Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for December, 2009

Have you ever watched a professional tennis match?  Watch the players at the end of each point, they have a ritual they perform, whether they win or lose the point, it’s always the same.  One of the rituals I’ve seen them do is to play with the strings on their racket between points.  Those strings were acting as a focusing technique, a way to keep out the distractions of the crowd and the other player.  It was a method to clear the screen and focus on the next point.  It was almost like they were pressing a delete button, so they could go into the next point with no emotional residue from the last point.

Think about what those tennis players were doing and how that could help you.  If you’re allowing your past experiences to influence your ‘next point’, you’re doing yourself a disservice.  This is the case for both positive and negative experiences.  If we dwell on positive experiences, we could become complacent, even arrogant.

The negative experiences will leave us fearful and unwilling to take risks.  Put the past behind you; focus on where you are now and what’s in front of you.

Don’t let one setback lose the game for you.  It’s happened to all of us at some point, where something has happened and we didn’t think we could recover from it.  For me, it was ten years ago, I had a deal lined up.  I thought it was a done deal, everything was in place, but the contract had yet to be signed.  It fell through.

I had put all my eggs in one basket with this project.  When it fell through, all I could see were those hundreds of thousands of pounds of revenue disappearing and I had no safety net.  My calendar was clear for the next three months for this client and it was a major setback.  So I certainly know what I’m talking about when it comes to setbacks.

How can you handle a major setback like this and not let it affect your focus?  You can handle it as just another bump in the road.  If you’re expecting a smooth road, then any setback is going to be jarring, but if you’re expecting that you are going to encounter bumps in the road, then your attitude is different.  You’ll think, “Okay.  Here’s a bump in the road, guess I’ve been lucky so far, how do I respond to this?”

Don’t dread the bumps, I say welcome them, they’re all part of the journey and they help shape you.  You may not be able to see how or why those bumps are there and how they’re shaping you.  It’s difficult to see it when it’s happening, but if you can have the perspective that they’re not only shaping the journey, they’re helping you, you’re going to have a different attitude.

If you have that different perspective on setbacks and you couple that with a firm resolve to reach your goal, you’re going to succeed.  If your resolve is weak, you will fold at the first challenge you meet.  So welcome the bumps, stay firm on your goals.

Be prepared for the setbacks. Welcome setbacks because they may very well be what make the journey successful.  After the setback, hit the delete button and move forward.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Question: What is your highest priced product or service?

Answer: It’s the ceiling on your income. Because whatever the actual price, that number is the most money even your best customer can spend with you.

Think about it. The amount of business that customers can do with you is limited by your highest priced product, service or program.

Stunning, isn’t it? Several years ago I realized that the way my business was set up, my best customer could only spend £400 with me. That sounds embarrassing now, because it was so simple and so obvious and yet I hadn’t seen it.

Maybe the most someone can spend with you is £100. Or maybe it’s £100,000. It doesn’t really make a difference. There’s still a limit.

And if you’re going to double, triple or quadruple your business, you have to push past that limit by raising the amount that people can spend with you. You’ve got to give your best customers more opportunities to give you money.

Typically that means creating higher priced products. But I don’t just mean adding on a zero to your price points, although that may help in some cases.

It’s time to begin creating real high-end solutions so people want to spend more with you. And so you can deliver a lot more value.

It is a different type of sell because you may be asking people to spend ten times more than they’ve ever spent with you before. But there is a way to do it that will bring tremendous growth to your business.

I know because I’ve done it. When I put together a high-priced coaching program, it increased my yearly sales by about 33%. I added over £100,000 to my business just by adding that program.

So maybe the only thing you need to do this year to skyrocket your income is to put together a high-priced program or develop a high-end service that your customers will want to buy.

Start thinking about it. Look at your highest priced product or service – really look, and see how you can take it to a new level. Make plans to create a really high-end product that your existing customers will pay for, and that will attract more new leads to your business.

