking and see how much it costs you both emotionally and financially. You write down all the things you do and how you feel when you get hooked by this thought and you create some distance from it. 

6. You try to see other ways of thinking about follow-up. You are now thinking in a more level-headed way and see that this person actually did show some real interest and that you do in fact have a service that can help this prospect. 

7. You build an argument for that new belief and imagine what might happen if you followed up with that new attitude. The fear of rejection starts to dissipate. You might actually start to feel enthusiastic about following up and perhaps getting a new client.

8. You go back to your strategy and scripts and after a little preparation, you pick up the phone. If you don't reach them you send an email message. You feel emboldened.

9. You continue your follow-up until you reach them and have a good conversation that leads to the next step. In many cases this follow-up leads to getting some new clients and your confidence grows.  

It's this process of first working to develop an outer strategy or game and then developing and implementing an inner game that completely transforms your marketing. 

It's funny, but the biggest gains I've seen with my clients, is not in their outer game, but in their inner game. Once, they faced their fear and turned things around, the fear rarely came up again. And that then enabled them to refine their outer game. 

And, marketing actually became fun, because they were now consistently winning the game and attracting more of their ideal clients. 

If you're in the SF Bay Area on November 3rd, I invite you to the workshop where we'll demonstrate both the outer and inner game in real time. We'll go beyond the simple how-tos in this article and show you the actual process in action. 

http://actionplan.com/inoutgame-rm

How do you integrate the outer and inner game of marketing? Please share on the Action Blog by clicking on the Comments link below. 

by Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

I spent this past weekend at my yearly Conference for the Marketing Mastery Program. We spent 2 1/2 days exploring everything you can imagine (and some things you can't imagine) about attracting your ideal clients. 

I wish I could give you a summary that would be useful to you, but I just can't. We covered about 20 topics from How to Get More Attention with Your Marketing Message, to Getting More Done in Less Time, to Breaking Through Your Resistance to Marketing and Selling, to Collaborative Marketing. 

I opened the Conference with "Marketing Creativity and Courage" and ended with "Your Marketing Action Plan for the Year."

But I think the participants came less for the content (which was great) but more for the connections and inspiration. 

My favorite part of the Conference was a 30-minute segment where I interviewed Sal Sylvester, a Mastery Program participant, who had taken his business from struggling (by offering half- and full-day leadership workshops at about $5,000), to thriving (with high-end, 8-month leadership programs up to $70,000). 

Sal's big secret? He followed the marketing basics. 

He worked on developing a more powerful message and took a lot of time expanding and honing his website. Then he worked at developing strategies to get in front of more of his ideal prospects. He spent a good amount of time fine-tuning his sales and proposal process. 

And he worked a lot on the inner aspects of marketing as well. He worked on his limiting beliefs of not being good enough or worthy enough to land really big projects. 

His big breakthrough came in February, 2011 when he got notified by email that three of his projects had come through (when he was on his honeymoon)! 

The biggest thing Sal experienced was his new level of confidence that he could make it happen and create a great lifestyle while serving his clients and making a difference. 

What's the difference between Sal and most Independent Professionals who don't have his level of success? When you add it up, it's quite a few things:

1. He knows where he is going, who his ideal clients are and what his services and programs deliver. 

2. He knows how to speak about his services in the results-oriented language of marketing that gets attention. 

3. He has a great website that gets the attention of visitors and gets response from his ideal clients. http://512solutions.com

4, He knows how to engage his prospects in conversations that make them want to know more and to meet with him. 

5. He conducts Strategy Sessions that connect with prospects and have them to commit to working with him. 

6. He does great work that produces stellar results for his clients. 

Now, I'd like to try a little exercise that will take only a minute. I'd like you to score yourself from 0 to 10 on how well you do on those marketing activities above. Your lowest score would be 0 and your highest score would be 60.

How did you do? Where were you weak and where were you strong? Which areas do you really need to do some work on?

