The 12 Step Process That Led a PR Agency to a Whopping $1.8 Million Sale

Peek behind the curtain and discover the exact step-by-step “Introverted Prospecting Process” Will Wang uses to reel in colossal wins for his personal clients (plus, steal it as a roadmap for yourself!)

Ring the bell, gang. We’ve harpooned a real whopper of a deal for our client.

And today, we’re laying it all out for you.

Step-by-step.

Due to confidentiality agreements, I can’t give too much detail about the client themselves.

But the truth is, you don’t need the nitty gritty to understand why this works so well (or to put it into action immediately for yourself.)

Here's what you need to know:

Our client offers a P.R. service for some of the largest corporations in Australia.

These businesses have big teams, bigger budgets, and a real need for a P.R. firm in their corner that can deliver serious results.

Today’s case study is a client that fit that bill.

They needed our help to stand out from the masses and get noticed by their ideal prospects.

We ran a direct outreach campaign for them designed to get them in front of the right people (in the right way), close the deal, and turn those prospects into good clients.

(You know- the kind you actually want to go to work for every day of the week?)

The result:

Our client closed a $1.8MM deal – from a single contract.

So, what did we do?

We call it “The Introverted Prospecting Process.” It’s the gold standard here at Growth Labz, developed by none other than our very own Will Wang.

This process is effective even if you’re starting out cold with no podcast, no videos, and no warm list.

This is actually the exact 12-step process we weaponize for our own in-house clients to deliver results other agencies can’t touch.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be a client of ours this is your sneak peek, “behind-the-curtain” look at how we work.

Why are we giving it away?

Because our goal at Growth Labz is to help guide you through the BS and give you free content that’s better than some of the stuff other people are charging for!

Now, without further ado, I give you…

Step #1 – Figure Out if Direct Outreach is Right for You

Before we sit down to create a strategy with any client, we always ask the same question:

Is direct outreach the right strategy for this client?

The reality is that for some businesses, it isn’t the best choice.

For starters, it depends on the lifetime value of your customer. (Which is how much a customer is worth to you over the next 12 to 24 months, or however long they’re going to stay with you. But you already knew that, didn’t you? 🙂 )

If your business has a low lifetime customer value and relies on a high volume of sales, then direct outreach may not be the most effective method for you.

In the case of our client, direct outreach was a perfect fit. Each individual customer is worth thousands, if not millions, of dollars to them.

It was also critical to zero in and just choose two channels to focus on.

As tempting as it is to scatter your efforts across multiple platforms, you really only need to focus on one or two to have a really successful campaign.

So, for step one, ask yourself:

Based on my average customer’s Lifetime Value, is direct outreach the right strategy for me?”
What one (or two) platforms are likely to produce the best results for me?

Step #2 – Who Are the Right People?

So you’ve decided that direct outreach is the right strategy for your business.

Your next step is to look introspectively to figure out who your best customers are right now.

But here’s the thing…

Your best customers aren’t necessarily your most profitable!

The reality is that you can have customers who spend a lot of money with you that you don’t really enjoy working with.

You can also have customers who are a genuine pleasure to work with but don’t bring in much revenue for you.

To get clear on who your ideal client is, ask yourself:

Who are my best customers?
Who have I gotten the best results for?
Who do I want to work for every single day of the week?

Step #3 – Where Are They?

You know who you want to work with.

Now, you need to figure out where they spend their time.

I actually like to phrase this step as, “Who has my customer?“

You can find whole pools of them in both online and offline sources.

For example: social media groups, specific live or networking events, online forums… they may even be the audience of a particular Influencer.

For this particular client, we discovered that the audience they typically go for had all gone to a particular event.

It was actually quite easy to get a list of attendees for that event. And once we had it, we then had a whole group of prospects to talk to.

Find that point of commonality and you can create powerful lists of people who are more likely to want to hear what you have to say.

Don’t move ahead until you know:

Who has my customer?
(or…)
Where do my ideal clients hang out? (A specific live event, networking events, a particular online forum, or social media groups?)
Is there an Influencer they tend to crowd around?

I do have one little postscript for this step…

Don’t rely on lists you buy online.

There’s no guarantee that the list you buy will be any good.

Chances are, it’ll be full of people who have no interest in your service. And they’re almost guaranteed to have been hammered to death by hundreds of other companies who bought the exact same list.

The result?

Certain fed-up people will flag you, and some will have deactivated their accounts entirely by the time you send out your email.

Too many bounce backs and spam flags can actually get your entire email domain in big trouble.

