How We Accidentally Booked Way Too Many Sales Meetings
For One Marketing & Consulting Agency
(Even though their services are very expensive, very complicated and almost impossible to explain to their prospects)
Spoiler Alert: We Actually Booked Them More Meetings Than They Could Handle!
Check out this case study to see exactly how.
This was a tricky one.
You see, the more complicated the business model and the closing process, the harder it’ll be to not only book that calendar full…
… but to also make sure you’re going after only the most qualified prospects.
That was the issue with this one particular marketing agency.
They were great at what they did, but their services were very expensive and very hard to explain.
I'm Talking Five Figures Plus Per Project...
... and they didn’t know how they would help each client until they’d done a deep dive with the client and figured out exactly where the leverage in the business was.
Trust me, it’s very hard to generate interest in a business by saying “We can help you… but we don’t know how yet.”
That’s a tough sell.
But we still managed to book them more calls than they could handle and help them close enough business to stay uncomfortably busy (their words).
So let’s dig in and see exactly how.
First, we need to start with the who.
Who:
This client is protected by NDA so we can’t reveal their details. But we can tell you they’re a direct response marketing/consulting agency based in North America. Their ideal clients are direct to consumer brands that need help effectively selling at high conversions (higher conversions equal higher margins).
What They Do:
Basically they help clients sell their products more efficiently, in whatever way makes sense.
That may be by overhauling the email flows for an ecommerce brand. It could be by advising a brand to stop selling through Amazon and helping them create their own D2C channel.
Or it could be by helping create video scripts that make their social media ads more effective and allow them to acquire customers for less money.
We’ll stop there, but that’s just scratching the surface.
The Problem:
Their solution is different for every client they work with. Because it needs to be tailored to each different business, and the audience that business serves. This means that they’re always in a position of starting from scratch with each new client.
Couple that with each client also needing extensive consulting time to best implement the new systems and processes…
… it’s a very hard business to run at scale, and even harder to close clients at scale.
And all those things add up to make a business that’s pretty difficult to make work with cold outreach.
A lot of cold outreach comes down to the offer.
You need to communicate your offer in a way that resonates with the audience and makes the lightbulbs go off in their brain about how well you’re going to solve their problems.
If you can’t connect to the problems the business owner is already aware of, it’s VERY difficult for them to have much desire around your offer.
Unfortunately, the offer for this agency was so vague it created almost no interest in clients. Unless the client happened to be actively seeking a solution for higher conversions and better sales processes. Which is very uncommon!
The Solution
We made 3 major changes to help get more interest and start closing at volume
Change 1 - The Offer
For all our clients we create something we call The Golden Offer.
What’s that?
It’s an offer so good the prospect can’t refuse.
We would have called it the Godfather offer but we didn’t want to get sued haha.
To create a Golden Offer we have to do two things.
1, we do a deep dive with you to understand the problems your service solves, how it solves them, and how you’re currently communicating those solutions.
2, we then do a similar deep dive on your audience and figure out what problems they need solved, and what sort of messaging will resonate with them.
From there we work to distill your problem solving into 2 or 3 sentences that resonate with your audience like crazy and have them staying up all night daydreaming about the possibilities.
The best offers are easy to absorb and communicate heavy benefit with almost zero risk.
Remember back in the 80s when Domino’s Pizza kicked Pizza Hut’s butt for the home delivery crown and become the number one pizza brand? They made it happen by having the best offer.
Domino’s offer at the time was “Fresh hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less… or it’s free.”
Who Could Argue With That?!
More importantly, when it’s Saturday night in 1985 and you’re flipping through the Yellow Pages looking for an easy mealtime solution for the family…
… are you choosing the generic pizza place? Or are you choosing the one that promises fresh pizza in 30 mins or it’s free?
It’s a no brainer.
Once you’ve got an offer like that, it’s FAR easier to close.
