Now we get to the exciting part: how to get your phone ringing off the hook! In reality, you only need a few, steady calls each day to be snowed under with work, assuming that you are a one-man band. But if we aim for lots of calls, we hope that even your worst efforts will at least keep you very busy.

Enquires are the oxygen that keeps your business alive. When you have few or no enquiries, your cash runs out and you are starved of that essential ingredient for business success – cash flow! You find you can’t meet your bills, have no money to advertise and a vicious downward spiral takes hold. The collapse and death of your business soon follows.

Follow my system for generating a constant stream of referrals and your chances of success increase dramatically. But please remember, I cannot guarantee your success. If it was that easy, no entrepreneur would fail. Business – like life - is a game of percentages. If you do enough of the right things and avoid enough of the wrong, you are likely to survive, succeed and prosper. Yet nothing is guaranteed. I don’t know you, your history, your capabilities or how well you will implement this strategy. I can only put forward my belief of what is effective and what is not. You have to pick your actions using your own judgement of what suits your marketplace, personality, energy levels and current situation. Let me just offer the menu. Eat the foods you choose! I only suggest you try some of each and then you will know what works for you.

Step #1: Advertising your Business

You should always be advertising, even when you are established and have a large client bank. Shrinkage of an unattended customer base is a natural state for most businesses, hence the need for marketing departments. A computer consultancy is no different from other businesses from that point of view. Unless, of course, you are getting many people referring you to others and that cycle never ends. But this is unlikely to happen, or at least to the extent that your diary is full.

When starting out, your advertising needs are obviously greater, for you have a huge void of empty diary space to fill. Therefore, I suggest the following strategy:

1. Gather together all your local papers and magazines where you could place classified ads
2. Phone each for the following information: circulation figures, advertising deadlines for classified and display ads, advertising rates
3. Calculate the cost per word per 1,000 circulation for the classified ads. E.g. if it costs $30 for one word in a 500,000 publication, that is $10/1000=$0.03 per word per 1,000 circulation.
4. Order the publications from the cheapest per 1,000 to the most expensive.
5. Place adverts in each publication, starting with the cheapest first. You may not want to place ads in them all at first – it depends on your budget. But cheapest first makes economic sense.
6. After a week or two, and assuming you have had some success with your classified ads, start testing display ads. They can be considerably more expensive but they also pull more enquiries from the same publication.
7. After you know which publications are pulling in the enquiries, consider increasing the number of adverts in each. For example, if you have one classified ad under the Computers section of one publication, consider also putting an ad in the Business Services section. You will get more eyeballs this way. In addition, you can experiment with another advert within the same section. So, for the Computers section, you could have one advertising PC Support and another advertising Setting Up Networks. Each headline in your add will attract the interested parties that you are targeting.
8. Once you have established how many enquiries each advert brings (you are keeping records, aren’t you?) then you can calculate your return on investment. Please note, when someone phones about your service, always always ask them where they heard of you and record it. It provides valuable information for future marketing efforts.

Once you have a client bank, you should also have good data on the most effective adverts and places to advertise. Then, you can write your own paycheck for you know what you need to spend and where, on average, to get your target monthly earnings. You can only do this if you keep accurate records. The advantage technical people have is that analysis and record keeping is more natural to them than non-technical people. They are used to dealing with detail, else they would not have mastered the PC and be in the IT industry.

Always have some “maintenance” adverts running to keep a constant trickle of business coming in. Quite often, some business takes time to mature and an enquiry may take 2 months before it leads to a paid appointment. Therefore, if you are busy, keep those adverts running as it can provide appointments 2 months hence. In addition, when you are very busy, it gives you the opportunity to raise your rates so that you earn more in less time. It is a question of supply and demand.

Step #2: Creating Joint Ventures

A joint venture simply means you have partnered with another company to do business. Normally, this would entail you offering your products or services to their customers and vice versa.

It works like this:
1. You contact a range of local IT businesses and ask if they offer the service that you specialise in. E.g. if you offer PC support, you may wish to contact some dealers who just supply the hardware. Or if you offer network installations, you may wish to team up with hardware suppliers, software consultants and so forth.
2. If they don’t offer that service, you ask if you can team up with them and you will pay them 15% of whatever business you do with that referred client.
3. You arrange to meet them so they can put a face to the name. They are more likely to remember you if you do this. If this is not possible, just stay in regular contact and send them emails or your Joint Venture reminder literature every other month.