It’s better to take the time to cultivate your own personal list. The quality will be much better, and so will your results.

Step #4 – Know Your Unique Result

Someone is always willing to do what you do, but cheaper.

But competing on price is a race to the death.

To stand out from the pack, you need to know what makes you unique. Something that no one else can claim but you.

Maybe it’s the scale of the results you achieve, a process you leverage, or a level of quality you deliver that blows your competitors out of the water.

Whatever it is, highlight it and make it as detailed and tangible as possible for your audience.

Because when they know what makes you unique, you automatically separate yourself from being just another “me too” business and establish yourself as a unique and individual authority.

If your unique selling proposition is good enough, you become “The Only” in your niche.

For example, the only data-driven, copy-focused direct marketing agency in Australia that can say they’ve won their clients a single email worth $30,000.

The only choice if you’re willing to accept no less than whoever will get you on the no B.S. path to achieving a $1.8M sale.

What are parts of your business (or what results have you gotten) that no other company can copy?
What’s the one thing you do better than anybody else?

Want to know another huge benefit to have a killer USP?

Not working with you becomes more painful than choosing to do nothing.

Tough choices are, well, tough. It’s much easier for people to just do nothing, accept their results, and stay comfortable.

But if what you have to offer is tantalizing enough, doing nothing becomes the worst-case scenario for your prospect. Getting in on what you have to offer becomes sweet relief.

Step #5 – Create a Case Study That Shows Your Entire Process

It’s one thing to say you’re the best at whatever it is you do.

It’s another to be able to present people with evidence and say “here’s why.”

Anybody can tell you they can walk a tightrope across a volcano or make a million dollars with a single ad. Talking the talk is easy. But when pushed to prove it, very few people can actually pull it off.

Your case studies act as solid proof that you are the best at what you do.

They show people who are just like them, with the same struggles and the same situation, getting the results they want for themselves.

And it feels way more powerful and believable because it’s coming from someone else rather than yourself just shouting about how great you are.

For this step, you’ll need to get a case study from at least one of your clients that shows your prospects exactly what you can do for them.

It can be a written testimonial, a video, a podcast- the medium is less important than the message. But you’ll want to match the format to your target audience as much as possible.

What was their situation like before you came along? What were their struggles?
What happened when your client hired you?
What’s their life like now? What are their results?

Step #6 – Find The Details

This is the final step before we even send the email.

Earlier we talked about knowing where your people are.

The next step is to actually go through and find the details to get in touch with them.

However, we won’t dig into specific technologies you can use here. It would probably take a book for us to explain all the moving parts and technicalities.

But what we will say is that you want to find out as much as you can about the people you’re going to contact.

Why?

Because when you know your prospects, you can personalize every single email that goes out.

People appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time and effort to understand and see them.

It takes a lot more effort than sending out a single blast of a hundred emails with the same headline, but response rates have been phenomenal.

(Plus, you don’t get flagged as spam because you aren’t hitting on anything that moves blasting a generic email to everyone and their Aunt Susie.)

Find the actual contact details for “The Right People”

Step #7 – Write Your Emails

By now you know:

Who you’re targeting
Where they are, and
What you have to offer them that nobody else can give them.

You also have:

Case studies prepped
Specific details about each prospect (that you can leverage to personalize your content.)

Now, it’s time to write your emails.

When writing any email, there are three key elements you’ve got to include:

Value
Social Proof
Humor

Value comes from understanding what the customer’s key challenge is, how you can help them overcome it, and why you think your product or service is a good fit for the business owner (or whoever it is you’re approaching.)

Social proof comes from the case studies you created earlier, as well as testimonials, reviews, and results from other clients you can use to get attention and build trust as quickly as you can.

As for humor…

That’s just about being yourself.

If you’re not an especially jokey person in real life, don’t push it and try to be someone different.

Just don’t talk to people like they’re corporate, because at the end of the day it’s person-to-person marketing.

Be human and talk to other people like they’re human too.

You’ll stand out from their inbox full of icy, dead corporate emails (and, hopefully, entertain them and give them a smile too.)

Write your emails with these three key elements: value, social proof, and humour (humanity)

Step #8 – Follow Up With the People Who Don’t Respond

Your emails go out and you get some people replying back to say they’re happy to have a phone call and find out more about what you do.

Woot woot!

That’s what we set out to do, right?

However, there’s also a certain portion of people that don’t respond. But just because someone doesn’t respond doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. Some people just don’t respond because they’re actually busy.

These are the people you’ve got to follow up with.

