Introduction! 4. Do You Need A Website?! 8. Sales Is Not Scary! 11. Establishing Who You Are! 16. Building An Audience! 22. Great Storytelling!

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Lucas Eaton
8 years ago
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2 Introduction! 4 Waxing Philosophical! 5 Becoming Proactive! 6 Do You Need A Website?! 8 What s The Purpose Of Your Website?! 8 And How Will We Get There?! 9 Sales Is Not Scary! 11 What, Exactly, Is Sales?! 12 Selling High-Touch Products And Services! 13 What Are The Components Of High-Touch Sales?! 14 Establishing Who You Are! 16 What Are You Awesome At?! 17 And How Do You Stay Awesome?! 17 The Persona At Work! 19 Building An Audience! 22 What Is An Audience?! 22 What Does Your Audience Want From You?! 24 How To Find Your Audience! 26 Great Storytelling! 28 About Our Story! 29 Captivate! 29 Establish That There Is A Solution! 31 Trigger Your Offer! 32 Overcome Objections! 33 Where s The Proof?! 34 Separate The Wheat From The Chaff! 37 1

! 17 And How Do You Stay Awesome?! 17 The Persona At Work! 19 Building An Audience! 22 What Is An Audience?! 22 What Does Your Audience Want From You?! 24 How To Find Your Audience!

3 Get Them To Take Action! 39 The Safety Net! 41 Putting It All Together! 42 The Hook & Ladder! 44 The Hook! 44 The Ladder! 46 Your People Problem! 47 The Business Card URL! 47 Built By Links! 48 Referring Websites! 50 Organic Traffic! 51 Paid Advertising! 53 Gateway pages! 57 Your Homepage! 57 A Case Study! 58 A Secret URL Found On Your Business Card! 60 An Educational Article Or Blog Post! 62 An Event! 63 A Carrot! 65 Structuring Your Website! 68 Creating A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story! 69 Cultivating Your Audience! 71 Building Carrots! 72 Why Give Anything Away For Free?! 72 A Transactional Carrot! 72 A Timed Carrot! 74 2

57 A Case Study! 58 A Secret URL Found On Your Business Card! 60 An Educational Article Or Blog Post! 62 An Event! 63 A Carrot! 65 Structuring Your Website!

4 Writing A Newsletter! 78 What To Know When Writing A Newsletter! 78 Closing The Gap! 81 The One Month Plan! 81 The Three Month Plan! 82 The Six Month Plan! 83 About Autoresponders...! 83 Making The Sale! 85 Tracking! 87 Tracking Your Website Funnels! 88 Tracking Your s! 90 Closing Words! 94 3

82 The Six Month Plan! 83 About Autoresponders...! 83 Making The Sale!

5 Introduction They weren t questions about negotiation or market rates. They weren t letters of success, failure, fear, or even hate. No, the first wave of feedback hitting my inbox after releasing my first book wasn t anything I anticipated (or feared.) Instead, I was slammed with questions about clients specifically, how to get them. Aren t you putting the cart before the horse? You challenge me to raise my rates... but I hardly have enough work at my current rate, writes one reader. So over the months, I ve shared with my weekly newsletter the tactics that I ve used to gain the workload needed to keep my consultancy in business, an organization with a burn rate of $100,000+ a month. But there s only so much that can be said in a weekly . This book is my magnum opus on the Art of Getting Lots of Work, my Blueprint outlining the strategies that will keep the lights on, whether for the freelancer s suburban home or the big agency s downtown office. Imagine this book as a spiral. We ll be starting from the abstract, and moving inward toward the concrete and specific. We ll first explore what high-touch sales is, and how you and your website fit into the picture. Afterward, our journey will have us applying both concepts we ll learn about first into landing pages, headlines, and call-to-actions.

) Instead, I was slammed with questions about clients specifically, how to get them. Aren t you putting the cart before the horse? You challenge me to raise my rates.

6 For this reason, I really suggest you NOT to skip around. Start here and spiral down, down, down into the practical. But if you jump directly there, you might find yourself lost. The Blueprint Gateway Hook Ladder Carrot Trust SALE WAXING PHILOSOPHICAL In his book Permission Marketing, Seth Godin describes the death of selling via interruption. In short, the idea is that we re bombarded with lots and lots of attention-grabbing messages. Buy this! Look at me! And our culture s slowly become numb to this form of advertising, especially as marketers double-down with even more interruption to try to compensate for diminishing returns. As the son of a professional blackjack player (yes, those exist): doubling your bets while you re losing is really, really dumb. So if the old style of interruptive advertising becomes less effective, how can companies keep moving products off the shelf? Relationships, says Seth. Courting a customer over time, and only selling when they re ready to buy. This book is going to teach you how you can apply this same idea of relationship building to your sales pipeline. While it s true we ll be focusing on fully automated, online ways to build relationships and get new clients,

In short, the idea is that we re bombarded with lots and lots of attention-grabbing messages. Buy this! Look at me!