The advantages of this method are as follows:
• It costs practically nothing. You have no upfront marketing costs, except phone calls and some stationary. Therefore, it is an ideal low budget marketing method.
• It is low risk. You are getting paid by results. If you don’t get any leads or convert the enquiry to a sale, it hasn’t cost you anything.
• You are being introduced by a supplier who the client knows. It works like a recommendation and the client feels more comfortable dealing with you. Consequently, your enquiry to sales conversion rate should be much higher.
• It can be enduring. Set up one joint venture partner and they could refer regular business to you for a prolonged period of time.
• You may get into larger companies or better situations that would have cost you a fortune in marketing. Joint Venture introductions have gotten me some lucrative contracts with very “hard-to-get-into” companies.

The disadvantage to Joint Venture Deals are:
• The Joint Venture partner is likely to forget about you. That is why I recommend you try to visit them and stay in touch by email and letter. It helps keep you to mind when they get an enquiry that fits your particular service.
• They will want convincing that you will do a good job. This is more difficult when you first start out, but not impossible. The last thing they want is for someone to mess things up as this may jeopardise their relationship with their own client. You just have to explain things in a more ingenious way, so you appear to have more experience than you actually have. This is does not mean lying. If they ask who you have dealt with before, just say, “My target market is currently small to medium sized businesses” even if you have never had an appointment before. You are telling the truth and they may not question you further.
• Many potential joint venture partners will turn you down. It is silly because quite often they are losing out themselves. But even so, your best efforts to explain the benefits of such an arrangement will fall on deaf ears. If so, move on to the next one. You can always contact them again in the future, when they may be more receptive. This particularly applies if they have a live enquiry that they cannot fulfil. A timely phone call may get your relationship started.

Joint Ventures are one of your effortless marketing weapons. Once established, they require very little ongoing effort on your part. Another effortless way to generate a consistent supply of leads is through a lead generation website. The next step shows what to do.

Step #3: Automate your Marketing with a Lead Generation Website

Can a simple website really bring a stream of hot enquiries into your email inbox and get your phone ringing? I wondered this very same question a number of years ago. So I set-up a website.

What happened? Within 2 weeks, I got leads into 3 large companies. I was amazed! That was quite some time back and there is more competition nowadays. But over time I have managed to increase the number of visitors to my website and so increase the number of leads. At the time of writing, I get an average of around 10 leads per day. Not all these leads are good. Some people seem to think I am Microsoft. They ask me all types of questions, ranging from software licensing issues to how they really like Web TV! Nevertheless, a good percentage are hot leads that are convertible to sales. This is what you want.

Creating websites is an easily learnable skill. I remember seeing a 13-year-old kid selling web design services on the internet. If a 13 year old can do it, so can you! You need some web design software. I recommend Dreamweaver, although FrontPage can do the job for you just as well, if your requirements are simple.

Your website can be as simple or as complex as you desire. The most important thing is to get one up fast. Straight away if you can! The best way of doing this is to create a one page website. It then operates like a sales letter. You have your headline at the top, then list what you cover using bullet points, where you are located and have contact details at the bottom. This gives most potential buyers all they need to know.

Over time you can modify, improve and add to your simple website. But first, just get the ball rolling quickly. Why? Because you want to start getting visitors to that site. And there is a lead in time before they will come. For example, if you submit to the search engines, it may take them up to 3 months to add your page to their database of searches – if they decide to add it at all. Not to worry, I have some near “instant” methods of getting visitors to your site.

