Million-dollar business owner Scott Krady shares his strategies for attracting clients and closing deals
Yearning to leave the corporate world, Scott Krady turned what he learned in his marketing career into a million-dollar business. The father of two runs Magnitude, a marketing agency in Irvington, N.Y. Although Magnitude competes against big public companies such as Omnicon Group and Interpublic Group dominate, Scott grew it a million-dollar, one-person business since he began experimenting with freelancing in 2018 and then committed to taking it full time in 2021.
As Scott won more accounts creating integrated marketing and communication campaigns, he enlisted a team of contractors to help him as business grew. The business gradually morphed into what I describe in my second book, Tiny Business, Big Money, an ultra-lean employer business, with two employees.
Scott spoke at the “Tiny Business, Big Money” series at the New York Public Library on Monday, July 14, in a panel about how solopreneurs and owners of tiny businesses can close deals and get to the million-dollar mark. He joined Shark Tank veteran and Roq Innovation founder Raquel Graham and Municibid founder Greg Berry, who helps towns and cities sell surplus equipment and cars so they can fund activities like parades. (More on Raquel and Greg’s ideas in future columns).
Looking to create your own lucrative exit strategy from corporate? Here are some of the ideas Scott shared from the front lines of running a thriving professional services business.
1. Understand that your network is your currency. Scott started his business in his fifties and discovered he’d been building a valuable asset: The relationships he’d developed over the years. He’d been both a marketer and a reporter at Fortune.
As he launched the business, Scott began sharing his plans with people he already knew, through his previous career and charitable work. Some of these supporters became his first clients.
“Probably the best place to start when you're thinking of starting a business and want to get results is the people that know you, that can validate the work you've done, who see you as credible,” he said. “Those are the people that will be the most likely to take a chance and do business with you.”
His advice: “Things happen because your network, the people that you interface with,” he said. “They want you to succeed if they like you genuinely. And if you come across as authentic, and believing in what you're doing, then that's really the first step in the process of building those relationships that are hopefully going to lead you to opportunities."
2. Make time to attend in-person events. Even with the right relationships, you won’t be able to sell anything if people don’t know you’ve started a business. One of the best ways to spread the word is by attending events where you can meet your target customers.
“You have to put yourself out there,” Scott said. “When I first started, I went to every event I possibly could that had any relevance to anything we wanted to focus on, from a B2B perspective, in our business.”
You don’t have to be an extravert to do this. When Scott attends events, he prioritizes asking questions and listening, so he gets a good handle on what B2B clients need right now. He also seeks common ground that will allow him to build relationships.
“At some point, they're going to mention something that will resonate with you,” he said. “It could be as simple as a TV show that you both liked or a town that you visited. Maybe they're from Toledo and you went there last summer."
Chatting about common interests and circling back to them in your follow-up outreach can help bring a warmer feeling to it. “You're looking to make someone who is a stranger into someone more familiar,” he said.
Show what you can do for clients. “We are in the ideas business, so we're only as good as the ideas that we provide to our potential customers,” says Scott.
He and his team provide detailed information on how they can help a prospect while still in the pitching process, based on an analysis of what they're doing and things that the targets could do differently or better.
“Oftentimes we do this, whether they become clients or not, just because we want to show that we're a potential valued partner,” said Scott.
Ultimately, sales are about building trust—and offering preliminary ideas is a good way to do that.
Sharing ideas makes selling easier. “It's not even considered selling,” he said. “It's more like ‘We're going to do business together, partner together.’”
4. Remember that selling is a numbers game.
Even if you’re getting a lot of rejections, you can still close enough sales to build a sustainable business, he pointed out. “You could strike out on 10 deals and hit two and still be doing quite well,” Scott said. “So, you have to think about it from that perspective.”
If Scott meets or emails 30 or 40 different people, he feels he’s doing quite well if two respond to him. "If you have two of those a month, it adds up,” he said. “So, focus on the wins and the positive responses, play the numbers game and put a lot out there.”
4. Uncover your clients’ biggest pain point (and solve it). It’s a lot easier to sell to customers if you offer something they need … and can deliver it. Scott realized his clients need a growth engine and emphasizes how his team can help build it in the sales process.
“We're typically dealing with a company that's having some sort of growth problem,” he explained. They may be new to the market and need to build out their narrative to the market, launching a new product or rebranding. His work is providing solutions, such as figuring out what their narrative is and building that out in their marketing to share with stakeholders.
5. Deliver results. Most of Scott’s clients hire his firm on retainer, meaning they pay a flat fee every month for pre-selected services. To make sure clients get their money’s worth, he devotes a lot of attention to finding great contractors to support their marketing, tapping his network of former colleagues.
“There’s no shortage of competition,” he said. “There's a lot of firms out there that do what we do. It's about having the right expertise and the right people and the right track record.”
This approach, in turn, makes the selling process easier, because it fosters a lot of referrals.
Keep your pipeline full. “The sales cycle really never ends,” said Scott. “It's ongoing.”
One way to think of it, he said, is if you have 100 leads, any of your prospects could close at some unknown point in time. “You don't know if it's going to be today, tomorrow, within six weeks or six months,” he said. “You have to keep nurturing them as much as you can in meaningful authentic ways that add some value for them and hopefully, it's a win at the end. It's an ongoing cycle.”
Plant seeds now. Although it’s summer, Scott recommends continuing to reach out to clients. You can check in to see if they have summer plans and mention you’re looking forward to having a meaningful conversation come September. In the meantime, he recommends asking, “Is there anything I can do to help you between now and then?”
If summer is slow in your industry, this seed planting will serve you in a month or two, when that outreach will be likely to pay off.
“You want to keep the conversation warm until we're back into a non-summer mode, where people are actually thinking more seriously about closing business,” he said. While it can be tough to break out the laptop on a beautiful summer day, even a few hours of work can pay many dividends.