Also, when you listen today, we…
– Gave you 3 different ways to get new clients.
– Gave you proven phrases you can start using that convert like hot-cakes when talking to prospects.
– And answered your questions on the quickly approaching LAUNCH 2.0 Intensive April 20-22nd.

Listen to it below, be ready to take LOTS of notes, and claim your $1,997 ticket (its free to our members) to the upcoming Local Online Marketing 3-Day Intensive.

IMPORTANT: Our discounted hotel room rates expire this Monday, April 9th. Be sure to get registered ASAP and reserve your hotel room by Monday or else you will miss out. The LAUNCH Intensive will change your business and your life… its POWERFUL and really is the best decision you can make for your business.

Can't wait to meet you! -Kevin

Listen To The Streaming Audio Below

(or)
Download the MP3 of the Audio Here.

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By the time the crash in 2008 hit, Linda Bayko was looking for something else to do. After 25 years in the computer industry, Linda had taken an executive layoff in 2005 and started her own finance company and bought the Nitro Blueprint System course. While working with small businesses, she began to realize the reason they didn’t have cash flow was that they weren’t marketing online. It was at that time she began to teach them what she had learned from NBS.

Her first client was her realtor, who’d seen her success with her finance business online and practically begged to become Linda’s first client. She became the guinea pig for Linda. She only charged $200 a month, then went up to $500 a month. After that, Linda added her mover, then a mortgage broker. She dealt with people she knew already, working her warm market which made it easy.

But, she was working hard… and at those rates, not having much to show for it.

A live event and a couple of conversations later (thank you Clarence Fisher and Ed Downes), and Linda realized what had gone wrong – she’d failed to recognize and own her value. The remedy was drastic.

She fired her clients. Better to start fresh. Linda sent out about 350 emails to her contacts looking for referrals.

No response. She sent the same email again. This time she got 4-5 contacts who said they were thinking about it.

She sent it again, and landed her first $2,500 a month client.

It got easier. She used a client questionnaire that subtly revealed all the moving parts involved in doing local online marketing – and resulted most times in prospects practically jumping over the table to sign up as her client.

She quickly got a new client who turned out to be a franchisee. It turned out there were lots of complications with that. She met with the franchisor, who ultimately opened .up the whole back end of that business with tons of content, and got permission to market to the 139 brokers in his business across the U.S.

How’s it working now for Linda? As far as her current clients go, they’re making more money. Her first client, the realtor has sold more than 10.6 million!

The moving company owner was sitting with his feet up on the table when he first called; there were no jobs. The housing market was tanking and the jobs were drying up. Since working with Linda he is now running three trucks full time. Now, believe it or not, he periodically calls to ask if she can turn the tap off a bit.

Linda’s advice to you – don’t focus on the money; focus on the fun. Once you are having fun and enjoying yourself, the money will come. It takes discipline and great time management. Get your work done. Be sure to set a time amount every day for each task and get it done. Don’t go on Facebook all the time. Shut your email off rather than checking it constantly. Be persistent; follow up is very important. If she had stopped after only sending out that one email blast, she would not have gotten that first $2,500 a month client.

Finally, learn from your mistakes. We all make mistakes in presentations, and it never feels good. Reality is, only one person saw the mistake, not the whole world. Don’t get hung up on the technical side of things. Just go out there and sell it and outsource the rest. Hire a sales team if you need to. If you aren’t generating revenue, you will have to shut your doors. Follow the program, it works. Do it and do it again.

Ever had that feeling while you worked at a job that you were smarter than your boss?

That you were being held back by the cubicle? That there was a ceiling on what you could earn and accomplish? Michael Carels did.

So when he watched an acquaintance interview with the big Internet company he worked for, then turn the job offer down because that business wasn’t interested in local marketing, it got him thinking. He soon jumped ship and connected with that friend to pursue a local online marketing business – working, masterminding, and strategizing alongside him from different cities. Michael didn’t know a whole lot about SEO, but knew how to deal with small business owners.

He could see the potential and demand among businesses – advertising was moving online. He knew customers were going to Google long before they’d ever head to online yellow pages, and figured he could start leveraging his selling and relationship skills into selling Google Places spots.

Of course he had no idea how to get a company ranked.

But he started dialing for dollars anyway. While nobody really likes doing cold calling, Michael had a pretty good handle on it and worked the numbers. He’d make 30 dials a day. Of those, he’d reach 3-5 people. From those, he’d probably get one appointment. Of those appointments, he’d land clients.

Michael’s biggest priority was getting those calls made – not necessarily getting appointments, or getting to talk to a certain number of people. Once you’ve been at it a while, you can back into how many dials you need to make, how much each one is worth to you. The goal is to get through the “No’s” – every single dial is bringing in money, no matter what their response.

In fact, after doing just a bit of cold calling, he got an appointment with a prospect. Michael didn’t even have a business bank account, so he had to take a personal check. He remembers watching the client write the check, thinking: “I’d better get this business on Google Places… how do I do that?” Realized he was now in the world of SEO. That’s when it became very valuable having a friend in the business to consult with. Some nights he’d wonder how this was going to work.

