Using The “Death-Ground” Strategy In Your Prospecting…

In 2012, I brought an event called Startup Weekend to Adelaide with a friend.

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour weekend event that groups of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas, and work to develop a working prototype, demo, or presentation by Sunday evening, having started on Friday evening.

I was in charge of ticket sales.

Someone challenged me to a bet that I wouldn’t be able to get more than 20 people in the room.

$100 was on the line to prove them wrong.

At the time I had:

• Zero industry contacts;
• Zero industry credibility; and
• Zero industry influence.

Now, the default for most marketers is to use referrals and networks.

Remember, I didn’t have any of those.

The next is to runs ads.

Again, I had no budget for ads.

So, most would give up.

When your back is against the wall you either have to fight your way out or be crushed.

It is either kill or be killed.

You are on the death-ground.

What I realised was the answer to my problem was diversifying the way I could get leads.

I could leverage others who had spent time, money and effort qualifying prospects, so I didn’t need to.

I could just jump right in and offer those qualified prospects a complimentary solution.

What else could I get access to?

The list I came up with a niche list that included partnerships with:

• Websites;
• Bloggers;
• Tweeters;
• Facebook Groups;
• Facebook Pages;
• Podcasters; and
• Press & Media.

The gatekeepers of these channels on those platforms had already spent time, money and effort warming up and educating prospects on:

1. The problem; and
2. Possible solutions.

These prospects:

1. Were problem aware;
2. Had likely purchased other solutions;
3. Were likely unhappy with those solutions; and
4. Were looking for something else.

And what we were offering was different, new and unique.

I could access this warm attention, awareness and traffic and only need to heat those prospects up to boiling and educate them on:

1. Our solution;
2. How it worked; and
3. How it could work for them.

So, this is how I found those gatekeepers:

1. Understood who my dream customers were;
2. Understood where they were and who was the gatekeeper to accessing them;
3. Added value to those gatekeepers;
4. Asked those gatekeepers for reciprocal favours by way of access the to attention, awareness and traffic they controlled; then
5. Repeated steps 3–4.

If you are reading this, I assume you know STEP #1, who your dream customers are.

Now, STEP #2, knowing where your dream customers are and who is the gatekeeper to accessing them, until now, has been a matter of time-consuming market research.

Pulling off a sold-out event from nothing was a month of full-time work.

But there is a quicker and easier way…

Over the years, I created a cloud-based software tool (Gmail required) that finds new marketing channels for you to access.

Having software that does this in a systematic and automated way leaves you time to do more important things.

All you have to do is input a keyword and it will find who is the gatekeeper to accessing your dream customer, which you can then:

• Add value to them; and
• Ask them or reciprocal favours by way of access to the attention, awareness or traffic they control.

This equals 50 channels for Mainstream Websites and Press & Media Outlets PLUS 10 channels for other 16 platforms for a total discovery of up to 240 new marketing channels per search.

So, if you have been struggling with finding new paid and earned marketing channels quickly and easily, then this new version will most likely help you!

Get your 1-day trial to this software for $1 here.