Now take one and work on improving it. Just a small improvement can make a huge impact. For instance, I've seen my clients go from a  25% close rate to a 75% close rate - and better. That means for the same number of meetings with qualified prospects, they are now getting three times as many clients. 

Look, I don't have another Conference coming up for a year, and I'm talking a break in 2013 from the Marketing Mastery Program, but you can still get very detailed information on how to increase your results on every one of those marketing areas above through the Marketing Club. 

Check it out at this link for complete details:

What area of marketing are you going to improve in your business this year? Please share on the Action Blog by clicking on the Comments section below.

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

Most people don't think they're creative. 

And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. All young children think they're creative, but year-by-year the creativity is squeezed out of them. 

What's more important is the RIGHT answer. 

And when I work with clients, a lot of them are looking for that right answer and are afraid to do anything unless they're absolutely sure that answer will work 100% of the time. 

But that's no way to run a business. 

Sure, you want to know what I call "The Game of Marketing" where there are certain principles and rules. But that's just the beginning. Then you need some creativity to take the principles of marketing and combine them and improvise on them until you get your message out in a way that people notice and respond to. 

So how do you get creative if you don't think you are?

First of all, everyone is already naturally creative. It comes with the package called being human. However that creativity has been covered over by too many rules and restrictions, the need to do things right, the aversion to risk and the fear of looking bad or doing the wrong thing. 

What a burden of false beliefs and constrictive thoughts. 

The good news is that there are a lot of tools that can unleash your creativity, none of them are that hard to do, and they actually work. 

I'm going to share one of them today, one of the most powerful.

Distance Yourself from Your Challenges

The concept is simple; you're too close to the problem. You are so caught up in trying to find the right answer that you freeze. In a recent Coaching Call in the Marketing Club, we explored these ideas and in our next call, a participant shared a powerful story how she used this technique of distancing herself. 

What this participant did was coach a friend on how to market her services. And she found that she had dozens of great ideas for her. It wasn't that she was a marketing genius, but that by distancing herself, by being outside of the challenges, that she came up with so many creative ideas.

For instance, if you started a restaurant, you might find it hard to think up a design theme and decor. But haven't you gone to a restaurant that wasn't designed well and immediately came up with several great design ideas (in your head or shared with your friends)  to make the restaurant more attractive and dynamic? You were at a distance because you were not the owner. 

There's been research on this. It's a real phenomenon. 

Find a way to distance yourself from your challenges and, all of a sudden, many great ideas will pour in. Let me give you a few ways to make this work for your own business challenges. 

1. You are trying to come up with a unique message for your business and you hit a brick wall. Instead, think of helping a business that's far away, in a different state or country. Same situation, but not your business. You're likely to come up with a lot of good ideas. 

2. You can't think of any titles for your eZine articles. So instead, you distance yourself by thinking about your client's challenges, not your titles. What are all the mistakes your clients have made over the years? I'll bet you can come up with dozens almost immediately. And those can be turned into titles for articles.

3. You're having some real time management issues. You can't seem to stay on top of things and you're getting overwhelmed. When you try to work on this, you don't get far. Find a friend (as my participant did) and coach them. Listen closely and then come up with some ideas for getting more done with less time. I promise that you'll surprise yourself. 

4. You have a hard time motivating yourself because you're not sure of your direction. In this case, distance yourself by putting  yourself five years into the future. Then instead of struggling to look forward, effortlessly look back and report how your business would look if it were very successful. This simple shifting of perspective typically leads to motivating possibilities. 

This simple act of distancing yourself frees up your natural creativity. In fact, distancing is the opposite of identification or attachment. Instead of being stuck inside your own limiting beliefs, you free yourself by looking at your challenges from an outside, more objective viewpoint. 

Give this a try on one of your marketing challenges and report back by sharing on the Action Blog. Just click on the Comments link below. 

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

Have you ever head the phrase used so often in athletics?

"It's the mental game that's the key to winning."

Well, with all due respect to athletes, no, that's not the full truth. You see, I can work on my mental game as much as I like, but put me out on that racetrack and I will loose every single time. 