7 what you learn here is also going to influence the walk you talk at networking events and the attitude you have when meeting with prospective clients. And after applying The Blueprint to your own business, you ll be armed with both the knowhow and a system that keeps you booked solid. BECOMING PROACTIVE Why won t anyone [possible clients] contact me...? I have a habit of stalking Internet forums for freelancers and consultants, and the above question presented in limitless forms and variations is being asked again, and again, and again. All over the web. Every. Single. Day. What I ve observed over the years is that a lot of people think that by putting up a website and passing around their business cards at Chamber of Commerce events, hordes of clients will show up clutching wads of cash. But ask any real brick-and-mortar business owner how the website + business card strategy works out in the long run. Particularly, poll out of business businesses if you want the real truth. People quit their job, open up a business banking account, put together a site, print some shiny cards, and wait. The lucky ones get some clients and pay their bills; but many retreat back to the safe haven of salary and/or complain on Internet forums.

BECOMING PROACTIVE Why won t anyone [possible clients] contact me.

8 The problem lies in a reactive mindset. We wait for referrals. We wait for someone (anyone!) to fill out our contact form. We wait for that big client to come around and book us for months. A few paragraphs ago I mentioned that I had a six-figure burn rate when running my consultancy. To employ ten full-time developers and designers and to keep from being kicked to the curb by my landlord, I had to guarantee a lot of new business each month. It was non-negotiable. I like to say we had a huge amount of fixed expenses, matched with variable income. I once was reactive, but expanding my company required that I become proactive. I had to stop waiting, and make work happen. Are you done with waiting for that next contract to show up on your doorstep? If you are, let s dive right into The Blueprint.

To employ ten full-time developers and designers and to keep from being kicked to the curb by my landlord, I had to guarantee a lot of new business each month. It was non-negotiable.

9 Do You Need A Website? A surprising number of people have written me about whether or not they even need a website. Writes Linda, Here is my question, should I set-up a website for myself? I have an online presence with LinkedIn and an online portfolio with Coroflot. Do you believe that would be enough to build my freelance clientele? Dozens of websites exist with the intention of making it easier for deals to happen. They re virtual resumés that are both searchable and shareable, and usually don t always require either party to know that the other is looking at their profile. But this book isn t about just building a website. It s about building up a relationship with an audience, and letting them know we re the best possible person (or team) to help them with their problems. We ll be doing that primarily over two mediums: web pages and , both of which you ll have complete and total control over. So go ahead. Setup a LinkedIn profile or whatever else. But to kick us off, let s talk about why we need a website. WHAT ROLE DOES OUR WEBSITE SERVE? Picture for a moment a client of yours. At one point, she had no idea who you were. At a later point, she heard about you maybe you met her at a

Dozens of websites exist with the intention of making it easier for deals to happen.

10 networking event, or she was referred, or she somehow stumbled upon you via Google. Between first contact and signing your contract, stuff happened. She had to quell two concerns: First, that you re capable of executing the project she needed. Second, that the ratio between risk of you failing and cost to get this built isn t overly high. Only then, will she hire you. And to get there, you probably talked with her a bunch. You sent her links to work you ve done. You ve chit-chatted over . You answered her questions over coffee. And once she said, OK let s do it and signed your contract, she officially became your client. The goal of your website, as outlined in this book, is to do more of that inbetween work for you. I want you to get to the point where your online strategy is a dedicated business development asset for your company; where answering can this person build my project can be done with as little involvement from you as possible. HOW WILL WE GET THERE? Many of you are web designers are developers, but some of you aren t. If you re not a whiz at setting up websites, there s nothing to worry about. There are three main mediums that we ll be working with: web pages, , and downloadable content. The overwhelming majority of your time

Only then, will she hire you. And to get there, you probably talked with her a bunch. You sent her links to work you ve done. You ve chit-chatted over email. You answered her questions over coffee.

11 will actually be spent in a word processor writing the content that goes into your site and . In a nutshell, we ll be setting up a website that has various gateways, or landing pages where you ll be sending people to. Next, we re going to lead them from being a reluctant and skeptical pair of eyes to expressing an interest in hearing more from you, and we ll be doing this over time using drip campaigns. Once established, you ll have a self-propelled conveyor belt setup that will turn visitors into opt-in members of your audience, and audience members into leads, and leads into prospects. The best news is that you re largely out of the picture. The only thing you re responsible for is making sure your monthly web hosting and marketing payments keep going through.

Next, we re going to lead them from being a reluctant and skeptical pair of eyes to expressing an interest in hearing more from you, and we ll be doing this over time using drip email campaigns.

7 Secrets To Websites That Sell. By Alex Nelson

7 Secrets To Websites That Sell By Alex Nelson Website Secret #1 Create a Direct Response Website Did you know there are two different types of websites? It s true. There are branding websites and there