And if you find that this is one area where you can definitely implement the changes that will help grow your business, stick with it. Concentrate on developing that new high-priced product. Make it your focal point, and watch your sales grow.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Knowing, in general, who your target market is can be a lot like knowing, in theory, what it’s like to ride a roller coaster. You may have read a lot about that amusement ride but, until you’ve actually ridden one, your knowledge is incomplete. In the same way, until you have an in-depth understanding of your target audience, it’s impossible to know what they need and how to provide it.

This may seem very elementary to you, if you’ve been in business for awhile. But it’s really the most important step toward building a stronger business. If you aren’t sure who needs your products and how that audience lives, works and thinks, how is it possible to market to them effectively? The great thing is that, once you’ve learned those things, your marketing efforts are much more successful.

Think of it this way: once you’ve clearly identified the group of people most likely to need your products, your marketing changes from “How to reach lots of people” to “Will this help reach my target audience?” That sort of focusing in is so much more effective in the long run.

So, what are some questions to ask when defining your target audience? Here are the important ones:

• What age, gender and occupation are the people who need my services?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What’s their lifestyle—where do they go on holiday and what do they buy when they shop?
• Are they married or single? Do they have children?
• Where do they live, and what things do they like to have around them?
• What is most important to them?

These questions are obviously targeting individuals. If you usually work with businesses, consider these factors, as well:

• What industries are my target clients in?
• Where are those companies located geographically?
• How many employees do they have?
• What position in those companies do my targeted contacts hold?

As you can see, answering each of these questions gives you a more in-depth knowledge of your target audience. Not being able to answer them simply says that you need to focus more on who is most in need of your services.

The more specific your answers to these questions, the more targeted your marketing becomes.  The opposite approach to building business is to attempt to please everyone. The danger to that approach is that when your marketing is generic, it may not capture anyone’s attention.

Having clarity about a target audience and focusing on what they need is the strongest possible foundation for your marketing. If you feel reluctance about narrowing down your audience, is it because you fear losing opportunities?

The opposite is actually true. Trusting that you’ve found your perfect audience allows you to relax and simply meet their needs. You don’t have to fret about competition, because you’re the perfect person to serve them.

Specialising your services to meet the needs of your target audience can be scary, if you don’t yet feel that trust. Here’s an example that might motivate you toward identifying your niche:

Suppose you offer telephone etiquette training. Your current marketing generically offers to train employees to sound more professional on the telephone. What if, rather than offering general telephone skills training, you narrowed your approach down to teaching sales people to cold call more effectively?

Do you see how that narrowed focus might make your services more interesting? Cold calling is something most salespeople resist. By teaching those same salespeople to make more appointments with fewer calls, you’re providing a valuable service to sales-based organizations. That automatically makes your marketing more effective. You begin to attract business naturally from the companies that most need that service.

There’s no need to worry that you’ll miss opportunities by specialising because you focus your marketing on people much more likely to respond. Trust that your business will grow as you define your audience and target your services to their needs.

Take the time to identify your target audience more clearly, if you’re struggling to build your business. Identify who that audience is and what it needs, and you’ll see much greater returns from your marketing dollars.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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If a hundred people express an interest in your business this month, how many of them will be paying clients by the end of the month?

Once someone has raised their hand and expressed an interest in you or your business, what is the process they go through to become a paying client?

If your answer is, “it depends,” or “it changes according to every client,” that’s a tremendous mistake. You can’t grow your business that way. You will only grow exhausted if you must be personally involved in every single sale.

This aspect of conversion is really, really important. Everything else you do may give you visibility, but it’s not going to convert client interest into paying business unless you have this conversion process in place.

All of the methods, all of those other things you focus on, all they will do in and of themselves is raise your visibility. They’ll let people know about you. But they are not, by themselves, enough to get someone to put their hand in their pocket, take out cash or a credit card and hand it to you.

It isn’t enough just to get your name out there. That alone isn’t magically going to bring you paying clients. To make that happen you must have a conversion process.