But he didn’t fall into the rut of looking busy, fooling himself that busy work was the same as revenue producing activity. He didn’t keep researching, buying more courses, getting ready to get ready. He didn’t worry about not knowing how to do everything for his clients himself. He had a salary to replace, so he took action.

Michael says, “It comes down to taking action. You have two motivators – avoiding pain or getting pleasure.

Have a vision of where you want to go. It’s so critical to take action. Once you take action and get yourself out there, things start to happen for you.

“Don’t concern yourself with research all day. Study your program and then get out there and network. There are infinite clients out there. Don’t try to do everything yourself. If you do everything yourself for your clients, you’ll spread yourself too thin. Get quality outsourcers instead so you can focus on your strengths and do what you do best. You can go out, meet people, and bring in new clients and have others fulfill the work. Don’t try to learn everything before you take action.”

There is no better advice out there. And it’s working for him. Clients routinely email him to say how his services have totally changed their lives. They’ve paid off debts, they’re getting consistent business like it used to be back when the Yellow Pages worked. All these businesses are looking for proven methods – when you help them, the feedback is fantastic.

Going forward, Michael’s goals are to be smarter with his time, where he’s happy with a consistent number of clients from all over the world, all outsourced.

Beginning in 2012, his plan is to travel and manage the business from wherever he is.

His parting advice: Have an inspiring vision for what you want, that’ll help you take consistent and bold action every day. That’s how you will get results that you want.

Mac and PC debate aside, seems like if a decade-plus Microsoft employee who’d dabbled in small business commerce online has discovered that the more he learns online, the more there is to learn, it’s okay for us all to admit we don’t know it all – and to take action anyway. Rich Thurman got a taste for online entrepreneurship and it fanned the fire for his desire to learn more.

It was the consultative selling aspect of local online marketing that got him hooked. The idea of selling a service that’s meaningful and helps business owners grow their business resonated with him. He realized how much they needed this; unless a business has a strong internet presence their competitors will leave them in the dust.

With this idea in mind, his education in online marketing begun, he went for a boat ride. As boats do, his broke… and started him on his course of success.

Where to find a guy to fix his propeller… Rich found one online. The shop had a website that looked to be Angel Fire circa 1992. He went in, got his propeller fixed, and started a conversation.

“How’s your website working for you?”

“It isn’t.”

Rich gave the guy his book, gave some tips about getting the site to perform better, and even gave some advice about what to do the next time he got a call from some SEO firm promising him the world. Then he left.

Two days later, you can imagine the call he got. “If I pay you, could you DO this for me?” Sure.

Rich collected $1,500 up-front, worked on the site to bring it into this century, pulled a call to action on the site, set up a lead capture system, set up a trackable 800- number, and generated traffic. A lot of it. At the end of the month, he gave his client a report he was able to use to calculate ROI. It was working. Well.

The next call he got was, “If I give you more money, could you get me MORE traffic?” Sure.

Sounds easy, of course. And if it worked like that for every client from the get-go, it would be wonderful. But along the way, Rich fought the same battles all of us go through.

Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear he didn’t know enough.

Good thing he had a mastermind group (or three!). As the adage goes, you become most like the five people closest to you. He surrounded himself with people who were all in when it came to taking action.

He learned the value of stopping the data gathering process and just taking action when the time is right. If you’re never done learning, you have to learn to take action anyway or you’ll never get results. It takes courage to implement. Courage to be willing to have mastermind partners rip your business apart and help you put it back together better. But accountability allows you to move faster than you can on your own.

His advice to you: Take bold steps forward. If you go out and listen to all the gurus, they all say get out of info gathering mode and get into implementation mode whether you’re ready or not. Throw mud against the wall and see if it sticks – if it does, great. If it doesn’t, learn from it. If you miss opportunities because you’re not ready, you miss out. Just do it, whether you can or not! You don’t need to know the whole book. Just stay one page ahead of your customer.

Also, don’t fall prey to shiny object syndrome. There are lots of products out there – pick ONE and go with that one. Consume it to its full, then get out of the info gathering mode and implement what you learned from that resource. If you have success, you’re golden. If not, then move on.

She dreamt of becoming a mom.

But after fifteen years doing compensation consulting and analysis for different companies she realized she was spending her life in a profession she hadn't actively sought. She wanted to be home and available to her kids, to work from home.

She spent her workdays doing research on how much people should be paid, and her nights at home trying to find ways to make money from home to replace her full-time job's income, contribute to the world, and be available to her kids. She spent a good year buying and trying different online marketing, money-making schemes (also known as shiny objects). Nothing worked.

Scam City?

It hit her that all these 'gurus' were making money from her, and she had nothing to show for it. Mandi didn't want to be in a business where her buyers ended up feeling like they'd been scammed. She wanted to provide a true service that was helpful to people.

That's when she discovered local online marketing. It made sense. She could help good, hard-working business owners connect online with the customers who desperately needed their services. She could provide a service critical to their success, being the difference between whether they made it or not. As a local online marketer, she wouldn't be sucking money out of them, she'd be helping them move to the next level.