Why? Because I'm not conditioned to run the race. I don't have the  experience, the training, the skills to win. I don't have a sufficient "physical game," And that is absolutely necessary to win. 

But the mental game is equally important, of course. 

There are a lot of well, trained, highly skilled and conditioned athletes who do not win. And in many cases, they simply didn't work on their mental game enough to enable them to train better, build their skills to a higher level and keep on keeping on until they win consistently. 

Of course, this is true in marketing yourself. 

But Independent Professionals, compared to professional athletes, are a pretty sorry bunch in both departments. They don't have the marketing know-how, skills, and training to win. And they haven't mastered the mental game either. 

I know, because I've worked with hundreds of intelligent Independent Professionals who had great potential, excellent services, and solid experience in producing results for their clients, whose only marketing activity was praying for referrals. They didn't have an outher or innner gameplan.

And that will only get you so far. 

Are you working with your ideal clients, that is, clients you love to work with and who pay you well? Are you attracting an ongoing stream of these clients? Are you booked up six months or more? Are you making (at minimum) a low six-figure income or even a mid to high six-figure income?

If so, you don't need to read this. Your marketing gameplan is working and your biggest issue is how to fit in all those great clients. 

In this eZine (and blog) for the past 15 years I've been sharing ideas, strategies, techniques and approaches to successfully market your services. But how much have you put into action? 

Are you committed to becoming a "winning marketing athlete?"

If you are, you have to do the things that they do. This includes but is not limited to: 

1. Developing a great marketing message and marketing materials that really express your value and uniqueness - and continuing to improve your message and materials. I still work on this and I've been in business for 28 years!

2. Communicating with a whole lot of people about your business. I've met thousands of business owners through networking and speaking. I've met tens of thousands through teleclasses and I've connected with hundreds of thousands through my eZine. 

3. Following up fearlessly with anyone who might be a potential client for the purpose of having deeper marketing and selling conversations. Believe me, they won't follow-up with you! The ball is always in your court. The next move is always yours. 

4. Asking for the business. One of the easiest things to do technically, one of the hardest things to do in reality, because it takes mental toughness. By conquering the fear of rejection, of looking bad or being pushy, closing is not a big deal.  

If you just worked in these four areas consistently and persistently, you'd become a winning marketing athlete. You'd be doing what's necessary to build both your outer and inner game. 

And you'd start attracting more of your ideal clients than you ever thought possible. 

When are you going to start? Why not today? 

Make a commitment to take your business and marketing to a whole new level. To do that, you need to both learn the practices and skills of marketing and gain the know-how of mastering the mental, or inner game. 

Three options:

1. Just think about it a little more (perhaps forever).   

2. Sign up for the Marketing Club today. If you sign up today I'll also send you a hard copy of my book, "Marketing Ball - Lessons on Attracting Clients from the Marketing Coach."  Today only!

actionplan.com/fasttrack

3. Find out more about my live (and free) workshop called: "Winning the Outer and Inner Marketing Game" to be held in the SF Bay Area on Saturday, November 3. Details here:

actionplan.com/inoutgame-rm 

What are you doing to become a marketing athlete? Please share on the Action Blog. 

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

Everyone knows what marketing hype is. 

It's when you stretch the truth for the purpose of persuading someone to buy a product or service. And for most people, marketing just doesn't include hype. It IS hype.

But when you're a professional service business owner, hype will backfire on you. You see, we may forgive a company selling soap on TV that includes a certain degree of hype in their commercials. But we are slower to give a professional a pass when they do the same kind of thing in their marketing. 

"This workshop will astound you with the amazing secret information it contains on leading your employees to success."

Look, there are very few things that astound anyone these days. Another one you see a lot:

"Learn the 10 Shocking Management Mistakes that will crush your business if your competition doesn't first."

Well, it certainly makes me feel anxious. But do I believe it for a moment? Nope!

I learned something from the famous marketing consultant, Jay Abraham, early in my career. He said, "Superlatives actually weaken your message, simply because they are not believable."