So, if you’ve been working diligently, and doing all of the things that you need to do to increase your visibility, but it’s not converting into paying business yet, you need to focus on conversion. Right now.

Focusing on the answers to these questions will help you to articulate your conversion process:

1. What am I actually doing to encourage people that are interested in me to spend some money with me?

2.  How easy or difficult am I making it for them to trust me to spend money with me?

3.  How well am I spelling out the benefits of what I’m offering so that clients want to spend their money with me?

4.  Can clients clearly see the return on investment they’re going to get?

5.   Can they see the improvements that they’re going to enjoy or the quality of life they’re going to enjoy as a result of spending money with me?

These questions apply across the board and the answers will help you to implement a process to convert interested consumers into paying clients.

© Bernadette Doyle, 2009

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That’s one question I am asked over and over by clients. Whether it’s how to price a product or how to price your services, this is something you have to be definitive and decisive about. You have to be able to tell your prospective buyers how much it’s going to cost them to sign on with you.

My answer is usually in the form of a question. “How much do you want to make?”

I’m not trying to be cagey with that response. But, you really are the best person to determine what you need to make in order for an exchange to be worth your time.

This is one of the first things I learned from one of my own mentors, Yanik Silver.

He doesn’t make decisions according to what the market is doing. He doesn’t rely on external references to determine his pricing. He does it totally internally.

What do I mean by that? If you are pricing your products or services according to what you think people will pay or what other people are charging, that’s pricing externally.

Try instead to think about the project you are planning. Think not only about how much time you are going to put into it, but how much energy and effort as well.

Consider your total involvement in the venture. This is how you begin to set your price internally.

Then ask yourself, “How much do I want to make from this?”  Jot that down on a piece of paper.

Next ask yourself, “If someone is to use my solution and they apply it in exactly the way that I’m telling them to apply it, what would it do for them?”

This is an important question, because it’s all about value – the value you are giving to clients and the value of what they are receiving.

Yanik’s philosophy is, “I am wealthy because I enrich others 10 to 100 times the value of what they pay me.”

So, you must reflect on the difference your product or service can make for your clients.

If you find that what you are offering benefits clients in a far more lucrative manner than it does you, you can set your price at the higher end of your rate. But, you should also consider something else.

Try rethinking the presentation of what you’re offering. You might find yourself heading in a somewhat different direction than you originally intended, but it could be well worth your while.

I mentored a client who had an amazing process by which he helped businesses win contracts. When we first started working together, he was fixated on the idea of having an e-book. He was helping major companies win contracts to the tune of millions of pounds and he wanted to put all of his expertise in an e-book that would sell for £50.

What we came up with instead was a way that he could deliver this same information to groups by packaging it into a high-end workshop. I can tell you that the price points were much, much more than people would have been paying for an e-book.

I recognize that in these tough economic times, individuals and companies alike are cutting back on their budgets. As much as this may tempt you to lowball your price, don’t fall into that trap.

Your next challenge is to demonstrate and prove your value to clients. The issue is more about how you sell it than whether or not they’ve got the budget. If you can show someone that they are going to save $300,000 by investing in your product or services, they will find the $20,000 to pay for it.

So, while you are establishing price points for different projects, keep your mind open to the possibilities of presenting them in various ways.

Don’t trade your diamonds for dimes. Set your price based on what you want to make and what clients stand to gain.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Are you under the impression that other business owners who offer something similar to what you offer are your competitors? Do you think these people won’t promote you because they see you as a competitor?

This is a common belief among many small business owners – and it’s a big mistake. Don’t view these other business owners as competitors. Consider them as potential joint venture partners.

Joint venture partnerships with businesses that complement yours are a prime source for you to find new traffic and generate quality leads.

It is so beneficial to your company to find other businesses that have lists of prospects similar to those you are targeting, and to approach them about a joint venture.

This is how the people who are in mastermind groups think. This is why they are so successful. They have this abundance mentality – meaning that they believe there is more than enough business for everybody. These mastermind types are always looking for other things to offer to their list.

