Lessons From the Field
Apex Consultants: Share your favourite books and authors!
Some of ours to kick off:
1. Zero to One - Peter Thiel
2. S.P.I.N Selling - Neil Rackham
3. Becoming Steve Jobs - Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli
You Can't Consult For Yourself
Those lessons usually relate to the importance of:
- Creating a systematic method for acquiring new clients
- Generating predictable lead flow
- And selling a scalable service…
But the one thing we may not talk about enough, which influences everything else and makes it all possible…is managing the personal dimension.
That is to say, managing yourself and getting help when you need it.
Learning to Manage Yourself
The truth is, business is not hard.It’s a rational, objective step-by-step process of finding perfect market, offer, and message fit.
Then, scaling up from there.
But being the kind of person who can remain objective throughout that process and therefore succeed in business is hard—for most.
We All Have Blindspots.
We often don’t know the full extent of what is...
Why Strategy Trumps Tactics
These days, there are more and more people talking about shiny new marketing tactics.
Sales funnels, chatbots, PDFs, case studies, webinars, the list goes on... as you surely know. And obviously the tactics work, to a point, or else no one would be talking about them.
But here’s the real secret behind all marketing tactics that no marketer is going to tell you…
It isn’t the tactics that work, but rather the strategy behind them.
The tactics aren’t new and they’ve been around for centuries.
Since the days of carrier pigeons sending direct mail, to voicemail on tape call rooms…
The tactics haven’t changed much, because people haven’t changed much.
Only the mediums have.
So, when you’re wondering why some consultants are able to scale to seven figures, build large firms, hire teams to support them, and/or create a lifestyle businesses that allow them to work where they want, how they want, with who they want…
This large...
Not Just an Art, But A Science
Most people spend their lives in search of one thing…
Certainty.
Proof that the future is going to unfold in a certain way.
But the truth is no one knows what the future holds, what’s going to happen next, or how things will shake down.
Which is an unbearable feeling for most people.
Feeling out of control, blind to the future, and reactive to life’s happenings.
But there is one way to feel certain about the future…
And that’s not just relying on art for living…but also science.
Let me give you a quick example.
You see, when Gav and I first started to market our services, we used to think that the results we got from our campaigns were due to, well… us.
That we got extraordinary results, because our copy was the best copy.
Or because we knew our audience the better than anyone else.
That our results were good, because we were good.
But then we started to notice something...
At first, we...
Marketing Isn't Optional As A Consultant
The cool thing about working an in-house job…
Is that someone else is doing your marketing for you.
Usually, high-achiever types, who are investing their paychecks in something stable on the side… driving the fast cars… and living the high-performance lifestyle.
And their consistent energy prospecting, qualifying, calling, selling, following up and closings…
Hundreds of leads, per day, per person…
Is what affords almost all other non-revenue producing positions their ability to do what they do. Not that what they do isn’t important, but just that without that stable revenue, it just simply isn’t affordable.
LinkedIn has over 15,000 full-time employees… and 6,500 are in sales.
What does that tell you?
What exists at a larger level, must also exist on a smaller level. And in larger organizations, these truths are just most obvious.
All this to say that, in business: marketing is not optional.
Especially not when you’re on...
Why Market Saturation is a Myth
I want to share an idea with you that is humbling to admit, but will revolutionize your business when you embrace it.
And that idea is that...
Your level of income and the success of your business is directly proportional to the total amount of the market you are able to service...
And when you understand this, you will understand why market saturation is a myth.
You see, most consultants who rely on referrals for new clients, are simply servicing the amount of the market they happen to be brushing shoulders with.
This network may seem extensive, but it is a closed system.
The amount of people in the world who can benefit from your services and are happy to pay for them is more than you can imagine…
In fact, many of them may be far removed from you geographically.
At the time of writing, I am in Australia running a business that currently services 100% U.S. clients. I can assure you, I am not bound my geography, and neither should you be. And there's nothing...
Our 5-Step Process For Getting Clients
In this video we share one of our proven processes we used to generate client appointments for our consulting business.
This is just one of the methods shared in our program: The Apex Consultant Method.
Where you will also learn how you can outperform even this method, scaling your consulting business with organic, paid and other highly effective client generation strategies.
This video is less than 15-minutes long, but reveals the exact marketing funnel we use to generate as many leads as we can handle.
Let me know what you think, just hit reply with your questions :)
Leveraging ‘The Everywhere Effect’
Have you ever been online and clicked on something, then left that site… only to see an advertisement for the product you were just looking at in the sidebar of the next site you visited?
Here’s What That Can Look Like, Even on the Illustrious New York Times:
That’s not the NSA trying to help out your local Audi dealership, it’s something called ‘paid retargeting advertising’ and it is one of the most underutilized tools every consultant should be leveraging.
Here’s an example of how this can work for you…
Imagine one of your clients visits your site, or the website of one of your competitors, and they don’t make a decision to work with you then and there, which will be the case almost 80% of the time…
And yet, that evening when they log into Facebook, they see a blurb about a talk you gave recently, with a link to the video. They click on it.
The next day, they see an article, where you were featured in one of the...
