What can happen when you get the sale right?
When you sell a high-value product or service, you don’t need dozens of additional sales each month to make a significant difference in your business.
Sometimes, getting just a few more customers or clients each month to choose your premium product or service can make a big difference in your cash flow and profit, not to mention your attitude.
Reach more qualified prospects, make a stronger sales argument, and follow up intelligently; even modest improvements at each stage can produce a surprisingly large improvement in sales and profit.
If you’re already doing exceptionally well and still hungry to grow, we’d especially like to hear from you. Success doesn’t mean you’ve run out of opportunities. Some of the biggest opportunities we find are hidden within already-successful businesses—waiting for someone to recognize them, develop a strategy to pursue them, and turn untapped business into customers, revenue, and profit.
Those are the kinds of opportunities we’ve spent decades working on.
Different businesses. Different markets. Different sales problems. And very different solutions as the situation dictates.
The results speak for themselves.
$20+ Million in Business
Marketing and messaging strategies that helped Howard Exploration Inc. generate more than $20 million in business.
“Russell Martino’s marketing and messaging strategies have delivered over $20 million in business to our company. As far as I’m concerned, he is a marketing genius.”
— Alan Howard, President, Howard Exploration Inc.
Higher Close Rates on $6,000–$12,000 Sales
A streamlined marketing process that brought better-informed prospects into the practice—and produced its highest closing rate to date.
Record-Breaking Revenue Collections
A high-volume practice already selling $5,000–$10,000+ treatment programs went on to surpass every previous revenue collection record.
Seven-Figure Revenue Streams
Overlooked opportunities developed into highly lucrative revenue streams, including opportunities reaching well into seven figures.
The number isn’t the whole story.
It’s easy to look at a result after the fact and focus on the number: $20 million in business, a higher closing rate, record-breaking collections, or seven-figure revenue streams. Those numbers matter, but every one raises a more interesting question: What had to change to make that result possible?
There’s no single answer. One business needed a stronger sales argument; another needed prospects to learn more before meeting with a salesperson. A third was already extraordinarily successful but still had room to capture more of the opportunity it had created. And another had valuable opportunities within the business that nobody had yet recognized.
Different businesses. Different markets. Different prospects. Different problems. So why would the solution be the same? Each required different analysis, different strategy, and different campaigns. When it comes to selling premium products or services to premium buyers, there is no ‘single solution’ you can plug in.
That’s where a lot of marketing goes wrong. A business decides it needs a new website, direct mail, better follow-up, a book, or a new sales presentation, and then the conversation shifts to building it.
But the thing isn’t the strategy.
The first question should be: What’s standing between the opportunity and the sale?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. Often, it isn’t. And sometimes the opportunity has nothing to do with converting the prospect already in front of you. There may be another market you should be reaching, another way to package what you already know, another reason existing customers should buy more, or another revenue stream hiding inside the business.
You don’t know until you look. That’s why we don’t begin by deciding what we’re going to build. We begin by finding the opportunity, understanding what keeps the business from fully capturing it, and then deciding what the sale requires.
Results start with solving the right problem.
Case Study
Phil Straw, D.C. | $6,000–$12,000 Treatment Programs
When the marketing itself becomes the bottleneck.
Phil Straw wasn’t having trouble finding people who needed what his Southern California chiropractic practice offered. He had developed a marketing process that brought prospective neuropathy patients into the practice for treatment programs priced from $6,000 to $12,000.
The problem was the effort required to get them there. The process had become complicated and expensive, and, in Phil’s words, a “logistical nightmare.” Too much time and money were being consumed before the prospect ever reached the point where a sale could happen.
We looked at the process differently. Instead of simply trying to generate more prospects, we streamlined marketing and eliminated a costly, time-consuming step. Then created the strategy and marketing assets needed to do more of the work before the prospect arrived at the practice.
That changed more than just the marketing. Prospects arrived better informed and with a clearer sense of what to expect. As a result, the practice achieved its highest-ever closing rate for treatment programs priced at $6,000–$12,000.
“Russell Martino has simplified our marketing process, eliminated a costly and time-consuming step, and brought us better-informed prospects who know what to expect. Our closing rate has never been higher.”
— Phil Straw, D.C.
The answer wasn’t more leads. It was a better path to the sale.
What if the biggest opportunity is one you haven’t seen yet?