They know that there is always going to be that group of hyper-responsives – the people whose desire to buy is greater than your ability to keep up with them. If you are not putting offers in front of them, they’ll take that desire to buy somewhere else. You risk losing them as customers if you don’t continue to offer them opportunities to buy from you.

That’s one of the reasons that, in addition to promoting my own offerings, I’ll often do reciprocal joint ventures with people who promote me. When I plan a teleseminar, I create a list of all the people I think could promote my call and invite them via email to participate.

At the end of the call, I always offer something for sale, and the people who helped promote the teleseminar receive a percentage of what I make from those sales. This is a model that works really well.

And the leads you will get from these sources are quality leads. One of the most important things about lead generation isn’t only the quantity, but also the quality. What percentage of those leads turn into actual customers? How much are they going to spend with you over the next 12 months? You stand a better chance of getting quality leads by reaching out to the clients of people who are doing things similar to what you are doing.

An added upside to joint ventures is that you only pay your joint venture partners when you make a sale. You don’t invest any money up front, which is especially helpful if you’re just starting out.

When you develop this mastermind way of thinking, it will give you the opportunity for the exponential growth that you may have been unable to achieve on your own.

As a small businesses owner, you may once have thought that talking to your perceived competitors was the last thing you should do. You need to change your mindset about that. Together, you can accomplish so much more than either one of you could possibly do on your own.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Do a lot of people express interest in your business? Do you have plenty of leads? A good list of prospects?

If you’ve got all of that and you’re still not getting enough real business, enough paying clients, you need to focus more on your conversion process.

A prospective client is not going to magically convert into a paying client without your doing something to make that happen. There are actually quite a few things you need to be doing to help with that transformation.

Be more upfront about asking people for their business. Ask more people to give you money. Not a loan, not begging. Ask more people to spend money with you, whether directly in a conversation, through an email promotion, or by sending traffic to a page on your website where you’re selling something. If you’re only asking five or ten people a day for money, you can’t be surprised that you’re not getting the paying business that you want.

Maneuver yourself into a position where you’re seen as an expert; where people know about you, and your reputation precedes you. As a result, you will get people automatically seeking you out as an expert.

Have more conversations with more people. The simplest way to move someone from being an interested prospect to a paying playing client is to talk to them, either face-to-face or over the phone. Make time for those one-to-one conversations, especially in the beginning. It is in these one-to-one interactions that you can surface every type of objection, engage with clients and continue working with them.

Be willing to do whatever it takes to get your prospect to see the value. If you truly believe in the value of your service or your product, if you think it’s the best thing ever and that more people should be using it, what are you willing to do to help them use it?

Listen to what your prospect is saying. Before you go into your pitch, determine their current situation, their needs and their desired end result. Only then can you offer a solution that is of value to them. Once they know your value, they’ll be willing to pay for it.

Don’t let obstacles or excuses stand in your way. If the website isn’t ready or something else still needs to be done, you can still focus on talking with prospects and converting them to clients.  Do what you can, with what you’ve got, from where you are.

Have a strong follow-up system in place. Know what your process for following up with prospects is.

Vary the media you use in your follow-up process. Use combinations of email, phone calls, cards and text messaging to keep contact with clients fresh.

Add one more step to your follow-up process. If you’ve tried every medium to follow-up with a prospect, try one more thing, one more time, before you give up. Don’t think you’re being a pest, either. Most qualified, serious prospects won’t feel that way about you if you follow up the right way.

Think of your webpage or print sales material as your personal 24/7 salesperson. Make sure all the information is in place to help prospects make the decision to do business with you.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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If you’ve tried direct mail and advertising and it didn’t work for you, fine tune and adjust your advertising and mailings to make them produce results.  One method that I’ve found that makes an ad or mailing successful is to offer specific free items; a report, a tele-seminar or e-books.

