It was terrifying to leave the “safety” of the Dilbert Cube. I couldn’t help but remember all the times before, when I was attempting to sell and recruit. Back then I would *always* miss my monthly goals.

Yes, my new post-Dilbert Cube life was much more promising. Still I had to overcome my old Fear Of Failure. It was sooooo easy to imagine my post-Dilbert Cube life being the same as before.

Plus this was right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and nobody was spending money on anything then. <GULP>

So I make a list of literally a dozen things I can do, all of them for other companies.

Why not just do my own thang? Because: You can’t steer a parked car. Doing my own thing from scratch would be much harder than making a 10% improvement in somebody else’s business and getting a slice.

My first opportunity is at this company in Arkansas. They have a new product they want to start selling. I spend half a day with this CEO and I pummel him with questions.

“If you combine your advertising, plane trips, trade shows, booth babes, software demos and everything else, how much $ do you spend to get 1 new customer?”

He thinks for awhile.

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

I say, “If I could reduce that number to $15,000 would that be good?”

“That would be great.”

“Then that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll put together an action plan.”

I send him my plan. I’m going to write him a white paper, a lead generation page for his website, and place 2 magazine articles for him. It’s going to take 2 months and I’m gonna charge him $7500 per month.

He accepts it. 19 days into my post-Dilbert Cube life, I have my first client.

That’s how I replaced my income in 19 days. No regrets, never looked back.

[Did you notice??? I just gave you a HUGELY powerful technique, right here. Somebody who read this story will have made $10,000 from this by the middle of next week, if not sooner.]

When you consult, you really sell MONEY AT A DISCOUNT. If you know what their numbers are [and by the way *they* usually don’t, you have to help them] and what the new numbers need to be, you can find a piece of the pie that makes sense for you.

Personally I believe that you should offer assurance of tangible results. Not just a huge list of things that your client should do that hopefully might someday make some customers have good feelings about them.

Don Crowther has been making a living as a marketing consultant for something like 10 years now and he “sells results not procedures” to his clients. He’s assembled a module in his course on “How to be a social media consultant.”

(Which in Don’s world is, uh, not the same as somebody who goes to parties and blabs about Twitter.)

www.perrymarshall.com/socialmediavideos/

Perry

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.