Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for October, 2009

I’m going to ask you three questions.

1. What’s the number that defines your goal for your business?

It might be the number of clients you would like to serve each week. Or it could be the income you hope to earn.

2. How serious are you about meeting that number? How committed are you to really doing this?

Have you decided that you’re going to find a way to earn that income, no matter what?

3. Why aren’t you already achieving that number?

One of the main barriers to truly meeting your potential is undervaluing what you know.

We’re all taught early on that modesty is a virtue. Talking about what we can do and how much we know is boasting and bragging. But undervaluing what you know will definitely keep you from achieving your goal number.

I’d like you to try a brief exercise. Draw a big cross in the center of a piece of paper, dividing the sheet into four corners. Now write these words in each corner:

• top left: “hard to learn; hard to do.”

• top right: “hard to learn; easy to do.”

• bottom left: “easy to learn; hard to do.”

• bottom right: “so easy I can’t remember learning it; easy to do.”

Now think about your business. Just about anything you do in your business could fit into one of those quadrants.

Say, for example, it took you ages to learn a piece of software, but once you got used to it, it was really straightforward. It was hard to learn, but it’s easy to do.

Perhaps something that’s easy to learn is doing paperwork. But you may find it hard to do because it’s not something you enjoy. It was easy to learn, but it’s hard to do.

When you think about where you can generate the most money, you may automatically focus on the area which is hard to learn and hard to do.

So you sweat and struggle and earn lots of certificates and qualifications. And then continue to put tons of effort into your business in order to justify reaching that goal number.

But think about where your natural talent lies, where you have the biggest contribution to make. It’s actually in the bottom right-hand corner of your chart. It’s in the box that’s so easy to learn and so easy for you to do that you can’t remember learning it.

We tend to undervalue the things that come easily to us. You might even have ideas right now for something that you could put into a product. But it just seems so obvious that you think, “No one will pay for it.”

That is a thought that will keep you stuck. It’s so important for you to realize that what is obvious to you is not obvious to the rest of the world. There are things that come very easily to you, so easily you can’t even perceive that other people have a problem with them.

And that’s what you need to be focusing on. That’s where you have the biggest contribution to make. It’s your natural talent.

That’s where the gold is. There is a market niche that desperately wants what comes easily to you – and they’re willing to pay for it.

This is how you turn what you know and love into consistent predictable income. You do it by identifying that market that is praying for something that you have to offer.

If you truly believe in the value of what you’re offering, it will be reflected back to you in the form of increased revenue. But if you’re undervaluing what you know, you’re just going to be blind to the people who badly need your help.

You need to recognize that you are the answer to someone’s prayers. Right now someone is struggling with a problem that you can help them solve.

So identify your natural talents, and market those abilities to the people who are praying for someone just like you. You’ll find that your target number is within your reach.

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You may be making a common sales mistake when offering your products and services to prospects. Rather than setting fixed prices for your services, you may be deciding with each new prospect how much to charge for your products.

While that may seem like a good way to make every sale, it will actually wind up costing you money. Keep reading to learn how to make more sales while holding firm on pricing.

Make the value of your product or service clear to your prospect: You probably learned the habit of price shifting with the best of intentions—getting every prospect to say “Yes.” It might seem as though changing your price for each prospect is the best way to close every sale.

What you really need, though, are better sales techniques. You won’t have to reduce your price to make a sale if your product’s value is clear to the prospect. Set firm prices and then work to educate each prospect on how your products will benefit them. Once that benefit has been established, they’ll be more than happy to pay the price you quote.

Keep Yourself Accountable: Find yourself an accountability buddy. This is someone who will remind you to stick to your fixed pricing.  Someone who will watch out to make sure you don’t deviate! This is a hard habit to break.  Remember, you started shifting your prices in the belief it would help your conversion numbers. That’s why you need someone else to remind you that fixed pricing will net more sales.

Let the Client Decide: Once you’ve set a firm price on your products, approach each offer with the notion that your clients can decide what they need. Your job is to present the options to them. If you’ve done a good job, the client will make an informed decision to buy your products.

You might also be prejudging your prospects and decided whether or not they should buy. Sometimes, that’s done out of the fear they don’t really need your products. It can also come out of arrogance, a feeling you know better than the client what they need. No matter what the reason, it’s time to break the habit!

Someone who can actually be served by your products might be missed if you decide ahead of time they are not in a position to buy. For instance, Dan Kennedy tells the story of a salesman who botched his presentation after observing his client’s humble lifestyle. Why would he miss an opportunity to sell his products? Because he decided ahead of time they couldn’t afford to buy them.

