Outsourcing to Your Virtual Self

By Robert Middleton - Action Plan Marketing

One morning in 2001 I woke up and declared: "I can't take it anymore!" And that's when things really started to change in my business.

What couldn't I take anymore?

I couldn't stand training every single one of my clients individually in my marketing methodologies one at a time.

One day I'd train a client in the concepts of Marketing Ball or making appointments or using speaking as a marketing tool and then the next day I'd be training someone else in exactly the same thing.

After many years of this, it started to get old. Real old.

That's when I figured out how to do group programs. This way I could train people as a group (via teleconference) and then offer individual coaching on the finer points.

This led to my Marketing Action Groups which I ran for several years. And it was not only great because I didn't have to train clients individually anymore, but the fact that I worked with clients about half as many hours, made twice the money and got even better results.

Then I created the Marketing Club and put all my best how-to marketing methods and systems into self-paced online tutorials. This eliminated the need for live training of any kind, whether by teleconference or workshops.

And last year I created the Marketing Mastery Program that takes the foundational material from the Marketing Club and adds intensive coaching in the form of both group and individual sessions.

What I realized is that I'd completely outsourced the training part of my business to my virtual self!

And that training is more consistent, reliable and available than any live training could ever be. Now members of the Marketing Club and Marketing Mastery Program have access to my best marketing materials 24 hours a day.

So what does this mean to you?

It means you can also outsource training to your virtual self. And this can free you up to do client work that is at a much higher level.

Here are some possibilities:

1. Commit your methodologies, processes and exercises to paper. Turn them into pdfs and post them online where your clients can easily access them.

2. Do recordings of the same material and make them available online as mp3s. If you offer both, your clients will get more retention of the material.

3. Turn the materials into PowerPoint or Keynote presentations and then add an audio narration. This is an area I'm experimenting with and I think it could be the most powerful.

Now make these materials available to clients before you work with them in a group or individually. This has many advantages:

1. Your clients can study the materials on their schedule, not yours. They can listen, read, do exercises and take the time they need to absorb the materials.

2. When you do your group or individual work with clients it will be on a higher level. Instead of training in the basic concepts, you'll be answering questions and working on the finer points.

3. Virtual training in this material will add more consistency, as the material will always be the same. And of course, you can update it when that's called for.

4. It will take you much less time to consult, coach or train if you also add a virtual training component. You can use this time gained to develop more materials.

5. Ultimately you may decide to turn some of these materials into an e-book or other stand-alone program that you can sell online to earn ongoing passive income.

A few things that will increase the success of outsourcing to your virtual self:

1. If you provide material to study before group or individual sessions, it must be a requirement, not a suggestion. If it's optional, most people will avoid doing it.

2. Always have assignments on the material that they send in to you. Yeah, I know this sounds like being a grade school teacher. But reviewing this material doesn't take long.

3. Provide feedback on their assignments. If you don't include this feedback loop, they'll start to drag on getting their materials back to you.

To make all of this work, you need to buck the conventions of ordinary training. The truth about training is pretty ugly. There is only about 10% retention from reading or training alone. But if you add groups sessions and individual coaching, retention increases to as high as 90%.

Remember the old saying, "work smart, not hard"?

Well, combining training with coaching is smart. But making the training virtual is even smarter. You'll spend less time and be able focus on the higher level stuff.

The most important consideration in all of this, of course, is that whatever you do, it has to improve results. You need to be in the success story business. My experience is that working this way takes a lot of the training burden off me so that I can focus on helping my clients achieve those results.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Find out a way to outsource training and the transfer of other information to your virtual self. You'll find that your virtual self will work 24 hours a day, never get exhausted and never require a raise!

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What training or information could you start outsourcing to your virtual self? Please share your answer on the More Clients Blog by Clicking on the Comments link below.

Comments

[Philam]

New technology really helps you save time especially in training. Good post! :-)

[Aamer Iqbal]

Bravo! (I know a guy who would have charged $400 for what you give away here.) Guys, this is the value Robert has been giving us for years.