No BS, the information I am about to share can be the foundation to you making a lot of money in the offline world. I'll spare any additional hype as that's the last thing we need. But I'm serious, take a few minutes and read this thread if you have any interest in offline marketing.

I decided to start this thread after reading, posting, and reading other posts in another recent offline thread on here. It's clear a lot of people could use help in this area...real offline marketing. I'm talking about getting huge checks as an offline marketing consultant. And doing it without selling website design, SEO, autoresponders, etc.

The bottom line is, and I alluded to this in that other thread, the hardest part about getting large fee's as a marketing consultant is BELIEVING it is possible. And hopefully, after reading this thread YOU will believe it IS possible. Perhaps some great marketing minds like MichaelHiles, AP, JohnMcCabe, and Blase, will chime in as well to help you believe it IS possible and people ARE doing it.

Let's get started.

Beliefs are everything. Your belief system will govern your entire life. I could go on and on about beliefs and the proper mindset. But for now, please just trust me on it. And if you do want me to talk more about it, PM me and tell me.

Warrior member AP gave some great examples (in that other thread) of just how dumb most companies are. So trust me when I say this, if you read a few key books about direct marketing, you WILL know more about proper marketing than 90% of business owners out there. And even if they do know this stuff, they aren't using it.

AP mentioned this as well, and I agree, this stuff is easy. The ignorance of the businesses owners makes it easy.

I'll prove it to you. Below is a list of things to help you get started and to help you BELIEVE that YOU can help businesses and in the process get paid big bucks to do it.




It costs about 5 times more to get a new customer than it does to sell to an old one. This is probably the biggest thing I see businesses doing wrong. Most businesses are spending a ton of money running ads while completely ignoring their past customers.

Now that you know it costs 5 times more to get new customers instead of selling to past customers, doesn't it make sense that you should focus more of your time, money, and energy on, as Dan Kennedy puts it, putting a fence around your herd?

Obviously going after new customers is a good thing. But, not at the expense of ignoring old customers. One of the reasons people don't buy is lack of trust. If they have purchased from you in the past that means they trust you. So why do all of the work of gaining someone's trust and then only sell something to them once? You gained their trust enough that they got out their wallet and gave you money. That's a big step. Use it to your advantage. Sell them something else.

Takeaway - If a business is spending a ton on advertising to get new customers, stop the bleeding. Redirect their focus on selling to past customers. Then, use the extra profits from that and advertise for new customers.




Obviously your job as a consultant is to make the company you are helping more money. If you can make a company $100,000 in the first year of working with you, do you really think it matters if you charge them $30,000 to do it? Selling is just an exchange of value. So if you can show a company how to make more money than they pay you, it's a win win. It's like they are buying money at a discount.

You may be asking "how can I be sure I can make them $XXXX?" That answer lies in....




Choosing who you DON'T work with is just as important as who you do work with. I don't care how much money is involved, sometimes it's in your best interest to not work with someone.

You also need to pre-qualify so you know you can help a business and get an idea of how much you can help them.

You find out how you can help a business by asking them questions. You can do this over the phone, in person, fax or email them a questionnaire, etc. I recommend emailing a questionnaire.

Their answers will tell you what they are doing, what they are not doing, what they could be doing better, how much their average customer spends with them, how many customers they have, etc.

As an example, if a business is spending 90% of their advertising budget on getting new customers and they are ignoring their past customers, you can EASILY make them a ton of money.

Remember, it costs 5 times more to get new customers than it does to sell to past customers. ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS!

When they answer your questionnaire, you will see all of their numbers. So then you can run your own numbers. You can add small increases to their numbers and thanks to the wonderful power of compounding, you can get an idea on what you can do for them.

Small changes equal big profits. Again, thanks to compounding.



This part is long because of the story I tell. But there are some nuggets in there if you are paying attention. It's also long because...

Besides belief, this is probably the most important aspect of whether or not you can command $5,000 a year or $30,000 and up.

If you are selling a commodity, then charging higher prices is not going to work. This is why a lot of IM'ers that get into this "offline gold rush" struggle. They are selling commodities. They are selling websites and SEO. Truth is, a lot of people think that they can just hire their neighbors, aunt's, uncle's, hamster's, 14 year old owner who is a "computer whiz" to make them a website for $200.

Fact is, all other things being equal, people will choose the lower price. If you allow an apples to apples comparison, you're screwed. Now that you know this, what does that tell you?

You don't allow them to compare apples to apples. Be an orange. (who came up with these silly fruit analogies anyway?!)

I used to sell mortgages. I was selling a commodity. I was handed "warm" leads and told to "smile and dial". What a pain in the a$$ that was. I remember sitting at my desk day after day pounding the phone "hoping" someone would pick up their phone and do business with me.

There was a few problems with this. First off, the leads sucked. They went "warm". More on that (leads) later. Second, even when I did happen to get lucky and people actually talked to me, I felt as if I was trying to convince them to refinance. Keyword being "convince". I was in the convincing business. Let me tell you, it's a terrible business to be in.

Even worse, if I did a good enough job convincing them and got them interested, I then had another hurdle.

Pricing.

After talking about how much my fee's were I always got "those fees are too high" or "ok, well I'm talking to another company as well and their fees are less" or "ABC company offered me a lower interest rate." So what did I do, I lowered my fees. Makes me sick thinking about this now. If I didn't lower them, you know what would happen. I'd lose the deal. Which meant going to back to pounding the phones looking for my next deal.

Only this time I was worse off because I was getting desperate. People can sense when they are your next car payment.

