What you want to do is give your clients exactly the information they need at exactly the right time. You don’t want them to be internet marketing experts. The whole idea is that they hire YOU so they don’t have to worry about that.

So you need to educate them in a way that keeps them confident and knowledgeable enough that they’ll trust you, keep paying you and know immediately when another firm approaches them why they’re full of hot air. Staying in regular personal one-on-one contact with a full list of business people and showing a genuine interest in their business even when they haven’t fully decided to hire you yet is probably the most effective way to recruit your clients.

If you have strong personal contact this way they’ll think of you first and look to you for advice on web issues. That’s all you need to bring in a steady stream of paying clients.

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And you charge a substantial set up fee and ongoing fees. The biggest problem most small to medium sized business owners have is a lack of time.

Their next biggest problem is usually getting more high quality customers. So if you provide hands off solution that gets them more customers with no time involvement on their part you have a winner on your hands.

Also don’t get too fancy with this. Don’t expect to sell people on a multi-thousand dollar service hiding behind your website. Pre-educating your clients with a whole pile of blogs and audio you have the resale rights to may NOT be the most intelligent way to do things. You’re giving them all kinds of ideas and preconceptions that they’ll screw up.

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As they’re telling you about their great results just say “Wow that’s so great. Hang on I’m just writing it down.” If they don’t give you specific numbers ask for them and write those down too.

Then either before or after asking for referrals also ask them if they’d mind you using what they said to you as a testimonial. If they say yes just ask them to read and sign the testimonial you’ve written out. That’s how you get powerful testimonials. There’s another advantage here.

If your client reads his testimonial before calling his friends to recommend you you’ve just given him the perfect thing to say to his friends. For example “Yeah this guy built me a website and I just made three sales totaling $5,500. All straight from the website he built for me.”

“Because you’re my friend he’s willing to give you a free online marketing critique to see if he can help make you some more money in the same way.” Listening to these recommendation calls is not only entertaining it’s also very educational for you.

You’ll find out how your clients talk about you and areas you might need to educate them more. You’ll also find out how much they appreciate the work you’ve done from them.

Finally there is a huge advantage to you of this whole process. You’re cementing in their mind the advantages of doing business with you and making them repeat it over and over to their business friends. That builds long term client loyalty.

You might say something like: “That’s just great. Thank you so much for letting me knows. Hang on I’m just writing what you said down.”

“You know John I’m thrilled you’re making good money out of the site I built for you. But what would me even more is to help a few of your friends to make this kind of money too.”

“Remember when we first started out and I told you that when you see the real results I get you I’d like you to call and recommend me to a few of your business friends.”

“Who do you know who’s in business who could also benefit from the service I provide. They might be a restaurant owner or a clothing retailer or they could be running an accounting service.”

Business owner: “Oh yeah. My accountant might like a website.”

You: “Look I’ve found the easiest way to do this is just to go through the list of people you know. Do you keep an address book of some kind?”

Business owner: “Sure I’ll just get it out.” I’ve just let you in on a referral getting secret that instead of getting you one or two referrals can get you 5. 10, 20, 30 even 50 or more high quality referrals.

The secret is to ask your client where he keeps the addresses and phone numbers of his friends. Does he have an address book? Then go through it with him and talk about who you might be able to help with your service and how you might be able to help them. As you come across good prospects ask him if he’d be kind enough to call them now.

And just start booking appointments to see them. It really is that simple.

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It’s like the doubling penny. If you double a penny every day for a year you end up with about 789 billion dollars by the end of the year (okay I’m exaggerating to have some fun with you but you get the idea).

Offline getting referrals from your happy clients can be even more powerful than viral marketing. Think about it. If every one of your new clients refers you two more clients before long you’ll have more clients than you can handle and hopefully more money than you can spend.

The biggest secret of getting a steady stream of referrals is to make giving referrals a condition of doing business with you. Here’s how you do it.

Some time after you’ve made an agreement and sorted out payment you have this conversation with your new client:

“Before we go any further I just want to let you know what you can expect from me.

“First you can expect that I’ll treat you with respect and I’ll deliver all the tasks on this list on the dates we’ve written down.

“As you know nothing’s entirely predictable in business so if I can’t do that I’ll let you know in advance.

“I’ll also spend a lot of my time thinking about and brainstorming ways I can help you increase your profits in your business and when I come up with an idea that I think can truly help you I’ll let you know.

“That’s what you can expect from me and I would just like to ask if you’d be kind enough to do a couple of things for me in return…”

“First I’ll need feedback and at times various forms of content from you at certain times and of course payments as we’ve written on this list.”
“Nothing’s entirely predictable in business so if there’s any problem with delivering the content or the feedback or the payments on time I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me know in advance.”

“Also after I’ve been helping you with your online marketing for a few weeks and you can see that’s its obviously working for you I’m hoping you’d be kind enough to do me one more favor.”

“I’d like you to call and recommend me to a few of your business friends who could also benefit from the service I provide.”