Stop talking yourself out of sales. Present your products clearly and establish the benefit to each prospect.  Positioning yourself to serve their needs and making the advantages of your products obvious is always a better strategy than changing your price. Name your fixed price and then let them decide whether to buy.

It’s not too late to change your selling habits. Practicing fixed pricing is the fair way to build your business. Put your energy into learning to serve your clients with great products and presenting the benefits of those products clearly. Once you do, your business will begin to grow with a lot less effort than you’re expending now.

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Boosting your Business’s Revenues with Efficiency

If you are ready to expand your current business’s revenue sources, you may consider creating an information empire. An information empire can leverage your personal unique strengths and your current business concept to grow exponentially in the fashion and in the speed you desire. One of the largest benefits to leveraging this technique is that you can increase revenues without substantially increasing your time investment. Utilize the concepts outlined below to begin brainstorming about how you could integrate this business technique into your organization.

Redesigning your Business Model

An information empire is about redesigning your existing business to better serve you and your customers. It is about delivering more value, to more people, more often, to make more money. When you approach your business in this fashion rather than the simple launch of a single ebook, you will be developing an information empire which can bring you in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds per year.

Offering Expertise in a Variety of Formats

An information empire is about offering your expertise in a variety of formats, using a variety of media both online and offline to reach and build relationships with your target audience. You can offer teleseminars, webinars, in-house conferences or seminars, CDs, DVDs, ebooks and printed books. The sky is the limit on what you can develop and offer to your clients and prospects.

Offering Products in a Variety of Price Points

You are going to have some customers willing to invest only $50 for a product, while others will be willing to spend thousands for the right information. This concept is not only about creating products at specific price points, it is about building answers to problems which individuals are facing, no matter what the price point is. When you accomplish this, people around the world will be happy to spend the capital to purchase what you have to offer.

Taking the Opportunity to Leverage Outsourcing

You don’t have to work through this entire process on your own. You don’t have to hire expensive staff or to pay suppliers huge amounts to develop the products you are looking to launch. Building an information empire is about tapping into the right people’s skill sets to really enhance your business’s results. You can utilize virtual assistants to manage tasks remotely, saving you valuable money by allowing you to focus your attention on the more important, higher revenue generation tasks. You can find suppliers who will fulfill orders on an as needed basis rather than purchasing expensive inventory up front.

Solving a Problem or Answering a Question

To be successful in creating an information empire, you need to provide products which answer questions or solve problems. Don’t develop products in which you believe will fulfill a niche. Perform surveys, review data and develop something that you can test prior to making an investment. Working through this process will improve your levels of success when launching new products.

Consider what question you will answer or what problem you will solve by creating information products. Consider what your unique value proposition is as this is where your value lies. Utilize these brainstorming concepts to begin sketching your implementation strategy. Creating an information empire will leverage your current individual strengths and the success that you have previously had in your business model.

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Have you ever watched an artist sketch a drawing or paint a picture? Or watched a culinary chef prepare a meal? They make it look so easy, so effortless, don’t they? For them, these talents come naturally, and the rest of us willingly pay for their final masterpiece.

You have talents that come naturally, too. We all do. And, the very things that come easily to you are the things that are worth potentially hundreds or thousands or more to other people.

You’re probably using processes and procedures in your business that come so naturally to you that you don’t realize their value. Just because you haven’t taken a course and paid someone to teach you the skills you’ve picked up as you went along, doesn’t mean that you should take those skills for granted. That knowledge got you where you wanted to be. And it can likely help someone else get where they need to be. These people want you to share your knowledge with them, and will gladly pay you to do so.

When I first started my email newsletter, I went through the learning curve of figuring out how to do it. I learned about things like list managers, how to set up a template, how to send it, and how to get subscribers. I learned all of that along the way.

People who were receiving my newsletter saw that I was generating sales by doing this, and started to ask me technical questions. “How do you do this? What software are you using? How do you get a template done? How do you send it?”

Because I was more focused on marketing, I wasn’t thinking that my knowledge about e-mail newsletters could be revenue. I was more interested in things like lead generation and marketing strategy. It was a long, long time before the penny finally dropped and I thought, “I’ve got a process here that people want to learn.”

All of the steps I’d taken to create content for my newsletter – figuring out how to publish it, learning the software, the list management, getting subscribers – all of that was valuable. It was knowledge I possessed and could turn into an asset, which I did by offering a series of three separate teleseminars on these topics.

