Relationship Building 101 – Basic Training for Business Success

I recently spoke with Matthew Scott. Matthew is a ‘professional growth coach’ who helps people grow revenues for their business professionally and meaning for their lives personally. An accomplished entrepreneur who’s sold more than one company he’s built from scratch for a few good coins, I spoke with him during a recent meeting of Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coaches in Kansas City. I asked him to talk with me on the topic of how he builds relationships that build his business. What I got from talking with Matthew was quite revealing . . . and valuable. Enjoy!

REALITIES:

Matthew said there are some things you MUST know if you’re going to be effective at reaching prospects – and getting them to respond to you. He calls these the ‘realities’.

Consumers’ Realities:

1. People act to satisfy their own interests . . . i.e. they buy for their reasons, not ours
2. People prefer to work with providers they know, like and trust professionally
3. Professional service providers are, de facto, interruptions for most prospects

Providers’ Realities:

1. We want to make sales . . . generate revenues – it’s our genetics
2. We tend to skip the know and like steps and assume trust exists as we ‘go for the sale’
3. We tend to be transaction-oriented more than we’re relationship-oriented

CHALLENGES:

As service providers, we’re an INTANGIBLE until a prospective client understands otherwise.

Our marketing messages can be, therefore, difficult to create and even more difficult for a consumer to understand and use to evaluate us. The messages that work are not written. They’re experiences with us.

CHOICES:

Matthew finds that in order to build a relationship with a prospective client he needs to address three (3) issues:

1. “Do you have an UNDERSTANDING of my problem/s?”
2. “Do you have the ABILITY to solve the kind of problems I have?”
3. “Do you have the EXPERIENCE needed to address my issues?”

On Matthews side of the fence, he’s learned that he has to provide proof . . . in the form of an experience with him that he has the ‘right stuff’ in each of these areas.

For example, Matthew likes to give a prospective client an ‘experience’ of Matthew so that the prospect comes away with a committed conclusion that:

1. Matthew Scott DOES . . . understand my problem – and the consequences of having to live with it longer than I’d like
2. Matthew Scott DOES . . . solve problems just like the ones that are frustrating me every day
3. Matthew Scott DOES . . . possess the kind of experience needed to deal with the specific kinds of problems I’m living with and want to get rid of ASAP!

RESPONSES:

Given all this, Matthew is committed to providing each prospective client with a pathway to clienthood. This ‘path’ is built on a series of ‘Truths’ he’s gleaned from building a successful business – several times in fact – that were sold for many, many times annual earnings.

TRUTH: “Make Everyone More Kinds of Offers Every Chance You Get”

Matthew isn’t talking about asking more people to buy. He’s suggesting that you make a myriad number of offers to a prospective client that can be used by a prospect to become your client.

“You always have to be thinking, “Gee, what’s a good ‘Next Step’ this person could be taking with me?” What I find is that the choices are as varied as the people you want to consider them.” And, that’s good. Variety won’t hurt you. It will help you by giving your prospects the widest possible field of choices . . . to become a client of yours.

TRUTH: “Make Everyone Offers that are Value-Based and Repeated Often”

Matthew has built two successful companies. He’s taken a company from “a few sincere souls” to an organization that employed hundreds of people and grew to be attractive enough to lure investors who bought him out for a nice sum.

“Success” says Matthew, “is truly a journey, not a single stop along the way”. Perhaps that’s why Matthew also recognizes the strategic or ‘Lifetime’ value in his prospects. He knows the ‘long-term’ value inherent in any prospect relationship . . . and the ultimate value it suggests.

And, just as it’s easier to eat an elephant in many ‘bite-sized pieces’, Matthew finds it’s equally true about the offers that can help a prospect to become his client. The offers need to be equally ‘small and easy’ steps to take.

As a result, he’s built an entire spectrum of ‘offers’ that range from ‘small and free’ items like a white paper on a topic of value and interest to his prospective clients to ‘unique and significant’ offers that a more experienced prospect may feel compelled to invest in taking with Matthew.

Again, when you understand that relationships are supposed to be ‘long-term’ in nature (and, must be if their value is to be fully realized) then it makes sense to make ‘baby steps’ available to get someone on the pathway to running a marathon with you.

“I’ve learned that crafting easy-to-accept, low-barrier ‘entry point’ offers to help prospective clients become clients – albeit small clients initially – makes it easier to get that process underway”, says Matthew.

If you visit his website, you’ll find that he practices what he preaches.

Matthew’s mission is to work with executive men – leaving the military (he was in the Army’s Special Forces) and those who are not – but who are at a crossroads in their lives and seeking counsel to help them make the best choices for creating the ‘Next’ of their lives. So you’ll see his main website is really a portal (designed by an extremely adept web magician -- Sherilyn Horne) where he’s created unique sub-sites for each audience he’s seeking to attract.

