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Turbo Charged Consulting – Quick Launch Manual

Copyright © Jaime Mintun. All rights reserved.www.turbochargedconsulting.com

QUICK LAUNCH MANUAL

Your step-by-step manual for driving your profits from ZERO to SIX FIGURES in 90

days or less!

BY Jaime Mintun

Limits of Liability / Disclaimer of Warranty:

The author and publisher of this book and the accompanying materials have used their best efforts in preparing this program. The author and publisher make no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness, or completeness of the contents of this program. They disclaim any warranties (express or implied), merchantability, or fitness for any particular purpose. The author and publisher shall in no event be held liable for any loss or other damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. As always, the advice of a competent legal, tax, accounting, or other professional should be sought. The author and publisher do not warrant the performance, effectiveness or applicability of any sites listed in this book. All links are for information purposes only and are not warranted for content, accuracy or any other implied or explicit purpose. This manual contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is strictly prohibited. Although you may have received this manual for free, all rights still apply as they did when this package sold for $497. You do NOT have the right to give this or any other portion of Turbo Charged Consulting package to anyone, whether for payment, for free, or as part of another offering. Absolutely no distribution allowed, electronic or otherwise.



About the Author

Jaime Mintun At only 25 years of age, Jaime Mintun found herself broke and homeless after putting all her savings and effort into a failed internet marketing business venture. Yet, within less than 30 days, Jaime put a down payment on a new home and was earning an annual six-figure income. It was, by far, the most success she’d ever had. How did she do it? By doing exactly what she’s going to teach you here:

consulting for paying clients to market their products and services online. Over the past year, following her transition into consulting, Jaime has become a highly sought-after resource. Fortune 100 companies, fully-funded startups, and successful entrepreneurs now come to her for advice, copywriting, campaign and strategy development, SEO, and more. She’s helped launch internet powerhouses, such as social radio network BlogTalkRadio, and is receiving invitations to speak at industry conferences. Publishing houses have approached her to write a book about her experience as a 20-something entrepreneur. But she’ll be the first one to tell you that she’s just a normal gal. She’s no guru or marketing genius. “I’m a peer,” she says. “I’m the young, struggling entrepreneur that isn’t just sharing what I think will work for the poor, the restless, the downtrodden—I’ve been there. I’m sharing what I know works when all the chips are down.” Jaime is living and breathing what she teaches here in this consulting package. And if she were to leave you with only one piece of advice—if you were to only remember one thing from her, she would want it would be this: Let the beauty you love be what you do. In her heart, she knows this to be the truest path to success. But just in case you need a road map, she won’t leave you hanging! Read on to learn exactly how to walk that path.



Table of Contents

About the Author ............................................................................................................................ 2 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................... 4 HOW TO USE THIS EBOOK AND PACKAGE .................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER ONE: STRUCTURING YOUR CONSULTANCY................................................................. 8 SECTION ONE: CONSULTANCY IDENTITY & ORGANIZATION ........................................................ 8 SECTION TWO: DEFINE YOUR SERVICE OFFERINGS ..................................................................15 SECTION THREE: DECIDE WHAT TO CHARGE .............................................................................18 SECTION FOUR: LIMIT YOUR LIABILITY AFTER FIRST 30 DAYS..................................................25 CHAPTER TWO: PROSPECTING ...................................................................................................28 SECTION ONE: PROSPECTING BEST PRACTICES........................................................................29 SECTION TWO: HOW TO PROSPECT ON CRAIGSLIST..................................................................37 SECTION THREE: HOW TO PROSPECT ON GURU.COM...............................................................45 SECTION FOUR: AUTOMATE THE PROSPECTING PROCESS .......................................................56 SECTION FOUR: AUTOMATE THE PROSPECTING PROCESS .......................................................56 CHAPTER THREE: CLIENT MANAGEMENT ..................................................................................60 SECTION ONE: CLIENT MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES ..........................................................61 SECTION TWO: INITIATE PROJECT & DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION PLAN....................................67 SECTION THREE: MANAGE CLIENT EXPECTATIONS AND ISSUES..............................................71 SECTION FOUR: WORKING WITH EMPLOYEES & OTHER VENDORS .........................................76 CHAPTER FOUR: OUTSOURCING .................................................................................................81 SECTION ONE: OUTSOURCING BEST PRACTICES .......................................................................82 SECTION TWO: OUTSOURCING TO SECONDARY CONSULTANTS...............................................84 SECTION THREE: HIRING, TRAINING, AND MANAGING MASS TALENT .....................................87 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................92



INTRODUCTION

Welcome to your new turbo charged vehicle. This consulting package is going to give you everything you need to drive your profits from ZERO to SIX FIGURES in ninety days or less. I did it in less than thirty days. I bet you can too. The next several months are going to be very exciting for you. It’ll feel like you’ve been driving a Honda Civic your whole life and you’ve suddenly been given the keys to your very own Ferrari F40. I don’t know about you, but I used to own a Honda Civic. It’s a great car, but you floor the gas for any reason, and the car sort of sputters for a couple seconds and then dyslexically declares, with an overeager engine, “Oh! I was supposed to speed up?” That’s how my journey through internet marketing has been for the past eight years. Lots of slow starts, a jerk forward, then my foot falls off the gas. Chances are you’ve experienced similar frustrations in your ventures online. So I trust you’ll share my excitement when I tell you that this consulting package will retire your Honda Civic and put you into the driver’s seat of one of the world’s fastest vehicles—and one of the fastest ways you’ll ever find to reach a six-figure income. “What about a marketable skill? Will this package make me a better internet marketer?” Yes. And no. Of course you need a marketable skill to be a successful consultant—or you need to have connections to those with marketable skills. I’ve got you covered there with some great Additional Service Offerings you’ll learn more about later. But I’m not here to teach you how to be a better search marketer, or a better copywriter. It’s your job to choose what you love and to excel at it—I’m simply here to give you the step-by-step processes and best practices you need to make money doing it (which surprisingly is the tougher part of the equation!). At the least, if you can’t figure out what you love, or you’re just not good enough at it yet, I’m also giving you access to service providers who are good at what they do—and will make you money in the process. So here’s the bottom line: Even if you don’t have a marketable talent or skill, you could still make massive monthly income with Turbo Charged Consulting. I’m sure you know by now that there’s no magic pill, no magic button, and no secret code. So don’t expect it here. Making a living online will never be an easy push-button business. But it can be fun, quick, and rewarding – and I’m going to teach you how to cash in that reward within the next 90 days. That I can and will guarantee.



With my help, you’re going to take the immense knowledge, tools, and skills you’ve already acquired, and put them to work for paying clients. No more fiddling with affiliate programs or Adsense. No more waiting for the dollars to trickle in. Now you can go to an established company with a mailing list, a target market, a reputable product; and you can earn an hourly rate or project fee to do for them exactly what you’ve been doing for yourself. And you can continue to build your own website properties on the side. But it gets better. You don’t have to stress about how to build your consultancy. You don’t have to build your Ferrari from scratch. I’ve already done it for you and I’m simply handing you the keys. Your only responsibility is to drive it. Consider this: What are the basic hurdles you have to leap to successfully and profitably build a consulting business online?

1. You have to build and launch a website, complete with an explanation of services, informative pages about what you do and why you’re the best one to do it, and you need lead capturing mechanisms.

2. You need dozens of documents that look professional and not haphazardly designed, such as invoices, reports, proposals, client agreements, job response emails, and the list goes on and on.

3. You need to draw prospects to you – or you need a simple and effective way to find prospects and engage them.

4. You need a systematized and duplicatable process for both landing clients and managing/implementing their projects (otherwise you waste valuable time trying to figure out what worked the last time, what’s wrong now, and how to get to the next step).

5. You need a steady stream of referrals to keep you from exhausting your time prospecting over the long-term. This means having referral systems in place, capturing testimonials and endorsements, and providing exceptional service that inspires them.

6. As you grow, you’ll need to outsource certain responsibilities to secondary consultants. You need the legal documents, systematized processes, training materials, and more to ensure your outsourced talent performs to your requirements.

7. Then you need to make sure that you’ve structured the entire business appropriately to easily handle taxes, profit analysis, growth, and unexpected challenges.

Realize that what you have here, within the complete Turbo Charged Consulting Package, is every document, systematized process, and piece of information you need to quickly launch a highly successful and profitable consultancy. Assuming you have the appropriate skill set you’re creating your consultancy around, if you follow the simple, outlined steps in this eBook, you are guaranteed to have a successful consulting business that earns you $10,000 per month. When you complete this manual,



you’ll see a special insert at the end that will share with you how you can take your success even one step further…be sure to check it out! Even if you don’t have any marketable skill of your own, you can still earn substantial income landing clients for our Additional Service Providers, which I cover in several separate documents within the Additional Service Providers Folder. This isn’t difficult. And best of all, your success isn’t dependent on the whims of the search engines, the quality of your affiliate program and its tiny profit margin, or any of the other traditional facets of internet marketing. No, instead you can use your expertise in internet marketing to promote a client company that already has an established website, their own product, and an established market they likely already understand. Best of all, you aren’t responsible for the entire business! All you have to do is what you love and what you know best: whichever facet of internet marketing you choose to provide as a service. WELL IF CONSULTING IS SO EASY, WHY DO I NEED THIS PRODUCT? Consulting is an easy business to guarantee income from the tools and knowledge you’ve already gained. However, as an internet marketer, you speak an entirely different language from your new target market: business owners and C-Level executives. Were you to switch to consulting for companies without this product, you’d run into quite a few challenges. For instance:

1. Business owners and C-level executives do not respond to long sales pages. In fact, they will often run in the opposite direction if you market your services to them in any fashion similar to how internet marketers market to each other. Do you know what they respond to and how to produce it?

2. First impression is everything: professional website design, professionally written web copy, and professional documents are all essential. Prospects will use these indirectly to decide if you have the expertise and professionalism they’re looking for. Because in most cases, they’ll be hiring you to represent them—they want to be confident you’ll represent them appropriately.

Can you create a web presence that rivals established service vendors and companies? And how much would it cost you to have a professional designer or copywriter assist you? Far more than this entire package costs, that’s for sure!

3. Communication, office politics, managing client expectations: at first it seems like trying to win the client is the tough part. But soon you discover that managing the client and implementing the project can be troublesome as well. Do you know what challenges to prepare for and how to preempt them?



4. Analysis paralysis. Fact is you are your own worst enemy. Switching gears from self-employment (or internet marketing as a side-job) into consulting and being responsible for another company’s marketing can become quite intimidating if you have to reinvent the wheel and figure everything out for yourself. Trust me, I know this first-hand! It can be terrifying.

When push comes to shove, will you fight to figure it out, or go back to what you know and are comfortable with (but isn’t necessarily making money or making you happy)?

You’ll find the solution to every single quandary above in the Turbo Charged Consulting Package. Just work through this eBook and follow each step as you encounter it. I’ll tell you what to do, how to do it, and what template, document, or portion of the package to use. In less than 30 days, you’ll likely have a couple new clients, an excellent income, and the confidence to do it again next month! How do I know this? Because I used this exact process myself to earn over $10,000 per month consulting. I established that income in less than 30 days. I also used this exact package to create a Consortium of internet marketers. I singularly closed over 20 client projects in 10 days. My 100+consultants each closed client projects within their first 30 days. We experienced a 70.9% success rate in earning a monthly income of $3000 or more within just 30 days. Many had to request a leave of absence from our Consortium due to too many clients, including one consultant who landed a $20,000 project involving several websites and an entire strategic marketing makeover! The point is, we were each every-day people suffering money problems and struggling with the fear of having to return to a 9-to-5 job. We were not already rich, not already successful, and we sure as heck did not have an army of programmers, writers, or assistants to create websites, software, or implement strategies for us. We each started from scratch, with nothing more than this package, and we have landed clients and created new incomes, simply by moving step-by-step through this program.

HOW TO USE THIS EBOOK AND PACKAGE I recommend you read through this entire eBook immediately, before you actually start creating your consultancy. It will help you understand how everything fits together and give you a solid glimpse of the big picture. Then, go through it again, chapter by chapter. This time, do so slowly and take each step as it is discussed. Afterwards, refer back as necessary. Whenever you prospect, refer to the prospecting chapter until you have all the steps memorized and the process feels natural. When you land a client, review the client management chapter and refer back to it whenever you have a question about how to proceed or handle a specific issue. That’s all there is to it! So here’s to your success—I’m here with you every step of the way…



CHAPTER ONE: STRUCTURING YOUR CONSULTANCY The foundation of a successful consultancy is its underlying structure. You don’t need a business plan or marketing plan; but you do need to cross a couple T’s and dot a few I’s. It won’t take long. I’m a fan of keeping it simple. So I recommend that when you’re just getting started, you keep your consultancy simple as well. After you’ve won a couple clients, we’ll talk about some additional steps you should take to limit your liability and protect your assets. But first, we want to get you up and running with client projects in less than 30 days. Truly zero to six-figures within 30-90 days if you follow the steps outlined here and in the rest of this eBook. But enough talk about what we’re going to do…

SECTION ONE: CONSULTANCY IDENTITY & ORGANIZATION Required Product Templates

Website Customization Manual - location: Websites/README-MAIN.txt You may already have a company established that you conduct business through. Perhaps it’s an LLC. Perhaps it’s a corporation. Maybe even a sole proprietorship. Regardless, if you don’t mind consolidating your consultancy with whatever else you’re doing within that business, and there’s no legal or tax reasons preventing you, just go with what you already have. In my case, I simply set myself up as a sole proprietorship.

TURBO TIP: The following advice is largely in relation to United States consultants and business law. I recommend you research your country’s laws regarding starting and conducting a business. However, in all cases, it serves for now to operate as an individual. After your first 30 days, then you can look into setting up a corporation or LLC to limit your liability and protect assets. Also, do not take any advice in this or any other section of this eBook as legal advice. This is based on my experience and opinions, but I am no lawyer. Consult with a CPA or lawyer to validate your choice and help you file appropriately.



If you don’t currently have a business, I recommend you do one of two things:

1. File a DBA: That stands for “Doing Business As.” When you file a DBA, you’re simply telling the government that you are operating as a certain fictitious business name. So if your name is Sally Sue, and you want your consultancy to be called Flower Power Consulting, you’d file a DBA form that announces that you’ll be doing business as “Flower Power Consulting.” This doesn’t create a separate business entity. It’s simply announcing that you, as an individual, will be operating under this fictitious name.

2. Use Your Name Instead: You can easily run a consultancy named after yourself. In my case, for a time, I simply did business as Jaime Mintun Consulting. I didn’t have to file any forms or open up a separate bank account.

Now, regardless which option you choose above, this makes you a sole proprietorship. I recommend if you are not familiar with this type of business that you do your independent research. But in a nutshell, running a business as a sole proprietorship means that you are an individual and you file your taxes as an independent contractor. You don’t file your business income separately, but lump it in with your personal income. But let’s revisit the DBA real quick. To file a DBA, you’ll need to get a DBA Statement for the county you’ll be doing business in (the county you’re living in). You can often find out how to file in your county by googling the term “DBA” with your county name. Some states, like California, will require you to also publish your intention to operate under the fictitious name in a local newspaper. There are some services that will file your form and publish your intention for a small fee. Once you receive confirmation that your new name is now registered, you can open up a business bank account under your business name. This way, your clients can write checks to Flower Power Consulting instead of to Sally Sue. To learn more about DBAs, read this article on Wikipedia. So let’s take this step-by-step and discuss your second set of tasks—organization: Step 1. Decide What Type of Business Entity Your Consultancy Will Have You can choose one of the following:

A. Consolidate this consultancy with a business entity you already have (you can create a DBA for your business entity as well if you choose)

B. Operate as a sole proprietorship or independent contractor and

i. File a DBA, or

ii. Do business as yourself (independent contractor)



Step 2. File Any Necessary Paperwork Depending on your choice above, you may have to file some paperwork to establish your consultancy’s legal existence. Keep in mind if you file a DBA, you’ll need to open up a business checking account under your fictitious business name. To do so, you’ll need your certified DBA form returned from your County Register. Step 3. Customize Your Document Templates and Website Once you’ve chosen the name of your consultancy, it’s time to customize your document templates and website to reflect your consultancy’s identity. Tax Documents (Invoice & Expense Report)

Change “Your Company Name” at the top of the document to your chosen name Fill in your name and contact information on the left hand side Provide the legal name all checks should be made out to (your DBA name if you filed

one) at the bottom of the page Don’t forget to edit the dates and client information each time you use these

templates Contracts

Same as above Review the terms laid out in each contract and anywhere you see something in

CAPITAL LETTERS surrounded by brackets [ ], replace the text with the relevant information.

Contracts are for example purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice. Have your lawyer review them and make any necessary changes

All Other Documents As with the above referenced documents, every area where you should edit the text, it has been placed in CAPITAL LETTERS and surrounded by brackets [ ]. Be sure to go through every single document and replace text where appropriate. Your Website You have five versions of the website (same text and elements, just presented in uniquely different designs) to choose from. These are referred to as WebPacks. You’ll want to of course customize the website to include your contact information, copyright notice, and company name. In addition, you can edit the content in any way you desire. For instance, the entire site is written from a “we” perspective. However if you are an individual consultant using your own name for your business, it may feel more natural or appropriate for you to speak as a singular individual, i.e. “I” instead of “we.” If this is the case, you can replace all instances of “we” “we’re” “our” etc. across all pages with “I” “my” “I’m” etc. Also consider any services you do not wish to offer that are mentioned in the website and special reports and whitepaper. Read through everything very carefully. Be sure to add



mention of any additional services you want to promote as well, such as website engineering, application development, email marketing, etc. To make these and other global website changes, simply refer to the master README-MAIN.txt file included in your Websites Folder. Step 4. Organize Your Contact Information & Communication Devices Decide how you want your clients to contact you. Do you want them ringing your home phone or your cell phone? Or do you want a separate line for business? Because I live alone, I simply set my home phone up as my business line. My answering machine is a company greeting that tells them they can leave a message for the company, or for Chief Consultant, Jaime Mintun. I provide my cell phone number as well, but clients understand it is my private line and to only call it when necessary. But figuring out your contact information is easy. What I really want to address here is this: Get a fax machine. Or sign up for an email fax service like eFax. Or go to your local Kinkos. Just make sure you have the ability to send and receive faxes. As the perpetual penny pincher, I fought tooth and nail to not have to buy a fax machine. I knew I’d have to get a secondary line for it and just didn’t want to deal with the hassle. However, I quickly realized that the amount of business I was landing required the investment. Every new client means receiving their signed Client Agreement by fax and, if requested, faxing it back with your signature. If you work in the US, chances are you’ll have to fax a signed W-9 form as well (especially if you prospect on Guru). If you outsource any US talent, you have to receive their W-9 forms and contracts as well. Plus, I’ve found, it establishes credibility to have a fax number. Sounds silly, I know, but virtually every established service provider has a fax number. When dealing with small to medium-sized businesses, not having a fax number can make you look like a newbie or a little guy. The cost of a fax machine seems like a small price to pay to ensure such a small nuisance doesn’t cost you the deal right there. In addition: Enable three-way calling on your phone. Unless you choose to never work with an outsourced or referred resource, you’ll often need to facilitate a call between your client, another provider, and yourself.



Step 5. Structure Your Computer and Hard Copy Filing Systems We’ll discuss a bit later how to handle project management. However, you’ll want to organize yourself before you start consulting with any clients so you know where to keep certain files. Otherwise, you’ll decide to place a document in a certain location one day, and then think it should go in another location the next day, forgetting where you originally stuck it! This goes for your computer files and your hard copy files (such as faxes, local client paperwork, mail, tax documents, receipts, etc.). Computer Documents Structure your folders in whatever manner makes sense to you. However, to get you started, here’s an example: Consultancy Prospecting Documents Endorsements & Testimonials Website Files Book Keeping (Taxes, Business Expenses, Write Offs, Revenue, etc.) Clients Client A Invoices & Expenses Reports [Project Specific Folders such as “Articles,” “Keywords,” “Website”]

Client B Invoices & Expenses Reports [Project Specific Folders such as “Articles,” “Keywords,” “Website”]

Old Clients This is for clients you no longer work with. Consider it like archiving

Future Clients This is a good folder to have for clients you’re pretty sure you’ll land, but they’re not ready to start

Writers [or other outsourced talent] Outsourcing Materials Writer A Documents include writer’s signed documents if soft copy: W-9 Form Writer Agreement Project Specific Agreement Writer B Documents include writer’s signed documents if soft copy: W-9 Form Writer Agreement Project Specific Agreement I recommend you also invest in an external hard drive with automated back-up software or an online back-up solution. Your entire consultancy could bite the dust if your computer decides to hiccup too hard and crash out.



