When your biggest client disappears

Neil Brown of Brown Advertising (http://www.brownadvertising.com/) in Winston-Salem North Carolina recently faced a bit of a business crisis. His biggest client restructured and disappeared. One month later I called to see how things were going. To my delight (and a bit of surprise), Neil said, “Business has been really good.” When I asked him what he was doing, he said one word: Networking. That’s when I asked if he would share his story in a podcast interview and here it is. The short version: When Neil started noticing the instability and personnel changes happening with his biggest client, he started to prepare by joining one of the Marketing Mentor Marketing Groups (next ones start next week!) and getting his marketing machine in gear. Soon after, his suspicions came true and the client terminated their contract. Despite this, Neil says, “Because of the marketing, I haven’t really missed the client.” In this interview on the Marketing Mentor Podcast, Neil shares what’s making up his marketing machine, and how it’s working. One big component is local networking, to which Neil used to have an aversion. He says that since he’s a bit of an introvert, he always found it intimidating. But once he got involved, he now says, “I actually love networking” because it’s “simply talking with other likeminded business people.” Listen in to find out which networking groups he’s involved in, who he’s meeting, and the response he’s getting from this—and his other—marketing efforts. Has this ever happened to you? What have you done to prepare? Or what did you do when you were caught off guard?