Making Sales Without Being a Salesperson with Steve Gordon – 034

The easiest way to grow your business is through referrals. Period.

You just need a system – and then take action.

Do you want to get referrals, and make serious progress?

Then listen to this interview I did with Steve Gordon. Does he have 42 million followers? No.

But Steve knows this stuff cold. I think his middle name is referrals.

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Our podcasts are interviews between Justin Krane, Krane Financial Solution’s President, and various professionals, one or more of which are or have been Krane Financial Solutions clients. However, nothing stated within the podcasts should be considered a testimonial or endorsement of Krane Financial Solutions or Justin Krane, and the professionals have not been directly or indirectly compensated for being interviewed.

Our podcasts are interviews between Justin Krane, Krane Financial Solution’s President and various third-party professionals. Noting stated within the podcasts should be considered a testimonial or endorsement of Krane Financial Solutions or Justin Krane, and the professionals have not been directly or indirectly compensated for being interviewed.

Steve Gordon is a bestselling author, the founder of The Unstoppable CEO™, and the host of The Unstoppable CEO™ Podcast, and has written over 400 articles on marketing for service businesses. Through his firm, he helps service business entrepreneurs create leveraged marketing systems so they can spend less time on business development, and more time on what matters most. When he was just 28, Steve became the CEO of an engineering/consulting firm—but he knew nothing about marketing or selling services. Twelve years later, after growing that firm’s revenue by 10-times, Steve started his second business, consulting with businesses across 30 industries—including manufacturing, professional services, construction, and consulting—to design sales, marketing and referral systems for high-ticket/high-trust products and services. He’s here to share what he’s learned throughout his journey to help you attract your ideal clients and achieve the business goals you’ve been dreaming of.

**SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM FOR THE VIDEO!**

Don’t Make These Marketing Mistakes!

The biggest mistake business owners make in marketing is trying to market to everyone. Get very clear about who your ideal client is.
The more specific you can get on your niche, the better. It is very unlikely that a market is too small to support a business.
Resist the temptation to start as a generalist in order for your business to make it.
Once an ideal prospect is established, it is much easier to strategize on what avenue you can use to reach that person.
It is too difficult to create messaging if you are unsure of who you are going to serve.

Building Your Referral Network

The way most people go about getting referrals is a broken approach.
Simply asking a friend to connect you with someone is flawed because you are asking someone to sell on your behalf.
A friend or family member is not a trained salesperson for your business.
Instead of a sales meeting being the first part of a referral process, replace the sales meeting with important information about your services and offerings.
Take that information piece and ask your friends for 15 people they know who could use it, then give it to the potential clients yourself, dropping your friend’s name.
With the prospect already having your information piece, it is simple to show up as an expert instead of a salesperson in their eyes.
Many referrals drop off because there is hesitation for a manager to develop a process and commitment to ensure follow-up with the referral.

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Sometimes people label themselves either an inbound marketer, or an outbound marketer. Yet they should be used together.
Examples of inbound marketing are your website, referrals, podcast interviews, or articles.
Inbound marketing is fantastic because it means you are already somewhat presold to them.
It is difficult to stand out using only inbound marketing, so you have to embrace outbound marketing too.
It’s important to identify the timeframe in which ROI will happen for advertising efforts, you can run out of money advertising if you don’t assess the ROI.
Most people give up on marketing efforts too quickly without fully understanding the method and mastering it.

Best Quotes:

“The biggest mistake is not really knowing who you’re marketing to. And by that, I mean not getting clear on who your ideal client is.”

“What’s so interesting is that we have a lot of the answers and we have a lot of the questions, but sometimes we can’t even see the hump on our own back, and we can’t figure out how to do it on our own. But as soon as we bring in someone with different perspective and framework, it’s so much easier.”

“You can’t get to good messaging until you’re clear on who you’re trying to serve.”

“The fundamental flaw with the way that referrals work is that we’re expecting our clients, and our partners, and our friends, and our family to be good enough and know who we’re looking for well enough, and actually be willing to go get them and bring them into a sales meeting.”

“It’s going to be really difficult for you to engineer enough inbound leads to pay the bills, at least in my experience. It’s getting more and more difficult, particularly doing online inbound marketing. So you also need to be doing outbound. And I think the two are very complementary.”

“It all works. Like every kind of marketing you could ever imagine will work. Of course you have to stick with it. If you stick with it long enough to master it, it’ll work.”

“What’s the point of the business? It’s to create a customer. And the most important systems that you need to build in the business are the ones that create the customers because they’re the ones that make the business viable over the long haul.”