Hard Copy Filing System Again, organize your files in the manner that makes sense to you. However, I recommend printing out a copy of every legal document. Make sure each client has their own file/folder. For each client, I keep a folder for:

Legal Documents Expense Reports and Invoices Meeting Notes & Brainstorms/Ideas

Also create folders for any project specific hard copy files. For instance, I have a copywriting client who sends me printed special reports and articles he wants emulated, or for me to use as industry research. I keep all of these in his file under “Research.” The other set of folders you’ll want to organize is of course your business operation files, such as:

Receipts & Overhead Bills Checking Account & Credit Card Statements Miscellaneous Write-Offs (such as charity donations) Legal Documents/Filings (such as DBA)

Step 6. Synchronize All Business Communication Devices In our mobile workplace, it’s not surprising that many of us, especially those of us working from home, work on both a desktop computer and a laptop. Many of us also have smart phones and PDAs. If you’re like me and you choose to work from a home office, you’ll find yourself often growing quite claustrophobic. Or lonely. Or downright depressed from lack of sunlight! You’ll need to make sure it’s easy for you to work away from home so you aren’t chained to your desk. In addition, if you have a day job and work your consultancy on the side, you’ll inevitably receive emails, briefly edit documents, and conduct other consultancy tasks at your daytime place of work. So take the time now to research and invest in synchronization software or applications to keep all your files and communication devices synched and up to date. For my synchronization needs, I use Microsoft’s ActiveSync to synch my PDA phone with my Outlook email, contacts, and business files. It often comes free with your phone. Or you can download it for free here. To synch my laptop and desktop computer, I use GoodSync, made by the creators of RoboForm. Once you’ve completed the above tasks, you’ll be largely ready to launch your consultancy and begin courting clients. At least structurally. Now it’s time to answer those burning questions that probably ignited the moment you decided to become an internet marketing consultant:



A. What services should I offer? B. How much should I charge?



SECTION TWO: DEFINE YOUR SERVICE OFFERINGS Required Product Templates

Website “Services” Page - location: Websites/[your version]/public_html Various Additional Service Offerings - location: Additional Service Offerings I wouldn’t be surprised if you skipped ahead to this section. I know that deciding what services to offer is one of the main challenges every first-time consultant has. For example, you may know that your expertise is in Search Engine Optimization. But you want to distinguish yourself from other SEO professionals by offering that essential additional service. Or perhaps you feel your SEO skills are still budding and can’t stand alone. Then you’ll want to come up with additional services to offer a client to balance out the project scope (and so you don’t have to take projects where SEO is the sole or main focus). So I’m going to take you through a brief exercise to figure out what you’d like to do within your consultancy. Then we’ll decide if it’s what you should offer. But first, let me briefly reveal to you two hands-free services you can add to your offerings that do not require any new knowledge, skill, or effort on your part. You better believe you’ll still get paid to provide them! These service offerings require a small investment ($100 and $60), but they are minimal compared to what you will be able to charge (and earn). And trust me – these are not eBooks or affiliate programs, or any internet marketing mumbo jumbo. One service will give you unlimited access to over $1,000,000 worth of free template downloads, including websites, logos, document and collateral templates, wordpress and Joomla sites, and more. And these are Grade A, professionally designed website, collateral, and logo templates. Some even include flash.

Lastly, if you want to offer more customized website and corporate identity graphic design, and it isn’t one of your areas of expertise, you’ll have access to an excellent website that allows you to privately request inexpensive design projects completely to spec. You can charge above their requested fee and take the extra as your profit. The only time and effort you expend is in managing the designers to get the design you and your client want. Plus you



pay one standard fee only – and multiple designers bid for the project, submitting unlimited design versions based on your feedback until you find one you like. Even if you had not a single viable skill to market, you could profitably build a consulting business with just the above two services. As you will soon discover, companies requiring websites or website redesigns are literally a dime a dozen and they have sizeable budgets. I have provided detailed documents explaining exactly how to get started working with each of these three amazing service providers. They are located in the Additional Service Offerings folder of this package. Exciting isn’t it!? So you don’t have to stress about whether you’ll have viable services to offer. And again, if developing a personal expertise impassions you, you’ll discover at the end of this ebook how to do so and how to have paying clients handed to you (rather than prospecting for them as we teach here in Chapter 2). However, I’m sure that if you purchased this product, you have a passion for internet marketing and you’re ready to monetize the thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of dollars you’ve already invested to acquire your knowledge, skills, and assets. You Need to Decide What You Want to Do For a Living Yes, we all aim to retire soon and travel, raise our family, or any variety of other goals. But there’s something that drives you to choose internet marketing as your way to make a living. What aspect of internet marketing excites you? What tasks do you look forward to performing and what results or objectives energize you to keep going? There’s a quote I keep by my workspace from my favorite poet and Sufi mystic. You read it already earlier in my bio… “Let the beauty we love be what we do.” ~ Rumi I know we’re talking about the hard and fast ways to generate meaningful income, but I’m a firm and passionate believer in accessing the inside in order to manifest the outside. So I want you to ask yourself, what does that quote mean to you? And what is the beauty that you see in internet marketing that you have fallen in love with? That is what you should do and offer to clients. “What if what I love isn’t what I’m good at?” I’ll tell you something: One of the more shocking discoveries I made during my Managed Case Study with 100+ internet marketers who implemented the techniques and processes taught in Turbo Charged Consulting, was that almost every single one doubted his or her ability to effectively implement an SEO campaign for a client.



I had considered some of these marketers superior in skill to myself, yet they feared charging a client to perform their SEO duties. So I say to you, if you doubt your skills or abilities, in any arena, you have to be honest with yourself: do you severely lack the knowledge and ability to perform what you’ve learned and studied, or have you simply been unable to make much money from it? Because these are two entirely different challenges. You see, the first challenge means you do need to improve your skills. But the second challenge simply means that although you have the necessary skills and you’ve implemented them properly, there are several other factors at play for an internet marketer that aren’t necessarily present for an established business client, such as:

Whether you could find a quality affiliate program to promote (with a high enough profit margin and conversion ratio)

Your website is brand new and must take time to earn Google’s trust Your focus and time are stretched across dozens of websites and projects You can only steal a few hours a week to work on your own websites because there is

no immediate income from them You may not have your own products to sell, which are far more lucrative You’re responsible for doing EVERYTHING

As you can see, most of these complications that traditionally prevent internet marketers from making a meaningful income online simply don’t exist when you market a client who has an established company (or even a start up company who has a marketing budget and its own products and services). It’s an entirely different ball game, and one I am confident you can win. So take a moment now to decide what services you want to offer clients. And make sure you’re letting what you love be what you do!



SECTION THREE: DECIDE WHAT TO CHARGE Required Product Templates

NONE Okay, we’ve handled the first daunting issue of what services to offer. Now we face the question many new consultants fear most: “How much do I charge?” We’ve almost all been there…discussing a project with a potential client. The conversation is flowing wonderfully and we can feel the gears turning in our favor. Then the prospect blindsides us: “So what is your hourly rate?” or “What is your project fee?” We fumble for an answer, having no idea what to quote. The mind races as we consider the disastrous results if we quote too high, and we cringe at the thought of getting locked into a bid that’s too low. This is why it’s vital to do the math ahead of time, before you start prospecting. Know what your baseline is. Know what your average hourly rate should be. And know what you’re worth. Let me repeat that: Know what you’re worth. Confidence will come as you get into the trenches and win a few clients. But in the meantime, you have to fake it till you make it, and not let your doubts get the better of you. It’s alright to compromise with a client and agree to a lower hourly fee or project rate as long as it’s fair. But don’t let self-doubt or the jitters convince you that you aren’t worth the fee that will allow you to pay the rent, keep the house, and enjoy life a bit! SOME POINTERS ON CALCULATING YOUR HOURLY RATE & PROJECT FEES Use whatever method of calculation works for you. Deciding your hourly rate is not a fixed science. It’s primarily dependent on what feels comfortable for you. To get you started, though, here’s a method for generating some initial numbers. Step 1. Figure Out Your Baseline Income How much income do you need monthly to survive? This number includes:

All recurring expenses, personal AND business (rent, bills, groceries, membership sites, monthly subscriptions, etc.)

Credit card, loan, and debt payments 10% additional for miscellaneous expenses and entertainment 10% to 20% additional for savings and/or retirement

Don’t cut corners here. Survival is survival. And baseline does not mean forgoing debt repayment, sacrificing savings and retirement, or planting your head in a sand pit because you have no money to do anything fun. Make sure you cover ALL your bases here.



Step 2. Set Your Income Goal This number represents your monthly income goal – how much you ideally want to make consistently, and on average, over the next 12 months. For this particular consulting package, I of course recommend a goal of $10,000 per month. Step 3. Choose How Many Hours You’d Like to Work Each Month Now that you’ve set your two thresholds for monthly earnings, it’s time to figure out how many hours you’ll ideally allot yourself to earn that income. I’m a workaholic, so I went ahead and gave myself a 40 hour work week for consulting so that I could assign another 40 hours per week to my own personal projects. But again, only insane workaholics like myself choose to work 80 hours a week. So decide how many hours you’ll feel comfortable working. (And don’t worry, I’ll show you how you can still make $10,000 per month without investing 40 hours into consulting every week.) Elements to take into account:

A. Do you have a day job you’ll be managing your consultancy around? If so, is it full-time or part-time? Consider how many total hours you feel comfortable dedicating to any form of work each week or month. Subtract your day job hours from that total to come up with your allotment of hours for your consultancy.

B. Will you be assigning your own projects as “clients” to ensure your own websites and businesses grow alongside your consultancy? If so, again take your number of total hours you want to work each week or month. Then divide that number in half, or otherwise decide how many hours you’d like to dedicate to your own projects vs. client projects.

C. Combination: you have a day job, want to continue building your own projects, and take on clients. Well this is doable, but you’ll either end up working a lot of hours, or you’ll accept a lower monthly income from your consulting projects. Either way, take your total allotment of hours dedicated to any form of work and subtract both your day job hours and your allotted private project hours. The number left over will be the number of hours you have available for clients.

D. Now that you’re probably sinking into depression at the lack of hours you have available or the sheer amount of work you’ll have to do to earn your desired income, don’t forget: you have three additional service offerings you can provide that don’t cost you any hours! For example, you can bid on a website design project, charging $1600. Then you can use one of my additional service partners’ website services and get the design work completed, perfectly to spec, for $600!! The only time you invest is in project management to communicate the client’s requirements to the designers, and you’ve just made $1000. Think how many web design requests there are! Take a peek at Guru.com and trust me, you’ll start to see the potential here.



Step 4. Double-Check Your Estimates So Far Don’t second guess yourself; go with your instincts. However, do sit with the numbers you’ve come up with so far and ask yourself, “Is this a balanced life? Will I enjoy the day to day existence this will manifest?” I can tell you from personal experience that failing to ask these questions now can lead to difficulty and depression later on. We all know that money isn’t everything. It’s nice, yes…in fact it’s incredible! But not at the expense of your health, your family, and most importantly, your Self. So look at what you’ve come up with so far, particularly your monthly or weekly hours allotted to work, and ask yourself if this appears to be a balanced life you can enjoy and get excited about every day. Sure, consulting isn’t likely your ideal scenario. It’s a stepping stone to your next level—to help you generate a lot of income while your web properties grow, or to improve your skills or test approaches so you can develop your own line of products. But either way, you don’t want to sacrifice your happiness now for an “I hope so” future. Make sure you schedule time for your Self. Make sure you still take time to play with the kids, romance your significant other, and go out on the town. You will be surprised and impressed how you can move around your priorities and schedule to accommodate your life AND earn massive amounts of income. Trust me, I’ve done it and helped several others do it! Step 5. Calculate Your Total Investment in Knowledge, Skills, and Software to Date Here’s a fun one. I’ll bet you’re already laughing at the thought…how much money have you spent to date on eBooks, software, CDs, videos, teleseminars, conferences, and more? You don’t need an exact number. Just a ballpark. We’re going to help you earn it all back and then some! Step 6. Google It Okay, for once, I don’t mean type a query into a search engine. I mean create your own unique algorithm to develop a range of hourly rates and project fees that will allow you to always know where you stand, and what you need, while giving you room to compromise and negotiate. Like search algorithms, this isn’t a perfect science. So run any numbers you come up with against your gut instinct.



Example Algorithm Equation 1: Baseline Monthly Income / # of Monthly Hours Consulting Example: $5,000 / 160 (40hrs/week) This is a good example of a baseline hourly rate. In this case, it would be $31.25. I’ve never had a problem charging $40/hour or more – for any variety of internet marketing services. Equation 2: Desired Monthly Income / # of Monthly Hours Consulting Example: $10,000 / 80 (20hrs/week) Okay, I chose to use a more extreme example here to demonstrate something. Even if you wanted to work part time in your consultancy (20 hours per week), and you wanted to earn 6 figures a year ($10,000 per month), you’d still only need to charge, on average, $125 per hour. Now even if this hourly rate feels a bit steep for you, don’t forget that you can reduce your average hourly rate and supplement it by accepting projects you can assign to our Additional Service Providers. This means that even though you’re still only working 20 hours, you’re able to bill a client a small fee for managing another provider for another, let’s say, 20 hours. This allows you to reduce your personal hourly fee without increasing your hours and still hitting your $10k goal! Equation 3: Total “Tools” Investment / 12 Example: $25,000 / 12 Don’t include in this estimate any monthly subscriptions, memberships, etc. that you included in your Baseline Income Estimate’s monthly expenses. Now here’s where you need to get creative and choose what works for you. To ensure that you recoup any past expenses or investments (i.e. you successfully and profitably monetize all the tools and knowledge you’ve acquired to date), you can take the median monthly income target (between your baseline and your desired goal) and tack on the number you get with Equation 3. Then use that to calculate your average hourly rate. For demonstration purposes, let’s use the above example equations. Your median monthly income target would be $7500 (exactly half-way between $5000 baseline and $10,000 desired). Your monthly repayment of total tools investment would be $2084. So you’d need to earn an average hourly rate of $60 if you choose to work 160 hours a month (40 hours per week). You’d charge $120 per hour if you choose to work only 80 hours a month (20 hours per week). Either of the above rates and work load would allow you to earn a “profit” of $7500 per month while “paying off” all your past internet marketing investments over your first 12 months consulting.



At this point, it’s just a matter of understanding what the hard numbers are and finding the hourly rate that works for you—ensuring that it doesn’t fall below what is necessary to achieve your baseline income. Like Google weights web pages, you’ll have to decide how much weight to give each equation above and how to work the numbers to find the income, hourly rate, and # of client project hours that feel right for you. When in doubt, go with your gut. Step 7. Use Your Hourly Rate Estimate(s) to Project Appropriate Project Fees You can modify your project fees on a per project basis, of course. But it helps to have an idea of general fees for traditional or average projects. This becomes particularly handy while prospecting on Guru.com, because before you ever get to speak to the prospect and learn more about his project, you have to submit a proposal with a total project fee bid. To discern general project fees, it’s just a matter of estimating what the average project for a particular service would entail and how many hours you’d likely require to complete it. Always err on the side of projecting more hours vs. less. You don’t want to get locked into a project fee based on a 12 hour project when in reality it takes you 20 hours. Also take into account any costs involved in providing the service—including those costs you’ve already incurred. For instance, if you have a reseller hosting account and your client wants you to host his site, don’t give it to him for free. Incorporate a fair hosting fee into your total project fee. (Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule. I often give hosting away for free to add value to my service—as long as I’ve established that the value trade-off is worth it, such as landing additional work with the client, or charging a higher hourly rate right off the bat due to all the value they get for “free.”) If you’re writing copy for a collateral piece and the client wants you to design the layout and graphics, especially when this isn’t your specialty, you can get excellent graphics from one of our Additional Service Providers. Though access to these graphics is less than $60 per year and the specific graphic you pulled was free, you should still incorporate its value into your project fee, i.e. what it would normally and fairly cost the client to get the same graphic designed professionally. Just don’t get carried away here. Always be fair and reasonable. For instance, I charge a high hourly rate with my clients – so I always provide any graphic design elements free of charge, in gratitude. But I wanted to at least open your eyes to the possibilities here, especially if you have to initially start with lower hourly or project rates. Step 8. Check Your Hourly Rates and Project Fees Against the Market Visit Guru.com and browse professionals as an Employer. See what other professionals of similar skill level and service offerings charge. But pay attention to where they hail from.



Professionals in India will likely always underbid professionals in America, Australia, Europe, etc. This doesn’t mean they win all the projects. It just means you shouldn’t lower your fees just because a portion of professionals are able to offer great service for extremely low rates. There’s PLENTY of work to go around, I assure you. Also take a peek at project postings at Guru.com by browsing projects in a “I’m a Professional” search (which you’ll be doing more extensively later when we discuss prospecting). See what budgets companies are assigning to the types of projects you’re interested in. Again, just take in the information. It doesn’t mean you necessarily need to alter your fees you’ve come up with. That’s why I recommended you come up with a range of fees…knowing what your baseline pricing can be and what your high end pricing can be. Then you’re free to negotiate and compromise anywhere in between. I just recommend that you always bid slightly towards the high end (considering the project and your skill level are appropriate). You won’t scare a client away by quoting slightly too high, as long as you demonstrate that you’re willing to negotiate if needed and you’re worth the investment. However, there is something to be said for accepting choice projects at your baseline pricing. I chose to offer my baseline pricing to a startup company headed by a telecom entrepreneur who recently took his telecom company public and cashed out with several billion dollars. Sure, I could have asked for more. He could obviously afford it. But I decided to take the conservative route because I knew his new company had the potential to capture his new market and that he had the expertise and connections to make it happen. Sure enough, his social networking site is being touted as the next YouTube and as of January 2007, it receives over 20,000 unique visitors PER DAY. He considers me and my work on his project as having been integral to the site’s success. He’s provided me opportunities and powerful connections that will forward my own business objectives down the road. This client relationship is priceless to me. And all it took was demonstrating to him that I had a compassion and zeal for his project by agreeing to a baseline price (and yes, I let him know it was a baseline price and why I felt it worth it). So, when all is said and done here, the key is to go through your equations, get some numbers to play with, and try them on for size. You can always change them later. The important thing is to make sure you know your baseline and don’t go below the rate you need to survive. I’ll just say one last thing about choosing what to charge. I’m sure this will officially confuse the heck out of you, but I think you’ll understand its importance:



Clients will value you more, the more you charge. The only qualification to this of course is that you deliver a service appropriate to your fee, according to your client. I always found it fascinating that when I was struggling to succeed as a consultant seven years ago when I first got started, I would offer my services for free, or for back-end profit share, or through barter. And virtually every single “client” treated me extremely poorly. They meant well, perhaps, but they assumed I was an inexhaustible resource they could lean on indefinitely. I would field calls at all hours of the day, night, and weekends. Clients would heap mountains of work on my plate and get agitated when I couldn’t get to all of it instantaneously. We can look at it from their point of view, however, and it makes perfect sense: if you offer your services for too low a cost, or worse, for free, they have nothing to lose in assigning everything to you. They don’t have to budget cash flow towards your hourly rate or shuffle funds from other sources. Whether you do a lot or a little, you’re still free or extremely low cost. What they don’t realize is that they’ll burn you out far too quickly and the project will suffer or fail as a result. So keep that in mind and know that you’re doing yourself and your client an enormous favor by charging appropriately for services up front. However, you won’t have to worry about this too much here because I’ll be showing you how to prospect in places where companies are already looking for you and they’ve already assigned meaty budgets to the project. We’ll gear up to begin prospecting in just a moment – however there’s one more element to structuring your consultancy that I promised we’d cover: how to set up your business entity after your first 30 days in business. I know that you’re not 30 days in yet, but as we’re in this section, I want to cover it now. Just read through it this first time around so you know what to plan for 30 days out, then revisit the following section at that point to handle this vital step.



SECTION FOUR: LIMIT YOUR LIABILITY AFTER FIRST 30 DAYS Required Product Templates

NONE For simplicity’s sake, and to prevent any erroneous steps from slowing you down from immediate consulting profits, I recommended at the start of this chapter that you simply operate as a sole proprietorship or from within a current business entity you own. I also said that this and all discussions about business entities and legalities are based on my opinion and knowledge of United States law. So please check with your local laws and attorney before acting on this and my earlier recommendations. WHY YOU NEED TO OPERATE AS A CORPORATION OR LLC (OR EQUIVALENT) As with any business operation where you deal directly with consumers, employees, or other businesses, it’s a good idea to limit your liability. Otherwise, an upset client or outsourced consultant could turn into a lawsuit – and as a sole proprietorship or independent consultant, all of your personal assets will be at risk: your home, your savings, your retirement – everything. Though highly unlikely in a consulting capacity, the other reason to incorporate or file as a separate business entity is to prevent any business-related bankruptcy from affecting you as an individual, i.e. if your business goes bankrupt, you won’t be forced to file bankruptcy as well. For these reasons, I recommend you research your options, local laws, and consult with a CPA to decide the best business entity for your protection, tax benefits, and operating needs. Traditionally, there are three types of business entities you’ll want to consider (as a US consultant): C CORPORATION (TRADITIONAL BUSINESS.INC) A C Corporation is a United States corporation that is taxed as a separate entity (whereas if you operate as a sole proprietorship, you’re taxed only once, as an individual). Therefore, there are both benefits and drawbacks to filing as a C Corporation: Benefits

Corporations are taxed at a lower rate than private businesses.

Your personal salary can be deducted as an expense of the business (however it will be taxed when you file your personal income tax return)

Several additional deductions become available to corporations

Limited liability, i.e. your personal assets and financial solvency are protected

Ongoing Life, i.e. when you pass on, the company can continue to run and “pass on” to your kin or those of your choosing

Access to capital through the sale of equity or stock, which can be more advantageous than borrowing money and paying back with interest regardless of



profitability

Employee benefits, i.e. you would be an employee of your company and therefore can enjoy wonderful medical benefits, 401K, life insurance, and more, all tax-free to you and deductible by your company

Drawbacks

Double Taxation, i.e. your company is taxed, and then you are taxed as an individual for the income you personally earn from your company

Extensive paperwork, both for filing and for company activity and decisions. Shareholders or a Board of Directors must often be present and all shareholder meetings, major decisions, etc. must be well documented with minutes kept.