If you visit any one of them – take the ‘men@pause’ for instance – you’ll see that you can quickly and easily take Matthew up on an offer to provide you with value. On that site, you are offered “The 5 Truths of Business Men@Intersection of Professional & Personal Significance”. It’s a five (5) part series of daily audio emails – none are over four (4) minutes long – addressing each ‘Truth’ and providing significant, value-based insights on each.

“You don’t just hold up a big neon sign that says, ‘Trust me. I understand your challenges and I can help you”. My prospects deserve better. And they get it, too”. How? Well, when you sign up for his audio series (which is offered at ‘No Charge’, of course!) you get what Matthew calls his ‘Pink Spoon Marketing’ in action. I asked Matthew what he meant by that.

“Well, if you’ve ever been to a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store you know that they’ll give you a little pink spoon with a sample of ice cream. If you like it, you might buy a cone. If you like the cone, you might buy a quart to bring home to the family. And so the little sample grows you as a customer. But it all starts with the pink spoon . . . the sample”.

That’s the strategy Matthew reflects in his websites and in communications with his prospects, clients and centers-of-influence. And it seems to be working. Some of the ‘free’ samplers also decide to sign up for Matthew’s $29 e-book that he offers throughout his website. Others accept an offer to join Matthew for a slightly higher fee to participate in a webcast where they can get an even better feel for what working with Matthew is really like. Ultimately, some who start out for ‘free’ end up enjoying significant value from a working relationship with Matthew and he’s enjoying a serious (he won’t let me say exactly) six-figure income as a result.

STRATEGIC PARTNERS

Matthew offered to let me in on one of his ‘best kept secrets’ for building his business. He seeks out the ‘visible leaders’ in various fields who have an audience of clients and followers who might benefit from some product or service Matthew offers.

“I approach them with the goal of seeing if we can collaborate to bring value to one another. I do my homework and find people who are serving a clientele with some unmet need or want that I can help address. If they like my proposition to bring my solution to bear on their clients’ issues, then I and they and the clients all stand to benefit. Of course, if I can reciprocate in kind, all the better”.

Not surprisingly, Matthew lands these opportunities the old fashioned way. “I’m a Sandler Sales client from way back and it’s been one of the best investments in myself that I’ve ever made. That training taught me how to cold-call to get clients. I actually like to cold-call because my Sandler training made it so darned easy to do.” That’s also what a recent report from RainToday.com said, too. The most effective method (not the easiest, but the most effective) for generating new clients for professional service providers is . . . (yep!) . . . ‘cold calling’. Matthew’s experience using this tactic bears out the truth in that report.

In the end, by aligning himself with great leaders (who just happen to have great followings!) Matthew finds he can quickly gain exposure for himself and his services with hundreds and even thousands of prospective clients . . . relatively quickly and easily.

RECAP

Matthew Scott is an entrepreneur at heart who understands that helping people reach goals that they deem important can be valuable to him. Not only financially. But in terms of the value of living and working in a manner that creates meaningfulness. For both Matthew and his clients.

His wisdom for building relationships isn’t hard to grasp. It’s not rocket surgery. It’s common sense. Common sense built on a solid foundation of living out the Golden Rule with people who matter in his business and personal life.

Being respectful of others and thoughtful in creating solutions that demonstrate his experience, understanding and ability to solve problems that his prospective clients are living with and want to be rid of . . . is good, solid advice.

His ‘best practices’ for building relationships that build revenues include:

1. Cold Calling . . . selectively and effectively
2. Leveraging Existing Relationships . . . or “Getting to others by going through clients and centers-of-influence”
3. Client Testimonials . . . to demonstrate your experience and ability to effectively solve problems for a targeted marketplace (‘understanding’ is implicit in this, too!)
4. Creative Collaborations . . . to reach more prospects in less time, with better results

Matthew Scott is an accomplished individual in both his business endeavors and personal life. He’s also, no surprise, an incredible networker and imminently approachable.

If you’d like to learn more from him directly, he can be reached at: 1-866-981-WORK (9675), by email at:?mscott@lifesworkgroup.com or through his website: www.lifesworkgroup.com.

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Bill Doerr, CCO of SellMore Marketing, LLC is the creator of The Preferral Prospecting System®,
The Expert Directory® and The Ultimate Client Development System™. Bill uses these programs to
help service providers build their business by leveraging relationships and generating more referrals.
You can reach Bill by phone at: 860-798-6964, online: www.sellmoremarketing.com or by
email or by the TNNW Blog: http://thenationalnetworker.blogspot.com