Anyway, as you can imagine if I did land any deals with this approach I didn't make much on them. And I had to deal with a lot of bs to even get the deal.

Luckily, I wised up one day and realized that something had to change. I realized what I was doing wasn't working and set out to change that. I set out to learn about marketing. Best move I ever made.

I changed the entire way I did business. First, I picked a niche. In this case it was bad credit refinance. I then created my own leads by using direct mail. Letters, tearsheets, FSI's, postcards, etc.

All of my marketing pieces directed the reader to either my free recorded message ($5 a month), website, or call me (which actually went to an answering service called PatLive).

The free recorded message and website were more of a credibility booster. Obviously the ultimate goal was for them to call me. The website had testimonials and told them what I could do for them. The free recorded message, same thing.

Do you see what I did here? I positioned myself as the guy to call if you had bad credit and needed to refinance. People were now calling ME. Not the other way around. Remember before I was calling them. And I was trying to convince them to do business with me. And I was competing against other mortgage brokers.

Not anymore.

People started pursuing me. I just threw out some bait with the direct mail. Then they came after me. People would thank me up and down for returning their calls..."Thank you so much for getting back to me." Before, when I was calling them it was "stop calling me, I'm not interested!"

On the phone I would interview THEM. I of course HAD to get certain information from them do to the nature of my job. But at the same time I was qualifying them. Not the other way around.

They no longer were shopping around. They no longer questioned my fees. In fact, I started charging about 3 times more than I was before. But it didn't matter. They were just happy that I was helping them.

And at the end of the day that's what it's all about. Helping people get an end result. And in return you get paid for it. I mean really, does it get any better than that?


Basically, 80% of your results comes from 20% of your efforts. In business, this means...

80% of your profit comes from 20% of your products
80% of your profit comes from 20% of your customers
80% of your profit comes from 20% of your sales staff
80% of your problems come from 20% of your employees/customers

I should note that it's not always an 80/20 split. Sometimes it's 70/30, 90/10, 95/5, etc. Either way, the fact remains that most of your results comes from only a small percentage of your efforts. You basically want to separate the critical few from the trivial many.

How can you use this to help businesses? Here are some examples...

Do they sell more than one thing? If so, dig into the numbers and I bet you find that some products sell a lot more than others. If this is the case, I would consider focusing more on the products that are selling and less focus on the ones that aren't.

How about, 20% of their sales team is responsible for 80% of their sales/profits. My suggestion then, focus your time and energy on those 20%. It's obviously wise to treat everyone with respect, I am not saying to ignore the other 80% of their staff. But, by focusing more on those 20% and investing more time and money on them, since they are the ones bringing in most of the business, there's a great chance sales will increase even more.

You can, and should, use this 80/20 principle in your own consulting business. Perhaps 20% of your clients are taking up 80% of your time. Consider firing them! Or, raise your fees to make it worth the hassle. If they don't like it, see ya!



You are probably already familiar with this as you see it in IM. Well, it works in the offline world as well.

This technique is free to use and it will increase profits for a business like you wouldn't believe! Some examples...
Window Washers- Can clean the window sills and screens for an extra fee.

Pizza/Deli/Any Food Place- After a person orders, ask them if they would like XYZ product as well. Think McDonalds "Which you like fries with that?" Or, tell customers about a special you are running today.

Carpet Company - Upgraded to a better carpet or padding.

Paint Store - Person comes in to purchase paint, ask them if they need brushes.

Car Shop - Person is buying tires for you, ask them if they need brakes.

If a business sells anything online, they can use an up sell on their thank you page.

Infomercials have the up sell technique down pat! Ever order something off the TV? I can pretty much guarantee they will upsell the heck out of you when you call and order. They have to. It's hard to make money just selling the one product because TV air time and the cost to make the commercial is so expensive.

I would like to add that timing is important when using the upsell technique. It's best to ask AFTER the customer has committed to purchasing. Ask after you have payment confirmation (credit card number) when they are in the timing state.

Cross sells are similar. You are just selling customers a related product or service. Or at the least, letting them know about other products or services, even if it isn't related. If you sell widgets A, B, C, and D make sure your customer is aware of all 4. If they buy B, tell them about D. If they buy A, tell them about C. So on and so forth.




I could go on and on about this and give more advice (USP, testing, systems, improving the sales process, etc). But I think that is enough for now. It's a lot easier than you think. You just need the confidence that you CAN help businesses with your marketing advice.

Here are a few book recommendations on to learn enough to be deadly.

Marketing books to get you started...

Dan Kennedy - Everything he has written. Grab his No B.S. series books to start off.
Chet Holmes - The Ultimate Sales Machine
Michael Masterson - Ready, Fire, Aim
Larry Steinmetz - How To Sell At Prices Higher Than Your Competitors
Michael Gerber - The E-Myth
Neil Rackham - Spin Selling


Mindset, get your head straight books...

Dr. Robert Anthony - Beyond Positive Thinking (my favorite book of all time)
Dr. Maxwell Maltz (Dan Kennedy now owns the rights to it) - Psycho Cybernetics
Anthony Robbins - Anything by him (awaken The Giant Within, Unlimited Power, etc)

Tim Ferriss - The 4 Hour Work Week (could probably fit in both categories)


That is only a VERY TINY fraction of great books out there. But reading them is not enough. You must apply your new found knowledge or the books will be worthless to you. As always, take massive action.

Would post more but I have to run out to a hockey game. I coach a local middle school team. Wish us luck!

Any questions on this topic, fire away.