S CORPORATION (SUBCHAPTER S CORP) An S Corporation is a corporation that has elected a special tax status with the IRS to enjoy many of the benefits of a traditional C Corporation, but without double taxation. However, according to some experts in tax law and incorporation, this can be a negative drawback… As an S Corporation, you, as a shareholder (owner) pay taxes on your share of the corporate income, whether you leave it in the business or pull it out as personal income. This can drive your personal income into a far higher tax bracket, dramatically increasing your tax rate. Because individuals are taxed at a higher rate than corporations (for instance, an individual earning $50,000 per year will pay 28% of earnings in taxes, yet a corporation earning $50,000 in annual revenue will pay only 15% in taxes), claiming all your consulting income as personal income may cost you more tax dollars in the long run. In addition, you can multiply your deductions when splitting them between your C Corporation and Individual Income, which is not possible with an S Corporation. So though there can be many benefits to incorporating as an S Corporation vs. a C Corporation, make sure to discuss the above issues with your CPA or lawyer to determine the best course of action for you, based on the amount of money you plan to make with your consultancy (another reason why I recommend waiting 30 days to feel out how your consultancy is growing). LLC (LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY) A LLC is a newer business entity classification, and it seems to be the choice among many small business owners due to its protection without extensive paperwork. Like an S Corporation, an LLC is not subject to double taxation. However, it cannot enjoy many of the deductions a C Corporation, and in some cases, a S Corporation enjoys. In addition, as a shareholder (owner) of an LLC, you will be subject to the full self-employment tax, which is currently 15.3% of your earnings. There is no way to shift your personal income from business income to reduce this tax. However, as an S Corporation (vs. the LLC described here), you can claim a portion of your earnings as payment for services (such as consulting with your company) and take the rest as corporate income. That way, you only pay self-employment tax on the portion that was



considered payment for services and the other portion is tax-free (in terms of just this self-employment tax). As you can see, the above three business entity classifications are neither clear cut, nor simple. There are a lot of complex factors at play here in regards to determining the best classification for you. And of course, if you live outside the United States, you may have significantly differing laws and taxation methods. So use the above to get your mind churning about the issues and questions you will want to address while researching the best entity classification for you. Then be sure to consult with the proper professional to help you incorporate and limit your liability. With that said, it’s time to move on to prospecting. No sense in worrying about what to do with all that money you’ll make until you start winning clients and making it!!



CHAPTER TWO: PROSPECTING Most likely, this is the section you’re most interested in reading. How do we actually win clients? Well it’s easier than you think. If you’ve opted for our Managed Newsletter option, you have a lead generator and automated prospect closer working for you—that you don’t have to lift a finger for. NOTE: The abovementioned Managed Newsletter is not available with the free version of TCC. Please read the insert at the end of this ebook for an update on how to receive this and other mentioned services. You also have, in this consulting package, all the necessary materials and documents prospects want in order to make a decision. More importantly, they’ve been created in a way that subtly educates, persuades, and closes the client on your behalf. You just have to be there to answer questions. And most importantly, you’re there to ask questions. If there’s a single magic key to closing the deal, it’s to ask questions. And to listen more than you talk. The client will close himself. You just need to get him thinking about why he needs you and get him asking you how you can help. That ends the “sales call” and begins the “consultation.” So, before we go through exactly how to prospect and close deals, let’s first discuss the above and other Best Practices. As long as you adhere to these best practices when prospecting, you can ensure that you’ll close most of the deals you go after – provided of course that you feel confident about the services you’re offering. These best practices and others included throughout this manual are also available in easy-to-access PDFs in the best practices folder of this package.



SECTION ONE: PROSPECTING BEST PRACTICES Only Pursue Projects You’d Enjoy This is the cornerstone of best practices believe it or not. If a project bores you, it can easily lead to sloppy work and unresponsiveness. Deliverables don’t get finished on time and you stop contributing proactive and creative ideas to the project. It’s not necessarily a negative thing – we’re consultants and we don’t have the employee mentality. So you have to be aware of the type of project you’re accepting. By choosing a project that excites you, or that is in an industry you love, you help ensure a happy client. You’ll look forward to working on the project and your creative juices will naturally flow. Clients become testimonials and lead to referrals – the easiest and most profitable way to earn business. So don’t squander great referral or testimonial opportunities because you got bored. Choose projects you know you’ll love. Always Be Honest Okay, don’t laugh just yet. I’m not talking about refraining from lying through your teeth or lying about your past experience. This is far more subtle and far more important. A key best practice is to be honest with your prospect and later on, your client, about the little things. For instance, if you make a mistake, admit it. If you need more time, misquoted an item, or are struggling with understanding a key component of the project, say so. Most importantly, take responsibility and don’t be afraid to admit mistakes. This is also about being a human being and not just a service provider. For instance, if a family emergency occurs, let your prospect know and don’t be afraid to give any specifics you feel comfortable divulging. Don’t go into heavy detail and don’t use it as an excuse or apologetic. However, subtly reminding your prospect that you’re a real person with a real life can help build a bond between you. The key though is honest sharing – not for benefit, making an excuse, or trying to solicit sympathy. For example, I had a relatively new client instant message me at precisely the moment I found out a close friend had died. I was a wreck and in tears. But he wanted to know if he could call to chat about something. Instead of telling him I was busy and would get back to him, I told him the truth. My friend had passed away and I was devastated. We ended up conversing over instant messenger for well over an hour. He helped me through a trying time and it built a bond and relationship that has lasted. He even rearranged our project to give me some time off, though I argued I didn’t need it. Sometimes our clients know what’s right for us even when we won’t admit it to ourselves.



Use General Templates, But Get Specific To be efficient in your prospecting, you can’t slave over writing every job response email from scratch or creating every proposal from scratch. But you’ll lose most of the prospects you go after if you don’t bother to customize your responses and proposals to their particular project. For instance, I closed a client recently who told me, “Out of the 35 vendors that contacted me regarding this project, only you and one other company gave me a personalized proposal. All the other responses were clearly general – they didn’t take the time to address my particular request.” The only companies he followed up with were mine and the other one that sent a personalized response. It does matter. And you don’t have to be extensive about it, either. I only edited two sentences and added one more to make sure I addressed his specific project specs and challenges. But it made all the difference to him. Note: This is in reference to the Vocabulary Client, for which I provide a transcript in the Prospecting Diaries Mirror the Prospect When you respond to a prospect’s job posting, pay attention to how he presented the project. Did he sound passionate or more corporate/reserved? Was his posting brief and to the point, or long and detailed? Sometimes, this can be hard to ascertain as many postings are boilerplate and full of typical hype or the “ideal candidate” speech. However, try to get a feel for how the prospect communicates, and mirror his language and style. For instance, if the posting seems extremely brief and to the point (this is not the same as a posting that simply does not provide enough information), be sure to give an equally brief and to-the-point response. If the prospect’s posting is full of emotive language and you can sense a passion and personal interest in the project, be sure to share your own enthusiasm and explain why the project thrills you. Same best practice approach applies to your initial consultation or phone conversation. Pay attention to the way the prospect communicates. Does he say “I feel” a lot, or “I see,” or “I believe?” Be sure to use similar language. If the prospect primarily “feels,” you want to use emotive language. If the prospect “sees,” you want to use visual language and paint a picture for him. If he “believes,” you want to use definitive statements and touch on values, knowledge, facts and figures. If the prospect is brief and clipped during the talk, keep asking questions and be sure to never talk too long. You may also want to wrap up this call pretty quickly as such prospects will usually take the reins and will either make up their mind to work with you or not, through little input of your own.



Be Prompt & Manage Progress When we’re in the trenches prospecting dozens of companies, it can be hard to keep on top of each one. However, you gamble all your efforts and hard work if you drop the ball this early in the game. A difficult prospect with little chance of closing, may seem like an energy drain and you may consider simply not getting back to him. However, sometimes a prospect hard earned is a client for life. Of course, it can also be a sign that he’ll be a troublesome client and you’re right to consider not pursuing him. However, in either case, it’s important to communicate with the prospect. If you choose to no longer compete for his business, send a brief note to let him know. You never know who he knows or may talk to – or whether you’ll encounter him in the future. News spreads – especially bad news! The other aspect to this is to be prompt in your responses to every prospect. Always respond to phone calls and emails within a couple hours – within 24 hours at the most. Even if you don’t have what he’s asking for, or you need to check on something or create something, send a quick note explaining that you’re booked up with meetings or something similar and that you’ll send along the requested information tomorrow (always provide a specific day or time, even if it’s a couple days out). Best practice for managing the process is to only pursue five warm prospects at a time. Send out as many proposals and job responses as you like. But the second a few bite, slow it down or pause for a few days to make sure no more come through before resuming prospecting activities. That way, you’re never swamped with more prospects than you can handle (though I’m sure it’s a welcome problem to have!). Proactively Facilitate Progress Especially in the initial stages of prospecting, be sure to facilitate progress. Many consultants go into Q&A mode, where they simply answer the prospect’s questions and shoot back the email. Sure, the prospect now knows more than he did before, but you’re likely not the only professional he’s considering. And the one who proactively engages him to speak further, or schedule a call, will likely win the deal. So always use every response you send to the prospect as an opportunity to engage further. If he asks a question, provide your answer and then recommend you both discuss it further over the phone. Or ask him a return question he has to answer. Refer to the Marketing Intelligence Assessment for ideas or ask specific questions about the business or other marketing strategies being implemented or considered. This approach not only keeps the process moving forward, but it builds rapport, communicating to the prospect that you’re interested in his project and that you care to learn more. Always Lead, Unless Asked to Follow Most executives or business owners know the end result they’re looking for. But some of them may not be so sure about how to get there – or exactly what they need from you. In



addition, many prospects you’ll speak with are busy and wear many hats. Speaking with you is just one of many tasks scheduled for the day. So when you speak, don’t necessarily wait for the prospect to lead the conversation. Generally, I’ll pause at the beginning of the conversation to see if the prospect desires to take the lead. This pause should only last a second or two. Trust me, if the prospect already has an agenda to discuss, he will typically jump right into it. So unless the prospect jumps in to lead the conversation, be sure to immediately take the reins and have a plan for what to discuss. Don’t just ask, “So what would you like me to do for you?” or even “So tell me more about your project.” Of course, you don’t want to be overbearing either – however this initial conversation isn’t just for information about the project. The prospect is trying to gauge how you work and if you have good communication and listening skills, as well as the ability to manage the project he’s looking to assign to you. So you need to manage the call unless it’s expressly clear the prospect holds the reins. To help you structure your initial call, I’ve provided you the Marketing Intelligence Assessment. That way, you don’t have to try and think up questions to ask – you can simply request the prospect fill this out, and then discuss it during your first call. I also take you step-by-step through the first call later in this chapter. Listen More Than You Talk We touched on this briefly earlier. But I can’t stress this enough. All of your materials, your website copy, email correspondence, and phone calls should be customer-centric or prospect-centric (and all materials and copy provided through Turbo-Charged Consulting is exactly that). Don’t talk about what you do (unless directly asked). Instead, ask specific questions to get the prospect discussing his problems, goals, and desired results. Then discuss briefly how you can address those issues and achieve desired results. Brainstorm with the prospect and get him excited about the many things he can accomplish through working with you. Help him solve problems. If you find yourself talking about your services a bit too much, just insert a question. For example, the prospect has just told you that his company’s website only receives 100 visitors a month and that he’s created and uploaded hundreds of articles in the past month that he’d like you to review and edit for keyword optimization. After listening to him, you quickly ascertain that he’s used reprint articles that are not unique content and that he put too much content on his site too quickly. Now this is an excellent upsell opportunity as the prospect really needs an SEO writer to create unique content and a strategy for adding content to the site over time. But rather than jump into a long explanation of these additional services, simply say the following: “You’re definitely on the right track adding new pages to your website that are each dedicated to a specific keyword. However, Google and the other search engines will actually discount your site’s authority on a topic if you’re using duplicated content (content that may appear on other websites). Also, we’ve found that if you add too many pages to your website



too quickly, the search engines assume you’re using automated software and will also discount or ban your website. “So I recommend we develop a strategy and method for easily posting content to your site steadily over the next couple months. I can also work with you to develop unique, keyword optimized articles. Now, have you already done some keyword research to discover the best keyword phrases to target?” See, you haven’t gone into too much detail about what you do, rather you’re educating the prospect as to why he needs you. Then you go right into another question. Also notice the language used in this example. You never point blank tell the prospect that he did something wrong. You say, “We’ve found that such and such doesn’t work,” or “that Google and the search engines don’t like this.” Lastly, you don’t sound like you’re pitching your service. You’re recommending next steps in working together. He’ll naturally want to say yes to working together on a strategy which translates into saying yes to becoming a client! Admit When You Don’t Have the Answer, Promise to Find Out Some consultants are terrified of live phone calls for fear the prospect will ask a question she doesn’t have an answer for. However, I’ve found that I actually build stronger rapport with a prospect when I get stumped and have to admit, “Actually, I’m not sure about that. Let me check with a colleague of mine. I’ll let you know tomorrow.” In fact, one of the biggest compliments I’ve received was from a long-time client and close friend who said that what she liked most about me, and the reason she refers me to many of her friends and fellow colleagues, is that I don’t pretend to know everything and I don’t “throw around my ego.” I say this, because unlike being an employee or being self-employed, when we become consultants, it’s easy to think we’re responsible for all the answers; that if we admit to not knowing something, we invalidate our expertise and will lose respect. But the opposite is actually true. So admit when you don’t have the answer, and follow that right up with, “but I’ll find out for you and let you know within a couple of days.” Welcome Criticism This one’s hard to swallow, but it can really make a difference to your business. If a prospect informs you that he’s decided not to move forward with you, or he simply stops responding to your emails and phone calls, politely tell him, “I respect your decision, however would you please let me know why you’ve decided to no longer pursue this relationship? I simply appreciate the feedback so I can continually improve my services for future clients.” You can do this over the phone or by email. It’s up to you. Also, always take freely given criticism with open arms. I know it’s hard! The best of us have been told the worst, I assure you. But you never want to burn bridges and frankly, there’s



usually at least a kernel of truth you can use to tweak your prospecting methodology for the better. Now, this isn’t to say that sometimes you simply come across a mean spirited person whose feedback for you should honestly be thrown out with yesterday’s garbage. If it doesn’t serve you, just let it go. Move on to the next one. If It’s Not Working, Test Components I dare say my prospecting methods are near fool-proof. Not only have I used them to incredible gain myself and for close colleagues, but the 30 consultants in my Managed Case Study also used this exact prospecting method on CraigsList and Guru.com to earn business. In less than two months, every consultant but two had landed his or her first client. Many had landed three or more! However, that’s not to say you’ll never run into an issue. If you’ve sent out over 100 job responses and proposals and you haven’t closed a single client, be sure to ask those prospects that came close why they chose not to work with you. Change those aspects they cite and try again. If you’re still running into issues or you can’t even get into the final stages of the prospecting process, determine where the hiccup seems to be. For instance, if you’re getting responses from your initial job response or proposal, but after your second or third email correspondence, they seem to lose interest, study your emails. If you find that in all cases, you’ve simply replied to any questions they’ve had, but you haven’t proactively proposed a next step (such as scheduling a free consultation), then alter that one aspect and begin prospecting again. By targeting one element at a time, you can find out which step in the process isn’t working. Otherwise, if you change everything, you’ll never know what works and what doesn’t, and worse yet, you may keep coming up with processes that don’t work! Follow Up If there’s only one best practice you’ve ever heard before, this one would be it. Follow up! I don’t have to beat this into the ground, so I won’t. Simply organize your email client so you can keep track of prospecting conversations. If you don’t hear from someone for a few days, reach out. Even pick up the phone. Just be sure to keep in touch. I’ll just add this: as a drastic example of great follow up… I was courting a prospect over six months ago that liked my bid proposal and wanted to discuss some final numbers before signing up. Then suddenly it was impossible to reach him. His email inbox was full and rejecting incoming mail. His secretary would take my messages, but he’d never call back. After a month of measured follow up, I decided to let it rest. Then one week ago, I came across his file on my hard drive and reviewed the bid proposal I’d sent him for some SEO work. On a hunch, I emailed him reminding him of the project and asking if he was still interested.



Turned out he’d gone with another company six months ago that entirely disappointed him. He was hard to close, but because he saw my tenacity in following up with him, he knew that same dedication would translate into my work on his project. Ask Yourself if the Client Has Closed YOU We often get excited when a client wants to work with us. It means income, work history, something we can add to our portfolio, and hopefully referrals. But would it all be worth it if the client is difficult to work with, or you find the project exhaustingly tedious? Be sure to take a moment before you agree to any project and just check in with yourself about whether you’ll enjoy working with this client. “Well anything’s better than working for a boss,” you might say. But trust me -- that can easily not be the case! Consulting can quickly become a 16 hour-a-day affair and weekends seem to vanish into the never-ending work week. So you have to be vigilant about who you choose to work with and set boundaries before beginning the project. Which leads us to… Manage Your Time and Client Expectations I touch on this later in the Client Management section, however it warrants being said now: The client will lean on you as much as you allow. I discovered quite quickly in consulting that being readily available was a good thing – being endlessly available was very bad. A particular client enjoyed IMing me constantly throughout the day to ask little questions or mention interesting facts about her industry. I would receive phone calls during evenings and my early acceptance of work over the weekends turned into an established routine. My time was no longer my own. This client project has since slowed down, and we’ve discussed work boundaries – i.e. 9-5 except in emergencies (and no, not every little deliverable warrants as an emergency). But had I thought to establish my boundaries during the prospecting process and during the initial stages of the project, I wouldn’t have endured two months of never-ending work days. Now, if you’re working with a prospect in startup phase (whether the company or a large project), you may have to put in some hefty work weeks to help them launch. This is fine. Just be sure to explain that your consistent availability and extra work hours are to help them launch. But in the future, you’ll have to return to normal work hours (define what those are) and that you always extend your extra time to clients in launching phases – “so just realize that in the future, when I help another client launch, I may not be as readily available as I am now.” The great thing about this best practice approach is that you don’t have to necessarily verbalize your boundaries. The client will often take your lead. If you generally give a deadline of Monday or Tuesday for work assigned on a Thursday, the client will assume you’re taking the weekend off, as you should. If you let your phone go to voice mail after normal office



hours and reply promptly the next morning, the client will understand that you’re not “in the office” in the evenings. This doesn’t mean you have to ignore the client if they contact you during off-hours. It just means that when you do take the call, take the emergency project, etc., that they know this is not the way you typically operate. They’ll be all the more appreciative of your consideration and only ask for your extra time when needed. As you let the above best practices sink in, let’s jump into some actual prospecting! The next section will teach you exactly how to prospect on CraigsList, step-by-step. The section after that will discuss prospecting on Guru.com, also step-by-step. But don’t feel limited to just these two websites. There are several websites where you can earn work, such as elance.com, rentacoder.com, and many others.



SECTION TWO: HOW TO PROSPECT ON CRAIGSLIST Required Product Templates

Job Response Templates - location: Templates/Prospecting Partial Client List - location: Templates/Prospecting The Prospecting Diaries - location: Prospecting Diaries Marketing Intelligence Assessment - location: Templates/Client Management CraigsList is an invaluable resource for virtually everything; from selling or buying used goods, online dating, selling or buying a used car, finding a local group to hang out with, apartment rentals, real estate, jobs, and more. It’s also a great resource for finding contract work. However, most companies and consultants use the wrong section of CraigsList, thereby minimizing their chance of gaining paid work. If you’ve dabbled in CraigsList to find clients, chances are you went into the Services area to post about your consultancy and the services you offer. Unfortunately, this leads to few, if any, inquiries. (Feel free to still post there, but add the following to your posting regimen…) The key is to go where the hungry fish already are – where the companies have already raised their hands and said, “I’m looking for an internet marketer, I want to pay this much, and this is what I need.” Where can you find that on CraigsList? Strangely enough, it’s where you’ve been trying to escape from: the JOBS section! So here’s exactly how to land a client on CraigsList, Turbo Charged Consulting style – and step-by-step, of course! Step 1. Have Your Job Response Template at Hand Prospecting can be a slow and tedious process if you write every job response from scratch. So be sure to open up your Job Response Template and have it at the ready. Also, on the rare occasion, a prospect here may request a proposal, but in my experience, you won’t have to worry about that much. However, your Proposal Templates will come in handy when we get to prospecting on Guru.com. Refer to that section of this chapter if you need to submit a proposal during your CraigsList prospecting activities. Step 2. Visit Your Local CraigsList You are a global consultant. This means that you can accept clients from any region of any country. There’s no reason why you can’t. However, if you’re just getting started as a consultant, it may help you to begin locally. This will keep you in somewhat of a comfort zone and allow you to meet with clients face-to-face if you like.



Secondly, I recommend beginning with your local market because the global market is enormous and you’ll need to become familiar with the terms companies use to post their job requests for your expertise. For instance, you may think to search “internet marketer” or “SEO expert” to quickly find job postings you’d like to respond to. However, you’ll quickly find that many companies use other posting titles as well, such as “web marketing expert,” “SEO guru,” “search consultant,” and more. Browsing every single job request in the appropriate categories in your local market will help you gather a rich list of possible search terms so you can quickly peruse the international market later. UPDATE: I can’t stress the above tip ENOUGH! Most consultants seem to get caught up on this step. If your local CL area doesn’t have any good job postings, pick another city. It doesn’t have to be the closest one to you, it doesn’t have to even be in your country. Choose Los Angeles. Or New York. Or London. It doesn’t matter. So don’t get discouraged just because your local area has few postings. Also, if you’re only responding to five postings a day, look at some other locations. Choose to respond in more than one area. Don’t hold yourself back in this area. Prospecting is a numbers game, and I found too many consultants were resting on only five job response emails per day or per week. You can’t land meaningful work this way! So find one or more major cities to search in!! So now, to get you started:

A. Go to http://www.craigslist.org.

B. Select your city, or a large city, from the list that appears on the right-hand side. CraigsList is international, so you shouldn’t have a problem.