And the other thing: The kind of people you'll attract with hype-filled messages are usually not the kind of people you want to work with anyway. They will buy your programs, but you have set the expectations so high that you can't possibly deliver. Then because the program is harder than they expected, they drop out in droves or ask for a refund. 

The Boring Truth

You'd think telling the truth would be the obvious way to go. The big problem is that for many businesses, the unvarnished truth would be boring. 

"Use our services to get average results every time."

Well, my experience is that professional services and the results they produce are not boring. It's that the professionals simply don't know how to make the truth interesting and even compelling. 

So how do you do that?

Here's a quick guide on the ways that you can generate attention, interest and response for your services while still telling the truth. 

1. Outcomes and Results. Get to the heart of the actual outcomes and results you really produce for your clients. What difference do your services make? What specific uptick have you helped produce? Such as more sales, productivity, profits, retention, etc. Create marketing messages that highlight those results. To do this...

2. Be Specific. Truth is specific, hype is general. If you have helped 72% of your therapy clients avoid divorce and the remaining 28% split amicably, that's a true and impressive result you should communicate.  

It sure is better than: "Most of our clients transform their relationships dramatically." Or if you do say that, at least back it up with some measurable results. 

3. Measure. It's hard to be specific if you don't measure. The first thing to ask is, "What's important to the client? What are their key metrics? For me, the most important metrics are an increase in the number, project size, and duration of their average clients. 

So if before working with me they got 2 clients a month at $500 and the client stays an average of 4 months, I know we have real results if any of those numbers increase. If I can help them all increase, even better.

4. Use Stories. Specific measurements are the starting point, but attaching a story (a true story) to those results has an emotional impact and are therefore more memorable and persuasive. 

If I was sharing the kind of results my clients got, I could share something like this: "My average client, after working with me gets 50% more new clients per month, a 35% increase in their rates and at 25% increase in the length of their contracts. But cold statistics don't persuade.

Better to say, "Janice was frustrated by her income and wanted to increase it. I told her that it was more than increasing her prices but getting better clients and having a marketing system that brought in new clients consistently. After 6 months of working with me, she was able to attract twice as many new clients per month, and raised their rates as well as the duration of their contracts. She's increased her monthly income by $5,600 and is working with her ideal clients, those who really appreciate her work."

Which would persuade you more?

So the formula goes something like this: Measurement + Actual results + Story = Persuasion.

If you can communicate about your business like this, you don't need hype. But if you find you keep resorting to hype, it just might mean that you don't have the measurement, results and stories to back up your marketing. Time to get to work on those!

How are you using measurement, results and stories to market your business without hype? Please share on the Action Blog by click on the Comments link below.

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

Someone asks you what you do and you respond with your best "elevator speech" but nobody seems to be interested. You write emails and marketing materials that seem to say the right thing, but very few people respond. 

You're confused because you've targeted your market, talked about all your benefits and value and still you don't get the response you want. 

At this point, you may give up marketing completely. You decide that it's just not worth all the effort if nobody is responding to your message. But you sure would like to have a message that actually worked, that got the attention, interest and response you want. 

Is there a "secret marketing formula" that you can apply to marketing your professional serves?

The answer is, "yes," and it's the most important marketing principle you'll ever learn. When you finally understand it, you'll think, "That seems to be completely obvious, why didn't I see that before?"

When you use this so-called marketing secret formula, you will immediately see a change in the attention, interest and response that you're marketing gets. 

Let me explain it to you as simply as possible. 

The secret is this: When you communicate about your services, most people immediately focus on the benefits and value of the service they offer, that is, the focus in on you. "Here's how we can help you, here's what we do for you, here's what you get if you work with us." It's all about "Me, me, me."

It's not that you shouldn't communicate all that information at some point. The secret is that you should never communicate it FIRST! You'll have a lot more success if you communicate it SECOND.

