| Jun 17, 2020 | | 11 min read

How to Onboard New Customers Using the Power Hour Roadmap

By

If you’re a digital marketing agency owner and are one of those who gets really anxious about how things will transpire once you get a potential customer on a call, then this blog is for you.

Today I’ll be talking to you about the Power Hour roadmap and how it is an effective strategy to empower marketing agencies and businesses to close more deals and generate revenue.

For those of you who have just started your agencies and don’t have enough customers to scale your business, the Power Hour is how you will be able to get more clients, like your lighthouse clients, even if you don’t have any existing or established customers whom you service.

It is a foolproof strategy that enables you to prospect your customers before onboarding them and is something that doesn’t rely upon applying any type of pressure or employing any tricks.

Skip the reading and download the comprehensive Power Hour guide!

What is the Power Hour

The Power Hour is an introductory paid prospecting call between you and a potential customer. It’s the first meeting and, if executed perfectly, leads to turning the perfect prospects into clients.

The emphasis is on the word perfect because deciphering that is one of the biggest challenges.

Just like golfers, who ensure that everything from the tee to the club is perfectly set up for them right up until the time they actually hit the ball, marketing agencies must also ensure that everything is set up in such a way that it benefits them the most leading up to the Power Hour.

The mistake that most people make is to hop on to a sales call without preparing beforehand. There could be many reasons for that. Probably they want to show potential customers that they’re flexible or there’s a sense of urgency since they don’t have many existing customers.

However, since such unprepared calls don’t give you any insight as to who the prospect is and vice versa, they often lead to you wasting an hour of both your, as well as your prospect’s, time.

There has to be a proper process in place to qualify prospects before the Power Hour begins.

While you must definitely make it sound that you’re willing to meet a prospect and spend time with them, before that happens you must also ensure that you have everything together and know about the pain points of the prospect well enough to have a proper discussion.

If I had to create an analogy here, I would say that it’s similar to how doctors operate.

Before a patient goes in and meets a surgeon, the surgeon has already gathered all of their past medical history and knows all the medical diagnostics. Not only does this help them outline what the exact goals of the procedure will be, it also makes the patients feel more comfortable.

There would never be a situation where a dentist sees a patient who has an eye problem.

Similarly, digital marketing agencies must avoid jumping on the phone with a potential customer and then realizing that they're not the perfect fit for each other because maybe the prospect wasn’t ready to buy or wasn’t in the same wheelhouse as their services.

Using the Power Hour roadmap, you can sort all these small issues out before your main sales call and accordingly strike when the iron is hot without devaluing your time and disrespecting the client.

Download the Power Hour guide and get access to a detailed roadmap!

The Power Hour roadmap

There are eight stages in the Power Hour roadmap. In an ideal world, digital marketing agencies must have all the eight stages mastered to have an effective prospecting process in place.

I know what you’re thinking. The problem arises when agencies don’t have too many clients on board and, therefore, are eager to get on the phone with anyone, thereby shunning the process.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to play hard to get, but the overeagerness to get more customers might lead to you saying yes to someone who is not the right fit for your business.

This can be a problem because when it comes to scaling a business, closing deals is not the answer. Getting customers on board with the right expectations and deliverability is.

One of the key tactics through which agency owners can grow their business is to utilize customer testimonials, proof of performance, and key success factors from past customers. If you are thinking about choosing someone with whom achieving those goals is not possible, don’t choose them!

Eager to know more about the Power Hour roadmap? Download the guide!

Have an informative landing page

To start building your Power Hour roadmap, it’s imperative that you create an informative landing page where potential customers can take a glimpse at the services you provide.

The core purpose of this is to separate the grain from the chaff and eliminate the wrong set of stakeholders from contacting you and wasting your time. Furthermore, the landing page must also have an option for the prospect to sign up for an initial consultation with you.

There are many software integrations that you can use on your landing pages to get prospects to sign up. While some of the basic options are Calendly and Google calendar, I personally use Infusionsoft, where people can sign up, book, and pay for a consultation hour with me.

Now one of the questions that I’ve often been asked on this topic is whether or not it is advisable to ask potential customers to pay upfront for that initial consultation Power Hour.

For example, do you feel that it is worth getting on an initial call with a prospect for free, talking to them, and then letting them decide whether they want to buy an official consultation hour?

The answer to that is no!

While you might want to start off by charging a small amount like $50 for booking that Power Hour and eventually move up to $500 when you build authority, the key here is to create an impression that your time and expertise are valuable.

Going back to the doctor analogy, no matter what the circumstances are, they never give away free consultations. It’s similar for you as a digital marketing expert, where you’re showing the potential customers that you’re a professional in the industry and that your time is precious.

Another advantage of having a prospective customer pay for the Power Hour upfront is that when they pay it means that they’re more serious and show up prepared for the meeting.

They’re more likely to respect you and your marketing agency, and will turn out to be high-value customers. You can use the Power Hour as an effective tool to qualify your leads and if a prospect is not willing to pay for that session of expertise, they’re most likely not serious.

