SA-EXIT for Financial Geniuses
The Art of Winning New International Clients
by Shirree Leone
If I have to hear the word “Eskom” one more time...
Being a South African financial genius is just no fun anymore.
Our once growing nation used to be a buzz of opportunity, change and chance. Now our gaze is shifting as we look north to greener pastures. Africa awaits, bursting with fresh possibility... and even further up the map, we have Europe, the stable and ever bountiful land of pounds and euros.
Whichever country you choose, it’s time to look at SA-EXIT. I’m not talking about physically immigrating with a “let’s pack for Perth doll, our Yorkies are on their last legs anyway” attitude. No! We still love our beloved Rainbow Nation and we choose to live here. SA-EXIT simply means “let’s find a few overseas customers with dollars... just in case.”
Today’s ambitious South African finance guru sees the opportunity to export their expertise to other countries, but how to reach these enticing new markets? Well, you have two real choices: either get on a plane and spend a fortune on hotels, advertising and west end shows OR use a clever combination of Linkedin and Email.
Here are the four pillars of winning international clients from the comfort of your own braai. Just FYI, we built our entire global business using this exact method and we’d love to help you do the same.
Pillar 1: Personal Credibility is EVERYTHING
Ok, so you need overseas clients looking for financial expertise. The problem is, they are busy. They get messages from hundreds of your competitors and they have no reason to take you seriously. Who are you in their life? Nobody. So your number one priority is to establish your personal credibility.
Notice I say personal credibility. You need a huge budget to establish an internationally recognised company brand. The reality for most founders is that you don’t have the time or money to build a brand overseas - if you did, you wouldn’t be reading this. So the first pillar of finding international business is: forget your company brand overseas and focus on your personal credibility! If just 50 of the right overseas contacts take you seriously, then you’ve done your job.
To establish personal credibility, you need to show a key group of people (ie. potential clients overseas) that you feel their pain. That means you need to write an article, a few emails and do a podcast. Take a look at www.scottcundill.com to listen to our CEO interviewing our clients. And here is an example of an article we wrote for a business valuations expert to build his personal credibility with lawyers.
Establishing credibility requires some work up front. If you don’t have time, our team will do it for you.
Pillar 2: Go Niche or Go Nowhere
You need to build your personal credibility with the right clients overseas. So, who are these people? Where are they?
The world is a big place. You have many options. Work out who your niche target market is. Are you looking for CEO’s in Kenya? Or construction companies in Croatia? You need to know i) the country or city you want to target, ii) you need to know the job description of the person you are targeting and iii) most importantly, you need to know the pain they are feeling. This establishes your niche.
When targeting this niche group of people, you need to write content specifically for them. You cannot write generic, dull content which is why the secret is something called “The Captivating One-liner” - this is the title of our CEO, Scott Cundill’s e-book and you can get it on our website here.
Your Captivating One-liner is so important. It is that one sentence that becomes the gateway for your audience to discover the credible you. Without a Captivating One-liner, your audience simply will not click, or read, or watch or listen to you. Get your C1L right and you’re off to a flying start.
We run workshops with our clients to help them nail their C1L. If you need help, just ask.
Pillar 3: LinkedIn is Your BFF
Once you know which niche market you want to impress, you’ve prepared your Captivating One-liner and you’ve written content to establish your personal credibility... now you have to locate them.
That’s easy. Really easy. LinkedIn will do it for you. Use LinkedIn to search and connect with the people in your niche. LinkedIn is absolutely perfect for the financial sector for three reasons:
- Thousands of prospective clients are on there. It doesn’t matter if they are active on LinkedIn or not - get connected with them and feed them your content. Show them that you are that industry expert who understands their pain.
- Their email addresses are available. This is LinkedIn’s best-kept secret. Remember that email series you wrote in Pillar One? This is where you put it to good use. Not everyone is super-active on LinkedIn, so use their email instead.
- You can see exactly who they are before you contact them. LinkedIn shows you their job title, their company, their interests, their company… everything! This is a sales person’s dream.
If you do this right they might… just might… deem you worthy enough to set up a call or even a face to face meeting. Now that’s worth flying to Uganda for. How to sift through the right people is discussed in this article “Trapped in The Gap!”
Pillar 4: Automate Your International Prospecting
Chasing international business is time-consuming. So automate as much of the process as possible. Once you (or us) have developed three key pieces of content to build your personal credibility… remember they are:
- A feature article (like this example)
- An email series
- A podcast interview (see here)
...then you can set about automating the process so your prospecting runs in the background!
We can scout LinkedIn to automatically find possible clients or businesses that could benefit from your financial acumen in any country you choose, then message them on your behalf, email them and get them to read and listen to your expertise. Why would they engage with your content? Because your Captivating One-liner is going to be brilliant.
Finally, it all comes together with JESS. JESS is a dashboard that shows you which leads you should spend time on. You cherry pick the best leads and focus your intention on them. That’s how you win international business: by working hard on the right leads instead of wasting time with people who will not yield results.
We will automate the process of finding people overseas for you to do business with. We will show them that you are a credible person. Finally, we hand them to you on a platter called JESS and show you how to convert them into sales.
CONTACT
Email: shirree@majestic3.com
Website: www.majestic3.com
Podcasts: www.scottcundill.com