What service is valuable to a business, easy to justify the investment and is simple to fulfill?

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Hi guys,

Looking to see if we can get a valuable discussion going.

Right now I have worked with James Farren (on this forum) and he has showed me how to attract and sell lead generation services to businesses.

That is working quite well and I've built it up to over $10K/month in management fees and within the next 48 hours that is more than likely going to be above $20+K/month in management fees as I have a couple of deals that are quite likely to go through.

While I previously would have found it hard to believe, making the sales is quite easy - and if I am honest, quite effortless. I am about to close a deal for about $10K a month and with the way James has taught me to structure it, the prospect has not even asked for a testimonial or anything like that.

So I've come to the realisation that making the sales is the easy part. With the right type of marketing and sales process, it's really not that difficult. I used to think otherwise.

My new problem is fulfillment. Now I have the deals and fulfilling them means that I have to do a whole lot of work. I've thought about outsourcing but I feel like it is too complicated to efficiently outsource.

So the point of the post here is really to see if anyone else out there has any ideas on what services are valuable, easy to justify the investment and easy to fulfill. And by "easy to fulfill" I mean that they are easy to outsource.

I'm not looking to outsource everything. But I would like to hand off the core part of the work to someone else.

Ideally, I want to focus on the marketing and sales and not have to worry about fulfilling. That's the ideal scenario.

So my options are, as I feel right now:

1. Find people, or another agency, to do the work for me (not sure how to approach this).

2. Look into selling another service that fits my criteria and is relatively easy to outsource, or to find someone to fulfill.

To be honest, I am not expecting this to blow up - but any discussion or input would be appreciated.

So, what are your ideas?

PS: Before anyone PM's me about James or the course that I took from him that got me to where I am, please know that I am not sure if he is still offering this. If you would like more info on it then you can PM me and I'll have a chat to him to see if he is still offering it.

Thanks!
#offline marketing #business #easy #fulfill #investment #justify #service #simple #valuable
  • Why not talk to James about what he does? Seems the most logical thing to do, and doesn't smell as funny.

    If you're serious, you need to list out some of your activities.

    I could tell you to outsource the print campaigns, but if you're not doing them, it doesn't matter.

    This just smells like you're trying to sell your dear friend's program.

    Again, if you're serious, there's discussion to be had.

    Consider hiring a manager or a virtual assistant that is semi-capable, and teach them to train and manage your contractors. Make them multiply themselves while you're making sales.
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    • I am speaking to James in the next day or two - and I have a bunch of questions that I am going to ask him.

      But I am not naive to think that I should only look for help or advice from one source, or one person. I think most people have some valuable nuggets to share.

      You're right, I should have provided a little more on what I do to get the job done. I guess I figured the discussion wouldn't be focused on this so I left it out.

      Here is typically what is involved.

      To get the client some high quality leads, we'll put together a basic sales funnel that consists of a report and a sales page.

      Before any of that begins, we do an in depth targeting exercise with the client to really understand what they offer and who it is they are going after.

      Based on that, we come up with some topics for the report that might work well. Once a topic for the report is confirmed to be good (ie: people are opting in from it from ads) then we actually go and make the content and put it together.

      The sales page is based on the targeting exercise and written to attract the right types of client.

      Ads are usually on Facebook or Google adwords, hitting the report download page. There is some basic email marketing going on (but could be improved with more resources to add more email follow ups).

      Obviously the ads need to be managed and optimised as well.

      So in essence it's not too difficult, but it all ads up. The hard part is coming up with the angle and offer. The rest isn't too crazy to do.

      I really liked this sentence from your post:

      "Consider hiring a manager or a virtual assistant, and teach them to train. Make them multiply themselves while you're making sales."

      I have thought about hiring a manager / VA - but they wouldn't be specialised in any skillset. They'd just be a VA. I assume you mean to do this and then teach them everything, so that they can also later teach other people.

      Is that right?

      Would you not just try to find someone who already has the skillset? ie: a copy writer, marketing strategist, Facebook ad expert, etc?

      That seems more natural to me, but then the costs are probably significantly more.

      Can you share your experience?
  • Ahh, glad you're serious.

    I would be most inclined to go with the dude that taught me how to get where I'm at.

    As for hiring a VA, you're going to be hard pressed to find one that can do your job. Hiring a manager and training them to find qualified people to do those jobs is what you should think about.

    Where do you spend most of your time, outside of communicating with the clients?

    Outsource the sales page design, copywriting, and reports for sure. It seems simple, but the hours add up quickly when you're dealing with finding and keeping outsourced workers. And you'll go through a LOT of them.