C. Click your city’s link to visit your local CraigsList site.

Step 3. Browse the Jobs Section The Turbo Charged Consulting process can be used to promote and manage any form of consultancy in virtually any market. However, since our focus here is on internet marketing

TURBO TIP: If you find your local area does not have many job postings, pick the closest major city. Even if it’s in the next state or province. In fact, if you like, just go straight for a major market, like Los Angeles, New York, London, etc. We’re only using local listings right now for simplicity’s sake. Don’t get stuck just because your local market is empty—go elsewhere in that case. Doesn’t matter where.



consulting, with a refined focal point of search engine optimization, we will tailor the rest of this process to these areas. But do not feel limited by this—apply these steps to any form of consulting you’d like to pursue, whether it’s pet grooming, accounting, or anything else. You will find two “job” sections on CraigsList that we will browse. Jobs and Gigs. The following categories are best for finding internet marketing, SEO, and copywriting projects: Jobs Area

Marketing / PR / Ad

Software / QA / DBA (if you do web development/programming)

Web / Info Design

Writing / Editing

Gigs Area

Computer

Creative

Writing

Let’s tackle the Jobs area first.

Browsing Jobs Area – Step-by-Step

A. Click on one of the above categories.

B. Scan the most recent job listings. If you’re in a major area, these could go on for pages. If you’re in a smaller area, you may only see a couple posts per day. In busy cities, only go back three or four days max. In areas with sparse postings, you could safely go back about a week or so and still get responses.

C. Click on any posting that even remotely looks like it could request services you offer. This will help you gauge the types of posting titles to keep an eye out for. It’ll also help you identify posting titles to typically ignore.

For example, “Online Marketing Associate” may seem like a relevant job listing. However, the term ‘associate’ means that most likely the company seeks an in-house employee and won’t even entertain the idea of a freelance consultant. We’ll discuss such prospects a bit later, as some of them can be convinced to work with an outsourced professional. However, for now let’s concentrate on easier pickings.

D. Initially concentrate on listings that appear open to outsourced professionals. These include job listings that are notated as “Contract,” which you can filter for (though I recommend only filtering later after you’ve browsed and gotten a good feel for what is available). They also include listings that don’t outright state “salary, benefits, great working environment, etc.”

E. When you locate a listing you’d like to respond to, move on to Step 4.



Step 4. Respond to a Listing

A. Click on the “reply-to” email address provided at the top of the listing, or copy and paste the email address provided in the body of the listing. Be sure to double check whether the company has a specific application process they’d like you to follow. Some have an online application process. Others want you to place a Job ID or the specific listing title in the subject line of your response email.

Be sure to follow any such directions as failure to do so will almost surely kick you out of the running right off the bat.

B. Copy and paste the text of the Job Response Template into your email composer. Customize it to the particular project. Make sure to address any questions, information requests, or project specifics mentioned in the job listing. Keep it as brief as possible and invite them to visit your website for more information. Mention your client portfolio if you have one (this page is not provided in the website template as you may not have or want a portfolio yet, so just use an existing page template to create your portfolio if you like) or attach your Partial Client List.

Always link to a specific page if you are directing them to specific information. For example, if you want them to learn more about how you work with clients, give them the direct link to your How it Works page.

C. Always be sure to end your response with a call to action (give them a reason to act…either to visit your site for more information or to contact you). Also state that you look forward to speaking with them.

D. Whenever possible, add a question to the response. If they’re looking for an SEO expert and haven’t mentioned whether they’ve done any SEO in the past, ask them if they have, and if so, what they’ve done. If they want a copywriter, ask them what’s most important to them about the content – that it’s educational and informative, that it’s hip and fun and engaging, or that it’s brief and to the point?

E. Proofread your email for spelling errors, grammar, and OOPS information. Make sure you’ve customized all necessary areas. This is especially important in areas where you mention specific company or project names – don’t make the mistake of sending a response that refers to another company’s project! That would be an OOPS.

F. I can’t stress it enough – proofread each email before sending. Sadly, it’s so easy to lose the prospect at this early stage by simply skipping this easy step. If you’re not good with spelling or grammar, run it through a spell and grammar check system such as Microsoft Word.

G. After you respond to your first listing, the heavy editing and customization for the Job Response Template will be done and your remaining job response emails will go much faster. Just remember to always check it over to make sure you haven’t forgotten to replace the prospect’s name or made any other typos. After you’ve responded to all the recent listings in the Jobs section, move on to the Gigs section.

Step 5. Respond to Gigs Postings The only difference between the Jobs area and the Gigs area on CraigsList is that the person or company posting pays a small fee to post in the jobs section. It’s free to post in Gigs. However, this inevitably leads to a lot of trash and posting abuse in the Gigs section.



So you may choose to skip this section altogether. However, there can be some fun small projects here. For instance, I responded to a gigs listing for a small project that, after I consulted with them, steadily grew into a larger project as the company became a formidable entity redefining their industry. Great for my resume and great for future networking. If you choose to prospect the Gigs section, there are a couple things to keep in mind:

A. Don’t spend as much time in the Gigs section. Browse quickly as your time spent here will be worth less than time spent in the jobs area.

B. Be aware of scams and people who will waste your time or who are looking for freebies and barters. There’s nothing wrong with bartering, but that’s not what you’re here for.

C. Other than the chance of running across a real winner client (like referenced above), I like to check the Gigs area for quickie projects. For example, someone may just need help installing or customizing a WordPress blog, or they have a quick turn-around project for a graphics designer. These projects can be good in a pinch or to just add a bit of variety around your stable, long-term projects. They’re relatively quick and easy to close as well. Just don’t expect a ton of money. But hey, it’s a trade-off.

D. Prospect these the same way you do the Jobs area.

Step 6. Widen Your Search to Other Cities Once you’ve exhausted your local area, choose any other city you’d like to earn clients from. Perhaps your home town, or where you attended college, or where a prior client is located. Though not needed, sometimes it helps a prospect to know that an out-of-area consultant didn’t pick their city at random, but has some connection to the area. Definitely hit major cities like Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Denver, Austin, etc. Also, don’t forget the UK and Australia. As you widen your search, you may now want to use CraigsList’s search function. At this point, you may also choose to filter for “Contract” positions and use different keywords you noticed posters using in your local area.

Repeat the previous steps for these additional cities.

TURBO TIP: Search every CraigsList City at once. To speed up your search, use this great free tool to search all cities simultaneously. You still have to click around a lot, but it’ll still save you time. http://www.craigshelper.com. Rumor has it that this resource only works when using a Firefox browser or browsers other than Internet Explorer.



Also be sure to revisit CraigsList every day for new job postings (you may want to concentrate on your local area or major cities only when looking for new listings as you’ll never get to all of them across all cities). Don’t get discouraged if you hit CraigsList in a dry spell. There will be some weeks or days when there simply are no good projects to respond to. It happens. Just keep checking back.

Step 7. Decide Whether to Target Companies Requesting In-House Employees As I touched on earlier, it is possible to win a client originally seeking an in-house employee. However, it’s not as easy and I recommend staying away from any posting that includes any of the following:

“salary + benefits”

“you’ll love our great office atmosphere!”

“upward mobility, promotions, etc.”

“local candidates only” or “will not relocate”

Great prospects to go after in this category are those who seem to be asking for an employee, but it’s questionable. I.e. most likely it never crossed their mind to look for outsourced or freelance talent. In this case, use the Job Response. In House Request Template. If it’s a local prospect, be sure to let him know you’re available for in-office meetings and that you’ll want to meet personally with the project team to get acquainted with in-house staff. (You can still offer to do this over the phone with long-distance prospects). Step 8. Warming Up the Prospect Once you’ve sent out your ships, so to speak, your next step is to wait for responses to your initial email. When this happens, you’ll want to focus your next series of correspondences on warming up the prospect and steadily moving him towards a free consultation or phone call. Refer to The Prospecting Diaries for examples of this process. Particular things to keep in mind at this juncture:

A. Keep a forward mobility. Answer any questions and provide any additional information requested; then ask a question of the prospect to encourage another response. Don’t ask an idle or non-project related question. Also try to choose questions that get the prospect thinking of ways to work with you or how you’ll be able to help him. Refer to the Marketing Intelligence Assessment for ideas.

B. When you feel it’s appropriate, ask the prospect’s availability to schedule a call or “free consultation.” A good rule of thumb is to give the prospect a choice between two dates or times. For example, “Let me know your availability the next couple of days. I’d love to chat with you about some ideas I have on the project and some questions I’d like to discuss. I have an hour available tomorrow at 2PM PST, or perhaps Wednesday at 11AM PST. Which would work best for you?”



This encourages a positive response choosing an appropriate time. Where as if you simply ask whether he’d like to schedule a call, or you only mention “Let me know if you’d like to discuss this over the phone,” it’ll be too easy to decline or not even address the question.

C. Don’t fret if you can’t get the prospect to agree to a phone call, and no need to push it too hard. The fact is that with our global marketplace and our busy lives, many business owners and executives simply prefer email as the primary means of communication. I’ve closed numerous clients without ever having a phone conversation. It can often just be a formality or the first step after closing the deal.

Also, more often than not, the prospect will request a phone call. So always use your best judgment and try to never come off pushy or “salesy.” Just go with the flow unless it starts to stagnate. Then try to give it some juice with the above strategies.

Step 9. The Phone Call or Free Consultation As stated above, there is no rule of thumb for when the phone call will come into play during the prospecting process. Some prospects want to jump on the phone first thing, others seal the deal without ever hearing the sound of your voice. It just all depends. However, eventually, whether it’s before or after the contract is signed, you’ll have your first phone call. No matter when it occurs, it’s important to get this first impression right and to use it to build rapport and solidify the budding relationship.

Let’s walk through it step-by-step:

A. If appropriate, request the prospect fill out the Marketing Intelligence Assessment before your call. Be sure they fax it back to you and that you have time to review it before the call.

B. After introductions have been made, pause a moment to see if the prospect would like to lead. Only give it a brief pause – if he doesn’t step in, move right in and lead the call.

C. Begin with something like this: “Alright, the reason I wanted to schedule this call was to get a concrete picture of your project and your goals and challenges surrounding the project. That’s why I had you fill out our Marketing Intelligence Assessment. Do you have any initial questions before we go through it?”

D. As you discuss the assessment, your goal here is two-fold. First of all, you want to make sure that your perception of the project, what your duties would be on the project, and what the client deems important in terms of deliverables and results, are aligned with the prospect’s perspective. Secondly, you want to discuss ways of tackling the project and achieving desired results in order to move towards a closed deal.

Notice I said “discuss” here, and not “explain.” Keep this conversation two-way. Remember the best practice to listen more than you talk. As you discuss how to tackle the project, approach it in this fashion:

“I see here that your primary objective is to increase traffic to your website. Am I right in assuming this goal is directly related to increasing your revenue and profit margins? [wait for affirmative response] Exactly. Every single one of my clients



contacts me because they want more traffic, but what they’re really looking for is more revenue, which is a little more complicated. You see, I want to make sure your SEO strategy works synergistically with your other marketing outreach and that any traffic we bring in is properly converted into sales.

“What is the main action you want your visitor to take on your website? [wait for response] Okay, so your first step is to get them to sign up for a newsletter [as an example]. Perfect. Do you know what your conversion ratio currently is? [whether they know or not, respond with…]. Well once I get more traffic flowing to your website, I’ll want to work with you to ensure that traffic is optimally converting into newsletter signups. I’m confident we can increase your current conversions by at least 30%.”

See how the language is interactive. Not only am I asking questions, but I’m discussing the project as though we’re already a team and planning out implementation. It’s a lot easier to transition to “Let’s take these first steps to get started,” then to pitch a lengthy sermon about your services and then say, “So does this sound like something you want?”

E. When it does come to closing the deal, don’t make it a big deal. The decision should come naturally and often, if you’ve handled the call right, the prospect will bring it up. I’ve actually never had to, in my memory, outright ask the prospect if he’d like to work with me. We simply came to that mutual conclusion through discussing the project.

In fact, oftentimes the prospect gets really excited. Many discover they’ve found exactly what they’re looking for and they can already see how they’re going to get the results they desire.

If the prospect doesn’t broach the subject of getting started, and you feel you’ve fully discussed the project, simply say, “From what we’ve discussed today, it looks like we can get you X objective in X days/months. I recommend that, to get started, we begin with [FIRST STEPS YOU’D RECOMMEND]. Does that sound good to you?”

F. You may have some outstanding questions you need to answer, or additional approvals your prospect has to get before closing the deal completely. Just handle those loose ends in a timely manner and move on to the final step!

G. Make sure the prospect knows next steps. As soon as you have his verbal agreement to move forward (whether by email or phone), tell him what happens next.

a. Ask client to sign and fax back client agreement within 24 hours. Email it to him.

b. Agree on 1st deliverable and inform client when he’ll receive it. Should be within 24-72 hours of agreement receipt.

c. If there are any outstanding questions, be sure to tell client when you’ll have an answer.

And there you have it! You’ve closed your first deal! Now, as you work through this process, understand that nothing happens perfectly. If you don’t get to the Marketing Intelligence Assessment until after closing the deal, that’s fine. If you never have a phone call, that’s alright too. Just stay in the flow of a particular prospect’s process (unless it stagnates) and you should do fine. And now that you’ve got prospecting on CraigsList under your belt, it’s time to learn how to prospect on Guru.com!



SECTION THREE: HOW TO PROSPECT ON GURU.COM Required Product Templates

Guru Bid Proposal - location: Templates/Prospecting The Prospecting Diaries - location: Templates/Prospecting Client Project Agreement - location: Templates/Client Management Marketing Intelligence Assessment (optional) - location: Templates/Client Management Partial Client List (optional) - location: Templates/Prospecting WebPack Website Template (optional) - location: Website/[your version]/public_html Now don’t feel you have to try prospecting on Guru.com immediately, or, on the other hand, that you have to wait until you get the hang of CraigsList before you give Guru.com a try. The name of the game here is to go at your own pace. My personal experience is that CraigsList is quicker and somewhat easier, because you don’t have a specific process you have to adhere to. However, Guru.com standardizes and governs the process, which brings you several benefits over prospecting elsewhere:

A. Guaranteed Payment: You won’t have to worry about not getting paid, or not getting paid on time. Guru.com requests your project payment from the client before you begin your work, holding it in escrow until you’ve completed the project to your client’s satisfaction. Then they relay the funds to you less a small transaction fee (you’ll get dinged around 7%).

B. Managed Bidding Process: It’s hard to drop the ball or wonder what the heck to do next to land your client. As you move through the bidding process, the website’s tools and standardized courting process ensures that interested parties stay connected and come to a definitive conclusion. Plus, once you close a deal, they even tell you and the client what to do next to handle all paperwork and legalities before beginning project activity.

C. Qualified Prospects: Like CraigsList, companies posting on Guru are hungry fish. They’re raising their hands and announcing not only what they want, but what they’re willing to pay for it. The Guru bonus is that many of these companies have a larger budget and a good mix of both long-term and very quick turnaround projects.

D. Proper Mindset: Prospects on Guru already expect several things, including working with an out-of-area vendor or consultant, and to pay promptly for requested services. You don’t have to spend time educating them or changing their perspective in order to discuss the real issue of working together.

Still, with all the benefits Guru brings to the freelance consultant, I found getting acquainted with their account management area, bidding process, and the overall experience quite intimidating and somewhat confusing.



That is why I’ve dedicated an entire section of this eBook to explain Guru’s exact process and user experience. That way you don’t have to struggle to modify the more general approach discussed earlier for CraigsList – that was a nightmare I’m happy to keep to myself! So on to the good stuff – one step at a time. Step 1. Set Up Your Account Initially, I was going to recommend signing up for a free account to get acquainted with the system and the bidding process. Unfortunately, I never received a response from a single proposal I sent out with my free account. Plus many of the better projects are off-limits to free account holders. So I recommend you bite the bullet and get a paid Guru or Guru Vendor account. If you’re a single consultant, there’s no reason to get the Vendor account and it’s far more expensive. However, the regular paid Guru account only costs $74.95 per quarter (that’s roughly $25 a month), so I would say go with that. Let’s go through the sign-up process together for a regular paid Guru account.

A. Visit Guru.com. Click on the “Professionals – find work” tab and you’ll see a drop down menu appear. Select “Post Your Profile.”

Your profile will default as a “free basic” profile. Not to worry. Just go through their profile wizard and towards the end, you’ll be able to select the type of profile you want and compare benefits, pricing, etc.

B. Select your main category from the next page. For most of us, that would be “Search

Engine Optimization” under Website Design/Website Marketing.

Keep in mind that if you offer several types of services, such as copywriting and SEO, you will only be able to bid on projects in the area you select here. So if you pick



Website Marketing, you won’t be able to bid on copywriting projects (unless perhaps it’s web copy and they’ve posted it in the web marketing area).

You can create an additional profile for the Writing/Translating/Editing area, however you’ll have to pay another fee for the additional profile.

C. Register as a New Professional.

Fill out your information and submit your registration. You’ll then be taken to a page to select up to five subcategories in your chosen service area. These will be listed in your profile as areas of expertise.

D. Now you’re going to start building your profile and resume. The first thing they’ll ask you for are your software skills. Highlight all appropriate skills and list any other relevant skills you or your outsourced talent (regular secondary consultants) possess. Also denote how many years of experience you have overall for these skills.

At the bottom of this page, they ask you to “Summarize, highlight, and market your skills. Do NOT skip this vital part of your profile. If you’re not sure what to write, copy and paste an appropriate portion of the WebPack Website Copy, such as a portion or summary of the “How We Work” page. The content is the same in every WebPack.

Select Your Minimum Hourly Rate. I recommend not going all the way to your minimum, but closer to your mid-range. If you feel comfortable accepting projects that pay between $50 and $75 per hour, I would select $60 as your minimum hourly rate here so you still have some negotiating and “I’ll give you this special one-time-only discount” wiggle-room. Fill out the rest of the page and click “Continue.”



E. Select Five Industries. Make sure that you choose industries you have a competitive edge in or knowledge of. For instance, if you were a real estate agent for a while, or got your license, even if you’ve never had a real estate client, I would select that as an industry. Also select those industries you want to court. If you really want to win telecom clients, select that as one of your industries. If you want to focus on healthcare or alternative health clients, select the Healthcare Industry. Click “Continue” when you’re finished.

F. Fill out your resume. You have two options here. You can use your Partial Client List Template and copy and paste the information (be sure to take out all URLs and contact information as including such is a breach of Guru’s TOS). You can also copy and paste the Services Page of your WebPack.

Filling out the references is optional, but if you have a friend you’ve done work for, or a previous client, it definitely further validates you to include one or more references. Click “continue” when you’re done.

G. Now it’s time to choose the type of membership you’d like to have.

By default, you have a Basic membership, which is free. However, as I mentioned before, it’s a challenge to do any meaningful prospecting with a Basic free profile. Beyond Basic, your two membership choices are Guru and Guru Vendor. Click the orange “Read about” link above the Profile ID to read about the differences between the two account types. Your other choice is whether to purchase a quarterly membership, or to pay the entire annual fee (for a small discount). I recommend going with the quarterly option



until you’ve gotten a good feel for Guru.com. You’ll want to make sure that you like the entire process and that you win enjoyable projects. Choose your membership type and hit “Continue.”

H. Complete the selection and payment process. When you’re done, you can sign into your account. If you’re not automatically directed to the My Admin area, go ahead and click it from the top navigation menu.

Step 2. Finalize Your Profile with Two Vital Elements There are two vital areas of your profile that were NOT filled out in the profile creation wizard. Without them, you’ll be hard pressed to get much attention coming your way. So now it’s time to add these to your profile and we’ll be just about ready to get you prospecting!

How to Edit Your Profile Information – DO THIS FIRST! Click “Manage Your Profile” to go to your Profile Management page. You’ll now see that there are two additional areas of the profile that were not available to you before (granted you purchased a membership – Basic free profiles will only allow you to add one of these vital areas). These new areas allow you to let your Website (created from one of our WebPacks) do the major legwork for you. By upgrading your profile, you can now add contact information, a portfolio, and website links. Instead of juggling dozens of prospect inquiries, you can immediately draw them to your website that carefully educates and subtly influences them while validating you and your expertise. How to Set Up Your Portfolio and WebLinks Let’s click on WebLinks first.



A. Right under the “Manage WebLinks” tab title, click the orange “Add New WebLink” link.

B. The first link you should add is your website’s main URL. Enter your domain name

into the URL field (without “http://”). The title should be something similar to “Company Website” If you like, you can create a thumbnail image of your home page and upload it, however in my experience, this isn’t necessary.

C. For “Category,” select “Professional Services.” Yes, as you can now see, the

WebLinks area is traditionally used for linking to websites you’ve designed or projects you’ve worked on, however you want to have your company website listed first.

D. Keep “Price” on “Not Sure/Confidential.” They know this is your website, so it would

be absurd to associate a price.

E. For “Your Role” highlight every service you offer in your consultancy that’s available in the drop down.

F. Add the WebLink and make sure it’s ranked #1 in your WebLinks list.

G. Go through the same process, but this time, link directly to your online Portfolio page

if you have one. Or your Services page. Make sure to title it so the prospect knows that they can click there to see your Service Offerings or Client Portfolio (or create a link for each!).