I’ve heard from many of you that you’ve tried direct mail or lead generation advertising and didn’t see instant results.  There’s a learning curve with direct response advertising and you’re not always going to get a flood of business from your first ad or mailing.  By fine tuning and testing, you’re going to find the messages that you can rely on to bring in a certain number of inquiries.  Once you have this message, it’s going to produce going forward, it’s not a one time-deal.

Why Free Offers Work

When you’re offering a free report, you’re giving people something tangible to ask for.  You’re giving them a specific task and they’re going to be more responsive than a general ‘call for further information’ request.

I’ve tested this myself.  I ran an advertisement in a trade magazine and offered a phone number to call for further information.  The next time that I ran the ad; I offered a free report for callers.  There was a significant increase in the number of inquiries.

By offering this free report, you’re not only giving a specific ‘call to action’, you’re taking one more step to establishing yourself as an expert in your field.

What NOT to offer….

Well, let’s start with what NOT to offer as a freebie.  Products that take your time and only offer the one-to-one marketing approach are not cost effective and have limited sales potential.  This includes free consultations.

They’re time consuming and they’re taking your time from other projects and prospects.  Change your one-to-one marketing to one-to-many.  For example, that free consultation would reach significantly more people if it’s offered as a tele-seminar.

It’s also known that when you offer anything for free, you’re going to attract a certain number of people who just want the freebie.  They’re never going to buy from you, no matter what.  If you’re offering a consultation, you’ve lost a chunk of your time and it’s not going to pay off for you.  By offering a one-to-many product, you’ve significantly cut your losses with these bargain hunters.

What to offer…

You need to focus on the one-to-many marketing techniques, particularly if you’re going to offer a giveaway.  These giveaways need to be low cost for you, but offer a perceived value to the prospect.  A free report works well in advertisements, as do other techniques of one-to-many marketing such as tele-seminars or an electronic-book via email.

The Bottom Line

Creating advertisements and offers with unlimited potential to produce results over time will trump the hour of cold calling or one-on-one consultation that’s going to yield limited results.  Converting your one-to-one marketing techniques to one-to-many techniques is the key to becoming a Client Magnet.

Using free offers that have the one-to-many benefits is going to help your advertisements become more effective.   Think about where you’re putting your time in marketing.  If you’re using manual lead generators, change your methods to identify the fastest path to generate good leads.  That path is going to be direct response advertising, and the use of free reports is going to make them more effective.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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At the heart of every successful business is a great list of people to target with marketing. Building that list should be one of your primary goals. If you need a quick infusion of sales, there are things you can do without spending a lot of time. Here are five quick ways to build your marketing list.

I. Ezine Advertising: One way to reach a whole new group of prospects is to identify a business catering to your target audience and advertise in their ezine. An “ezine” is simply a newsletter sent by email to clients and prospects.

Many ezine publishers accept advertising in their newsletters, and there’s an easy way to find out who they are. At www.directoryofezines.com, you can pay to subscribe to their listing of ezines that accept advertising.

Now, you may be thinking it would be easier to simply place ads on those businesses’ websites. Here’s why ezine advertising is more effective: their prospects are much more likely to open and read their email newsletter than to go out and visit their website. That simple fact makes placing an ad in their ezine a better use of your marketing dollars.

II. Ecademy: The online business networking group www.ecademy.com is a good place to not only advertise but to learn what works in your ads. Ecademy allows members to place classified ads free in their online marketplace. Because many small business owners and solo professionals subscribe to this group, it’s a good way to reach that audience. Ecademy also supplies you with statistics on how many people clicked through to your website or member profile, so you can test ads and see which result in the best click-through rate.

III. Trade Magazine Articles: A quick way to establish yourself as an expert in your field is to write articles for related trade magazines. It will take some research to learn which magazines professionals who need your products are reading, but the exposure you’ll gain with that audience will be worth it. Not only can you provide useful information those professionals can use, they’ll also see your contact information in the author’s resource box.

