Sean McCool, as mild-mannered as his name, is a marketing and copywriting dynamo who has been generating considerable profits for his business clients for several years.
A native Southerner, he has lived and worked all over the United States before settling and residing in Chattanooga, Tennessee with his wife and children.
Sean is in the unique position of having been a successful sales person for many years before crossing over to the marketing side of the business table. He spent many years honing his sales skills while working for different companies.
In 2003, Mr. McCool started working with his father’s home improvement business, building custom sun rooms in Knoxville, TN. After a brief stint working in construction for the business, he moved over to sales, to continue using the skills he had in that area.
As Sean focused on helping grow his father’s business, he started to learn more and more about marketing. One aspect of marketing that caught his interest was copywriting, for direct response sales. Sean stated, “I’ve always had a knack and love for writing. I found a career where I could do sales and writing together.”
Unfortunately for Sean and his father, the housing collapse in 2007 was not friendly to their remodeling business and his father was forced to close the business.
As the business had been crumbling for some time, Sean was down to his last $26 and faced a mountain of bills. He decided to use the construction skills he had learned to start a handyman business. He took sixteen of those twenty-six dollars and wrote up a flyer, printed and distributed a thousand of them in what he thought might be a neighborhood likely to need his services.
He used the copywriting principles he had been learning and started to get more and more business. He rinsed and repeated what worked and kept refining his message to potential customers. And it worked.
The handyman business had been a survival tactic, however, and not a passion. As Sean realized that the marketing he was doing was working well, he realized he could use those skills to help other businesses grow and he could earn a living as well – but this time doing something he loved.
In 2008, Sean committed himself to focusing on becoming a full-time copywriter. He accomplished this goal in 2009, working for a major direct response marketing company for a year. His experiences there allowed him to eventually become a freelance copywriter, earning a comfortable living.
“So literally, in about five years, I went from $26 in my account to making multiple six figures thanks to direct response principals. Not just copywriting, but understanding the whole art of persuasion in both print and using all my sales skills,” stated Sean.
“I think one of the advantages I had is I’d been in sales ten years. So I understood a lot of the sales side of things. And then I had to apply it to writing and a few little tricks here and there. I was able to take sales skills and a natural writing talent and put everything together.”
In the last few years, Sean has expanded his skills to include marketing strategies and he has created a concept he calls Profit Funnels. He states, “I had wanted to go to the next level which was to help businesses, not just from a copy standpoint, but, literally from a marketing strategy standpoint – and help them market their businesses, so they can see the same kind of success and growth.”
Sean believes that there are many profit-generating opportunities that business owners aren’t taking advantage of to build their businesses, usually because they’re unaware of the strategies to use.
It’s common knowledge that most business owners focus on getting new clients. However, according to Sean, “The two areas they miss out on the most is they don’t do a good job of following up with their existing clients and getting them to buy more often. But you can be strategic and actually provide services and stay in front of the client.
Moreover, they fail to increase the transaction size, which is what grocery stores are great at. You always walk out with more. Most businesses don’t do that strategically.”
When a series of Profit Funnels are created and put into service, they become a system and can continually work to bring customers in more often and to increase the amount they spend.
Sean believes that, “Everything you do, even if it’s content, information needs to move the client, the prospect, or the customer one step closer to the next sale, because at the end of the day, you’re a business. You’re in business to make money.”
The experience of his father’s business closing has left a lasting impression on Sean. It helped to foster his desire to become a marketing consultant to help others, while incorporating his skills as a copywriter. The overall strategy of his Profit Funnels is to build a better company and get people better results so that it all works together.
This strategy helps to unify the business’ message by ensuring that no matter where people learn about the business, they’re hearing the same basic story, providing a continuity of their message.
The internet has created a surge in the creation of new marketing techniques, tactics and tricks which can be both confusing and frustrating for business owners to learn and implement.
Sean McCool believes that the overriding emphasis should instead be on using sound marketing principles which do not change with time. It’s about telling stories in an authentic way without any hype and persuading people why your business is the better choice. According to Sean, “Companies that don’t get that will be left behind for sure.”
To learn more about how Sean McCool can help your business grow, you can visit: http://www.seanmccool.com.