H. Now feel free to add links to any other websites you have designed, written copy for,

or done other work on. Always try to gauge a price for it if you can – if you didn’t receive payment for the project, select the fair price you would expect from a similar project now. Because I have an online client portfolio, I only add the best example of my work for each of my service offerings. So I’ll add the website design I’m most proud of, a link to the article or special report that’s garnered the most response, and so on.

When you’re finished, go back to the Profile Management Area and click on Portfolio. You may think that since you’ve provided your website link and perhaps a link to your services page or online portfolio that you won’t need to worry about adding any files to your Guru Portfolio. However, remember that a prospect will be in the middle of reviewing dozens of different Guru profiles. Yours is but one. So they may or may not ever make it to your website. Chances are they’ll look here first, so you better make sure they get something that will inspire them to research you further. Select at least one file to upload for each service you offer. For instance, if you will provide website copywriting, SEO article writing, and overall SEO services, you’ll want at least three files uploaded to your Guru Portfolio. For example, you could create the following:

A. A readable screenshot of a website page you wrote the copy for (not just the text, but the entire website page with the design – unless the design is bad). A great add-on to this is to create a text box or dialogue box using Photoshop or a similar program. Put



in the box a testimonial or endorsement from the client about your great work. You can also add to this file a sentence at the bottom saying, “For additional examples of my web copy writing, please visit [insert page link].”

B. A nicely formatted Word document of one of your SEO articles. Add to the bottom of the article any stats you have for it, such as number of incoming links it generated or placement stats for the keyword it promoted.

C. An SEO client one-sheet that shows a small screen shot of the website, stats report of top ranked keywords and their traffic, or overall site traffic report, and any additional testimonials or aspects of the project.

Step 3. Familiarize Yourself with the Rest of My Admin Area Usually I skip getting familiar with an account area and jump right into the action. However, it’ll save you time and stress later to simply get the lay of the land now.

Let’s quickly define each area:

TURBO TIP: Since you’ll be limited to categorizing files within your profile’s area of focus, such as Website Marketing, just select the closest category for the clip. The prospect will be able to understand what they’re looking at, even if it’s not perfectly categorized. Just try to get as close to accurate as possible.



Check Your Responses Project Invitations: These are notifications of companies who have specifically requested that you submit a proposal for their project. They read your profile and think you may fit their project. Project Notifications: These are automated “matches” that Guru provides. These are simply projects whose requirements match your profile’s specifications. Project Tracker Alerts: This is the area you’ll pay the most attention to when you start prospecting. If a prospect posts a question to you privately, or a public announcement to all companies who have submitted a project bid, you’ll be alerted here. You’ll also receive an email alert. Private DB Messages: If a prospect asks you a private question (i.e. others bidding on the project can’t see your correspondence), you’ll access it here. This, and all the other links in this area will trigger a Project Tracker Alert and Email Alert if a new message or announcement posts. Project QB Messages: These are public forum posts that are viewable by anyone who views the project. Quick DB Messages: Whereas the above messages are associated with a particular project, these messages are associated with you as a service provider. These messages come from companies who have found you via a search and have a question for you. Project Announcements: If a prospect wishes to communicate via mass message to any service provider who has submitted a proposal (vs. anyone who views the project, as is the case with Project QB Messages), they post a Project Announcement. Manage Your Bids & Proposals Watch List: While prospecting, you may come across projects you’re interested in, but for whatever reason, you aren’t ready to submit a proposal. You can add them to your watch list to easily find them later. Project Tracker: In the case you do bid on a project, you can view progress here. For instance, see if the project closes (another provider won the project), how many other providers have bid on it, and more. Proposal Template Manager: Create your various proposal templates here. You can use the Guru Proposal Templates provided, or create your own. Manage Payments & Feedback You won’t have to worry about this area for a bit. I will describe this portion of your account in detail when describing the process you’ll enter into after winning a client.



Step 4. Search For Projects & Submit Proposals Ah, the step you’ve been waiting for – finding actual projects to bid on. Regardless where you are in the site, whenever you want to search for projects, simply click on the “Search” tab or the “Professionals – find work” tab and select “Search for Projects” from the drop down menu. The first page you’re taken to is where you select what skill category you want to search for projects under. This is largely a tease. You can only apply for projects in your own skill category, likely “Website Design/Website Marketing.” So you’ll notice if you search any other category you’ll be taken to a results page where every project says in red text “Cannot Apply.” One way around this, though it’ll take some time, is to thoroughly prospect in your existing category. Once you’ve won all the projects you want in that skill category, re-assign your profile to a different category, perhaps rewrite some of the details and provide different portfolio files, and then begin prospecting in the new category. But moving along…

A. Select your skill category from the list.

If you choose, you can refine your search, either by sub category, Project ID, or keyword. Additional options include location, compensation amount, and more.

B. Browse the search results until you find a potential project. Click the project title to view details.

C. Review project details. If it sounds like a project you’d like to submit a bid proposal

for, click “Submit Bid/Proposal” at the bottom of the page. If you have a question or want something clarified, often you can post a public question to the project at the top of the page.

D. If you click “Submit Bid/Proposal” you’ll be taken to a page where you select the

profile you wish to submit with your proposal. Usually you’ll have just one. However, if you have more (in the instance you want to prospect in more than one area at the same time, and are willing to pay for an additional account), make sure you choose the appropriate profile for the skill-set requested in the project.

E. Now here’s where dealing with Guru can get a bit difficult. Most companies post

projects that request a Total Project Bid vs. an Hourly Rate. So you’ll have to do some calculating to discover the appropriate Total Project Bid to propose.

I’ve tested placing an hourly rate in the Total Project Bid field and denoting later in the proposal that it is my hourly fee and up for negotiation. However, eventually you must provide a total bid amount, as Guru will use this for the Project Award and Escrow processes, as they handle all project payments you receive. So save yourself the time later, as well as your prospect’s time, and define a total bid now.



F. After providing a Total Project Bid, just check off all the check boxes for Terms and

Conditions and agreeing to respond to any prospect inquiries. You cannot submit your proposal without checking everything off.

G. Next, you’ll be taken to a page where you write your proposal. If you’ve already

uploaded your Guru Proposal Templates, select the one you wish to use now. Otherwise, copy and paste the one you want into the text editor (or of course write your own). Be sure if you use one of my provided templates or another of your own creation that you ALWAYS customize it for the particular project at hand. I can’t stress this enough. Take the extra two minutes and add a sentence or two…or edit a couple sentences…so that you address specific concerns or questions the prospect has, or you just allude to specifics of the project.

Companies on Guru are used to receiving proposals through the site, and surprisingly, most of them are general proposals with no care or attention to the specific project they’re submitted for. It’s a major turn off to prospects and can work largely in your favor if you take the time to customize your own proposal. You’ll stand out and usually be the one to receive further inquiries.

H. If you like, you may attach a file to your proposal. You may choose to offer a free consultation and attach the Marketing Intelligence Assessment, however I’ve yet to have a Guru prospect take me up on the offer (though it doesn’t appear to hurt either).

You could also attach a clip or file demonstrating similar work to the services the company requests. Lastly, you could attach a whitepaper or special report you think they’d particularly appreciate. In all cases, just be sure to mention any attached files in your proposal and explain why you’re attaching them.

I. When you’re finished, submit the proposal (save it as a new template too if you majorly modified it and want to use a similar version in the future). You’ll be taken to a confirmation page where you can review. Make sure you double check your Total Project Bid and any reference to bid amount or pricing in your proposal. You’ll want to make sure they’re the same, especially when you’re using a single template to bid on several projects all with different bid amounts. Also give it a quick read over for grammar, spelling errors, and customization mistakes (wrong company name, typos, etc.). If you’re not comfortable with your proofreading skills, read it over for obvious content errors such as improper company name, and copy and paste it into a text editor like Word to check spelling. This is your first impression, so you want to make it a good one.

J. Repeat the above process for as many projects as you’d like to bid on. Don’t worry about over-doing it. If you get too many companies coming back asking to work with you, it’s a great problem to have. You can either 1) demand more money, explaining that you have too many companies requesting your services, or 2) assign the project to another consultant and negotiate a finder’s fee with them.



K. How many bids does it generally take to land a deal? Well in my experience, and what I’ve seen with my Managed Case Study, is that for every 20-50 bids, you’ll get about 5 serious inquiries, out of which you’ll close 1 or 2.

Once you get the process down and you’ve landed a few clients, you could land 1 project for every 10 bids you send out, which I have done numerous times. It really is just a matter of practice and paying attention to how prospects react, what they respond to, and what they don’t.

Step 5. Follow Up Now it’s a waiting game. Once you’ve prospected (and you can continue to prospect alongside your follow up activities), you simply have to wait and see if any companies take the bait. Once one does, you’ll get a Project Alert that will tell you either they posted a private message or public message regarding the project. In rare occasions, you may simply get notified that you’ve been awarded a project. As you receive inquiries from different companies, be prompt in your response. Keep in mind that you can provide your contact information in the private message area, so feel free to propose a phone call to discuss the project. It’s a great advantage to some of the less expensive companies in India and abroad that want to close all deals exclusively through the internet. This portion of the process is very similar to Steps 8 and 9 of the CraigsList Prospecting Process. So refer back to those for tips on handling the courtship and phone call. However, once you close a client on Guru, it’s an entirely different process from closing a client on CraigsList or other such venues. Step 6. Upon Client Agreement to Award You the Project Because Guru enforces a standardized process, you must adhere to specific steps to close your client and initiate project implementation.

A. Once the prospect announces his desire to work with you, he’ll need to go into his account and award you the project. You will receive an email and Project Tracker notification when this occurs.

B. To see the notice, log into your Account and click on “Project Tracker Alerts.” You

should see an item that says “Project Award – Offered.”

C. Click the item’s title to be taken to a page that details the project and explains “Next Steps” to you. Click the provided link to accept or reject the offered reward. The link takes you to the “Project Tracker (Awarded Projects) area. Unfortunately, you can’t easily get to this awarded projects area without first visiting the main Project Tracker area. So it can get a bit confusing.



D. Provided you want the project, accept the project on this page. Guru will post any next steps you are required to take, such as uploading a project agreement.

E. Click “Upload Project Agreement.” Open your Client Project Agreement Template and

edit it for your current project and its details. Be sure to review the terms and conditions and modify them accordingly, as these are general terms and will not apply to all projects.

F. Milestones. You’ll be required to assign milestones to the project in order to finalize

the award and initiate actual work. You can issue a Change Order later on, however do take care to make accurate milestones to the best of your ability. And always set them a bit later than you expect. It’s always better to beat your deadlines than to exceed them!

G. Submit your project agreement. The client will be notified and will approve. Make

sure the client signs the agreement and faxes or emails it back to you (however, acceptance of it on Guru is a legal and binding contract, so it’s not legally necessary).

H. Create Escrow Request. Your next step after the project is awarded and your client

agreement approved, is to create an escrow request. If you’re a US consultant, you may be required to complete a W-9 form to complete your escrow request. This is a tax form that establishes you are an independent consultant rather than an employee and that you are responsible for your taxes (i.e. they are not automatically taken out of your paycheck).

I. Your client will deposit funds for the total project amount you both agreed to. The

funds will be held in escrow until the completion of the project, wherein, once completion is confirmed by both parties, Guru will pass the funds on to you, less their transaction fees, in whichever manner you request in your account.

Once funds are deposited and you have the signed client project agreement in hand, you are ready to start! Before we move on to Client Management, however, I want to touch on one vital aspect of prospecting: how to automate the process so you have a steady inbound flow of referrals and leads without constantly going through the above processes every time you need a new client.

TURBO STEPS QUICK REVIEW: PROSPECTING

1. Prepare Job Request Template Prepare Guru Proposal Template 2. Browse Local or HotSpot CraigsList Establish Guru Account 3. Respond to Job Postings Submit Bid Proposal 4. Warm up Prospect Follow Up 5. Propose Free Consult/Phone Call Propose Free Consult/Phone Call 6. Close the Deal Receive Project Award



SECTION FOUR: AUTOMATE THE PROSPECTING PROCESS Required Product Templates

NONE If you can simply automate your prospecting, why did I just spend 30 pages teaching you how to prospect manually on CraigsList and Guru.com? Several reasons:

1. The best way to automate your inbound leads is from referrals. You need existing clients to produce referrals, hence you need to prospect manually at first.

2. You learn invaluable communication skills, common questions, and rapport building techniques when prospecting manually. This learning comes naturally, and in my opinion is hard-won otherwise.

3. Your confidence builds immensely after you’ve closed a client you actively prospected and courted. This helps with client management and project implementation because you know and trust your abilities.

4. Even with automated lead generation, whether from referrals or other automated sources (which are available to you and which we will discuss later), there is still often a courting process – though it is quicker and easier. If you don’t have an intuitive grasp of the process from having done it yourself several times, you won’t be able to adequately adapt that process to a hot prospect. In effect, you’ll still lose an easy sale if you haven’t learned how to close the hard sale.

HOW MUCH MORE DO I HAVE TO LEARN? The foundation of Turbo Charged Consulting is my belief that good, profitable business practice does not have to be difficult and it shouldn’t involve esoteric or hard-to-understand steps. Above all, it shouldn’t require an entirely new set of skills or knowledge. As you saw with my prospecting process, it is extremely straight forward and easy to implement. Working with automated prospecting will be even easier. You won’t have to learn anything. Let’s start with Referrals. As you may remember when you purchased this package, one of your free bonuses was the Referral System Builder Workbook. Rather than teach you the theory behind referrals and give you general ideas on how to create referral generating systems, I instead created this 40+ page workbook to do the work for you. As you thumb through it, you’ll read about dozens of unique and powerful ways to generate referrals – now this particular workbook isn’t consultancy-specific, so you can use these ideas to build any business you choose, from retail to B2B.



By the time you’re finished with the Referral Workbook, you’ll have been led through building your own unique referral system, as well as an implementation plan. What about other automated lead generation sources? Well there are plenty out there, both online and offline. However, I decided to build my own unique automated lead generation system, which seconds as an automated revenue source (that earns income for you independent of your own activities). There is NOTHING like this available anywhere else. This is largely because offering such an invaluable resource to you would normally kill a company’s profits – the expenses involved in running an automated lead and revenue generating resource are steep. I know, because I’m paying them! So why can I provide you this invaluable service where others can’t? I’m sure quite a bit of luck and persistence has something to do with it. I went out and got a company to sponsor 80% of the cost. This allows me to offer this service to you at a minimal monthly fee. It’s called The Managed Newsletter Option, and it is only available to Turbo Charged consultants such as yourself. NOTE: Read the insert at the end of this manual for information about how you can access this Managed Newsletter. However, let me just paint a picture for you… Let’s say that you want to keep in touch with prospects on a weekly basis – keep your name and information in front of them to subtly move them towards a free consultation and, eventually, client status. Let’s also assume the likely scenario and say that you only have about five existing prospects (if any) at this very moment. Would you take the time to write, manage, and pay for a weekly newsletter so that you could keep in consistent contact with your five prospects? Probably not. Would you go through the trouble to pay for expensive and highly questionable email lead generation services to get more leads that likely won’t be interested in your actual consulting services? Again, probably not. So let’s try on a different scenario: What if you had a weekly managed newsletter, professionally designed, written, and managed by email newsletter marketing experts? Imagine that you would never have to lift a finger for this newsletter. Your website visitors can automatically subscribe from your website, or you can send us your email list. Now let’s really use our imagination and create an ideal newsletter:



What if that managed newsletter you didn’t have to operate automatically generated leads on your behalf and added them to your mailing list? Plus, this newsletter would have referral mechanisms in place to increase your subscriber’s referral rates to further grow your email list. Imagine receiving an email every month telling you how many new subscribers you have, and how many of your current subscribers have clicked to contact you about a free consultation. But wait, it gets better! How about we really toss things up and discuss business growth best practices and marketing strategies in this newsletter that subtly inspire your subscriber to purchase a third-party product or service. I’m not talking about blatant ads, though there will be some well-placed banners. I’m talking about editorials and articles that announce free and informational whitepapers that educate your subscribers towards a natural inclination to purchase. No hard sells, and always informative, useful content. Every month, you receive a check for 50% of the gross profit generated. And you didn’t have to handle the newsletter, find subscribers, negotiate advertiser partnerships, or create the necessary processes and content to create the sale. Plus, we’re not dealing with measly internet affiliate programs. Each revenue generating offer is personally negotiated by my killer business development team to earn incredible commissions on sales and, more importantly, to generate residual income on each sale. Let me repeat: you will receive residual income month after month for a single sale. Easiest money you’ve ever made. But What About My Consultancy – Will Subscribers Become Clients? Every newsletter issue will have your personal contact information on it, as well as graphics and links inviting your subscribers to contact you for a free consultation. Articles will be written to lead subscribers to contact you as well. There will always be a call to action on your behalf. Read the Insert at the end of this manual to learn more! Now it’s time to discuss Client Management and project implementation.



CHAPTER THREE: CLIENT MANAGEMENT I’ve talked with several professionals who have tried consulting with a few clients, but who couldn’t maintain a profitable consultancy. By digging a bit into each person’s scenario, I was surprised by my findings. Yes, some of them simply didn’t take the time or effort to prospect properly or thoroughly. But the real issue seemed to be, in almost every case, the way they were managing their clients. You see, most consultants think the tough work is done when they land the client. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. To sustain a profitable consultancy, the key is in the Client Management – NOT just the prospecting. Why? Because prospecting can take quite a bit of time. All that time is a waste if you don’t manage the client relationship and project implementation properly – because the client leaves dissatisfied and you have little more than an hourly rate to show for it. This chapter isn’t just going to teach you how to handle your new client’s projects. More importantly, I’m going to teach you to handle them in a manner that results in ecstatic clients and referrals. Referrals are the cornerstone of any successful consultancy, because they are 667% more likely to close than a cold lead and they’re easier to work with because you’re already validated in their mind. You have little left to prove. Referrals save you time and energy so you can concentrate more on the clients at hand. Sure, the prospecting methods I showed you in the previous chapter make prospecting pretty simple. Plus the bonus Referral Workbook I gave you gives you simple referral systems to implement. But no matter how simple the process, it will always require your time and attention, and more importantly, a referral system can only work on a satisfied client! When you already have a couple clients, the excitement of looking for new and interesting projects and engaging in exciting talks with prospects, will undoubtedly take your focus away from your older projects. It will become a vicious circle – the need to continue prospecting heavily is a result of no client referrals…but it will also lead to no future referrals. And that can lead to exhaustion and potentially overall consultancy failure. I don’t mean to drag a rain cloud over your head, and trust me, excellent client management isn’t difficult! I just want to make sure you understand the necessity of day-to-day interaction with your client. As long as you are aware of the powerful nature of the relationship you’re building, ensuring the quality of that relationship won’t be difficult. So let’s hop to it then, shall we? As with prospecting, there are best practices for client management. Let’s start with those first. Then we’ll get into some specific elements, such as how best to plan an implementation strategy.



SECTION ONE: CLIENT MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES Upon Landing a New Client Within 30 minutes of closing a deal, be sure to get a Client Agreement out to the client. Request that they sign it and fax it back to you within one business day. It’s vital to begin a project immediately after closing a deal as any lingering here will lead to inaction and the client could easily change his or her mind. Explain that you cannot begin work on the campaign until you have the signed contract in hand. In some cases, a client will want you to sign an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) which will just protect his proprietary or sensitive information, meaning you promise to not disclose anything you discover or learn about the business while working with his company. Be sure to return this to your client promptly as well, as any delays in the beginning of a client relationship will signal to him the eventual pace. No need to get off on the wrong foot! As soon as you have the contract in hand, be sure to provide an immediate deliverable shortly thereafter. This deliverable should be agreed upon and mentioned before the agreement is signed. So, for instance, if you agreed to provide a brief intro list of possible keyword terms to get confirmation that these are the themes you should research, be sure to get this list to your client within the day. If your first deliverable is far more involved and will take more than 24 hours from receipt of the contract, then consider emailing the client a free special report or article that you think he may benefit from (it doesn’t have to be written by you. It could be an article you found on Search Engine Watch). At the least, email a brief update to let the client know progress is being made. The key here is to keep each client comfortable with the large decision just made. If they don’t hear from you for a couple days, it’ll instill doubts that will be harder to remove later on. Availability to Client Your client must be able to reach you in a reasonably speedy manner. All client inquiries, emails, and phone calls should be responded to in less than 24 hours – more preferably within the same business day. However, this does not mean that you need to be overly available—just be communicative so your client is never in doubt about what you’re doing and when he’ll receive something. I touched on this earlier in the prospecting chapter. The best practice for managing availability to the client is to provide two phone numbers and an email address. Office, Cell, and work email. You can also provide IM if needed, however I caution against this unless it will severely hinder work not to have the consistent connection. Having a client know whenever you’re online, and being able to reach you with the click of a button, can lead to a lot of erroneous and needless banter/busy work/etc.



