A Guest Post By Erik Rokeach

Hey there, it’s Big Chris, as you may know direct mail can be one of the best ways to get new clients… however it can be EXPENSIVE… well this blog post offers a solution to that

In this guest post by Erik Rokeach about how he got 10,000 ads mailed for free… you’re gonna love Erik’s strategy and there’s a lot you can learn from to apply in your own business. I’ve been so busy with stuff like getting ready for The KBL Mastermind coming up here Nov 11th and 12th that I haven’t had time to do a lot of posts myself, so it’s always awesome to have guys like Erik helping out and teaching ways to run and grow your training business… Enjoy Erik’s post..

Hey there it’s Erik Rokeach

So I wanted to share a story with you about how I ended up getting 10,000 ads mailed for free.

All it took was a little time, patience, and I followed the Golden Rule of Networking!

Which is, help others out before you ask for anything.

Now I’m just going to be honest about this and say I never expected to get 10,000 pieces of advertising mailed out for free. In fact, it probably worked because I didn’t expect anything in return.

I didn’t force anything, I just focused on giving! And when the time was right, I decided to go for it. And it worked.

So here’s the story…

One of the things I really enjoyed was partnering up with local businesses.

I would take a few hours each week and just randomly walk into businesses with the same market as me and see how I could help them.

One day I was driving down the road and saw this old brick building. I didn’t think anything of it, until I saw the small sign on the side. It was a cleaning service.

Actually it was a franchise where they send maids to your place to clean everything up. I lived in a pretty affluent area, so services like this were everywhere, and competition was high.

Since I knew this, I used it to my advantage. But before I explain how I did that, here’s how I set everything up…

Normally I would pass on franchises to set up a joint venture because there would be too many layers to go through. (Although there is a secret to that too. And I’ll talk about that in a another post.)

But something about this old building said to me that it wouldn’t hurt to stop in.

So I rolled into the parking lot, sat there for a few minutes and worked out my game plan on how I would approach them.

I finally settled on my bread and butter move.

Helping them find more business!

So I walked in, and the first thing I realized was that I had to go through a bunch of people to get to the right person.

They literally were set up like a doctors office with the glass sliding window, a receptionist, and a waiting room. I even had to sign in on a clipboard.

This forced me to change my game plane real quick. I knew from doing sales way back in the day that they key to getting to the right person was treating the receptionist like she was the most important person.

So instead of asking the receptionist If I could speak with the owner/manager, I just went right to her and told her “that she won!”

She looked at me like I was crazy. She asked what it was that she won. So this is where I dropped the business of the month promo on her.

Even though I didn’t specifically choose them as the business of the month, it was still a good business to give it to.

Oh and the business of the month promotion is basically where you pick a few businesses in your area (ones with your same demographic) and give the employees, managers, and owners free/discounted services to your business for a short time. Then up-sell them into your program.

The cool thing about using this promo on a receptionist is that they are included in this deal, and they usually want to get in on it right away. Since they want in on it so bad, they skip all the middle layers and go straight to the decision maker to get an answer. That’s usually the owner.

And they do it right there in front of you.

Now if the receptionist hesitates or says the owner isn’t in, then you just say…

“OK, that’s cool, but I just have to let you know I can only hold this open for you until the end of the day. And if I don’t hear back from you, you are going to lose out on everything you’ve won, and I will have to give it to another business.”

And if you really want to add some pressure, tell them you are going to give it to another business that they compete with.

Since the receptionist is usually the one who wants it the most, and wont want to be responsible for letting this opportunity slide by, she is going to make a huge push on the owner to get this through.

There is a side note to this. Do not be a Douche-A-Saurus and lie. If it ends up happening that the business doesn’t get back to you, or declines, then make sure you offer the deal to the other competing business.

Manipulation and lying is NOT cool! And I will get my gang of Douche-A-Saurus Hunters to track you down if you are pulling that crap!

Now at this point the receptionist walked away for a few minutes, and I knew she was talking to the owner.

The receptionist came back and wanted to know what the catch was. They were still a little skeptical.

Usually when I ran the business of the month promo, I had printouts, letters, gift cards, and sometimes a little basket or a folder to deliver everything in. Since this was a last minute decision, all I had were some gift cards. So it seemed a bit odd, that I had very little for them.

And the gift cards weren’t enough to keep them from being skeptical.

So thinking quick on my feet, I told them I knew of a way that I could make their business look great and bring in more customers for them.

They of course wanted to know how I was going to do that.