Methods of generating instant traffic

• Pay per click search engines – Overture.com is the largest player in the market at the time of writing. When a surfer enters their keywords at the pay per click search engine, the resulting list of sites is ordered by how much you have bid for your position. In other words, someone who bids $0.50 will be above someone who has bid $0.30. You get charged only when someone clicks on your listing and goes through to your site. Hence the term, “pay-per-click.” What is so good about pay-per-click search engines is that it takes very little time to set up your account and for your listings to appear. Within 3 to 15 days, you can be buying visitors that are highly targeted to your offering. Few other traffic generation techniques approach PPC for speed. Check out www.payperclicksearchengines.com for a list of who to use. Only choose the top 3 to so as the smaller ones are unlikely to produce traffic volumes that are worth the effort to sign up.
• Yahoo – as one of the most visited sites on the web, Yahoo is a good directory in which to be. In the early days of the internet, Yahoo listings were free of charge. Nowadays however, they are a paid service costing $200 at the time of writing. One word of caution though. Before submitting to Yahoo, I would make sure your site is checked over by an experienced webmaster as Yahoo are very fussy about which sites they accept. Your $200 is for a prompt review of your site and in no way guarantees your entry. You have been warned! Check out www.yahoo.com and use their help menu to find how to add your site.
• Looksmart – like Yahoo, they are also worth a look. The entry fees are similar, as are the criteria for entry. If you get into Yahoo, your site is also likely to get into Looksmart. But you will have to pay submission fees for both, as they are separate entities. Go to www.looksmart.com for further information.
• Forum posts – have you ever been to discussion groups on the internet? There are many web-based ones and also tens of thousands of Usenet Newsgroups where people discuss all manner of things. For a list of web-based forums, go to www.forumone.com for a huge list. These represent opportunities for the entrepreneur, as posting a message in these places will get a number of people reading it. Then, with a bit of luck, they will read your signature tag that promotes your business and go to your website. That is why you often see small business owners helping out free of charge in the forums dedicated to their speciality. They have found it brings a steady stream of business their way, if what they say is helpful and they know what they are doing. But whatever you do, don’t post a message in these forums promoting your business in any way other than a signature tag. It is frowned on and you are likely to either get banned or receive hate mail from frequent board visitors.
• Signature tags – every email you send should have a “signature tag.” Never waste an opportunity to promote your company name or offer. For those that don’t know, a signature tag is just a short advertising message that you tag on to the end of your emails. It can say something like, “Regards, John Doe www.yourwebsite.com We specialise in PC Support for Small Business, anywhere in the New York area. Call for competitive rates on 1-800-44455” You never know when someone will read it and say, “Actually, I’ve been looking for someone who can supply PC Support. I didn’t know this guy did that. It might be worth a call.”

Other traffic generation methods:

• Search engine submissions – these used to be the best way of promoting your site. Nowadays, although they can still get you traffic, they are far less reliable. The time they take to index your site is often slow and their criteria of what ranks highly in the search listings is a forever changing target. My days of optimising my sites for search engines have gone. I just don’t have the time anymore. There are better ways to allocate your marketing time. Even so, I suggest you at least submit to the main search engines. This is a constantly changing field and if I listed the top sites here, this book would be out of date in very little time. Therefore, to find out which search engines are the most frequently visited, go to the following website: www.searchengineforums.com. It is the best site on the internet for discussing website promotion. Just look at the list of the search engines there are it will give you an idea of what is hot and what is not.
• Joint Venture – ask if you can put your link on someone else’s site that might complement the service you offer. For example, a site selling PC hardware may not offer an installation service or training for new PC owners. If you offered computer training for beginners, there is a joint venture in the making. The hardware supplier gets a happy customer, because they can then offer an installation service (possibly branded under their own name) or they can have new PC users trained, thus reducing support calls caused by callers not knowing how to use their computers properly. In addition, you both earn extra revenue.
• Ezine advertising – one way to target a large audience with your product or service is to place a small advert in an “Ezine.” An ezine is a web-based newsletter that gets sent out to a targeted list of people, who have opted in to the list. For example, users of Microsoft Office may opt-in to a list that offers free tips on using Microsoft Word. Or there may be a support group for businesses in your region. While the topic may not be computer related, each business user is likely to use a PC in their everyday business. A carefully targeted advert could generate some enquiries for you. Just be careful not to waste your money on ezines where most of the readers are too far away for you to help them. Keep it local.

Step #4: How to Turn your Simple Business Card into a Hot Business Generator

You need a business card, as it is a simple way for your clients and prospects to identify what you do, where you are located and who you are. With luck, they will transfer these details to a more permanent list.

However, a business card can perform more than one task. It can also help sell some of the additional services your client does not know you offer. For example, if they brought you in for some PC Support, as far as they are concerned, that is what you do – PC Support. However, because the situation hasn’t arisen, they are blissfully unaware that you are a pretty hot website designer too. So they go to a competitor. You then kick yourself for not reeling off a list of every service you offer. But it’s already too late. You have lost that business – forever. And you are not to blame. Sometimes it is just plain difficult to get the attention of a busy manager and explain what you do. They fix things on a need to know basis and they don’t care that you do website design because at this stage they need their network up and running!