The key is to show that you’re quick to respond but that you have strict boundaries about your time. If the client requests something, and you can’t get to it for three days, phone or email back immediately to let him know you received his request. Then explain that your plate is quite full and you can have the deliverable to him within three days. Add that if he absolutely needs it sooner, to let you know – you can’t promise anything, but you’ll see what you can do. Often, just your willingness to work around your client’s needs is enough and he’ll leave you to your work. Content Creation and Management If you are conducting an SEO campaign for a client, or there are SEO articles involved, make sure that you write or manage all content yourself. This means that you control all content creation: Either you write the content yourself, or you hire a writer yourself that you’ve trained for SEO writing. If your client wants to use content already written, or repurpose content, you can agree to editing such content for SEO – just make sure you (or a secondary consultant/outsourced writer you trust) gets the final say on any content used for SEO purposes. I say this, because if you work with your client’s writer(s), and try to train them, you run into several issues. For instance, what if the client’s writer isn’t writing content that can properly rank in the search engines? What if you have to basically re-write each article? This is a waste of your time and the client’s money. But how easy will it be to ask your client to fire his writer, or to reassign her? Therefore, it is best practice to simply assert at the start of the project that all SEO writing must be handled by you. If the client wants to use one of his existing writers, she has to work on this project under you – meaning she signs all the necessary paperwork to become your outsourced writer. You pay her directly for her services (for which you invoice your client) and you reserve the right to let her go and hire the writer of your own choosing if her work does not (or cannot) rank appropriately with the search engines. Additionally, make sure you use your own web publishing platform or software, instead of the client’s existing Content Management System or any other software/platform the client recommends. Trust me on this – go with what you already know works. Just let your client know that you need their FTP information. This will help protect the integrity of your search marketing campaign. I have found that when working with my client’s preferred web publishing platform that I have no control over the outcome of the project because I haven’t already independently validated the platform’s ability to facilitate rankings. For example, one client asked that I use Article Manager instead of my own publishing platform. After checking with the software creator’s sales team about its ability to assist



SEO rankings and optimization, they assured me it would work fine, and we implemented the project with Article Manager. Unfortunately, its taxonomy and linking structure killed our ranking ability. Regardless whose fault it is, such a challenge in your SEO strategy may deplete your client’s funds so that he can’t reinvest in your services to correct the issue. Or he may just get fed up. Even if he continues to pay you to re-optimize his site properly, you’re stuck redoing all your work. It’s hard to ever make such circumstances successful for you and your client. So prevent it at the get-go and explain that you can only use your chosen and already tested web publishing platform. Working With Your Client’s Team Though we as consultants may offer a comprehensive list of services, in many cases, a client will only need one primary service area. If a client needs SEO, it may be that he already has web designers and programmers on his team. If another client hires you to design a website, he probably has existing programmers and a copywriter. Therefore, it’s imperative that you work successfully with the client’s in-house or outsourced team. Sometimes, especially with SEO, other professionals may be leery of working with you. If you find any such resistance, don’t go on the defensive. If you sense any hesitation or discomfort on the part of another professional on the team, kindly ask her if you can phone her later to discuss the project. Say that you simply want to get acquainted and get a feel for how she sees the project and what her goals are. Showing an interest in another team member’s goals and work demonstrates that you’re on the same side, on the same team. And that you not only have the client’s interests at heart, but theirs as well. If another member of the client’s team becomes a hindrance to the project, i.e. they don’t get you the items you need in a timely fashion, or they are constantly argumentative, don’t ignore it or feel it is not your place to address it with the client. If the project doesn’t succeed, it’ll most likely be on your head. So do address it. Approach the other professional privately first. Give him a call and say something to the effect of “It’s been a pleasure working with you so far. However, the nature of SEO (or whatever work you’re doing for the project) is very time sensitive. I know you’re very busy, so I wanted to discuss with you ways we can better communicate to ensure that we provide each other the items we need in a timely manner.” If speaking with the other professional doesn’t work to your satisfaction, best practice for addressing such a sensitive issue is to phone the client and say something similar to the following: “So far, working with so-and-so has been a great experience. He’s hard working and really knows his stuff. However, I’ve had a bit of difficulty lately in getting items from him. Much of my work, as you know, is very time-sensitive. So I wanted to approach you



about discussing how to better ensure that I can get what I need from so-and-so in a more timely fashion.” If the client asks what you’d recommend, recommend a project management system or other simple process for managing deadlines, milestones, and deliverables. Sometimes all it takes is a central platform where all involved parties can easily see and update project variables. We all get busy and it may not be intentional on the other professional’s part – he may just be overly busy and what you needed slipped his mind or got lost in his cluttered inbox. Microsoft Project works to this end, as well as open source project software available in Fantastico Scripts. For my projects, I use BaseCamp’s project software. It’s affordable, easy to use, and though not very functionally rich, if you want your client to have access, sometimes not a lot of functionality is a good thing! Tracking Your Projects Speaking of Project Management, it is vital to the integrity of your business that you accurately track your time and projects. There is extremely functionally-rich, free, open-source software out there for project management. However, I personally use BaseCamp as it’s easy to use and I don’t have to worry about it serving as a hurdle with my clients (in the case that they have access in order to update/view milestones, deadlines, tasks, etc.). BaseCamp is also great for tracking your hours across all your client projects (and even your own personal projects – which is a great way to gauge the best and most profitable use of your time when not receiving hourly compensation). When you track your hours, be sure to provide as much detail as possible about your activities. Not in terms of what you did, but what it was for. For instance, if you were implementing a variety of link building activities, such as blog posting, social bookmarking, etc., you don’t have to say social bookmarking or blog posting. Simply say “link building.” However, as you get more involved with certain clients, you will have hours that are involved in emailing feedback, research, meetings, consultations, editing copy, writing a quick piece here and there, and so on. These hours add up and the client often forgets about these little details. So when you submit 50 hours for the week and in the client’s eyes, the only deliverable he got was one piece of collateral and only 25 of your other hours were SEO, he’ll want to know what you were doing the other 10+ hours of your time. So be sure to keep track of even the little stuff! Is the Client Always Right? It depends. If the client approaches you, and explains he has a problem with the campaign or your implementation of it, then he is always right – about how he feels. So even if you believe his perspective may be a bit off, never invalidate his position or argue that he is wrong or incorrect. Respond that you understand he feels this way and be careful not to go on the defensive. Be glad that your client is honest and forthright with you. And take this challenge as an opportunity to really shine.



Unless it’s a simple issue to handle, or you know exactly what you want to say, don’t respond right away. Tell your client that you understand this is an issue and you’ll get back to him within the day (or the next day) with a solution. This way, you’re not put on the spot. Then try to see the problem from your client’s point of view and find what element, action, or result is leading to his dissatisfaction or belief that something is wrong. Don’t treat this as a blame game where, if you validate his assertion that something is wrong, it automatically makes it your fault. It doesn’t. The key here isn’t to find blame. It’s to acknowledge that no matter what, the client sees a problem and that means you have a problem: how to make the client satisfied again. Regardless whether you believe he’s right in his assertion. Best practice for handling client dissatisfaction is to first validate his belief – explain to him that you see where he’s coming from and you apologize for the inconvenience. Just don’t invalidate yourself in the process. If you see where he may have misinterpreted the situation, don’t be afraid to bring this to his attention…just don’t be defensive. Always see you and the client on the same side of the line, a team trying to solve a problem together. Not as opponents trying to fling the blame to the other side of the court. Next, propose your solution. If you both agree that the real issue was client misinterpretation, explain that his misinterpretation wasn’t his fault, but rather a result of the process. Find the missing link. Perhaps you aren’t providing detailed reports on progress, or you’re providing the reports but not summarizing what the data means. For example, if you’re reporting on SEO rankings, perhaps you’re showing tons of rankings, but they’re all for rarely searched terms that are thematically related, but not your targeted words. Fixing your client’s dissatisfaction may simply be a matter of educating him to the nuances of the process: that it takes time to get the top terms, and that ranking for a lot of thematically related terms means that Google is on the path to rewarding better terms. If the issue is that you aren’t getting deliverables to your client fast enough, re-evaluate the project and its deadlines. It’s important to be honest with each client at the outset of the project. Leave yourself ample time with deadlines – don’t rush yourself on account of pleasing the client. Be reasonably speedy, but don’t promise something you can’t deliver. Also, the moment you see your time availability shifting, or a new project taking much more of your time, notify all other clients that you won’t be as readily available or quick with deliverables as you’ve been in the past. In all cases, the best way to manage clients is to communicate thoroughly and consistently. Don’t be afraid of them. Don’t Be Afraid to Disagree Your client hired you because he needed an expert in your field. So when he asks your advice, or provides ideas or thoughts for your review, don’t be afraid to tell him what you believe or recommend, regardless whether it’s in agreement with what your client has proposed.



A smart client wants to be successful, not validated. He knows that he isn’t an expert in marketing, which is why he’s hired you. So, if for instance, you’re writing a sales letter, or a piece of copy, and your client returns your draft with his edits – if the edits are taking the piece in the wrong direction, don’t be afraid to tell him and explain why you’d recommend leaving the piece the way it is (or work with him to come up with another edit that works better). In the end, if you’re at an impasse and can’t agree, always remind your client that you can test it! Recommend that you go with your own version for starters (or if he’s adamant, go with his – it doesn’t matter). Use the piece as a control – so keep it live long enough to gather enough data on its effectiveness. Then replace it with the other version and see if response/conversion/traffic increases or decreases. If you have the ability to do a split test, (where you split each version evenly among visitors at the same time), then do that. Either way, because we can always test effectiveness of copy and most marketing strategies, there should never be an issue about who is right and who is wrong. Explain to your client that we cannot pre-determine what the market will respond to. We can only take an educated guess. Then it’s up to the market. And the only way to get its vote is to test. If You Don’t Know the Answer It’s okay. Say so. Tell your client, “You know, that’s a good question. I’m not too sure.” If you have an idea, but you aren’t sure, tell them, “I have a hunch that…” Then tell them you’ll research the question or touch base with a colleague or your team to get feedback. The client should never have a problem with you not knowing the answer about a specific question or a specific aspect of your work/industry. So be honest with him. Never lie or try to brush it over because you’re afraid to admit you don’t know something. Just say you don’t. But always explain that you’ll get an answer. That’s the key. As long as your client knows you’ll get an answer to him eventually, and in a relatively short period of time, he’ll be fine.



SECTION TWO: INITIATE PROJECT & DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION PLAN Required Product Templates

Client Project Agreement - location: Templates/Client Management Marketing Intelligence Assessment - location: Templates/Client Management Website Requirements Assessment (optional) - location: Templates/Client Management SEO Project Implementation Plan - location: Best Practices Invoice - location: Templates/Client Management Expense Report - location: Templates/Client Management Various Reports - location: Templates/Reports Alright, let’s imagine that 1) you just landed a client on CraigsList or 2) you just completed the Project Award process on Guru. In either case, if you followed the previous chapter, you should have the client’s signed Client Project Agreement in hand. If you don’t, make sure to follow up with the client and explain that you cannot begin work on the project until you’ve received the document. In addition to the Agreement, the other document you will need is the Marketing Intelligence Assessment. Depending on the flow of your prospecting process, you may have already discussed this document as part of your phone call. However, in the case that you did not have the client complete this assessment yet, schedule a phone call with him immediately following receipt of your agreement. Explain that you would like to gather more information on his project, goals, and benchmarks so that you can begin designing a project implementation plan. Use the First Phone Call/Free Consult portion of the Prospecting Chapter (located in the CraigsList Section) to model this call if needed. Ask the client to complete the assessment and fax it back to you before your call. If you are doing any website design work, be sure to ask the client to complete and return the Website Requirements Assessment as well. Once you have your phone call to discuss in detail what the client wants to accomplish (sometimes, even if you had a similar call before winning the project, you may need to revisit project specifics again in another call), it’s time to design a project implementation plan to submit to your client for approval. If you’re just handling some copywriting or website design for the client, then your implementation plan will be extremely brief and simple. Such as this: Website Copy Re-Writing Project Plan

1. Review existing website copy

2. Research industry and competition’s websites

3. Write and submit first draft of website copy (delivered in pieces as completed, for immediate feedback)

4. Revise copy based on your feedback for estimated final delivery on [DATE].



However, if you are going to implement a full-fledged SEO campaign for your client, there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of considerations to take into account that will affect overall campaign success. These include the client’s current and planned marketing efforts that will need to synergistically work with your SEO plan, as well as the client’s ability to convert traffic you bring. Because whether we like to admit it or not, your real job isn’t to optimize their website for search engines – it’s to drive traffic that will be largely useless unless it converts into profitable sales or leads. Therefore, it’s vital that you engage in a systematized, best practices approach to the design and implementation of your SEO plan for your client. To help you, I’ve provided a Best Practices SEO Project Implementation Plan. Refer to the specific document for a task list you can check off for each item you complete on the project. You’ll also have detailed definitions of each task on the list and a best practices approach for implementing it. Also keep in mind that this implementation plan is referenced in the Whitepaper available for download on your Turbo Charged Website and is therefore viewable by your prospects and clients. So if you want to alter this implementation methodology at all, you’ll want to edit the Why Businesses Fear SEO whitepaper and the SEO Project Implementation Plan. For your convenience, I’ve included the plan as it appears in the whitepaper on the following page. But you can review the detailed Plan in your Best Practices folder to familiarize yourself with the process. It includes a checklist for implementation and a detailed explanation of what each task entails. I assure you, it will help you land clients when you can show them that you already have a systematized SEO strategy in place. The implementation document should give you all the language and information you need to discuss it in detail with any prospects or clients. Review the plan on the following page…

TURBO TIP: The SEO Project Implementation Plan DOES NOT teach you how to optimize a website, nor does it go into detail about how to conduct any particular SEO technique. As mentioned elsewhere, the entire Turbo Charged Consulting package is not designed to improve your actual skills – just help you monetize them better and systematize them to ensure project success. I recommend that if you are unsure that you can adequately implement any aspect of the referenced implementation plan that you work to improve your SEO skills (or outsource those tasks) before accepting any SEO projects.



IMPLEMENATION PLAN AS IT APPEARS IN THE “WHY BUSINESSES FEAR SEO” WHITEPAPER

Marketing Assessment - Set goals - Set benchmarks - Set metrics for measurement - Understand how SEO will impact other

current marketing campaigns - Discuss which SEO strategies you’ll

likely pursue (may change after following assessments)

Website Assessment

- Know current statistics (traffic, conversions, visitor behavior)

- Know programming language(s) used and how they impact rankings

- Review other site elements with SEO professional to be sure they can rank your site (dynamic sites, retail shopping sites, etc.)

- Set overall objectives and purpose of your website. Determine whether you want it to be highly informational, interactive, retail, etc. as the SEO techniques used will depend on, and affect, these characteristics.

Team Building

- Have all applicable team members meet to go over objectives for your SEO campaign and make sure that everyone’s needs and expectations are addressed.

- Designate a project leader and, if each team consists of three or more people, designate team leaders.

- Make sure everyone understands that in order for SEO to be effective, the SEO professional will need as much access as possible to your website. If he must go through a programmer or designer for every little tweak, this will severely cripple effectiveness.

Keyword Assessment

- Discuss which keywords you’d like to target

- Review and approve SEO professional’s keyword list (developed by researching ROI potential of your chosen keywords and thematically related terms)

Website Review - Review website content, on-site

elements, existing links and linking structure

- Develop site optimization task list for optimizing all on-site elements for target keywords

Settle on Additional SEO Strategies

- Review all strategies your SEO professional provides

- Discuss each strategy and how it will affect your ancillary goals, which may be branding, reputation, producing industry buzz or social word-of-mouth, etc.

- Make sure your SEO professional and the rest of the project team understands exactly what strategies will be used (review our illegal methods with your professional to make sure none of them are being used and that you have a solid understanding of what’s being done)

Reporting Expectations

- Find out ahead of time what reports and detailed data your SEO professional plans to provide

- Discuss any additional data your company would like to receive

- Make sure your project team has discussed how to utilize this report data to produce actionable information

Begin On-Site Optimization and Additional SEO

- As you begin implementation, set review dates and project milestones for project team meetings to gauge progress and realign future tasks (if necessary)



Whether you use the above implementation plan, or design your own (as in the case with services other than SEO), draft it up in an easy-to-understand document where each step of the plan is clearly defined, and provide to your client for approval. Once approved, you can begin your work. Thankfully, outlining the entire project now will save you from wondering what to do next later. You’ll also find it speeds up the process as you will rarely have lag time. I find this particularly helpful when I take a leave of absence from a project (such as a vacation or due to another client’s needs). Instead of having to review previous work and refresh my memory, I can just look at my implementation plan and see all completed tasks so far (be sure to keep track of completed tasks!). I don’t have to brainstorm how to proceed next with the project as future tasks are also already outlined. A WORD ABOUT INVOICING AND EXPENSING Invoicing and expensing are fairly self-explanatory. However, be sure to invoice promptly on the 1st and 15th of every month, or however you choose to structure your invoicing (for example, if you invoice a pre-determined amount when a certain milestone is reached). If working with a client through Guru.com, you will use Guru’s invoicing process. By default, your Invoice Template states that all payments should be received within 10 business days. You can reduce this timeframe if you choose, however I wouldn’t recommend increasing it. You want to ensure your clients pay you promptly and consistently. In the event you have trouble receiving payment from a client, suspend all work until payment is received, and notify your client kindly of your need to do so. The only thing I need to mention about expensing is that sometimes your clients may need you to purchase something on their behalf and reimburse you. This is common practice, and perfectly alright, as long as you keep track of your expenses and fill out an Expense Report immediately following the purchase. You can send the Expense Report immediately following purchase, or you can submit it with your invoice. I would recommend you do not make purchases on behalf of your client until you have established a working relationship and he has a history of paying you on time and without hassle. OTHER REPORTS Particularly if you’re providing SEO services, you’ll be responsible for providing your client ranking reports, linking reports, and perhaps traffic reports. Many of these are provided in a Reports folder in your Templates area. You and your client can discuss how he’d like to receive reports. For my clients, I recommend sending ranking and linking reports every two weeks with my invoice, and a website traffic report and analysis monthly.



SECTION THREE: MANAGE CLIENT EXPECTATIONS AND ISSUES Required Product Templates

Client Lifecycle Modules (optional) - explained in Insert at end of Manual You should fare just fine by following the best practices outlined at the beginning of this chapter. However, I thought it might be helpful to outline some specific techniques for managing your clients’ expectations and handling any issues that arise. Technique 1. Under-Promise & Over-Deliver We hear this phrase a lot. In some ways, it’s common sense. However consultants often feel pressure, especially during the prospecting process, to get the client excited and to assure the client that we can handle the project better than anyone else. Sometimes the client will also ask us to agree to a project deadline or milestone before awarding the project to us. This can pose problems because oftentimes we don’t have enough project information to adequately say whether we can reach the suggested deadline. For these reasons, I recommend that you do one of two things:

1) Make your best estimate for a proper deadline or milestone, and then push it out at least 7 to 10 days. If it’s a major project that requires approvals, deliverables, or input from third parties, such as employees of the client’s company or other service providers, I would recommend adding an additional 30 days to your estimate.

This will give you a nice buffer for any unexpected developments (and there always seem to be unexpected developments!). And of course, if you can beat the deadline or milestone, it just makes you look better.

2) Go ahead and give your best estimate, but be very clear with the client that this is an educated guess and nothing more. You will need to get better acquainted with project details and you will provide revised estimates and milestones when you submit your Project Implementation Plan.

Also advise your client that if any others are involved in the project who will need to approve, deliver, or provide feedback on any project elements, whether the project meets projected milestones and deadlines will depend on them as well as you, and therefore you cannot guarantee anything. I’ve often used a blend of the above two tactics. I give myself some buffer room and I advise my client that such estimates are a best guess only.



Technique 2. Preempt Client Concerns There are often specific moments during certain projects where clients start to get an itch. You can relate this to the “7 Year Itch” often referred to in relationships. It’s when the honeymoon wears off and someone starts itching for a change – or they start having serious doubts about the current arrangement. Unfortunately, this occurs in professional client/consultant relationships as well. Particularly with long-term projects that have a high entry cost and a delayed return on investment. Search Engine Optimization is just such a project. To help you preempt your client’s concerns, doubts, and any serious “itches,” let’s look at the areas where clients tend to get concerned. For sake of focus, we’ll look specifically at an SEO scenario. However, you can discern similar itch points for other long-term projects such as large programming or web engineering projects. Likely Client Concerns During SEO Project Implementation

A. Where are the Rankings? Time Frame: Usually hits around the 30 or 45-day mark

TURBO TIP: Oftentimes, a prospect or client wants you to guarantee a date by which they’ll see SEO rankings. Or they want you to guarantee a certain number of rankings by a certain date. Never agree to either. Your Turbo Charged Website, Whitepaper, and Special Reports touch on this for your visitors, but just in case someone still asks you, make sure you do not make such guarantees. They are impossible to ensure and put you at an instant disadvantage. Therefore, any and all milestones and deadlines should be in regard to deliverables, and not results. If the client is uncomfortable with that, you can guarantee that if he is unsatisfied with your work or the project, and you deem his reaction appropriate, you will work at a pre-determined reduced rate for a pre-determined amount of time, or until a specific milestone is reached (which may be performance-based, such as X number of unique visitors to the website.) This guarantee is already mentioned in your website under How We Work.