Though it took me a while to figure out that I could turn my knowledge and skills into a tangible product, those teleseminars translated into substantial additional revenue for my business.

When an accountant measures assets in a business, he typically looks at tangible assets – things like what inventory you have and what capital equipment you own. For a solo professional, your assets are your time and expertise. And while those assets aren’t as tangible, that doesn’t mean they aren’t just as valuable.

So, stop undervaluing your assets. Think about the things you do and the things you know that come so naturally to you that you don’t see their value. What knowledge or skills do you possess that are potentially worth a lot of money to other people?

Consider all the steps you go through in your business that could be pure gold for someone. Then, market that information to your clients or customers to make those undervalued assets work for you.

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Does this scenario sound familiar? You’re working sixty plus hours a week and yet your income remains stagnant. You couldn’t be any busier, but you’re no more successful than last year. If any of this rings a bell, consider this possibility: the real problem with your productivity may be the time you spend avoiding clients instead of connecting with them. There are three steps to turning things around and having the connections with clients that build business.

Step Number One: Track How Your Time’s Being Spent

The activities on which you spend your time determine your income. If you take a hard look at how your time’s being spent, you may find a lot of busy work and very little client contact.

Are you actually talking to clients, or do they have to hunt you down? Does it take multiple calls for a client to receive a price quote? Do you actually quote prices or promise to get back later, but never do?

Whatever it is you’re doing besides connecting with clients, it probably isn’t producing income.

What’s needed is time in front of clients making your offer. Identify the ways you’re avoiding doing that and you’re ready for the next step.

Step Number Two: Make a Commitment to Connect

Once you’ve identified the things you’re not doing that could put you in touch with clients, make a commitment to change. Tell yourself that for the next week, or month or whatever time period, you’re going to return calls or finish price quotes, whatever it is you’re not doing now.

Make this commitment serious by adding some conditions. For example, you might say, “Every day this week, I will return client calls before I can eat lunch.” The point is to make it a high priority commitment in your life. Make this an iron-clad thing that you must do, because it’s so important to your business.

Step Number Three: Dig Deeper to Discover Why

If you’re still having trouble facing your clients, it’s time for a little soul searching. Is it possible you’re avoiding clients because you’ve erected mental barriers? Is there some belief inside you that’s keeping you from being responsive? Until that’s resolved, you may be saying “I need more clients” but you’ll continue to avoid doing the things that attract them.

Perhaps you feel you need more education or training first. Maybe you feel your website’s not quite perfect. Those are both mental barriers you’ve put in place to keep from moving forward.

It’s actually quite possible to make great sales without having much in place at all. Tell yourself it’s time to get down to the basics—returning calls, making appointments, completing price quotes—anything that will help keep you connected to your clients.

Once you’ve made the commitment to stay connected with your clients, the energy in your business is going to change. You’re going to see opportunities appear that can bring you great success. By making yourself open and accessible to clients, you will naturally attract more business and begin to reach your goals. All it takes is identifying how you’re avoiding clients now and making a commitment to take a step back toward them.

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Do you feel like you’re working yourself ragged, but still not seeing consistent income? When you’re putting in that much effort and not seeing an increase in business, the problem could be what you want at the deepest level.

In other words, it’s possible your subconscious beliefs are pushing away new clients. Here’s how that can work.

You may have made a conscious decision to pursue new business; the problem comes when your subconscious mind doesn’t want the same thing. The energy that’s produced by those conflicted goals can signal to potential clients that you’re not really interested in their business.

So, here’s the concept:

You have at this time exactly the client list that you want.

You might, for example, be saying, “My goal is to gain ten new clients each month.” But deeper inside, you’re saying, “That would create an awful lot of work! I don’t want that!”

Do you see how those conflicted wants could make you act in ways that would push away clients? You can’t help but respond, in the ways you do business, to a belief about the additional work new clients would create.

Once you’re willing to accept that your unconscious beliefs impact how you respond to clients, it’s time for a change. It may take a little work, if your internal conflict is deeply entrenched.

Here are some ways you might be subconsciously resisting clients. Are you practicing some of these behaviors that are guaranteed to push away success?

¨     Not returning phone calls

¨     Dragging your feet on bids or projects

¨     Failing to follow up on opportunities

¨     Turning down invitations

The point here isn’t to make you feel bad or guilty. It is to help you recognize that what you have right now is what you want.

The next step is to envision what new clients might actually mean for you. With new income, you might experience more freedom. You may find, as many successful people have, that you spend less time working once you stop resisting clients and focus more intensely on serving them.