It pays to have your business card act as a mini-sales agent working for you when you hand it over. How can you do this? Simple, on the reverse side of your normally blank business card, have a bullet list of the products and services you offer. Instead of your business card saying:

John Doe
PC Support and advice

1-800-333-4444
www.mysite.com

…you can have this additional text on the reverse side:

• PC troubleshooting
• Software installation
• Networking configuration
• Hardware advice
• Website design

By covering all your skills, when they glance at your card, you have a chance of one of these areas leaping out at the manager. “Ah, I see you do website design! We might be looking for some help in the near future.” You answer with, “I can certainly help and probably save you a lot of money. Those website designers can certain charge a hefty sum.”

Step #5: Leafleting your Way to Low Cost Enquiries

What follows is not a technique that I use but one that has been passed onto me by an associate. He says it is an excellent way to get lots of enquiries in a short period of time.

The first step is to get 1,000 leaflets printed with your marketing message. Next, stand outside your local PC superstore and hand out the leaflets! Simple and you know the people at the store have PC related needs so it is targeted. I have no idea as to the legality of handing out leaflets on the street. All I know is intellectually it sounds like a good idea. Having said that I have not personally tested the technique.

An extension of this technique is to do the same either outside (or inside) a computer exhibition, fair or show. Your target market is there and you should get your marketing message read by quite a few likely prospects.

Please note: don’t believe everything someone tells you. You have to conduct your own tests. That includes what I advise you to do. What may work in my area may not work in yours. One of the techniques may work so well for you that you don’t want to spend anytime on the others. That is fine. Just try everything and then decide. Keep accurate records so your decision making process is based on fact and not gut instinct. Direct marketers worth their salt know that testing is the most important task you can do. Without it, you rely on what others tell you. In my experience, people have a tendency to exaggerate and only tell half the story. Only by getting your own data, will you know for sure what works for you.

Step #6: Direct Mail

When you start out, be very careful if you are considering a mailshot. For a start they are expensive. They are also time consuming. Sending out 1,000 letters takes a lot of time because you have to: research the names; type them out; create a sales letter; print the letters; stuff them in envelopes. They are expensive because you have: paper costs; printing costs; postage costs; envelope costs.

Then what happens if it flops? You just spent several hundred dollars for no return. Something you can’t afford when starting out.

However, once established and you have a healthy cash flow, you may wish to experiment with direct mail. What are the advantages? Well, if you send an effective sales letter to a targeted market and it works well, you can roll out big. What I mean is it is scaleable. You can expand your mailshots to write your own paycheck. If each letter on average earns you $2 and it costs you $1 per letter to produce (after hiring admin help to do it for you), then you have a strategy for expanding your client base very effectively.

I have put direct mail last in the lists of steps to take because I feel it is the most risky. Yet with higher risks come higher rewards. It is easier to run out of places to advertise in your local papers than it is to send more letters. There are usually huge lists of businesses you can mailshot. You are unlikely to run out of prospects.

One IT consultancy in my region has a systematic campaign of collecting the names of all businesses they can in their area. If on their travels to appointments they see a new business in the area, they make a note and add it to their database. Each business receives a letter once every 3 months. It is usually the same letter each time, but what their company offers starts to get lodged in the readers mind. When the time is ripe for them to get that network installed, they might think, “Why don’t we get XYZ inc. in? They sent a letter recently with their details on it.”

The most wasteful thing you can do is to only send one letter. You would get a better return on your money if you sent a series of letters spaced over time. It is a way of being remembered, it establishes trust as your company name becomes more familiar and your letter may land on their desk when they are ripe for making an IT purchase decision.

Direct marketers will tell you that someone needs 7 exposures to your marketing message before they will buy. This is a generalisation but the point they are making is that repeated exposure brings the most cost effective results. And sending a letter every quarter is probably as near to an optimum timing as you will get.

For those of you who are starting your first mailing, the areas you specialise in will determine whom to approach. It is unlikely a Visual Basic programmer will want to target a one-man band as they simply do not have the budget (or even need) for some complex programming. In this instance you need to target by company size. Dunn & Bradstreet or any of the other list brokers can supply you with names and addresses targeted by several criteria. The more criteria you select, the higher the cost of each name. I would suggest business size and area is the most critical. Anything above that may prove costly for the improved return the extra filtering provides.