A tip for maximizing the resource box—rather than simply stating the nature of your business, offer the reader something tangible in return for their contact information. For example, instead of simply “Ms. Doyle is an expert in phone sales techniques” I’d offer to send them a free report on increasing phone sales success. Just be sure to follow-up when someone raises their hand and expresses interest.

IV. Online Article Sites: Not only can you submit articles establishing you as an expert to trade magazines, you can also submit them to online article directories. Again, these articles each include your author’s resource information at the bottom, so that interested parties can contact you.

There are lots of websites that allow authors to submit articles and there are different ways to submit them. One way is to research these article directories and submit your articles yourself. This method can be fairly tedious and time-consuming.

Another way to get your articles in online directories is to have a service submit them for you. One that’s fairly inexpensive is www.submityourarticle.com. The third way is to have an individual who specializes in online article submissions send your articles out all over the Internet. Someone like that normally has a database of article sites and will charge a per article fee to submit your writing. An example of that type of service is www.articlesthatsell.com.

V. Public Speaking: One more way to build your marketing list quickly is to give talks at gatherings your target audience is attending. Not only does this build credibility with potential clients, it also increases your visibility. There’s one essential thing you must do if you start doing public speaking to build your list. You must think of a way to get people to raise their hands when you’re finished and request more information.

One way to do that is with a giveaway. Offer something tangible such as a free report to people who give you their contact information. Having a drawing for a free product is also a good way to gather names for your marketing list. Either way, follow up quickly with anyone who expresses interest at one of your talks.

As you can see, there are many ways to generate interest with a whole new audience and begin growing your marketing list. Try more than one of these ideas to see which ones give the best results. You’ll soon find which ones bear fruit for your particular type of business, and be on the road to increased sales and income.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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“There’s no time like the present.”  There’s so much truth in that old adage, and we can use it not only in our personal lives, but in our business as well.  In marketing and sales, we spend so much time in setting goals, identifying revenue targets, planning our course and identifying income streams.  Is there anything missing?  Only the obvious, and that’s taking action.  In fact, it so obvious I’m almost hesitant to bring it up.   But for some, it’s a hurdle to clear.  Past experiences may have taught them that they must get everything in place and wait for the perfect time to begin an undertaking.

You must ignore your past experiences because if you keep waiting for the right time, the perfect time, to take action, you may be waiting for quite awhile.  The truth is, conditions may never be perfect.  There will always be obstacles, there will always be excuses, and you will always be able to find something that can stop you from taking action.

I found this to be the case when I set a goal to make $1,000,000 in sales.  I had my strategy, my path was set, or so I thought.  I discovered, much to my joy, that I was pregnant.  What a wonderful excuse not to go for my $1,000,000 goal.  Maybe next year, perhaps?  No, I took action, and took it with a sense of purpose.  In fact, my purpose was even more focused since I had a deadline, in this case a birthline, looming.

When I made the decision to take action, I set in motion a whole new course of events, different paths and new opportunities opened up.  And that happened because I moved forward even though the timing was not optimum.

But there’s more to it than just taking immediate action, it’s taking action to get you closer to your goal.

So when you take action, do it with a sense of purpose. Bear in mind:
• When it comes to goals, be firm on the what, but flexible on the how;
• The 80/20 rule – higher priced projects for a smaller number of customers;
• Put past experiences behind you and focus on the here and now and what’s in front of you;
• Stay adaptable, opportunities change, things happen, be willing to adapt to changing situations;
• Stay resolved; realize that there may be bumps in the road.

When you look back as you’re striving to meet your goal, look back only to remind yourself what your end goal is.  Take that opportunity to analyze whether your actions are bringing you closer or leading you away from your goal.  Stay firm in your resolve, if you’re not, you will fold at the first challenge that comes along.  If your resolve is strong, you can weather each bump in the road.

Part of growing a business, making more sales and getting more customers is being willing to take actions before the conditions are perfect.  So if you’re waiting for the perfect time to take action, the time is now.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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