Reframing what new clients represent is powerful. They are no longer something to subconsciously resist, but people who need what you have. You become motivated to serve them rather than push them away.

Once you’ve allowed this new truth into your life, things will begin to change. Opportunities will appear that you might have missed before. The energy will shift and clients will sense you truly want to serve them.

Because your conscious and unconscious wants are now aligned, you will be ready for the new business that comes your way. You will experience the kind of success you dreamed of when you started your business. Finally defining your desires, consciously and unconsciously, can be the beginning of the life you truly want.

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The importance of selling with integrity cannot be overstated. Ethical sales practices are the foundation of a solid, sustainable business. Let’s explore why being one of the “good guys” in sales is so important.

Deciding to sell ethically benefits not only your own career, but also has a positive impact on the people around you. Here are three reasons to present your products honestly:

1) Being known as someone ethical by your customers will benefit your future success.

In sales, we live or die by word-of-mouth. Your customers are much more likely to refer others to you if they know you’re consistently trustworthy. They will also reward you with repeat business that builds a sustainable income. This single principle is the cornerstone of a solidly-built business.

2) Your success will have a ripple effect on the people around you.

As business owners, our own success filters down to the people we employ, as well as to our families and our vendors. Building a business with a solid reputation means good things for them, too. Simply by deciding to always sell with integrity, we can build a business that improves the lives of many other people.

3) Your integrity fills the vacuum that might otherwise be filled with unethical sales professionals.

Let’s face it—without sales professionals committed to integrity, there’s a real vacuum in the marketplace. That vacuum is quickly filled by people without ethical standards.

The decision you have made, then, to be clear and honest while selling your products also benefits your clients in this way. You are giving them the privilege of buying what they need from someone who will treat them fairly.

Think about these three principles as you move forward in building your business. The people who need what you have to offer also need someone to treat them with respect and honesty. Your future customers are depending on you to fill the integrity vacuum.

If you have not already done so, make a conscious decision now to always offer your products with integrity. Even when moving forward becomes a push, hold to your high standards and new business will come your way. The benefit you, your customers and those connected to you will gain will make the effort worthwhile.

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… if there are  no clients, there is  no business

That’s one of the very first things I learnt when I starting out in my own business back in 1996.

Back then, just like you, I needed a steady stream of clients if I was going to succeed in business.  I was only 26 at the time, I had no marketing budget, I had no network, I had no track record, I had no proof, no credibility, and I had no satisfied customers to fall back on.  I started off by investing my time, energy and resources, into learning everything I could about communication techniques, selling and closing sales.  The result …   I very quickly attracted high-paying consulting contracts for £50,000 and upwards. For those of you in the US, that’s about $83,000.  Not only that, I was getting them from well known clients. People like Sony, Aviva, AIG, and British Telecom.  My income was on the rise!

What was the secret?  Simply – I changed the way I was prospecting clients.  I developed a way that clients started calling me instead of me calling them.  Follow the 6 steps I took and make it happen for you…

1.  Realize that most prospecting methods are too time-consuming. Cold calls can be effective, but they take time away from your workday. The problem is, even if you spend a day on the phone setting up appointments, you then have to go on those appointments  because YOU are the service that you’re selling.   This doesn’t leave much time for actually delivering  services to your clients.

2. Develop prospecting methods that don’t rely on you physically doing it all the time. Essentially, find ways to promote your business that don’t require you to become a full time marketing and sales person. Learn how to market yourself without spending all of your time doing it. Focus on building up a prospect list.

3.  Get a show of hands. I remember reading a book at the time and it talked about getting people to raise their hands first. Who is it that is already calling out for your services?  Who has expressed an interest in your products and services?  Let the clients express interest in working with you, instead of spending all of your time trying to sell them on your services

4. Focus on following up with those clients that have “raised their hands”. These clients are much better prospects for what you’re offering because they’ve already expressed an interest.

5.  Know that your price ceiling is as high as you want it to be. The ceiling on your income is the highest priced offering in your range. If you want to break through that ceiling, create a bigger ticket product or programme and offer it to your prospect list.

6. Find the right clients. Maybe there’s a certain type of client who is exactly the right type of client for you, the client that you feel passionate about working with. The one where you feel you would work even if you weren’t getting paid. Those are your ideal clients. You still get paid and it doesn’t feel like a chore to deliver your services.

As you focus on implementing these prospecting methods in your own business, you will see that clients will start to call YOU.  You’ll not only have a steady steam of clients, but they will be your IDEAL clients.