You see, when the first words out of your mouth or in a written document are all about you and what you can do, your prospect is actually turned off. They don't feel listened to. They feel they are being sold to. And that creates immediate resistance. "Here's this person telling all the great things their company can do, and I have no idea if they even understand my situation."

So if you don't talk about YOU first, what do you say?

You talk about the prospect, about their situation, their challenges, their problems, their pain, their frustrations and even their aspirations and goals. 

In the FIRST words of your marketing message, essentially you are saying: "I understand you, I feel your pain, I know what's missing for you now and what it is you want. I've been there before. I completely empathize with your situation." 

And there's nothing in the first part of your message that's about you. It's all about them. And guess what? When you're talking about them, they pay attention in a completely different way. 

And this is what generates attention and interest. 

After you've communicated that clearly, only then do you talk about what it is you offer that addresses their situation, makes their challenges easier, solves their problems, eases their pain, lessens their frustration and shows the way to achieving their goals. 

What I call this method of marketing communication is "Marketing Syntax." You see, syntax is the order of things. If you say things in the right order, they make sense. If you use the wrong order, you don't connect. 

Marketing syntax is simple:

1. Talk about their situation, problems and aspirations first. 

2. Talk about your outcomes and results second. 

3. Talk about stories that demonstrate that someone who was at #1 is now at #2.

4. Explain more benefits, as necessary. 

5. Make a call-to-action. Invite them to find out more. 

I won't go into #3–#5 in this article as I want to give you some real examples for both verbal and written communication for #1–#2.

Audio Logo - This is the sentence you use when someone asks you what you do. You want to apply marketing syntax. Imagine someone asks "What do you do?" Here are both good and bad examples:

Bad: We help people achieve abundant health and vitality. 

Good: We work with people who have chronic health issues.

Bad: I'm a coach who works with people to achieve their goals.

Good: I'm a coach who works with successful people who still get stuck in achieving some of their most important goals. 

Bad: I help companies increase profits dramatically.

Good: I work with companies who are dissatisfied with their current profitability.  

Bad: I work with professionals to help them attract more high-end clients. 

Good: I work with professionals who want to attract more high-end clients but don't know where to start. 

Read these over carefully. You'll notice that the bad ones are about what you do, about your results. The good ones are about the prospect's situation, problem, frustration or aspiration.

If you follow the good examples, you'll discover that prospects then want to know more. You can then tell them about the outcomes you produce for clients, share some stories, and explain some benefits. 

For a written example, you don't have to go any further than this article. Notice that I opened it with three paragraphs that were all about you and your frustration in not getting the results you wanted with your marketing messages? 

That drew you in, because you could completely relate to what I was talking about. I showed you that I understood what you were going through. And only after that did I explain what you need to do to get the attention, interests and response you wanted. 

This written approach to Marketing Syntax can be used in articles, web copy (especially your home page and services pages), and promotional emails.

I assert that this simple concept, Marketing Syntax, is the most important marketing idea you will ever learn. You want to become a student of this concept. You want to work at developing messages that use this principle, you want to test and fine-tune your messages, both verbal and written, until you get the attention, interest and response you want.  

Can you share an example where you used Marketing Syntax successfully? Please share on the Action Blog by clicking on the Comment link below.

by Robert Middleton

The scenario is familiar:

You're sitting at your desk creatively procrastinating. An important, but not-so-attractive marketing task has been sitting on your to-do-list for several days with little progress. 

It's something you know you need to do but just can't seem to get around to doing. Perhaps it's making follow-up calls to a few potential clients or writing a web page about a new service. 

Any task that holds the possible risk of rejection seems to drift effortlessly to the bottom of your list where you'll "get to it later" while you do more important things like organize your desk or check your email for the fifth time in an hour. 

It's not that you're not motivated; it's that you're stuck. 

And every effort of will to get that task done seems to hit the brick wall of resistance. How many times have you gone through this exact scenario with countless similar tasks in the past?

So what do do? How to move off the dime and just get it done?

There's no one answer for this, but many. Several small preparatory actions serve as both carrots and sticks to get you moving when resistance is high.