Download the Power Hour guide to get more landing page insights!

Strategy Assessment and access checklist

Similar to how doctors collect a patient’s medical information beforehand to be in a position to offer them the best diagnosis when they see them, marketing agency owners must also have a process in place to collect all relevant information from potential customers before seeing them.

The next step in the roadmap, after a prospect signs up on your landing page to book a Power Hour session, is to understand their goals, content, and targeting information. Doing so will help you prepare an access checklist for them to fill out and enable you to assess your strategy.

The access checklist is a checklist document that you can provide a prospect to get access to all the data related to their social media channels, Google analytics, and other such platforms.

In my experience, working with a potential client by providing them with concrete solutions based on real data will help you more than just talking hypothetically. The strategy assessment will help you prepare for the Power Hour session by analyzing their strengths and weaknesses.

These two assets - strategy assessment and access checklist - will empower you to do your homework beforehand and enable you to have powerful time during the Power Hour session.

Download the Power Hour guide for a free access checklist template!

Do a quick audit of your prospects

While a deep dive into a potential customer’s business might not be possible before the Power Hour since there might be permission issues, it’s advisable that you do a quick audit instead.

A quick audit, as the name suggests, is a quick analysis of the prospect’s business and gives you ample talking points to diagnose their business problems and sell your digital solutions.

One of the best methods to uncover a business’s performance is to run a Snapshot Report.

Running a Snapshot Report before your Power Hour meeting can give you insights into your prospect’s business and tell you the areas that need attention. For example, maybe their business website is messed up in that it’s either loading slowly or is not mobile-friendly.

Furthermore, maybe their social media presence is not as good as their competitors, and is something that might be leading them to lose business. Or, maybe you want to get quick insights into the best recommended keywords that they can use to garner digital impressions.

Whatever the case might be, a quick audit facilitates your marketing agency to get a foot into the door when it comes to converting a prospective client into a paying customer.

One of the most common questions I get asked with regard to the quick audit is whether or not digital marketing agencies should charge prospective clients for the audit before the session.

The answer to that is, it depends!

You can if you choose to, however, the aim of the whole Power Hour roadmap is to show people that your agency is credible, can be trusted, and follows a robust process when it comes to handling business. It’s about showcasing respect and asking the same from them in return.

The quick audit is one of the steps in that process and shows them your agency is professional.

You can choose to charge a small amount of money for the audit and then send them the report to look over. However, the ideal way would be putting it as a part of a process and then meeting them personally to explain all the intricacies.

People really don’t see the value in getting access to tools. They would rather pay money to listen to an expert who is delivering the information by using the tools. And that expert is you.

Grab the free guide and start building your Power Hour roadmap today!

The Power Hour meeting

Once you’re done with gathering all the information you need, the next step is to schedule the Power Hour meeting. I personally like to schedule my consultation meetings a week in advance.

I understand that this might seem to be a little counterintuitive because conventions dictate that if you want to do business with someone you should just get on the phone with them right away. 

However, there’s a nuance to that.

While your first response to a potential customer when they show interest in your services must be within an hour or two, when it comes to getting on a sales call with them there must be some time in between because you want to show them that you have a robust operational process.

You need to prepare for the meeting and also allow them to do substantial research on you. And if you’ve done your homework perfectly, they’ll find nothing but good things about you online.

Recommended Reading: How to Boost Your Agency Using the Three Components of Authority

Once you finally get to the Power Hour meeting, which could be anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour long, not only would you be prepared to wow the prospect, but you would also close the deal with a qualified prospect, thereby leading to the creation of a synergistic partnership.

The Power Hour is all about taking potential customers on a journey that first shows them their data metrics, then enlightens them with an analysis, and finally empowers them to take action.

Going back to the doctor analogy I used, the beauty with following the metrics, analysis, and action strategy is that it helps doctors collect the vitals from patients, allow them to do the diagnosis, and ultimately offers them an effective treatment plan to help improve their health.

Therefore, for marketing agency owners, when you’re putting everything inside a logical structure of a Power Hour, you’re tapping into the subconscious minds of your prospects, who would want to see their metrics, understand the analysis, and finally take action with you.

Download the Power Hour guide to get a detailed process on building a roadmap!

Conclusion

The most impressive aspect about creating a Power Hour roadmap is that within the first few minutes of the Power Hour session you will know whether the prospect is worth pursuing or not.

In fact, if the roadmap is robust and you’re able to outline your processes perfectly, you’ll probably know even before you get on that call since the process involves you understanding the prospect and deciphering whether the partnership between you two is valuable.

If it is, then by the time the Power Hour session starts, you’re confident about your talking points and already know which solutions you want to sell to a prospect based on their pain points.

So, get started today by mapping out your Power Hour roadmap. Download our extensive guide to get a detailed, step-by-step walkthrough and start closing the right deals with the right clients.

About the Author

Dennis Yu is the inventor of the 9 Triangles framework. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CBS Evening News and is co-author of Facebook Nation – a textbook taught in over 700 colleges and universities.

Shares
Share This