    When you get good ones, pay them what they're worth and then give them bonuses. Your business depends on them.

    A solid VA will take care of it. They only need to understand IM and how to hire people / hold them accountable.

    The fun part is closing the deal, coming up with the angle, and executing the plan, in my opinion. Most of that time, from the looks of your model, is spent up front getting the client and putting together their plan.

    Time is money. Pay a book keeper $500 a month to do your books. Finances are a time and soul sucking endeavor, and something I don't recommend doing on your own.

    My experience? I built a lil empire during the sniper site boom, and had 450 of them over the course of 3 years. At one time I had 22 writers and 2 VAs on board. It was a sweet operation.

    I started over last year, running it a lot more lean. Backpack business. Managing the PPC campaigns and communicating with clients can be done via a laptop, in your backpack, so you're able to move around the world freely. I don't want to be tied down to an office, so I'm using the lessons learned to keep that from happening again.

    It took 80-100 hours a week of my own time, along with who knows how many outsourced hours to make that happen. I understand where you're at and coming from.
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    • Thanks again for stopping by.

      Yep, definitely going to speak to James because like you said, it's the most obvious thing to do.

      I had an aha moment when you said to get a manager to do the hiring. I wasn't thinking of it that way. I know from some experience that hiring can take up a lot of time and energy and it's not something I want to be stuck doing.

      One issue is that if I am stuck "doing" the work then I get too attached to the project. Which is another reason why I don't want to be doing it. Not only because it takes up time from selling, but because then I sit there and really put in way too much time.

      So I think I'll pay more thought to your suggestion of finding a VA to help manage and hire the right types of people. That is a good starting ground.

      What are your thoughts on approaching an agency, who already does something like this, and reselling or white labeling through them? This way I skip all the VA's and management of that. What's your take?
  • I'm leery of using an agency just because you earned the clients. I dealt with a guy on a blackhat forum that did the "white label" stuff and he ended up nabbing $4k a month worth of clients.

    It was a racket he ran to scale his own business to $200k per month. It worked.

    It's a lot safer, in my opinion, to find someone who doesn't know that much about this business. For the future of yours, I mean.

    If they're capable of doing the work, and only deal with hiring people, you're keeping your replacements at bay. Or at least keeping them from being able to take a bunch of clients from you.

    I'd handle all the client work myself, and leave the labor to the laborers. They're a dime a dozen on Fiverr, eLance, and oDesk, so if you just hired a VA to scour those sites looking for quality workers, you'd be further ahead than you are now. And they work for dirt cheap up front. That's where the pay them their worth thing comes in, don't be greedy.
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  • Yes, all businesses want Leads, Leads and more Leads. Getting them good quality leads is the tricky part. Just getting a name and email is not enough, you need to also at least get a Phone number. In my experience handing out a Free report does not work like it used to in offline marketing. I currently provide leads for two businesses using Adwords and Video, and am finding it harder and harder to get optins.

    So I, like you, would also like to know of a good way to generate offline client customer leads in 2015.?
  • Hang on a minute...let me get this right. You have sold a service but you are not sure how to fulfill it?

    Is this right?

    Yes it's easy to sell anything just ask The Wolf of Wall Street. make big promises, etc and wallop.

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    • This is wrong. I can fulfill it but I have to do it myself. Anyone in business knows that doing the actual work yourself is not the best use of time.

      So that is my problem. And I don't know where to find someone to do the fulfillment and so I am stuck doing it!

      Will reply to other posts shortly
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  • why not look into offering direct mail services? the fulfillment is easy, you just need a mailhouse, who is likely a printer as well. Businesses routinely spend many thousands per month in direct mail and it doesn't require much education as there's no 'tech stuff' involved.
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    • Have been thinking about direct mail for a while. We have a similar program to EDDM (I believe that is the acronym) here in Aus. So what you teach would be pretty applicable here, too.

      Is there a regular recurring aspect to the direct mail services you provide or are you having to mostly find new clients for every mailing?
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  • I hate to sound too logical but wouldn't this James Farren be the one to ask? I thought that was what a mentor was for??
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    • Hey, thanks for your post.

      Yes I am speaking with him shortly but still open to further discussion from others.

      In either case, you're on point
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  • Do it in reverse way. find a service oriented company which is having excellent process and delivering excellence. Make your own company on the top of it and outsource everything to them.

    I completely understand your problem. I started selling web design and outsold. And at the end there was delays and unmanaged delivery. You should find somebody who is already doing their work in excellent way and sell for them with your brand. Or you can sell for others.

    Hope it will help.

    Regards
    AB
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