Our Story
Growing up in a family business – a wholesale distribution company that sold heating and cooling equipment to HVAC dealers – gave me the opportunity to witness firsthand just how important sales and marketing skills are to the success of the typical small business. I soon realized that the difference between those who were successful and those that struggled had little to do with the quality of their work. The difference was in their ability to market and sell.
I also came to understand the benefit of building a business around systems. In 1982, I was responsible for installing our first computerized system for purchasing, inventory control, order entry, billing and accounting. This system and the others throughout our small company saved us time and money. They also ensured a consistent level of quality and customer service.
My father eventually sold the business in 1985 and I moved on to work in sales for other companies. While working as a salesperson for LexisNexis I was introduced to SPIN Selling and for the first time I discovered the power of having a systematic approach to selling. Utilizing this system, I became one of the company’s top sales reps.
Longing for the independence that compels most small business owners to go into business for themselves, I acquired a Sandler Sales Institute franchise in 1996 and started my own sales training business. I was determined to provide small businesses with the tools and training they needed to generate more sales and be more successful. Armed with a selling system and my commitment to succeed, I built a strong foundation of new clients. Of course, being a startup, I had plenty of time to prospect. I was on the “stuffed mushroom cap diet” attending 2-3 networking events each week. I made cold-calls daily. I worked various trade shows and I spoke in front of every organization that would have me. In a relatively short time, I built a client base.
However, as my client base grew, the time I could dedicate to prospecting shrank. I no longer had the time to attend 2-3 networking events each week or speak as often as I had been. I also found that many of the prospecting methods I had been using were becoming less effective. Attendance at trade shows was declining. Fewer decision-makers were attending networking events. It was becoming harder and harder to navigate around voice mail and reach decision-makers when cold calling over the telephone. After 9-11, the region’s office towers beefed up their security to where walk-in cold calls were virtually impossible. I found that I needed more effective ways of reaching prospective clients. I needed a better system for generating referrals. I needed marketing.
I invested in a beautiful website. My clients were impressed by it, but it didn’t generate any leads. A colleague of mine suggested that I advertise in a local business publication, so I bartered $20,000 worth of sales training in exchange for a quarter page color ad that ran monthly in a popular business magazine read by small business owners throughout the region. The advertisement ran for almost two full years yet it didn’t generate any leads. I tried radio, spending another $20,000 on six months worth of radio advertising that ran almost daily. Yet once again it failed to generate any leads. Thinking that maybe I chosen the wrong radio station, I tried advertising on a different station. Unfortunately, my results were the same — no new leads.
Like many small businesses I had fallen into the “slot machine” marketing trap. I was pouring money into various marketing methods, hoping that one of them would ultimately pay off. Yet none of these methods worked. I was running out of time and tired of wasted money.
My system for selling worked beautifully once I had a prospect on the phone or face-to-face in a meeting. However, I needed a marketing system that would give me more of those opportunities. I needed something simple — a system that my office could operate without much outside help. I needed a marketing system that was effective — something that would generate leads predictably and consistently. And it had to be affordable. Better yet, I needed a marketing “coach” — someone who could show me how to build a marketing system that worked.
I ultimately found that system and the marketing coach I needed. The system is called Duct Tape Marketing, and my coach is John Jantsch, the creator of Duct Tape Marketing. Had I found John and his system sooner, I could have thousands of dollars and countless hours of frustration. As I built the marketing system for my company, I became so enthused by his approach to small business marketing that I sought the right to teach it to other small businesses and in 2009, I became an authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach.
Today, my company and I are one of the few business development firms that works on both sides of the client development equation — marketing and sales. Our practical, street-smart approach to marketing and client development has helped hundreds of small businesses and professional service firms build their businesses with more control, greater clarity and increased confidence. We show companies how to put processes in place to generate more leads, automatically and consistently, using the Duct Tape Marketing system. We then train our clients how to convert those leads into new or expanded business relationships using the Client Builder Selling Process.
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