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If, for one reason or another, you’re out of touch with your past clients, the best thing you can do for your business is to get back in touch with them.

Before you go out seeking new clients, try reconnecting with your old ones. They are far more likely to hire you than someone who has never met you.

There are a couple of easy ways for you to reconnect.

First, if you have a small number of past clients, contact them one-to-one. Pick up the phone and just talk to them. You don’t need to dive right in and start pitching them straight away. Talk to them first about what has been going on in their business or in their life, or how they’re getting on.

I guarantee that the vast majority of the time one of three things will happen:

• You will uncover a new opportunity to work with them again.
• You will discover a new need that they have.
• You may well get a referral out of it.

Now, if you’ve got a lot of past clients, you’re in an even stronger position. For this, I recommend a one-to-many approach. There are a few different ways that you can do this.

• Put together a simple, direct mailing. It could be a special offer for past clients. A “we missed you and we want you back” offer. Be creative and have some fun doing an offer like this.

• Send a postcard directing people to a webpage.

• Mail a full physical offer where you’re describing something new that you’re offering and asking them to take action.

It’s important that you really make your mailing stand out. A great way to do this is to use something called lumpy mail.

Lumpy mail is when you include some type of “grabber” in the envelope to make the package bulky and make it stand out from the other mail in the post.

Typically, lumpy mail gets opened before ordinary envelopes. It’s a great way to grab someone’s attention.

Again, have some fun with this. I’ve seen people send things like a,little watch attached to their mailing, and the message is about time. You can add chocolates, or little magnets and make them significant to the message you’re sending. Lumpy mail is fun to do, and fun to receive.

There are other things you can do as well. Have a special event that is for your past clients only. If you work in a local area and most of your clients are local, do a customer appreciation day. This might be a day that you offer for free, where you get your past clients back and you offer a networking opportunity. Perhaps you share some new information or new insights with them. Use that day as a platform for being face to face with your past clients and reactivating their business. That’s a strategy that works well.

If your clients are all over the world, try a variation on the same theme, such as a customer appreciation teleseminar.

Getting in touch with past clients may be a little time-consuming, but it is a good return on the investment of your time. It is simply the best way to remind clients of the value of your services and introduce them to something new that you may be offering.

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I regularly get email questions from people saying, “I’ve got this new XYZ service. How can I find the people who need it? How can I let as many people know about it as possible?”

The problem with this question is the idea of  promoting your new product and service, without really thinking through what your audience wants.

To sell your new product or service you need more than visibility in the market.  You need to give your market what THEY REALLY WANT

Let me give you an example. There was a dog food company and they had been very successful in their market category, but they were losing market share. The new chairman was determined to turn things around. He called a board meeting with his top sales people, marketing people, his top researchers, and all the division heads.

He began to get heated, ranting and raving. “Why are we losing our share? What are we going to do about this?” As he intimidated the room with his behavior, a young intern raised his hand and said, “Sir, the trouble is the dogs don’t like the food.”

See the problem here?
The company had been trying to fix a fundamental problem without identifying the true source of their problem.    They thought that spending more on advertising, or spending more on marketing, or promoting more, or doing PR, or all of these activities would increase their business.

And it’s true. All these things will increase your business IF you’re offering something that people really want. But if you offering something that people don’t want to buy, then no amount of promotion is going to compensate for that. All it’s going to do is make you tired and broke.

It would be the same as trying to convince a market that black and white televisions are a better buy in a market where the consumer doesn’t want black and white anymore, they want color. You can’t jump in to promotion before really making sure that what you’re offering is something the market is really hungry for.

Promoting a new product or service takes consistent effort, it uses resources, and it requires constant energy. And so, it’s very easy for someone who has jumped in naively to get disillusioned very quickly. The lesson:  You should never begin promoting without making sure that the market really has a need for what you’re offering.

The sad thing is many businesses don’t learn this one lesson until it’s too late. Many go out of business at that point. I don’t want that for you. I believe that you’re in business because at some level it’s a calling for you.

You know deep down that you’ve got something valuable to offer. You know that there are people in the world that you can truly help. And I know how frustrating it is if you have been trying to help those people, but you feel that you can’t connect with them.

I’m not saying that you should get out of the market. Rather, you should find out how to corner the market you’re in. Granted, if you’re selling an inferior product that people don’t want, you can’t do a lot to fix that. Otherwise, the answer lies in making sure your business offers match the demands of the market.

The solution is aligning what you’re offering with what people really want.

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