With our clients, we write sequences that typically contain 5-8 emails spaced out over a month or two.

For our $1.8 million sale client in particular, because each individual client was worth so much to our client, we used direct mail and phone calls to follow up with everyone who had opened an email and hadn’t responded. Our tech actually showed us people who had opened emails more than ten times that hadn’t replied.

People don’t do that unless there’s at least some interest there.

Talking again about technology, there are tools like Loom video which will send you an email when someone’s watched the video. Following up with someone after they’ve watched the video can make a huge difference between them and someone who hasn’t.

Even if you miss them, you can try them the next day at the exact same time. That’s the power of technology.

Write 5-8 follow up emails
Take note of anything in particular that stands out. (A certain time of day you’re getting replies, an email that seems to plummet response, an email that boosts it. Break it down and see if there’s anything worth testing there.)

Step #9 – Know What Happens When They Say “Yes” (But They’re Not Ready to Buy Yet)

When you’re aiming for six, seven, or even eight-figure customers, you can’t expect them to say yes and then immediately move into working with you.

A lot of them need to talk about budget, go through paperwork, and get sign-offs from the board and secondary decision-makers. It can take lots of nurturing and time.

And sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense to move forward with the sale right at that moment.

In the case of our client, it took about four and a half months of nurturing before they had the paperwork signed.

So it was four and a half months of them going back to their client saying, “Hey, by the way, you know, I know you said to give you a little bit of time. I’m just coming back and we’ve just written this book, or we’ve written this article, or there’s something of value I think I can add. So I just wanted to send this to you just to keep us top of mind.”

They checked in consistently to offer things of value that kept them top of mind for their seven-figure client.

Having a nurturing process in place for people who do say yes to a phone call or a case study but just aren’t ready to buy now ensures you don’t get lost in the mix when your client is doing other things.

What do you have that would be of real value to your prospects that you can give them to touch base with them and keep them warm?
If you don’t have anything, what can you make that would be an asset for you and fill a genuine need for them?

Step #10 – Engineer Your Sales Process

When you’re working with corporate customers, several people will likely be involved in the purchasing process.

This means you need to engineer your sales process to work in your favor. You need to map out every step in the process until each person in decision-making positions and their objections are accounted for.

With this client, we worked backward from the initial contact and created a list of people who would have a say in whether the corporate purchased the service. The chief marketing officer, the chief financial officer, and so on.

We mapped out what each stakeholder might be objecting to and then worked out the sales process to get around those as quickly as possible and make it easy for them to move forward.

Yes, it’s delicate, tedious work. But putting in this kind of effort will launch you far and above your competitors.

“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.” – Michael Caine

Who are you going to have to go through to get a “yes” for your project? Write them out individually.
What objections will each of them have?
What do they need to hear from you to feel comfortable moving forward?
Map out your sales process to counter each person’s objections and tell them what they need to hear at each step.

Step #11 – Focus on Your Onboarding Process

You’ve made the sale and you’re ready to celebrate.

Maybe there’s already a bottle of tequila waiting with your name on it…

But the work isn’t finished!

Making the sale is only the beginning. This is when the real work starts.

You want to make sure you’re serving them and they’re getting the results they’re after, starting at the very beginning with your onboarding process.

Onboarding is all about making the customer comfortable, preparing them for what they’ll need to contribute to the work to come, and helping them to see exactly what processes you’ll follow when delivering to them.

Assuming a “yes” early on will still be a “yes” several months down the line is dangerous.

Corporate clients expect a high level of service, which is what you should aim to provide from the minute they agree to work with you- and every minute thereafter.

Flesh out your onboarding process.
Set the standards and show your clients what they can expect- and what you expect from them.
Make it as smooth and easy as possible. Set them at ease.

Step #12 – Optimize The Process

It’s nice to make one sale.

It’s even nicer to make 10 or 100!

So, our last step is to go back and examine every single step of the process you just went through to see what you can optimize.

There are lessons to be learned in everything, and there’s always something we can apply to be even one percent better every single day.

What went wrong during this process? What went right?
What objections came up that you didn’t expect?
Where can you improve your process to make it easier for the clients to buy from you?
What can you improve to make it so they actually want to do more business with you in the future as well?

Build Your Process

The Introverted Prospecting Process isn’t a quick, easy, or a hack.

But with it, a $1.8M deal is only the beginning.

Do you want these results for your business, but need a little extra guidance? Schedule a Growth Roadmap call with us today and we’ll work on developing a sales process that works for you.