Not every sales problem looks like a sales problem.
Sometimes customers are buying. The business is successful. Nothing appears particularly broken. But there may still be money sitting inside the business that nobody has figured out how to capture.
Victor N. Makris | Makris Law Firm, P.C.
“Russell Martino has an uncanny ability to identify opportunities others don’t see. I’ve watched deals go from notepaper in living rooms to boardrooms, with revenue streams well into seven figures. At my law firm, two ideas Russell introduced became highly lucrative revenue streams.”
— Victor N. Makris, Makris Law Firm, P.C.
“Russell identified two opportunities at Makris Law Firm that weren’t part of the firm’s existing approach to generating revenue. Those ideas didn’t start with a request for a specific marketing tactic. They began by looking at the business, recognizing an overlooked opportunity, and figuring out how to turn it into something commercially valuable. Both became highly lucrative revenue streams for the firm.”
Sometimes there’s nothing to fix. There’s something to find.
When you look at your business only through the problems you already know you have, you can miss the opportunities you don’t know to look for. A valuable new market, a different way to package what you already do, an overlooked reason for existing customers to buy more, or an entirely new revenue stream can be surprisingly close to what you’re already doing.
The opportunity doesn’t always require reinventing the business. Sometimes it requires seeing it differently.
Case Study
Victor N. Makris | Makris Law Firm, P.C.
What if the business is already doing well?
It’s easy to look for opportunities when something is obviously wrong. Sales are slow. Leads aren’t converting. A campaign that should work isn’t working. A problem demands attention, so you look for an answer.
It’s harder to ask the same questions when the business is already successful.
Dr. Robert Shelton wasn’t trying to rescue a struggling practice. He describes his clinic as one of the highest-volume chiropractic practices in the country, offering treatment programs priced from about $5,000 to more than $10,000. By most reasonable measures, what he was doing was already working.
Dr. Robert Shelton | $5,000–$10,000+ Treatment Programs
But working and fully realizing the opportunity aren’t necessarily the same.
Russell worked with Shelton on marketing and sales for those high-value treatment programs. According to Shelton, the practice went on to “completely crush” every previous revenue collection record it had set.
“I’ve owned and operated one of the highest-volume chiropractic clinics in the country, specializing in selling treatment programs priced from about $5,000 to $10,000+. With Russell Martino’s help, I completely crushed all previous revenue collection records.”
— Dr. Robert Shelton, D.C., P.Sc.D.
Success can hide opportunity just as easily as failure can hide a problem.
When a business is struggling, you know to look closely. When it’s successful, it’s much easier to assume the system is working as it should.
But a business can be growing and still lose too many good prospects. It can generate impressive revenue and still leave money on the table. It can have a sales process that works—and still have room to make it work considerably better.
That’s why the question isn’t simply “Is this working?”
A more valuable question may be: “How much better could this be working?”
And for a high-value business, the answer doesn’t have to involve a dramatic change to achieve a dramatic economic result.
Case Study
Stan Kinder | Owner, Everything DSO
The bigger the decision, the harder your sales argument has to work.
As the value of the sale grows, everything surrounding the decision grows with it. More money is at stake, more people are involved, more alternatives to consider, and more reasons for the prospect to slow down before saying yes.
Stan Kinder knows that kind of sale.
As the owner of Everything DSO, Stan operates in a world where transactions can range from about $3 million to more than $10 million. These aren’t decisions made because a headline caught someone’s attention or a salesperson delivered a clever close. The proposition can be complex, the stakes are high, and the argument has to hold up all the way through the decision.
That’s the ability Stan highlights when he talks about Russell Martino, Terrie Lopez, and Conquest Sales and Marketing. Not simply writing copy or creating marketing, but taking a complex proposition and finding a way to communicate it to the right audience so the value is crystal clear and the message prompts a response.
“Russell has a unique ability to take a complex proposition and communicate it to the target audience in a powerful, compelling way that prompts a response.”
— Stan Kinder, Owner, Everything DSO
When millions of dollars can ride on the decision, “good marketing” isn’t good enough.
The proposition has to be understood, the value has to be clear, and the sales argument has to hold together throughout the prospect’s decision-making process.
The more complicated the sale, the more important it is to know exactly what that sales argument needs to accomplish.
Different problems. Different solutions. Same standard.
