A few weeks ago, in this blog post, I talked about the importance of flow and frame within your business. This is a part two.
A quick recap: no matter what you’re selling, two elements should be involved. There should be a flow of continual opportunities for sales and you should be framing those opportunities.
I like using a baseball analogy.
Depending on what you’re selling and what your business model looks like, there will be opportunities coming your way on a daily or weekly basis.
At Bestseller Publishing, these opportunities come to use daily. These are at-bat opportunities for us to bring in a new client, someone who may potentially buy one of our products or services.
Our “at-bats” are people who buy our book: Publish, Promote Profit.
We bring in 1,000 to 1,500 new buyers every single month and could be bringing in more than that using the book as well as the workbook.
Our other “at-bat” opportunities include strategy sessions calls. These are phone calls made because many people will come through our free plus shipping book funnel. By the time they’re ready for the call, they will have filled out a complete application with all of their info.
We have strategy session calls happening on a daily basis. On a low day, there are probably around 10 applications and a high day can be 20-25 applications. We have three team members handling all of them. We’re actually in the process of bringing on a fourth person right now (they’re in the middle of training).
As you might imagine, this can get difficult to maintain with such a high volume of applications every day, but it’s so worth it.
Before the strategy session call, when the potential client has gone through the free pls shipping funnel, they’re telling us with their credit card that they’re interested. So once we get them on the call, they’re already ready to go at-bat, waiting for us.
That’s why it’s so important for us to have that call. We want to at least be able to ask them what they thought of the book, if they liked it, and see if there’s any way we can help them.
This allows us to determine how urgent their needs are. Is the person ready to start working with us today? Or is it going to be a slower process?
Now, this is all just what works for Bestseller Publishing. I described our “at-bat” opportunities, do you know what yours are?
How does someone find these “at-bat” opportunities?
As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, you can find these opportunities in paid advertising or content creation. What this looks like and how much it costs depends on your personal needs and budget.
This week I have a few more ideas of where you can find some potential “at-bat” opportunities…
While they are great platforms, Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only places to look. All of the potential business people you would like to connect with and many potential buyers are on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is where people are looking to do business. It’s a platform where you can manually reach out to people to start a conversation, and then offer value.
One reason I really liked using LinkedIn when I first started my business was that it allowed me to demonstrate my knowledge, credibility, and leadership expertise in my field.
Having a solid profile increases the likelihood of building trust with other business owners and potential customers.
I think the ability to endorse people’s skills and past work is very helpful when making new connections. When someone endorses you, anyone who sees your profile can see that which shows that you have other people in your field backing up your claims to have certain skills.
The platform also makes for a great research tool. You can use it to research companies, interviewers, recruiters, etc. It’s always helpful to know what your competitors are doing and where your audience is spending their time.
- Speaking engagements
One of our authors in development, David Alvarez and I were talking about how he can develop additional credibility with media and PR. I told him that I needed him to find places where he could go build relationships with people so he can potentially speak on their platforms.
I basically just described every local networking group.
So he did. David went out and found half a dozen large networking groups in our area that he’s planning to go to on a regular basis. It breaks down to just a couple a week.
He’s probably not going to be asked to speak right away. David needs to build up his credibility; however, if he was a business owner with a bestselling business book that had been featured on various media platforms, guess what?
He would be able to reach out to those same networking groups and he would have been asked to speak immediately.
Within these groups, there usually isn’t a speaker fee, but if your ideal client is in the room and yo use your book to add to your credibility and authority, you’re going to have a constant flow of people who are ready “at-bat.”
Now you might say that sounds like a lot of work.
I agree. That’s why I use paid advertising. I can sit from right here behind my desk to get work done and keep things growing. I don’t have to travel all over the country going to speaking engagements.
I do a few here and there because I enjoy speaking and I’m not half bad at it (so I’ve been told), but I don’t want to be constantly on the road.
If you don’t love traveling for speaking engagements either, I have good news. There’s another method for creating flow in your business and you don’t even have to leave your house…
- Engaging on social media
I specifically mentioned reaching out to people on LinkedIn, but you should be manually engaging with people on any platform you use for your business.
You can engage with people in groups, via comments, in direct-messages, etc.
Gary Vaynerchuk has a fantastic $1.80 Instagram strategy. He argues that the way to win on social media is to actually be social. How many followers you have doesn’t matter if you can’t build a community of like-minded people who actually engage with your content.
He says you can only do this from scratch by becoming part of the conversation.
The reason he calls it a $1.80 strategy is because you’re leaving your personal .02 cents on the top 9 trending Instagram posts for 10 different hashtags that are relevant to your brand or business every single day.
He says that by the end, you haven’t just left your .02, but a full $1.80 of thoughts online in the specific category, niche, or industry you want to become a part of.
Lastly…
- PR & Media
You can get yourself booked on podcasts.
I have a blog post with details about how to be the best podcast guest you can be which you can read here: “How to be an Amazing Podcast Guest”
You can write articles on various blogs. They typically call this guest blogging. It’s something you can even exchange with someone (your post on their blog and they post on yours).
You can become a regular contributor in print and online magazines, you can create your own podcast, newsletter, etc.
PR and media within your business will look different from someone else’s. Your budget, time, and comfortability doing public speaking will determine what this looks like for you.
Because as business owners we only have two primary resources: our time and money, if you aren’t going to be spending money on ads, you should be spending your time.
Even if you are spending money on ads, you should still be spending time getting flow within your business. We do.
We have our PR team booking 50 to 60 placements for or clients every single month like clockwork. You can absolutely do this for yourself. There are a ton of trainings online about how to book yourself (we have a bunch available in our membership group where you can either learn to do it yourself or have one of our team members do it for you).
My biggest suggestion: use three methods to create flow and lead generation in your business. Every business owner needs “at-bat” opportunities and so do you.