Strangely, though we explain that good term placement won’t usually occur for roughly 90 days, it seems that right around the 30 or 45-day mark, clients still seem to get anxious. This is especially prevalent in those projects where the website needs to be designed or re-designed before SEO can commence. For instance, I had one client whose site design and programming took four months to complete. By the time I was able to begin my optimization work, the client had already sunk in over $20,000 and his investors were on edge. Everyone wanted to see results. But I had barely gotten started. Around the 45-day mark, my client confessed that he was disappointed in the project’s results so far. He expected to see traffic by now and to begin recouping the massive dollars he’d invested to date. However, I was only half-way into my promotion! I still needed another 45 days to show profitable results. But the damage was already done. In his mind, the campaign was a disaster. Now, had I thought ahead, I would have preempted his concern seeing that the entire project had already been operational for four months before I even began optimization. He was obviously already an aggravated client – and though his aggravation had nothing to do with me, because I was the one responsible for making the money (driving the traffic), I received the brunt of his frustration. Now I’ve made it a point to do the following right around the 30-day mark to protect against such unnecessary client dissatisfaction in the future: Send an Educational Notice As explained in the insert at the end of this Manual, you can access this and several other Client Lifecycle Management Modules that you can send to your clients at crucial points in your campaign, to educate them and alleviate any fears. However, should you wish to create your own notice, simply create an email or a brief special report describing where the ranking process is around the 30-day mark. For instance, “Google should have indexed most of your website pages and you should begin seeing a lot of thematically related keyword terms getting ranked – they’re just not the high-volume terms you’re targeting…” By explaining before the end of your first month what they can expect, they won’t have time to develop questions and doubts about the campaign. You’ve already educated them to the process behind the scenes and why it signifies success down the road.

B. Why Don’t Any Backlinks Show Up in Google? Time Frame: Also usually hits around the 30-day mark Some clients will simply leave you alone to do your job. However, you may get a client who constantly searches his keyword terms in Google or other search engines, or he’s using tools to find how many backlinks are currently coming into his site.



Unfortunately, Google rarely shows many of the links they’ve indexed for any particular website – especially new sites, it appears. So although you may be submitting reports enumerating countless links you’ve acquired, the client can’t validate your claims through independent research, which can lead to some uncomfortable conversations. So I recommend sending out an informational email or special report/one-sheet around 20 days after you’ve launched your SEO campaign (again, this is available as a Client Lifecycle Management module for Managed Newsletter subscribers): Describe Google’s Policy on Showing Backlinks Clients like to be educated – especially if it’s quick and fun. So don’t go into a lengthy explanation. For instance, our lifecycle modules are flash-based quizzes that ask a curious question of the client, such as “If you were Google, what would be your most valuable secret?” The answer would be its proprietary algorithms – such as how they rank websites according to their backlinks. Now you can describe why Google won’t show many backlinks for any particular website. Because you’re educating the client and wrapping it up in a fun and engaging process, you’re not making excuses for lack of results, which is what the client would assume if you explained these facts after he shared his frustrations with the discrepancy between your linking reports and his research on Google.

C. Why Isn’t This Traffic Converting Into Sales? Time Frame: Usually around 90 days in, or when traffic really starts to pick up You’d think that getting the traffic flowing would be a good thing, right! Well not if sales aren’t coming in. Though the client hired you to optimize his site, somehow it may become your fault if the website isn’t converting that traffic into sales. This can be detrimental to your relationship if you don’t handle the challenge appropriately. However, it can be an incredible benefit to you and the chance to upsell the client to an additional service and be the hero. The moment you see traffic beginning to flow, whether you see sales coming in or not, be sure to congratulate your client and offer to guarantee that this great traffic not only converts into sales, but that its conversions beat even his best previous conversions by at least 30%. A flash module containing this offer is available and explained at the end of this manual. Recommend Conversion Optimization Don’t wait until the client’s had time to stress over the lack of sales and begins searching for the one to blame (I’m not saying they all do this, but many clients honestly believe it’s the quality of the traffic that’s to blame – and in some cases it might be).



Preempt any client fears about traffic conversions by sending a congratulatory note the moment you see traffic spike towards the client’s expectations. Add to that note that you know the key now is to ensure optimal conversions of this traffic into sales. You’re confident that their site will do so beautifully, but in the case they want to analyze site effectiveness and increase conversions dramatically (30%-80%), you’d be happy to help.

We’re almost done covering Client Management. The last area we’ll want to discuss is working with the client’s employees or other service providers or vendors who have been assigned to the project as well.



SECTION FOUR: WORKING WITH EMPLOYEES & OTHER VENDORS Required Product Templates

NONE This section teaches you how to best work with the client’s employees and any other consultants or vendors also working on the project. This does NOT include any secondary consultants or third-party service providers you enlist on behalf of the client. Those relationships will be discussed in the next chapter: Outsourcing. This section deals with the specific and unique dynamic at play when you are a single outsourced consultant among employees, or you are one of many outsourced consultants or vendors (both of which can lead to a sense of threat or competition). Strangely, this process isn’t so different from prospecting. That’s because both are about building rapport and trust. In fact, this reminds me of my first sales job in college – I was hired to sell Alumni packages to previous graduates of my university. After explaining the job thoroughly to me, the hiring manager said, “Alright, I have one final question for you before we decide whether to hire you. “What is the singular greatest reason you think someone would want to purchase an Alumni package?” Several answers whisked through my brain: it was a tax write off, they got access to special alumni-only vacations and deals, they would experience an emotional reward for helping their alma mater… But almost on a whim, I decided that none of these would be the singular reason most people would agree to buy the package. “I am,” I answered. “I’m not just selling the package, I’m selling my self – building a rapport with them.” Honestly, to this day, I don’t know how my 17-year old self knew that answer. Apparently, neither did the hiring manager. She was shocked. “You are the first and only person, in the 5 years that I’ve worked here, who has answered that question correctly.” I tell you this story because the key to winning clients and successful client management is to know that what you’re really selling is yourself. Rapport is everything. This is especially true when working with the client’s other talent, whether in-house employees or other outsourced professionals. I’ve heard horrific stories of projects



devastated by in-house politics and blame games. So it’s important to immediately prevent any such issues by building relationships with every team member involved on your project. Step 1. Begin at the Beginning As you may have noticed in the SEO Implementation Plan covered earlier in this chapter, the very first step, after initial assessment conversations, is Team Building. You want to get acquainted with all involved team members as soon as is appropriate and possible. One way to do this is to request everyone’s contact information from your client so you can email each team member. Or you can request that you each get together for a conference call or meeting. Step 2. Ask Each Person What He Wants Whether you address each team member privately through phone or email, or you host a collective meeting, make sure that the first thing you address is each person’s goals and objectives for the project. Get a feel for each department’s needs. You’ll discover that for many of the team members, your deliverable (such as traffic or web copy) isn’t what is so important. They’re interested in how their department will be represented and whether this project will hinder their own projects or plans. For instance, if you’re conducting an SEO campaign, the advertising or marketing department may want to be closely involved to ensure company messaging and branding are upheld and reinforced. The IT department may be concerned about their already swamped staff and whether you’ll lean heavily on them for website changes, code optimization, and other on-page elements. At the same time, the IT department may also be concerned about security and allowing you to make such changes yourself. Then you have the finance department or investors who are solely concerned with budget matters and whose primary interest is in getting the most work accomplished for the least cost – which will likely lead them to assign certain tasks to the IT department that is on salary, than to you because you’re paid hourly. As you can see, these are all priorities that can quickly conflict and prevent the project from moving forward properly. Because you’re right in the middle of it, you don’t want internal politics or priorities to jeopardize a project you will be largely responsible for (and blamed for if it doesn’t succeed). So sit with each person or department, and discover how they view this project, what their concerns are, and what they’d like to see accomplished. Echo back to them what you believe you’re hearing to ensure you’re on the same page. Make sure you gather the entire team at some point to reiterate each department or individual’s concerns and goals, and to make sure the entire team is on the same page and united towards the same priorities.



Step 3. Designate a Project Leader If the project is SEO and you’re the SEO professional, chances are the project leader will be you. However, never assume. The client may want his outsourced copywriter that he’s worked with for over a year to manage the project. Or the VP of Marketing may designate her top employee. Just make sure to bring up the subject and recommend that the team designate a project leader who is copied on all project-related correspondence and who designates tasks and manages resources. In the case that you are project leader, and you’re working with a larger company, don’t freak out if you don’t have any project management experience! As long as you have a detailed implementation plan and you have discussed every team member’s responsibilities, managing the process should occur naturally. Just request that you’re copied on all correspondence so you can keep an eye on everything. In fact, even if you aren’t project leader, you may want to request this. For example, let’s say that the marketing department is issuing a series of press releases. You’ll want to review the releases and optimize them for targeted keywords. The marketing department likely wouldn’t have thought to ask you to do this on their own – so you’ll want to be vigilant and proactive to assist the project in any way you can. More importantly, you want to protect against anyone inadvertently doing something that could hurt the campaign, such as uploading too much new content to the website too quickly. Step 4. Never Blame Another Team Member If something goes wrong, or didn’t get delivered on time, even if you know another team member is at fault, never outright blame them or inform the client that it’s the other person’s fault. This can lead to bad blood between you and other team members, and if they all have pre-established relationships, they could collectively have it in for you and try to get you kicked off the project. (These are extreme circumstances, but I mention them all so we can be about the business of preventing them. But don’t worry – not everyone is out to get you!) The best way I’ve found to handle these sensitive situations is like this: Let’s say my client calls me, very perplexed and angry, and says, “Did you make a change to the website today? The entire thing is down and we’ve lost $1000 in PPC click-throughs that have been completely lost” Now, at first, you may be relieved that it is not your fault – because you remember the client’s in-house copywriter was making changes to the website this morning.



However, this puts you in a precarious situation. If you blurt out that it was the copywriter’s fault, the client will storm off to the copywriter and tell her that you informed him she brought the website down. So, instead, I recommend saying something like this: “No, I haven’t logged onto your server today. I know a couple of us have been making changes. Let me look into this for you and see what I can find. Are your programmers re-launching the website, or would you like me to?” See, this way, you’re on his side, helping him solve the problem. But you aren’t placing blame, even unintentionally. Now, when you get off the phone, you can call the copywriter and let her know what happened. Now it’s up to her to discuss the mistake with her boss. You needn’t even get involved. Step 4. Be Friendly I’ve touched on a lot of worst-case scenarios here, but in my experience, very few projects ever threatened to get ugly, even before I learned how to better manage team member relationships. So don’t be too concerned about a client’s in-house employees disliking you, or about another service provider getting competitive. It happens, so you want to take measures to prevent these debilitating issues, however don’t let them frighten you. I’ve developed numerous friendships with other consultants and employees I’ve met through client projects. Plus I’ve hired a few of them myself, or brought them onto another project. I’ve also received referrals from several. So remember to see other team members as a potential garden for budding new friendships and professional relationships. And that about wraps it up! Now your mind should be swimming with all the many ways to ensure your client project is an enormous success. Give it some time to sink in, and refer back to this chapter as often as you like. You’ll find that with client management, and every other aspect of consulting, you’ll learn best by simply doing. Don’t let all this information paralyze you into inaction. Just jump in and don’t worry about whether you’ll flounder a bit at first.



Surprisingly, clients rarely notice when you make a mistake (unless it’s directly related to your tasks on the project). So if you do some steps in the wrong order, or you accidentally do something I warn against, don’t worry about it. Take it as a learning experience and move on. Clients almost always become friends. They know how to forgive and forget as long as your heart’s in it and your skills are where you said they’d be. So, above all, have fun! And when you’re ready, or when it’s required, move on to the next chapter: Outsourcing.

TURBO STEPS QUICK REVIEW: CLIENT MANAGEMENT

7. Get Signed Client Agreement 8. Conduct In-Depth Project Assessment and Planning Call 9. Get Acquainted with Client’s Project Team, Review Goals and Concerns 10. Design Detailed Project Implementation Plan 11. Obtain Client Approval of Project Plan 12. Implement



CHAPTER FOUR: OUTSOURCING What is outsourcing or sub-contracting, and why would you want to do this in your consultancy? Outsourcing means that you contract another service vendor or individual to handle a particular portion of your project. This is useful for a couple reasons:

1) Your project is simply too large for one person to handle, i.e. it requires more than 40 hours a week in time commitment, or more hours than you’d like to work

2) Your project requires secondary skill sets you don’t feel you can provide

3) Your project requires skill sets you may possess, but would rather not provide

4) You want to increase your profit margin by outsourcing particular aspects of your project at a slightly reduced fee (for instance, you could charge $30 per article for a copywriting or SEO project, and outsource the work for $15 per article. You would earn your share for winning the project, managing the writer, and editing the article for effectiveness and quality)

We will discuss how to hire, train, and manage outsourced talent for the above benefits. However, do realize that outsourcing adds an entirely new element to consulting and can complicate an otherwise straightforward process. Outsourcing involves managing human resources or vendor relationships, and though you’re placing specific project tasks into other people’s hands, the responsibility is still in your hands. Therefore, if someone else messes up, doesn’t finish on deadline, etc., you’re still responsible for the success or failure of the project. In addition, you have to manage your cash flow – for instance, do you pay your sub-contractors before your client pays you? You can also find yourself stuck in a perpetual training mode. I find this particularly prevalent when hiring writers for SEO content development. Turnover is high, quality is low, and the stress level can skyrocket. Sound daunting? It could be. But we’re here to make sure we minimize and hopefully prevent the above issues. Because, the truth is, outsourcing can be a wonderful addition to your consultancy and, if handled appropriately, will increase your profit margins, decrease your personal time investment, and enrich your client’s experience as you’ll be a central access point to a rich array of services. So, to ensure that you are able to outsource successfully and profitably, this chapter will discuss outsourcing best practices and an overall management methodology for managing outsourced or sub-contracted talent. Let’s start with some best practice approaches to outsourcing.



SECTION ONE: OUTSOURCING BEST PRACTICES Acknowledge You Have a Team When outsourcing, it’s always a good idea to acknowledge to your client that you have a team that you work with. That way, you can put your client in direct contact with your sub-contractor (when appropriate) so you aren’t stuck playing middle man when not required. Even if you don’t know precisely who you’ll place on the project, you can say you have a team of consultants you work with, or that you have a team of writers/programmers/etc. that you tend to work with, and you just have to see who’s available. In the case of outsourced talent such as writers or additional services as discussed in the Additional Service Providers area, I recommend that you do not necessarily put them in contact with your client (unless required by the service provider, such as in a vendor relationship). This is to prevent your writers from directly approaching your clients for additional work (thereby becoming your competitor). In the case of additional service providers, it allows you to work a fair profit margin into your pricing. Sign Agreements with All Outsourced Talent Make sure you have developed agreements outlining your guidelines for outsourcing relationships. This is more than just a W-9 contractor agreement. You’ll want to outline, in detail, how you operate with your sub-contractors, how and when payments are made, whether you will only make payments after receiving client payments, or whether you will provide bi-weekly or monthly payments regardless (often required when handling long-term resources who work on multiple projects). You’ll need to explain your expectations of your sub-contractors, the level of productivity and quality you require, as well as availability requirements. Lastly, be sure to outline some form of confidentiality or non-compete agreement so that your sub-contractors agree to never approach your clients directly, outside of their relationship with you, for additional work. I provide an example of such an agreement for outsourced writers. As you will see, it’s a lengthy agreement handling the above issues and other content-specific guidelines and laws, such as who retains copyright over developed material, whether the writer is entitled to future payments or royalties in relation to usage of developed works, etc. (As already discussed, this and all agreements contained in Turbo Charged Consulting are for example purposes only and you should have your lawyer review or re-write them). To protect yourself from future lawsuits, stress, and misunderstandings, be sure to develop agreements with your lawyer for each type of outsourced talent you choose to work with. In many cases, a general sub-contractor agreement should suffice, but in cases where specific rights are in question, such as with design or written works, make sure to address all possible issues.



Differentiate Between Different Resources When outsourcing, you’ll work with roughly three different types of resources. Understanding which category a resource fits into will help you figure out how to manage that particular resource.

1) Secondary Consultant: The first category is perhaps the easiest to work with. A secondary consultant is simply another professional whom you hire to handle a particular aspect of your project. You can choose to pay your secondary consultant directly, or you can connect her with your client and let them negotiate her pay (wherein the client pays her directly).

A secondary consultant is simple to work with because she is already an expert in her field and as your consultancy grows, chances are you’ll continue to work with the same secondaries, building solid relationships and processes. Other than ensuring you’re both on the same page about a project, you likely won’t have to train your secondary consultant nor will you have to micromanage her performance (however you may wish to see all deliverables before passing them onto your client).

2) Third-Party Vendor: This second category usually includes any company or service provider you outsource to. For instance, many of our additional service offerings are through third party vendors.

Unlike a secondary consultant, third-party vendors are companies that typically have their own infrastructure and processes they adhere to. For instance, they may have a particular setup process they have to go through with your client, and cost negotiations may need to be discussed directly between them and your client. With a secondary consultant, you can usually choose to negotiate all pricing yourself, on behalf of your secondary consultant, and then pay your consultant yourself – this may not be possible with a third-party vendor. Instead, you’ll probably work on a pre-negotiated affiliate, reseller, or referral basis.

However, as previously mentioned, with our Additional Service Offerings, you CAN negotiate pricing yourself, and so in these unique cases, you can dramatically increase your profits without increasing your time commitment.

3) Mass Talent Resources: This last category refers to traditionally low-cost, high-

turnover resources such as many article writers, simple script programmers, etc. Though such individuals are the least expensive, they are often the toughest to manage and the most time consuming. However, if you can manage such resources appropriately, you can significantly increase your profit margins by keeping your resource costs low while still charging a fair project fee. Because SEO content writing is the most necessary and time consuming element to SEO, I have provided an entire set of outsourcing templates to facilitate hiring, training, and managing SEO content writers. However, be forewarned that in my, and many others’ experience, unless you’re willing to pay top dollar, it’s very difficult to find good writers who will consistently produce rank-able content that follows SEO guidelines, no matter how well you present them! However, I provide a process that has successfully produced some great writers and, at the least, simplified the hiring, training, and management process.



SECTION TWO: OUTSOURCING TO SECONDARY CONSULTANTS Required Product Templates

Secondary Consultant Project Agreement - location: Templates/Outsourcing W-9 Form - location: Templates/Outsourcing Though we’ll cover outsourcing to some particular third-party service providers in the Additional Service Offerings section of Turbo Charged Consulting, I wanted to cover the nuances of the other two types of resource outsourcing: secondary consultants and mass talent resources. In this section, we’ll cover secondary consultants, which will be straightforward and brief. Then we’ll discuss how to hire, train, and manage mass talent resources in the following section. Step 1. Profile Exact Tasks/Project Elements for Secondary Consultant(s) Before you attempt to assign a secondary consultant to your project, detail precisely what tasks you’ll want your secondary consultant(s) to perform. For instance, do you want someone to handle an entire aspect of the project, such as the copywriting portion of a web development project? Or do you just want your secondary to manage a sub-set of SEO tasks, such as social bookmarking or article promotion? Make sure you’re clear on what you’d like your secondary to handle. Step 2. Decide Payment & Work Flow Depending on the client, the project, and other factors, you may not manage every secondary consultant the same way. Therefore, just be clear on how you will manage the payment flow and work flow for this particular secondary (or group of secondaries) for this particular project. For instance, you can choose from the following payment flow options:

A. Your client pays your secondary consultant directly. This minimizes your need to manage the secondary consultant and protects you from cash flow issues associated with paying a secondary for services your client may or may not have paid you for yet. However, I recommend you NOT choose this option if you need to retain managerial rights over your secondary. For instance, if your secondary’s participation can severely impact your own role in the project, you’ll want to likely pay her directly so you have the right to train, manage, or fire her in the instance that her work is sub-par.

B. You pay your secondary directly as a sub-contractor. This may increase your project management work load slightly, however there are many benefits to this arrangement, provided you can handle the cash flow requirements.

First of all, you retain managerial control over the entire portion of the project you’ve accepted responsibility for (as mentioned earlier, outsourcing talent doesn’t mean outsourcing the responsibility for project success!). This means that you can manage



deliverables (review them before they are passed on to the client), address work quality issues or productivity issues, and, if required, replace your secondary consultant with a more capable individual. Though these may seem like responsibilities you’d rather not have, when it comes to keeping your client’s project successful and profitable, you will be thankful you have the capability and right to address any issues that arise with your secondary. When paying your secondary directly, you will either agree to pay at set intervals, such as bi-monthly, or upon certain project deliverables. Or you’ll agree to pay only after receipt of payment from your client.

As for determining work flow, you’ll want to decide how to manage your secondary:

A. Request that all project deliverables, such as reports, keyword lists, content, and

designs, be sent to you first for review. I always do this with new secondary consultants or at the outset of a new project. That way I can monitor performance and quality until I feel comfortable. Then I simply let my secondary send deliverables straight to the client.

B. Request that you be copied on all correspondence between your client and

secondary. This way, you can monitor progress and performance without requiring deliverables be sent to you first.

C. Introduce your secondary to your client and allow your client to manage the

secondary (wherein she basically becomes another direct consultant and no longer your responsibility – unless you’re the one paying her). In this case, you relinquish all control of this consultant and in essence, she is no longer your secondary, but rather just a referred resource.

