How to Structure Your Workday to Maximize Profits

Does this sound like your current workday?

9:00 AM – fire up the computer and check emails from clients and prospects

10:15 AM – putting out a fire from something someone mentioned in one of the emails

11:00 AM – still putting out fires

12:00 AM – I deserve a lunch break

1:22 PM – ate too much, need to lie down. This break can go on a bit longer

1:45 PM – still watching puppy videos on YouTube

2:00 PM – about to pick up the phone and do some followup calls, more emails came through

2:35 PM – first call made. didn’t go so well. losing motivation

3:12 PM – it’s important to check client rankings and their ad spend/sales

3:45 PM – let’s do some client work and optimization/ads

4:45 PM – it’s way too late to do any sales now. every business owner is heading out the door

5:00 PM – I should head out the door too, can do more work tomorrow though! Continue reading

My Interview on Experiment 27 About Starting a SaaS

It was an honour to be interviewed on the Experiment 27 (click for show notes) podcast by Alex Berman.

We discussed starting my software company ScopeLeads, and how I slowly moved away from clients in order to achieve that.

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions below!

An Honest Guide to Keeping (or Firing) Your Consulting Clients

We’ve all been there before. You’re excited to get on the phone with a new prospect and when they send over their URL, you have a mini heart attack.

How am I supposed to work on this garbage website?!

If you’re selling PPC, hopefully you’re also including landing page creation and management so this isn’t so much of an issue. But for most of you that sell SEO, this can be a major roadblock to getting your client results.

The site isn’t responsive, it looks like it was built in the 90’s, and it has one paragraph of content on it.

The real question I am going to address in this post is: How far should you go for clients?

This can be further broken down into 4 stages of dealing with a client and questions you should be asking yourself:

1.  Should you even take the client in the first place?
2.  How much “extra” work is needed for you to be successful?
3.  How far above and beyond to go for them?
4.  When should you fire your client?

These questions mesh together so closely that I won’t separate them into different sections. Continue reading

2 Unique Ways to Get Your Foot in the Door With New Prospects

Selling is hard, right?

Screaming about your services from the rooftop usually has people running the other way (or gets people staring at you like a lunatic).

Especially if you’re new to selling, the process of getting people to even listen to your pitch can be extremely difficult, let alone getting the opportunity to show the quality of your work and prove yourself.

To combat this, you have to come up with a way to grab the attention and show the prove yourself to the prospect before anything else.

This is known as getting your “foot in the door”. Once you have your foot in the door, the prospect is much more likely to allow you fully in.

Continue reading

Should You Go for a Few Big Clients or Many Small Ones? These Agency Owners Answer The Question

It’s an age-old debate as old as consulting itself.

On the one hand, you have less work with fewer, bigger clients and make the same amount of money. But with smaller-ticket clients, you can onboard more and play the volume game since they are more likely to convert (and be retained) at lower monthly price points.

At least that’s what conventional wisdom tells us.

Yet I still see people everyday being both successful and also scarily unsuccessful using both models.

So I went to real, successful agency owners to interview them about which model they prefer, and why. Their answers, as well as my take, are below.

Continue reading

These 3 Closing Tips Will Help You Make The Sale Every Time (Even After a No)

This is by no means going to be an “ultimate guide” to running a sales consultation. In fact, we’re only going to be talking about one small part of the consultation: the end.

You see, there’s a lot that can go wrong when speaking to a potential client, but by the end of it you got the basics down. You spoke about their business, their problems, needs, wants, goals, and you present your solution. But the end- the part where you ask for the sale- that CANNOT go wrong.

If you do these, they will save you a ton of time and money you would have spent on followups, and will result in business you otherwise would not have gotten. Let’s jump right in. Continue reading