Plan Your Week

At any given time you have dozens of potential projects and tasks, some for your clients, some for yourself. But looking at a long list every day only leads to overwhelm. You can only realistically get a few of these things done every week. So put only those items on your weekly list that you can reasonably accomplish that week. Simple, but it takes practice.

Plan Your Day

Each day transfer only those items to your daily list that you can reasonably get done that day. Easier said than done; we always tend to put more on our list that we can easily fit in. So at the end of the day we've lost the getting-it-done game. Remember, this is a "to DO list," not a "TRY to do list." My rule of thumb is to work from a short list of high-priority tasks. 

Estimate Time for Tasks

Almost everyone tends to underestimate what it will take to get a task done. Rule of thumb: Double the time. Increase that one hour to work on your services page to two hours. And don't put "elephants" on your list: "Write Book." Instead, "Write five pages of book."

Handle Your Email

Everyone checks their email - usually several times a day. How about "handling your email instead?" This means checking and responding to every outstanding email. Then do it fewer times a day - say two or three instead of ten. The idea is to remove email as an excuse for not getting more important things done. 

Prepare Yourself

When finally confronted with the dread resisted task, you should prepare for that task first. If it's making follow-up calls, think about the possible outcome (a new client or two), script out what you're going to say, and rehearse with a mastermind partner until your confidence increases. Then visualize making the calls and see yourself doing them effortlessly with a positive outcome. 

Think Like an Olympian

Fit those activities into your schedule and make them as important as the task itself. Remember, Olympic athletes put in a lot more time preparing for the race, getting coached, and visualizing outcomes than they do in the actual race. Why should you be any different? Making follow-up calls and writing marketing materials aren't easy, especially if you haven't spent a lot of time doing them. Thinking they should be easy only undermines you. 

Make It a Game

When working with a client who has done all of the above, but is still resisting and delaying, I challenge them to a game of "get it done or else." This is how it works: The client commits to getting a specific task done by a definite time. If he or she fails to get it done, they write out a $100 check to their least favorite political party. It's amazing what happens when faced with this dire consequence!

Practice Winning Behaviors

All of the practices listed in today's blog post are "winning behaviors." They are practices that will help you consistently win in your business. They'll help you get difficult things done, enabling you to take on even more challenging projects and tasks. Being self-employed requires this kind of discipline, especially if you want to earn a great income and make a real difference with your clients. 

What are the winning behaviors that you practice? Please share on the Action Blog. 

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

When we think of improving our marketing, we think of increasing our effectiveness a little bit here and a little bit there. 

And it's true, incremental changes in several areas can produce a big increase in overall effectiveness. However, there's something almost everyone misses in this process.

This will make more sense if I give you a scenario:

An Independent Professional (perhaps you) is doing their best to get out there and market their services. 

Activity one: Attend networking events, talk with prospects

Activity two: Provide article to those who are interested

Activity three: Collect cards and send link to website

Activity four: Follow up to talk about your business

Activity five: Set up Strategy Sessions (selling conversations)

From the outside, these look like the right activities. They are designed to make connections with prospective clients, follow up with them, set up meetings and conduct selling conversations. 

Then why is it that the vast majority of Independent Professionals do these activities with very little result to show for them? 

It's not for lack of intention or hard work or trying the best they can. The problem is that in doing these activities, most are actually doing the exact opposite of what they need to be doing. 

And to see that, you have to examine the most important component of all these activities. You must examine the quality of the communication. 

All marketing is communication. But the key to success in communication is often a mystery. What are Independent Professionals doing wrong in their communication? Why is their communication not producing consistent results?

It has to do with the focus and direction of the communication. Let's look at these five activities and demonstrate what's not working and how to make it work. 

Activity one: Attend networking events, talk with prospects

OK, great, but what are you talking about? Doesn't it make sense to mostly talk about our services, what we do, how we help clients, the kind of results we produce etc? Yes, but that is the least important part of the communication. 

