This is an answer to a question I was asked privately about marketing a small, one person, b2b service business. It’s a sort of follow-up to my earlier “Being Good At Cold Calling Is Like Being A Functional Drunk” post.
In a nutshell, when there is only one person to bring clients in the door AND service them; to be successful you must put marketing systems to work instead of manual labor to get clients. The reason is simple…
With one person delivering the service being billed for, time not spent with paying clients is expense. Nothing more.
Reliable, positive-return marketing in the form of: “evergreen” advertisements, direct mail campaigns, automated and live seminars, newsletters, referral incentive programs, and more need to be put in place and run on autopilot to be successful over the long term.
Far too often, professionals with a terrific service get caught up in the wheels of their success. The very activities that brought them to success level 1 keeps them from getting to level 2. When the only ways you know how to get clients require manual labor — things like cold calling, networking, even certain referral stimulation activities — in order to progress a small step back is usually required where manual labor is replaced with tested systems. Many service pros earning a 6-figure income who are still just scraping by are not willing to do that, and remain stuck instead with limited time available for billing and far too much time spent on manual labor client aquisition.
If you liked this post, you'll probably enjoy these, as well:
- Being Good At B2B Cold Calling Is Like Being A Functional Drunk
- Small Business Entrepreneurs Need A System To Hire Employees
- A Peek Into A Consultation With A Networking Consulting Business
- How to uncover Marketing and Business Breakthroughs
- Cold Calling Sucks! (For computer consulting businesses and everyone else, too.)