Here’s what I said…

” See these plastic gift cards? Well, not only am I going to give you and all of your co-workers free training, but I am going to give you a stack of these $100 gift cards so you can give one each to your best customers as a thank you. And I’ll throw in a few extra for you to give to your friends.”

It was a deal that was too good for them to pass up.

The owner came out and I explained to her how the gift cards would make her business look awesome, and make her clients happy.

And she loved the idea.

That’s because she knew by giving the gift cards she was adding value, and letting her customers know that they were important. Plus it increased the chances of her customers referring new business.

So it was a big win for her. And a win for me, since they would now be wanting to hand out my $100 gift cards to “targeted” prospects.

They were targeted prospects for me because their services were generally contracted out by women with a high disposable income. And 90% of my clientele were women or stay at home moms with a lot of spending cash.

So that is how I got in the door and set up a good relationship.

But that’s not the best part.

Remember above when I said I knew that there was a lot of competition for maids and cleaning services in my market?

Well, after a few days passed and we were just setting up some of the small details to get them started on the business of the month program, I asked what else they were doing to bring in business?

They told me how they paid for ads and a few other things. But the one thing that stuck out to me was that they were going to be sending out 10,000 advertising pieces.

Now, I was no mailing expert, but at the time I understood the basics of copywriting and I knew what worked for me.

So again I approached them with an idea that would help them bring in more business. I also told them that this would make them stand out from their competition.

Telling them that they would stand out from the competition was key!

At this point I asked them if they’ve sent out advertising pieces like that before?

They said yes. I asked them what their conversion rate was. At that time I didn’t really know what a good conversion rate should be, but when they told me that they would get about 10-20 calls (not clients) from 10,000 pieces sent out, I knew that it wouldn’t hurt for them to try something different.

What was cool, was they actually showed me their design and asked if I had any input on it. I had no clue what they were trying to do with it, but I suggested a few different headlines, a call to action, and a few other things.

Which they didn’t use. But I was cool with that because it allowed me to sell them on the idea that would add more value to their service, and stand out.

Something no other maid service offered.

I asked them…

“Do you discount your services?”

They said yes.

I then asked…

“Would it be beneficial to you if you kept your prices the same, and added more value to what you were doing?”

They said yes again, but were hesitant saying yes because they mentioned that they didn’t want to do more work and not charge for it.

I said, “isn’t that what your doing by discounting your services and trying to be cheaper then your competition?”

They said yes, but asked me how could they keep their prices the same, add more value, without doing more work or spending more time at a location?

This is where I dropped my idea on them.

I basically asked them, “what if I were to offer something from my business as an incentive to get people to sign up for your services?”

It wouldn’t cost the business anything, they wouldn’t have to do any extra work, and it shows that they are doing something better than their competition.

They of course said yes.

So all I did was find out what package they were trying to sell the most of. At that time it was a package for 5 cleanings.

I convinced them to keep the price the same and market it as four cleanings, with the fifth one for free. Then as a thank you for purchasing that package, give the new customer my $100 gift card.

They liked the idea, and decided that was the deal they were going to go with on their mailing. To make it easy for them, I made up the artwork and sent it over.

Which they didn’t use. But hey, I wasn’t paying for anything, and they agreed to send out advertising for me, for free! Plus hand out my gift cards to qualified leads.

Not a bad deal.

So we went back and forth for a few weeks, and finally they mailed out the ad to 10,000 people.

And I didn’t pay one cent for that to happen. Not bad!

Plus I established a new relationship and network of people that had access to my demographic.

One other cool thing about this was, since my programs were being promoted through their advertising, it acted as social proof that my business was good.

This franchise cleaning service had been around for years. Everyone knew who they were, and trusted them. Since they were promoting for me, I automatically gained the trust of their customers and prospects.

Which made my job of building my business, a whole lot easier.

This technique worked great for me. Over time I refined it, and used it on other businesses which led to similar advertising deals and promotions.

Which in the end, brought in more business for me.

Hey there it’s Big Chris Again, Check Out Erik’s Site for Fitness Pros full of all sorts of great interviews at FitnessBusinessInterviews.com

And check out the new resources page here at Kick Back Life, full of all kinds of tools, resources and programs to help you run and grow your training business… whether it’s done-for-you Search Engine Optimization, boot camp workouts, promotions you can run, nutrition programs for your clients, marketing and sales systems, you name it…

Click Here To Check Out The New Resources Page

And remember to be sure and leave Erik a comment below…. super cool of him to put this blog post together sharing his strategies