Howard Exploration didn’t have Dr. Phil Straw’s problem. Phil didn’t have Victor Makris’s opportunity. Victor’s situation wasn’t Robert Shelton’s, and none of those sales looked quite like the multimillion-dollar transactions Stan Kinder describes.
So no single tactic produced all those results.
Sometimes the answer was messaging. Sometimes it was changing the process. Sometimes it was finding an opportunity no one had recognized. Sometimes it was getting more out of something that was already working.
The common denominator wasn’t the tactic. It was starting with the sale: understanding the opportunity, identifying what stood in the way, and then building what the specific sale required.
That’s why we don’t believe every business needs a book, direct mail, a new website, a funnel, or a new sales presentation.
Any of those could be exactly what you need, but we don’t know that yet. Neither do you—not until we understand what you’re trying to make happen, what’s happening instead, and why.
We don’t sell tactics. We build what the sale requires.
Results like these don’t come from theory.
Russell Martino has spent decades in the trenches of direct response, marketing, and high-value sales—selling his own professional services at premium fees and helping clients across very different industries do the same.
Along the way, his work has earned the respect of some of the most accomplished people in direct-response marketing and sales. People who know the difference between an idea that sounds good in a conference room and one that actually has to persuade someone to spend real money.
“He is not a theorist.”
Dan Kennedy has known Russell for decades and has seen his work both as a marketer of his own professional services and as an advisor to clients in diverse fields. In the foreword to Persuade. Profit. Repeat., Kennedy makes the distinction plainly: Russell’s approach comes from successful experience doing the work, not simply teaching it.
— Dan S. Kennedy
“He is one of the best.”
Legendary direct-response copywriter Clayton Makepeace generated more than half a billion dollars in sales for his clients and worked with some of the biggest names in marketing and advertising. He worked with Russell on seven different projects. His assessment of Russell was equally direct.
“I’ve worked with some of the savviest direct-response marketers on the planet, going all the way back to David Ogilvy. Russell Martino is one of them. He is one of the best.” — Clayton Makepeace
Hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services
Rodger Friedman has known Russell personally and professionally for decades. In his introduction to Persuade. Profit. Repeat., he describes Russell as having helped marketers sell hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of products and services and highlights his ability to connect ideas, emotion, and execution into a cohesive system.
That history matters, but not because you need another marketing guru.
You need someone who can look at a difficult sale, understand what has to happen for the right prospect to say yes, and distinguish between an interesting idea and one capable of producing a business result.
And ultimately, that’s the only reason any of this experience matters to you.
The result we haven’t talked about yet is yours.
You’ve seen what happened in other businesses when the right sales problem was identified and the right solution was built around it.
But we don’t know what’s sitting inside your business yet.
Maybe you’re already generating plenty of leads, but too many drop out between interest and the sale. Maybe prospects like what you offer until they see the price, and suddenly you’re defending your price instead of explaining why you’re worth it.
Maybe your salespeople are good at what they do, but they spend too much time in the sales conversation establishing value, answering objections, or explaining differences your marketing should have made clear long before the prospect reached them.
Or maybe what stands between you and stronger sales is something else entirely.
There may be a market you haven’t explored, expertise you haven’t monetized, a better way to package what you already offer, an untapped opportunity among your existing customers, or a new revenue stream closer to your current business than you might expect.
That’s the interesting thing about opportunity: you don’t always know what you’re looking for until you find it.
And you don’t have to walk into the conversation already knowing the answer.
You don’t have to decide whether you need a new website, a book, a direct-mail campaign, better follow-up, or a different sales process. You don’t even have to know exactly where the problem is.
You just need to know there’s a gap between what your business is producing now and what you believe it should be capable of producing.
That’s enough to start a conversation.
Bring us your sales problem.
You don’t need to send us a polished brief or determine what kind of marketing you need before you reach out. In fact, we’d rather you didn’t.
Tell us what you sell, what a good customer is worth, and what you’re seeing in the business. Maybe good prospects aren’t buying. Maybe sales keep stalling at the same point. Maybe you’re tired of competing on price when you know you’re worth more. Or maybe the business is already doing extremely well, and you sense there’s an opportunity you’re not fully capturing.
Give us enough to understand what you’re looking at. Then let’s see what’s standing in the way of the opportunity and the sale.
Fortune favors the bold.