But first she needed a client.

Just Follow the Instructions

She went to the Local Business Money Machine Launch live workshop in March 2011. At the event, she was given an assignment: Send this email to your friends and family to see who they know who could use your services. She did it. Mandi emailed her personal contacts from her personal email, then sent a similar email to her LinkedIn contacts. Because her days were spent working at her job, she followed-up by email. Not a perfect follow-up plan, still, it worked!

Of course, there was the little matter of her full-time job that made for a bit of a challenge. Unwilling to let this stand in her way, she used her vacation days one at a time to enable her to make appointments with prospective clients. She knew she only needed a handful of clients to replace her income. (Mandi lives in the Bronx and made very good money at her job.)

It worked! Mandi prepared her presentation, did a bit of keyword research, and followed the consultative sales process she learned with the Local Business Money Machine. She halfway expected her prospect to say, "I understand how valuable this service is, but really don't have a budget for it." Instead, he said, "I understand how valuable this service is, and have been looking for someone to do this for us. Where do I sign?"

Six months later, he's saying things like, "I noticed on your website you've got some testimonials. Can I write one for you, too?" and "We're doing so well with this… can we add more keywords now?" (i.e. "Can I pay you more now?")

She kept at it, and still hasn't tapped her whole prospect list. With four clients and a now-proven track record of success, she decided to take the plunge to go full-time online. Mandi's got a marketing plan for 2012 that should enable her to reach her goal of $200,000 in revenue with 10-15 clients, while spending no more than about 4-5 hours a day on her business.

Advice You Can Trust from Someone Who's Making It Work

If you follow the program, your role is more client management, not technical. The tech stuff is your outsourcer's role. There's no way you could do it as well and as cheaply yourself as you could outsource it. You need to be organized because nobody's sending out your invoices for you (unless you outsource that, too!). Even if you outsource, you've got to manage your outsource team to make sure their questions get handled in a timely fashion.

You need to have a passion for helping business owners and be able to communicate that to them. You can succeed by just contacting your friends and family – although your friends and family will probably refer you to strangers. Having an introduction like that makes it easier. The better your relationship with your client is, the longer your engagement will last.

Jump in and DO it. Go through all the lessons in your course, then take action. Send that friends and family email. The faster you get it out, the better. Don't spend hours rewriting it – it's already a good email. Customize it a tiny bit if you need to make it sound more like you. You'll be surprised who responds – it won't be 100%, even with follow-up. But all you need is one or two to get started.

Understand and believe. You're providing a tremendous value to the business owner. Remember this and don't sell yourself short!

Commit to a mastermind group. It's a huge help knowing the group is there, a good source for accountability and answers to your questions – either they know the answer or someone knows where to find it. Hold each other accountable and ask the tough questions to keep each other moving forward. Be supportive, always focused on the positive. Negativity doesn't help you get anywhere in life – focus on the positive in every area – kids, business, relationship. This changes how your life moves forward.

Forget "Going to Disney"… Mandi's House May Be the Happiest Place on Earth

When I caught up with Mandi, it was the very first day of her new life as a non-employee. What'd she have to say?

"I have such joy in my heart today. I've had this vision of being in this place for three years – to be the master of my destiny, to be able to focus on my family as much as I want to. What I wanted when I was little was to grow up and be a mom. This afternoon, I have my sons' concert – I never would have been able to go to that! There's a holiday party on Wednesday, a holiday show on Thursday. I can now focus on what's really important to me!"

Too many struggle getting to this and its time to SOLVE that if you're having that problem right now.

This video gives you a simple, elegant, easy approach that removes all of the pressure, fear and anxiety and gives you a technique that works. You can have your first paid client within the next few days or weeks!

RESOURCES:
– Download the video slides (pdf)
– Consultative Sales Process blog post
– Book: Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni
– Book: The Art of SEO: Mastering Search 
Engine Optimization
– Doing Business As (state-by-state list)
– How to Get One Client a Week

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Watch this demo video of a software tool from a fellow local marketer. Its
the same tool we use to build our list of local business prospects to
target. It is a BIG time and hassle saver over doing it the manual way.

With 3 clicks of a button and a minute later you can have 100's of targeted leads.

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This training module is on the Consultative Sales Process – how to convert prospects into paying clients without having to be a sales person.

If you missed part 1 in this series, you can View Part 1 Here.

Some resources from this video.
The Dan Sullivan Question (book)
Consultative Selling (book)
The One-Page Proposal (book)

Share your comments below, would love to hear from you!

If you are new, it will get you focused on what matters most. And if you have some success under your belt it will be a great reminder.

Definitely make sure to do the 5 minute exercise at the end.

Download Flow Chart (Right Click and "Save As" to save to your computer)
Download "Empty Box" Flow Chart (Right Click and "Save As" to save to your computer)

P.S. Next week we are starting a 4-part training series addressing the #1 problem local marketers experience – consistently getting prospects and clients.

And giving you the #1 client getting method local marketers can use to get a stream of never ending clients.

It's a true game changer for local marketers.