We have a simple 4 step process for creating a Golden Offer… and we can’t tell it to you because it’s our secret recipe, just like Domino’s…
… but we can give you a hint.
We took the client’s usual vague “Hey I think we can help you make more money” offer, and made it way more specific.
It was more like “We can get you x results in the next 7 days”. And that turned out to be enough to cut through the noise and book some calls. Too many calls, as it turned out, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Change 2 - The Approach
Like we said, when these guys found us they had been trying their own cold outreach approach that had been (semi) successful for them 3 or 4 years ago…
… but delivered practically zero results recently.
Well, the world has moved on. And the marketing world moves faster than anything else.
So what worked in 2018 is most likely not going to work at all in 2023.
We have an AI powered outreach system that’s been perfected and refined and worked on since 2008. We tweak it on almost a daily basis to keep up with the latest breakthroughs in both marketing and tech.
As a result our approach has booked thousands and thousands and thousands of meetings and calls since then.
So when we coupled that unique approach with the Golden Offer for this client, the results were pretty spectacular.
Check out these open rates for example:
When Was The Last Time You Saw 97% Open Rates??!
Or even 84%?
Once our systems work, they work like crazy.
The result of that was the number of booked calls jumped through the roof.
They went from 1 or 2 calls a month to five or six a DAY.
But then the issue was no longer call volume… it was closing the calls!
Which is what led to…
Change 3 - The Closing Process
Prior to working with us, they didn’t really HAVE a closing process.
They’d have informal chats with potential clients… and then just let the call end without any real attempt at closing. Like they were just here to give out free consulting.
This meant potential clients only came back if they wanted more information. There was never any urgency and no reliable sales process.
As a result it was not unusual for it to take 5 or 6 calls to get anywhere close to a sales decision… and that decision was almost always no… or a “maybe” that took months to get to a resolution. Even if the resolution was no!
Why Was This?
It was because the relationship was casual and convenience based. The potential clients didn’t feel like they were missing out on anything by not moving forward… it was easier to just reach out whenever they felt like it.
We fixed this in 2 ways.
The first way was with the Golden Offer. A good offer makes all the difference when it comes to sales calls.
If you can communicate exactly what benefits a prospect gets in return for crossing your palm with x amount of silver, you’re halfway there!
The second way was by giving them a proven sales process to push their clients through.
We asked them to break it down into two calls.
A discovery call where they assessed the prospect’s needs, then a closing call where they presented their proposal and asked for money in return for implementing the proposal.
It’s not exactly rocket science… but it was light years from what they had before.
We also gave them ideas for collateral and content for the prospects to read and absorb BEFORE and AFTER the calls…
… just to keep that sales argument rolling.
It was because the relationship was casual and convenience based. The potential clients didn’t feel like they were missing out on anything by not moving forward… it was easier to just reach out whenever they felt like it.
We fixed this in 2 ways.
The first way was with the Golden Offer. A good offer makes all the difference when it comes to sales calls.
If you can communicate exactly what benefits a prospect gets in return for crossing your palm with x amount of silver, you’re halfway there!
The second way was by giving them a proven sales process to push their clients through.
We asked them to break it down into two calls.
A discovery call where they assessed the prospect’s needs, then a closing call where they presented their proposal and asked for money in return for implementing the proposal.
It’s not exactly rocket science… but it was light years from what they had before.
We also gave them ideas for collateral and content for the prospects to read and absorb BEFORE and AFTER the calls…
… just to keep that sales argument rolling.
And It Worked
They went from struggling to book calls and then struggling to close people, to suddenly being at capacity and having to stop the outreach because they couldn’t service any more clients!
I do believe that’s what’s technically known as “A Good Problem”.
So, let’s be honest.
If you’re reading this, that sounds pretty great to you doesn’t it?
More sales meetings with easier closes is always a win, right?
Let’s talk it over and see if we’re a fit for each other.
Click the button below to book your call strategy call now.