Step 3. Select Your Secondary Consultant(s) You may already have a particular professional in mind. Or perhaps you need to put a request out on CraigsList, Rentacorder.com, eLance.com, Guru.com, or any other of the many websites out there. However, in all cases, explain the project details, and the details of your proposed arrangement. Include:

How much you plan to pay (unless they must negotiate pay directly with the client How you’d like your relationship structured (work flow options discussed above) Who will pay the secondary—you or your client Any additional guidelines you have, such as if they develop content, designs, etc.,

who retains ownership of them. If you do not already know your secondary consultant personally, be sure to get a resume, clips, references, etc. You will be responsible for the quality of their work, so keep that in mind when selecting someone. If you find that quality consultants cost more than your client is willing to pay, or more than your project fee can accommodate, bring this up to your client. Explain that you have a



particular consultant you’re interested in, who does great work, but he or she will not work for less than X. Explain that you can get a consultant at a lesser fee, but the quality of work will also be reduced. This may be fine in the eyes of your client – so let him choose how he’d like you to proceed. Step 5. Introduce Your Secondary to the Client Though not required, you may want to introduce your client to the potential secondary consultant before signing her onto the project. This way, you get your client’s blessing and agreement. Step 6. Sign All Necessary Documents This step will usually coincide with signing client project agreements with your client. You’ll want to make sure that you have W-9 Forms signed for every secondary you’re paying directly (provided they are a US Citizen). You’ll also want to have a Secondary Consultant Project Agreement signed. Be sure to enumerate any specific details regarding the project, your relationship structure with your secondary, and each party’s commitments and responsibilities to the project. Step 7. Begin Project Work And now you simply dive into the project! You’ll find working with a secondary consultant can be a lot of fun and very enriching. Often, you’ll work with the same secondary on multiple projects, which will improve your co-performance, not to mention she will likely bring projects to you as well! If and when you choose to employ mass talent resources, you can use many of the above steps and methodologies. However, read through the next section for some specific tactics, primarily for hiring, training, and managing writers.

TURBO TIP: The reason you issue a W-9 form to all outsourced US professionals is that you will need to expense their payments at the end of the year (in the event that you pay them yourself – if your client pays them directly, you need not issue a W-9). You will also need to declare their income to the government by February 1st of the following year unless their total earnings from you are below $600. Google “10-99 Form” for services to help you do this. You will be able to write off all consultant payments on your taxes.



SECTION THREE: HIRING, TRAINING, AND MANAGING MASS TALENT Required Product Templates

W-9 Form - location: Templates/Outsourcing Freelance Writer Contract Agreement - location: Templates/Outsourcing Secondary Consultant Project Agreement - location: Templates/Outsourcing Freelance Writer Profile Questionnaire - location: Templates/Outsourcing SEO Article Writing Guidelines - location: Templates/Outsourcing This section is primarily for those of us who offer Search Engine Optimization and don’t want to write all the content ourselves. For this reason, I will concentrate on the mass talent category: freelance writers. However, you can modify this process to work with any mass talent resource. What makes a resource “mass talent” versus a secondary consultant? I define “mass talent” as any resource that is low-cost. This is because low-cost often translates into a reduced quality of work and the likelihood that your resource is a freelancer and not a consultant. What’s the difference? A freelancer may accept outsourced projects, however she does not typically manage the project – i.e. she is paid to only deliver content or design, or some other deliverable. A consultant is usually paid to also manage a project and must possess strategic skills allowing her to successfully brainstorm, design, implement, and optimize strategies and processes – whether for marketing, web development, or something else. Whereas a secondary consultant can largely manage herself and produce quality work without much micromanagement from you, a mass talent resource will often require your consistent training, review, management, and advice. I’ll be honest, as far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on whether mass talent resources are worth it to an individual consultant such as you or me. I personally found hiring and managing them tedious and without real benefit. Of course, success entirely depends on the quality of the individuals you can find and the process you use to manage them. I can provide you with such a process. After I refined and settled on the following processes, I was able to train and retain a couple excellent writers. Before I discuss these processes, however, I want to mention one quick thing: pricing. When managing freelance writers, you’re going to be expending A LOT of time and effort upfront on managing and training them, not to mention editing their work. Therefore, I recommend you charge your client at least double what you pay your writers. Trust me, even if you tripled your cost, you’ll more than earn your share.



THE HIRING PROCESS The hiring process is pretty straight forward. Step 1. Post Writer Request Post your job request on CraigsList, Rentacoder.com, or the website of your choice. Feel free to be brief. Just make sure you explain that a knowledge and experience with search engines and basic SEO is required or “useful.” You may not be able to require SEO knowledge as that will inflate your costs. If you want article writers at $7 to $10 a pop, you’ll have to take writers with little to no SEO experience and train them. If you can accommodate a higher fee, then you can get writers requiring little training and editing. For instance, I found two excellent SEO writers by offering $15 per article on CraigsList. Step 2. Request a Writing Sample Be sure to ask for a writing sample when you post your writer request. Ask for a sample written for the web if possible (obviously an SEO article if they’ve written one before). If you have a particular project you need this writer for, ask for a sample related to your market. Step 3. Request an Edit of a Poorly Written SEO Article Refine your list of prospects after you receive a writing sample. Then email your final prospects and let them know that they have passed to the final round of the selection process. Send each a poorly written SEO article that you want them to edit. Give them a brief set of SEO rules to edit by. Then ask each to edit the article with those rules in mind. This will help you determine who has a good grasp of SEO guidelines, plus it will help ingrain these rules in the writer’s mind, which I find is far more effective than simply handing over the SEO Article Writing Guidelines and hoping they catch on. Step 4. Select the Writer(s) You Want to Work With If more than one writer shows promise, go ahead and hire them both, if you have enough work for them. Otherwise, take the more capable or more affordable (depending on your priorities), and explain to the other that you will keep her on file for future work as you are constantly hiring freelance writers for SEO projects. Step 5. Officially Hire Writer(s) & Complete Paperwork Each writer should fill out the following documents for you: W-9 Form: This is so you can issue a 10-99 at the end of the year, as discussed earlier. This will not apply if your outsourced talent is outside the US. Freelance Writer Contract Agreement: This is a lengthy contract delineating all copyright, tax, and royalty issues associated with hiring a content creator. As with all contracts and agreements provided in this package, this document is for example purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Have your lawyer review it or develop one for you. For most mass talent resources, you will not need them to sign a separate project agreement, as they will likely work on several projects and only in this single article-writing



capacity. However, if you plan to have a resource more closely involved with a particular project, wherein they communicate directly with your client, then have them sign the Secondary Consultant Project Agreement as well. THE TRAINING PROCESS Ah the training – this part is perhaps the easiest portion, however that is only because there is little else you can do besides offer the training material and hope the writer applies it! However, many consultants wonder if they can adequately train and manage an SEO writer if they themselves are not good copywriters. My response is that if you have a solid grasp of what a good SEO article is, and what it needs to rank well, you can definitely train and manage writers. However, if this isn’t your strength, I recommend outsourcing to a secondary consultant who is an expert in this area. Allow her to either write the content herself, or manage mass talent on your behalf. Step 1. Fill Out Freelance Writer Profile Once all hiring documentation is received, ask that your writer fill out the profile questionnaire. This document should be kept with the writer’s documentation (I create a folder on my computer and in my filing cabinet for each writer and keep this and all signed agreements there). In the case you have future projects in need of writers, this questionnaire should provide you the necessary information to decide if this particular writer will be right for that project. For instance, it asks them what industries they have extensive knowledge in, what other marketing capabilities or skills they have (in the case that they could serve as a secondary consultant and provide additional services), what type of content they are passionate about writing, and any content they do not feel comfortable writing, such as adult content. Step 2. Provide SEO Article Writing Guidelines Give this document to your new writer and ask her to review it in depth. Though not provided here, I recommend developing an easy quiz to administer to your writer after reviewing these guidelines. Ask questions like “What must the first sentence of every article include?” and perhaps give multiple variations of headlines, sub-headlines, and other vital elements of an article and ask her to select the appropriate one and explain why it is the correct answer. Yes, it seems like a lot of work up front, but unfortunately I’ve found that not doing so results in writers who seemingly refuse to actually learn the guidelines set forth and apply them! I’ve hired and worked with over a dozen writers and not a single one consistently sent me articles with even one essential SEO element properly written until I started quizzing them ahead of time and testing them with the editing exercise described earlier. THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS Now we’ll find out if our writers will perform! Here’s some tips to increase the likelihood that you’ll get the quality content you’re looking for. Coupled with the above processes, you’ll fare



far better than I initially did with my own writers – a perfect example of where you’ll profit from my mistakes and lessons learned! Step 1. Track Writer Activity The most essential component to successfully managing mass talent is to track writer activity and facilitate assignment and delivery of article assignments. I use my client project management software for this, BaseCamp. I create a new “project” for each of my writers, giving them access to their own management area. Here, each writer can receive my article assignments and any project related messages, feedback, etc. The writer then uploads her completed articles in the Files area and logs her activity in the Timesheet. Because BaseCamp only allows the timesheet to track hours, I tell each writer that 1 article = 1 hour. When she logs an article, she puts the article title and/or keyword, word count, and our agreed article fee (since I chose to pay more money for articles with higher word count) in the activity description area. This helped me gauge my expenses and progress at a glance. I review each article and will update the timesheet with “ACCEPTED” or “REJECTED” for each article. The writer understands that she will not be paid for an article until I accept it. If rejected, an article can be edited and resubmitted if the writer chooses to do so. Once I accept an article, I download the file to the appropriate project folder on my computer and update my project keyword list to note for which keyword the article was completed. Whether you use BaseCamp or another project management program, be sure to use something. Use the above tracking process or a similar process, otherwise outsourcing will quickly get unmanageable and out of hand. Step 2. Assign Article Batches I find that writers will work for reduced rates (less than $20 per article) more readily when they are guaranteed a steady flow of article assignments, or at least an initially large batch. Depending on your project load, I recommend assigning each writer articles in batches of 10 articles. Tell your writers that they have 2 weeks from date of assignment to complete all articles in their batch and they will not receive additional articles until all articles in their batch are complete and turned in. State that your receipt of their completed articles does not guarantee them future work, as all future work is dependent on your project load. This not only puts your writer at ease (she feels she’s working on a per-batch basis, which is more attractive than working on a per-single-article basis), but it protects you in several ways. First of all, you know exactly which articles/keywords are assigned to which writers. You can assign articles to multiple writers instead of having an entire project’s content riding on one writer and her ability to turn in work on time.



In addition, tracking batches is easier than tracking individual articles. It’s easier to enforce completion of a batch of articles by a single deadline, then to set different deadlines for each individual article. Step 3. Be Strict but Reasonable You’ll invariably have writers who will need deadline extensions or who may completely ignore your deadlines and then ask for a second chance. I found I was too lenient with many of my writers and by giving them an inch, they often took a mile. Always be reasonable and take circumstances into account. But overall, I would recommend being strict with your writers. Stick to your deadlines and if a writer consistently turns in articles that don’t adhere to your guidelines and SEO rules, let them go. Give them one chance to re-read your guidelines and resubmit the articles. If they still can’t seem to get it, thank them for their time, but move on to another writer. Otherwise, you’ll expend countless hours rewriting content almost completely. Step 4. If You Find a Good Writer, Hold On for Dear Life! If you find a writer you really like, solidify the relationship. Guarantee steady work, or increase her pay if she asks. In the long run, this is way more profitable than to expend the time and money on looking for, retraining, and managing new writers when turnover tends to be so high. Don’t be afraid to lose her, or pay her more than you believe she’s worth – just show your appreciation and do what you reasonably can to continue working with her. That’s really all you need to know to begin outsourcing. Your actual experience outsourcing will be as varied as the personalities of every human resource you work with. You’ll find, I believe, for the most part that it is enriching and fun. If you find yourself stressed with a particular aspect of outsourcing, such as managing mass talent, then just work with vendors and secondary consultants. Or vice versa. Other than the natural growing pains and learning curves, all aspects of your consulting practice should be enjoyable and rewarding. If not, get to the heart of the matter to discover why, and adjust, make changes, etc.



CONCLUSION Wow. So we’ve covered a lot. Not just in the final chapter, but this entire eBook. You should now have a solid idea how to operate your consultancy and manage your clients. But I know all this information can be overwhelming. So I recommend returning to the beginning and just taking everything in bite-sized chunks. If you haven’t already, set up your consultancy as described in Chapter One. If you start to feel overwhelmed, just take your perspective in a bit; reduce it to just handling Section One of Chapter One. Don’t worry about how you’ll actually win clients, or whether you can adequately manage an entire project yourself…just get the first steps completed and trust that the rest will follow in place. It’s just like driving your car at night. Your headlights can only show you the road directly in front of you—and you can’t see your entire path from where you are, or how you’ll get to your destination…but you can still make the entire trip that way. Each new portion of the road will come into view as you approach it, and you’ll navigate it beautifully! I know that this will be easy for some. But I also know how scary switching gears can be. How difficult starting something new is; especially when we’ve tried new things before that didn’t work. Just remember that you’re not required to learn anything new here. You don’t have to bank your success on a piece of software or a search engine’s methodologies, or anything else. There’s no complicated skill set to develop. There’s no convoluted equation to crack or figure out…you literally just follow each step as outlined and you are guaranteed to make money. I trust that you can agree that this entire package is extremely affordable for everything it includes. I did this to ensure that every single internet marketer desiring to succeed could actually do so – no more barriers to entry. So I mean it when I say: If you seek help and truly apply yourself and the Turbo Charged Consulting processes, I promise you will receive help and succeed in reaching your goals. Because, remember, I’m no different from you. I’m not an established “guru” or “nada guru.” I don’t have an arsenal of websites generating income for me, nor do I have a team of programmers or site designers pumping out scripts, websites, or products. I’m an individual internet marketer who faced bankruptcy and sleeping on the streets. I’m a young woman who chose to fight for my dream of financial stability on my terms, rather than through working for a boss or by some stranger’s methodology. Lastly, I’m a professional who not only did every step in this system myself to earn over $10,000 per month, but I taught this system to other internet marketers, of varying skill levels, who have used it to successfully earn $5,000 to $10,000 per month as well. And no matter what happens in the market – whether Adsense dies, or Adwords goes defunct, or Google goes bankrupt, or Yahoo! stages a hostile takeover – with Turbo Charged



Consulting, your profits and success will never hinge on any of it. Your business model depends solely on you, and you can always adapt to whatever occurs in the market. So every time doubt creeps in, every time you feel analysis paralysis seeping into your bones, just take one more step forward. And then one more. And then another. There’s nothing left to stop you. I look forward to celebrating your success. And I invite you to submit your goals to our Goal Setting & Attainment area of the TCC Forums. When you reach your goal, we’ll present you with a certificate and special reward! To Your Success & Joy,

Jaime Mintun February 27, 2007



WANT TO TAKE IT ALL TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

As was mentioned throughout this manual, you have everything you need to succeed and earn a six-figure income consulting—all within this package. However, there are several ways you can enhance, speed up, and automate your consultancy and income. You can also move your consulting practice into a whole new, more powerful realm. Rather than learn only how to consult for paying clients, you can learn the higher arts of:

Wealth Creation

Philanthropy

Creative Life Design Why am I even bringing any of this up? You’re here to simply earn a six-figure income in one of the easiest ways possible. But as I’ve mentioned in this manual, we concentrate on ways to make money because or highest fear and concern is that we can pay our bills. But if you took that concern away, and what you did with your life had nothing to do with anything other than your own happiness—what would you be doing? Let the beauty we love be what we do. Talk to any wealthy person who got there on his or her own, and who is happy, and you’ll discover that they only got to where they are by pursuing something they enjoyed. But as simple as being happy should be, it’s incredibly difficult. You have to first know what makes you happy, then you need to pursue the inner growth required to connect with that happiness and see the path to reaching it. Then you have to be able to earn an income doing it, or automate an income that frees you to do it, and likely the icing on this very delectable cake is to liberate others to do what they love and pay it all forward. Sounds like a tall order doesn’t it? And so few ever truly get there. But luckily, over the past year, my team and I have built an environment that goes far beyond teaching you how to move through the above process. We do it for you by providing online training to improve your knowledge and skills, assistance programs to guarantee you income by handing you clients, personal mentoring, self-development and wealth tracks designed to give you the exact income and experience you desire, and so much more. If all you need to be satisfied is a six-figure consulting business, then you don’t need to read further. You have everything you need here, for free. I am not sharing this information with you to try and “up-sell” you anything.



However, since there are some assistance programs mentioned in this manual and many additional resources not available with the free version of this package, I felt obligated to at least let you know about them and when they will be available. Then you’ll be informed enough to get more information if you desire it. And be sure to use and enjoy all the free resources, templates, and information available in this free Turbo Charged Consulting Package!

INTRODUCING

THE TRAINING GROUNDS

Students accepted into the grounds receive training and assistance in a paced, monitored format. Each student begins as a 1st Degree Apprentice, with access to only certain training, materials, and programs. Specific tasks and milestones must be completed and reached before one can graduate to the next degree. This reinforces focus, prevents overwhelm, and inspires action and sense of progress.

The Training Grounds feature training, mentorship, and assistance in 14 key areas:

RESOURCES

1. Training Grounds Forums: Students enjoy several perks within our membership forums, including:

Industry forums for Internet Marketing, Public Speaking & Publishing, Business Development, and other fields so that students can share knowledge and news and stay abreast of the latest industry events (during our beta period in 2007, only Intenet Marketing forums will be available)

Joint venture and networking forums to pursue projects and partnerships

Advice arena: as students begin managing client projects, you will come upon questions, fears, and client issues you may not know how to handle. No one is ever left alone in the trenches—just post in the advice arena and help will come.

Mastermind Groups

Contests, Member Projects, & More

Students earn participation points, encouraging you to learn in the most efficient manner possible: by teaching and assisting others.

2. Member Created Materials: Students can share resources, case studies, templates, ideas, and any other materials or resources and receive feedback. Sharing is encouraged and rewarded so that every student can leverage the vast knowledge and particular expertise of each other student.



TRAINING

3. Basic Business & Skills Training: Online training courses allow students to increase skills and knowledge in a self-paced environment where you can only see the training immediately relevant to you. This way you don’t get overwhelmed with all the content, nor get off course learning skills or methodologies beyond their immediate focus. Training courses include topics such as:

Career, skills, and financial intelligence testing

Consultancy Organization Structure

Basic Skills: Easy step-by-step tutorials they can follow to execute “grunt work” they accept within our Outsourcing Program

Client Acquisition: Prospecting, Referral Systems, Advertising

Client Management

Project & Team Management

4. Focused Wealth Tracks: All students must, after initial basic training, choose to pursue a specific wealth track. Only one can be pursued at any given time so that students are not distracted or detoured (you can apply to switch). Example tracks include:

Search Engine Optimization (most likely PortalFeeder will be used)

Multivariate Conversion Analysis & Optimization

Business Development

Virtual Executive Assistant

Public Speaking & Publishing

If you already are a customer of a wealth track system (such as PortalFeeder) then you will simply need to let us know, and you’ll be given a coach within the Training Grounds to further assist you. If not, you will be able to access these best practice systems within the Training Grounds, often at a steep discount.

You won’t have to begin using a wealth track until after you’re making steady income with our Outsourcing Program, which we’ll explain sortly.

5. Self-Development Tracks: In the same manner, students choose a particular self-development track to pursue as well. This is to ensure that vital internal shifts occur so success is not compromised by latent fears or doubts.

COACHING

6. Team Mentors: Each student is placed on a team where a mentor monitors progress, reviews assignments and tasks (and awards credit towards graduation). Mentors are also available for advice, coaching, and masterminding.

7. Wealth Track & Self Development Track Mentors: Representatives of each track (hand selected by the track creator/expert) coach each track participant through completing the track’s training or system while also helping them complete Training Grounds milestones and tasks.



ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

8. Outsourcing Program: To ensure even the greenest newbie earns an immediate income, we provide access to small “grunt work” projects. You’ll be able to jump right in and get your feet wet, doing easy tasks for a reasonable fee. As you progress through our training levels, eventually you can submit projects to the outsourcing program and let newer students do the work you don’t want to do.

9. Client Acquisition Program: Although you will learn how to land clients on your own, and must demonstrate this ability to progress through the grounds, we also provide you with a dedicated sales team. Sales agents are assigned to teams, so they work with the same group of students, becoming well versed rather quickly in each individual’s skills, approach, and portfolio.

10. Expert Service Providers: For every Wealth Track students can pursue (and hence every service you can offer to a potential client), we have at least one resident Expert Service Provider who has an impressive client portfolio, marketing materials, and an established track record. Students can market these ESPs and take a finder’s fee in return (or outsource any portion of a project you can’t implement themselves).

11. Managed Newsletter Service: Once we’ve trained you, given you a specific skill set to develop and provide (wealth track), and provided you a basic income through client projects, the next important step is automating that income and making it passive and consistent. We maintain a managed newsletter for our students (once you graduate to a certain level) that is sent to your clients and a growing list of prospects. We create all content, manage sendouts, increase subscribers through referral programs and incentives, and negotiate exclusive advertisers (many who don’t otherwise advertise online) that we market through contextual advertorials, whitepapers, etc. We track any sales back to the originating student who then receives half the income—without lifting a finger. However,you can assume full control of any or all aspects of the newsletter, in an easy to use interface, if you choose.

12. Email Lead Generation: Should you wish to grow your newsletter list quickly, we provide new subscribers for a significantly reduced fee, allowing students to leverage our mass buying power.

13. Philanthropy Program: Students can choose to donate time, money, or expertise to existing charities. Or you can submit a proposal to create your own philanthropy project (and bring other students on board). Participation points can be earned here towards graduation, which will incent others to work with you on the projects close to your heart. Have a sacred healing space you want to create, or a community initiative? Make it happen here.

14. Fortune Club: Upon graduating to the last phase of the Training Grounds, students gain access to our elite Fortune Club where they are hand delivered Fortune 500 clients and can leverage our rich network of contacts.

There are 9 degrees you’ll graduate through before you become an official graduate of the Training Grounds. At this time, you can still remain an active member of the Training Grounds and will have additional opportunities available only to graduates.

To learn more, just sit tight. You’ll hear from us shortly with more details and a link to apply.