The most important part of the communication is doing just the opposite: Finding out about your prospective clients, asking questions about their business and how they got started, above all, being curious and interested. In doing this you learn about their goals and their challenges, and you'll have a much better idea of how you might be able to help them. 

Activity two: Provide article to those who are interested

Offering an article after meeting with someone is certainly better than offering just a business card. After all, if you've connected with someone and developed some attention and interest, the next thing they want is more information. 

But the key is the content of the article. Is it mostly "me-centered" talking all about the things you do for clients and all the things you know? Wouldn't it be more interesting and compelling if it talked about common mistakes they made and how to correct these mistakes? It wouldn't be about you, it would be about them, their concerns and aspirations. 

Activity three: Collect cards and send link to website

This is a good idea. This provides more information they might be interested in. But what is the content of your website? Like the article, most websites are completely "me-centered." They are about your business, your background, your services. 

How often do you see a website that's "you-centered" instead? That is, it talks about their issues, and aspirations. It talks about the clients you've worked with in a way that a visitor can relate to (that client is just like me). It talks more about results (what you get) not so much about processes (what we do).

Activity four: Follow up to talk about business

It's a good thing to do any kind of follow-up. It's certainly better than waiting for someone to call you. But what do you talk about on those calls? More often than not, you start talking about your serves, what you do and how you do it. 

But just like your networking conversations, people want you to be interested in them first. They want you to understand them before you pitch your services. So in this call you should ask more questions and get to know them. What are the goals in their business; where are they in reaching them; what are their challenges in reaching them?

Activity five: Set up Strategy Sessions (selling conversations)

If you really get to know someone, they naturally want to know more about you, about your services, about how you help your clients. But you don't want to go too deeply into that on a follow-up call. You want to set up a time to talk in more depth. 

That's what I call a Strategy Session. And guess what, about 75% of that call should be about the prospect, not about you. You want to better understand their situation, goals and challenges before you talk about the services and solutions you offer. 

When you turn your marketing around from talking mostly about you, to talking mostly about them, a wonderful thing happens: Prospects get interested in you. They enjoy talking with you, reading your materials and meeting with you. 

By making this simple but powerful change to all your marketing communications, your marketing will start to get results on a whole new level.  

What tips do you have about communicating about your business to generate attention and interest? Please share on the Action Blog by clicking on the Comments link below.

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

I remember that week in 2000 vividly. I had just hosted a one day free workshop at the Santa Clara Convention Center with about 180 participants. I had used that event to launch my "InfoGuru Marketing Manual."

I followed up the event with an email promoting the manual and orders started pouring in, not just from the Bay area but from all over the world. 

I'd finally hit upon something that my subscribers wanted: a concise, yet detailed how-to manual on attracting clients for Independent Professionals. 

And over the ensuing months, the manual orders kept flooding in – sometimes as many as 75 a day. It was a little overwhelming but also exhilarating. Over a three year period I was bringing in about $10,000 every month through manual sales alone. 

Now that's a great example of "Rapid Revenue Acceleration." 

On Friday, my friend and mastermind partner, George Huang, interviewed me about the things I'd done over the past several years to generate income in my business rapidly, and the InfoGuru Manual campaign was just one example of that.

That year, 2000, I cracked the $100,000 barrier in my business and have never looked back. 

However, what made this interview so different than most was how George dug into everything that I was doing that enabled me to accelerate my revenue rapidly, both externally and internally. He investigated my thoughts, attitudes and decisions as much as my marketing strategies. 

You can listen to this interview on August 29 and all the other interviews of the Rapid Revenue Acceleration Summit starting next week on August 21. 

Today I wanted to share with you the formula that George discovered for rapid revenue acceleration. It certainly fits with everything I teach about attracting high-end clients. 

The Rapid Revenue Acceleration Approach (The Rule of Five 1's)

1. Focus on a Single Audience. You don't want to dilute your efforts on different customers and clients with varying interests and needs. So the better you can target this audience the better. This also enables you to focus your message in a way that is crystal clear and that speaks to the aspirations of that audience.  

