Auditel Consultant:
Lee Freeman

The road to somewhere – part 8

09 Aug 2010 | Filed under: auditel, cost management, Self-employment

Monday 9^th August and having spent a couple of days away from the office last week attending various meetings an early start at my desk this morning to try to catch up on a number of bits and pieces. Some of these are simply follow-up messages to the meetings last week, some of them involve some client analysis, while others involve planning the week/month ahead. All of them are in their own way as important as the other, and there are obviously those I enjoy doing more than others. The important thing that I have to remember is that each of them needs doing to the best of my ability if my business is going to be the success I want it to be. This was one of the areas that it took me a while to get used to in this new venture, the fact that there is no one to delegate tasks to. If I do not do it no-one else will. Coming from a corporate background with teams of support staff, well normally at least one anyway, there has always been somebody else there to help share this workload, well no longer!!

This was part of the reason why, as I mentioned in my last blog on my progress, that I had decided to employ a telemarketer. Not merely the fact that I dislike cold calling, but also the fact that I have to manage my time more efficiently nowadays, and if I can employ someone who is better at a task than I am and free up some of my time as well, it does seem a no brainer. I left you last month still not having decided who to employ as my telemarketer, as I had a number of different choices both in terms of personnel as well as fee structures. At the end of the day I decided on Charlotte Greenman of Accredited Marketing, who having spoken to all of the potential individuals, was someone who I seemed to develop a rapport with at an early stage, and I believed I could work with. Was it the right choice, while only time will tell but I have certainly not been disappointed at the initial results.

So having decided on who to use, the next question was who should they contact. From my background as a chartered accountant, I had been targeting local firms of accountants since I started the business, not only as potential clients themselves, but also a potential introducers of business. Now accountants are difficult people to get hold of, as I had found over the last few months, so what better project to test Charlotte on. Not that they are always unavailable but they do seem to have a formidable set of gatekeepers that prevent you from talking to the individual you want to. So armed with her list of people, Charlotte was up and running. What were the results of this campaign, I hear you ask. As we stand today Charlotte has booked one appointment for me, a meeting which I attended a couple of weeks ago, with hopefully another couple to come. This may sound like a very small ratio, from an initial list of 25 or so, but would I have done any better? One of the other benefits that has arisen is that Charlotte has at least been able to identify those that were not interested in my services. This may sound negative, but at least by speaking to the relevant individuals (something I had often not managed), Charlotte has been to identify those firms who will not use my services now or in the future. This means they can come off the list of prospects and enable me to concentrate my efforts elsewhere where hopefully there will be better rewards.

It is now 5 months since I started this venture, and I am still very positive about the future and achieving the goals I set myself at the start. To me there is no better feeling than walking away from a meeting with positive vibes ringing in my ears, even better when those positive vibes also include a signed agreement. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I had a number of meetings last week, and most of these were with people who will never be clients themselves, but who could be good introducers of business. To a person, all of these individuals understood completely the service I am offering and have not come across something similar. In fact one of the comments I received back was along the lines of :

“I do not understand why people would not want to use this service, at the end of the day it costs them nothing, and if there are savings to be made it becomes self funding”

I think I will print that off and pin it to my office wall so I can view it daily, as it encapsulates exactly the service I provide.