Attract Sell Keep: The Art of Marketing Your Services is an expert guide to building an ethical, profitable, and enjoyable service practice. It used to be that a solid education, sound technical skills, and fine manners were enough to make a good living as a service professional. That's not the case anymore. In today's highly competitive environment, service professionals-from attorneys to CPAs, doctors to architects, painters to plumbers--must be rainmakers, whether they like it or not. ASK teaches professionals painless and cost-effective techniques to increase market awareness, attract more desirable prospects, and turn those prospects into loyal customers who are eager to help you grow your business by referring their family, friends, and acquaintances. You will learn to overcome the fears, biases, and false notions that block even the most ambitious professionals from taking straightforward and pleasurable marketing steps to grow their businesses. ASK provides proven, profitable, and non-manipulative ways to earn more business through concentrating on solving the prospect's problem, building emotional rapport, and treating the prospect with respect. It is not an accident that the acronym for Attract Sell Keep is ASK. As you progress through this book, you will see that much of your success depends on your ability to ASK-the right questions of the right people at the right time. The time-tested ASK process can be adopted by anyone who is intent on becoming financially successful and achieving life time goals...and who is willing to ASK a few questions. Sharpen your rainmaking skills further with The ASK Workbook.
About the Author: About Henry When I became a Merrill Lynch stockbroker in the late sixties I was shocked to learn that my financial success as a professional investment adviser was dependent on my personal marketing skills. I was handed a stack of coupons people had sent to Merrill for a free brochure and told to cold call them to see if they wanted additional information. This "smile and dial" strategy, the only marketing and sales training I received, was demeaning, frustrating and shocking, but I had no choice if I was going to make a living. It was sink-or-swim. I had a good education and experience from former jobs in advertising, market research, and franchising, but I knew next to nothing about promoting my own services. So, I started cold calling. Sure, most people hung up on me, some were angry that I bothered them, and a few had some questions. It was a rough beginning. I learned that the best way to extend the conversation before I was dismissed was to ask questions: "Are you optimistic about the stock market?" "Do you enjoy picking your own stocks?" "What criteria do you use to decide when to sell?" When I met with prospects, I asked more questions, and that usually encouraged them to start asking me some: "What did I or Merrill Lynch think about the market?" "What research did I use to identify good investments?" "What criteria did I use to know when to sell?" Of the fourteen rookie brokers that opened the Merrill office in Chicago's John Hancock Center, I led the monthly statistics in new business. This stared my life-long research to learn more about the best and most effective ways to market marketing professional services. For the next 40 years I studied what others had done, attended and gave business development seminars, and experimented with different strategies to accelerate the growth of my businesses. The results have been far more than I could have ever imagined. After nine years working for both Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney I started and sold two successful investment advisory companies, and finally retired in 2007 to write, teach and mentor entrepreneurs. This book is a compilation of the lessons I learned and is an excellent basic text for anyone who has to promote and sell their own services to earn a living. It is unique in that it offers practical, profitable, and ethical solutions for technically competent but marketing-challenged individuals.