2. Offer a Flagship Product or Program. You may offer a number of different services, but if you want rapid growth it must be a single, well-differentiated offering that has high perceived value such as my InfoGuru Manual. In subsequent years I offered the Marketing Action Groups, the Marketing Mastery Program and the Marketing Club. 

3. One Lead Generation or Promotional Approach. You want to find the most effective marketing strategy and go "all in." You can't dabble with a little here and a little there. When I promoted the InfoGuru Manual it was via emails to my subscriber list. Over a three year period I crafted hundreds of different email messages to communicate the value of the manual. 

4. One Engagement Approach. This is the step that so many miss completely. Once you've done your promotion, such as speaking, email, or even networking, you need a step-by-step system to engage the prospect until they are warmed up enough to engage in a selling conversation. This always includes some kind of organized follow-up.

5. One Conversion Approach. Marketing is what gets a prospect interested. A conversion or selling approach is what closes the deal. For the InfoGuru Manual this was a simple call-to-action at the end of the InfoGuru Manual sales letter. However, the conversion approach for my Marketing Mastery Program is individual complimentary Strategy Sessions.  

All of the people George will be interviewing for the Summit have offered a wide variety of products, services and programs, from high-end information products, to business coaching services. What they all have in common is the five-step approach outlined above, of course, customized to their own businesses. 

Can you also develop a system for rapid revenue acceleration in your business? Certainly the possibility is there for just about everyone, but I urge you to make your reservation in the Summit and learn from the experts.

By the way, this is one of the few summits where I'm excited about every single interview. I know I'll learn a lot personally.  

When you click on the link below you'll be taken to a page with the schedule of all the interviews. You can listen to them live and all of them will be recorded and transcribed so that you can listen later. 

Rapid Revenue Acceleration Summit

Do you have an example of rapidly accelerating revenue in your company? Please share on the Action Blog. 

by Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

In a conversation with one of my Marketing Mastery participants the concept of "marketing invincibility" came up. 

Sounds, good, but what would that look like? 

The dictionary defines invincible as being too powerful to be defeated. When I think of invincible I conjure up super hero images - those who have special powers that protect them from defeat. So if you had marketing invincibility what would your super powers be?

Here are a few I think are essential:

Super Clarity

Our marketing super hero would be very clear about who his clients were and the results his services delivered. There would be no uncertainty here, no vague and indefinite target market or vacillation about the services he offered.  

Super Communication

When asked about her services, a marketing super hero would have answers prepared that explained the value of her services in a way that was attractive, interesting and persuasive. She'd easily talk about the benefits, the structure and outcomes. 

Super Website

All super heroes have an image, a brand, if you will, expresses by their costume, style and actions. Super marketing heroes have an impressive website that communicates their image and brand while educating their prospects about how they can help.

Super Marketing Strategy

Super heroes are know for one particular power, such as super strength, the ability to fly etc. A super hero marketer typically discovers the marketing strategy that works best for him and then exercises that strategy consistently, whether it be networking, speaking, or online marketing. 

Super Follow-up

Super heroes never give up. They pursue their objectives until they  have triumphed. So in marketing that would mean the ability to keep pursuing a prospective client until it was clearly a go or no go. They would never be satisfied with maybe or someday. 

Super Confidence

Yes, super heroes have fears and doubts. But when push comes to shove, they have confidence they can prevail. Super marketers have weaknesses as well, but when they launch a campaign, give a presentation, or go for the close, they have no doubts or fears.

Super Growth

Most super heroes gained their power magically. They just have it. But super marketers are more like Batman. They developed their powers intentionally, over time, with much struggle and sacrifice. And they are committed to growing and improving.

When marketing super heroes develop the powers listed above, they do become invincible. They are never concerned that they won't have clients that pay them well. They can always activate one or more of their super powers and quickly grab the attention and interest of prospects, converting them into paying clients. 

What are you doing to develop your marketing super powers? Please share on the Action Blog by clicking on the Comments link below.