“Does that sound like a fair arrangement?”

You’ll want to practice saying this so it comes out smoothly and naturally.

When you do this most of your clients will be very impressed with your professionalism. First of all one of the most annoying parts of doing business with a new contractor is not knowing what to expect from them and what’s expected of you.

You’ve just told them exactly what to expect. You’ve also put in their heads the idea that you deliver by telling them that you expect them to be so happy with your service that they’ll want to recommend their friends.

And the chance of them agreeing to this request is very high indeed. This is the first step. Now what do you do to get the referrals when the time comes? You’re about to discover a few insider secrets that almost no one in any field knows…

Read More- How to Avoid Phone Tag Hell

But if you’ve decided it’s vital to answer your phone then set a 1-2 hour call in time every day.

Tell your prospects and clients that you are always next to your phone and you will always answer your phone in that time period.

Put the time on your business card something like “best time to call 2-3pm”. Then make sure you are with your phone and you do answer your calls immediately.

If someone calls in that time period and leaves a message because you’re on a call to someone else then be sure to call them back immediately.

If anyone calls outside those hours you can feel free to turn your phone off or answer it…it’s your choice. You should also return messages you get outside those hours during the call in time you’ve set.

What you’re doing is training people to call you when it’s convenient and practical for you. And you’re making yourself accessible.

I used this method for several years and it works wonders at slashing down wasted time on the phone. When your talking to a business owner one on one you can even leave your cell phone on and if it rings turn it off in front of him and explain that you only guarantee to answer your phone during a set call in time and why you do that.

On the subject of cell phones answering one while you’re talking to a business owner is the height of rudeness and could very easily cost you his business. Turn it off.

If you’re having an impromptu conversation with a business owner and you’re expecting an important call at some stage, once you realize your conversation is going to go on for a while, say “I just have to warn you I’m expecting an important call but I don’t want to be rude. If it comes through while we’re talking is it okay for me to take it?”

But I am warning you: taking cell phone calls while you talk to business owners is playing with fire. I know a few very successful business owners who will simply end the conversation with you and leave if you take a call in the middle of talking to them. And I would be inclined to do the same myself.

Let me put it in plain language…you’re wasting my valuable time talking to someone else while I’m waiting for you and it’s just plain rude.

With some businessmen this problem can become many times worse. If you’ve ever done any kind of sales you know how it can be outrageously difficult to set up an appointment by phone. The simple answer is…don’t do it that way.

When you’ve got a business owner’s attention, when you’re having that casual conversation about marketing and his website, he may not be quite ready to act immediately.

He might have to bring his business partner in or find some answer to other questions he has. Or you might have caught him at a busy time and you both decide it would be better to talk when he’s not being constantly distracted.

Here’s a key secret master salesmen and consultants learn pretty fast. NEVER leave an appointment without booking a definite time for the NEXT appointment.

The same goes for telephone calls with a business owner who hasn’t hired you yet. Book the next time you’ll get together and give him a compelling reason to look forward to that appointment.

For example: “Okay I’ll see you Wednesday at 2pm. I’ll have those projections on your increase in profits from your own direct response website.” Or: “I’ll show you something then I didn’t have time to cover today. I used exactly the same thing to help another business in town make an extra $3,000 last month.” Finally I’ll share another secret for you that can help any busy consultant avoid phone tag…

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The strength of the one-on-one approach is:

• You design a custom website solution for the business owner you’re talking to.
• You eliminate most or all of the shopping around the business owner might consider doing.

If you’ve frequented online marketing forums for 6 months or more you’re already marketing savvy and business owners will pick up on that very fast believe me. When you start talking about automating follow up marketing with their customers with a sophisticated online email marketing system (you can use your aweber.com account…you get unlimited autoresponders)…

Or when you talk about creating response driven website pages that get visitors to the website to actually call or email the business immediately (you just design pages with a call to action)…

When you do that smart business people will be listening. They know more customers and better marketing to their customers means more profits.

You actually have a huge advantage being an internet marketer because if you’re a bit shy or geeky and you start talking like this they’ll just think you’re one of those supergeeky internet geniuses like Bill Gates!

The most important thing is to focus on asking THEM a heap of questions about their sales process and just throw in stories you know from the internet marketing world on the results people have had from their web sites.

You want them to know that your objective is to see if you can find real solutions for their business…ways to make them more money with their online marketing. But my most important point is…you don’t know squat about how to set up this service unless you talk to real business owners and take real money off them.

You already have the skill to do the job. Don’t be overcome by that old affliction “the paralysis of analysis”.

Just get out there and talk to some real live prospects…and get started! “You are already a highly skilled consultant who can charge for your expertise.” What part of that don’t you understand?

This same businessman is going to blow $5,000 to $20,000 plus on a web design firm that won’t do a thing for his bottom line sales. You have an obligation to save him from wasting his money and help him on a track that we all know from experience will make him real profits.

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