Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for April, 2010

You’ve made a sale.  The customer’s credit card has been approved, you’ve booked their seat or ordered their product, and you’ve added your new customer’s email address to your newsletter list.  You’re already tallying your net profit in your mental bank register, and you’re resting comfortably in the pleasure of another sale well-done.

Not so fast…

If there is any time lapse between the closing of the sale and the delivery of the customer’s product or service, at some stage you will need to address the “buyer’s remorse” phenomenon.

If your customer falls under the weight of buyer’s remorse, he or she might have feelings of guilt associated with a high price tag, credit extension, or disapproval by others.  The client might begin to fall off of their “purchase high” and start to consider their new, reduced spending power; or they might wonder if they should have done more research or waited for a better, newer version of your product or service.

Your job is simple:  you must keep buyer’s remorse from ever showing its face…by using a Stick Strategy.

A Stick Strategy is simple.  It involves offering a gift that fulfills your customer’s need for instant gratification, and then staying in touch with them to reinforce the benefits of their decision, until they receive the product or service that they purchased.  In other words, remind them regularly that they’ve made a good decision.

Example of a High-Cancellation-Risk Sale:

A motivational speaker offers two types of events:  a 1-day workshop and a 2-day weekend seminar.  She starts marketing and taking reservations for the 1-day workshop only 6 or 8 weeks in advance.  But for the weekend event, she starts accepting bookings up to 4 months ahead of time.

Her customers who book 4 months prior to the 2-day event are much more susceptible to the effects of buyer’s remorse.  A lot can happen in 4 months – people move, their family situations can shift, their employment might change – and that might prompt them to eliminate her seminar from their new schedule.

It’s especially important that this business owner stays in contact with her weekend seminar customers during those critical 4 months – to make sure that those clients remain interested and on-board, without regrets.

Follow these simple steps to keep your waiting customers on-board:

• Immediately following your customer’s booking, make a good-will gesture (e.g.  a digital report, an insider preview of your service, a free sample, coupons to use in the meantime, or anything that will reinforce their spending decision as a good one).

• Keep a list of people who have signed up for one particular service, and use that list to send industry tips, answers to commonly asked questions, or special bonus offers throughout their wait – and be sure to reference the date of the upcoming service in every piece of correspondence.  This will keep their interest piqued, their energy levels high, and will shoo away that bothersome remorse bug.

• You can also send a friendly note part-way through their wait. A simple “Hello, can’t wait to meet you at the conference,” or, “Here’s the seating chart and your nametag.” can boost their obligation to the commitment that they’ve made.

• Keep customers-in-waiting involved. Maybe you’re thinking about making an addition to your service – send a note asking for their opinion on the change.  Or, ask them for feedback on the booking process.  In short, make them feel that their opinions are important.

Maybe you have felt buyer’s remorse yourself.  If you have, think about how much better you might have felt if you’d gotten a free gift right away, or if someone had contacted you to ask for your input.  Would you have been more willing to “Stick?”

Make your customers stick with you…all it takes is a healthy dose of communication and a little dollop of good-will glue.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

You’re gathering a database of prospects and marketing to those who have shown an interest in what you’re selling… you’re sending out direct mailings and e-mails, and you’re promoting your next event… you’re taking calls, you’re booking seats, and you’re realizing profits that are just short what you’ve dreamt of.

STOP. Every method listed above is a piece of the money-making puzzle, but there’s at least one element listed there that can be expanded to include an explosion of profits – profits of a caliber that you may have not considered possible.

That element is the “call.”  If you’re talking to one person on the phone, answering his questions and moving closer to a single booking, imagine the potential it could have if you were speaking to 50, 100, or even 150 people at once.  And furthermore, imagine if you were charging money for each of those people to participate in that call.

Hadn’t considered the teleseminar until now?   Here are a few points that demonstrate the profit-making ability of these super-calls.  You can:

• Charge a participation fee: When every person that’s participating in a teleseminar (or simply listening to you speak), has paid a fee (e.g. $50), you make a significant profit.  Just think, a mere 10 participants equals a cash realization of $500.  If you can book 150 participants, that a whopping $7,500 for 1 or 2 hours of your time!  $50 is a small investment for each individual caller, but equates to an astounding profit realization for you.

• Charge for transcripts. You can make participation in your teleseminar free, but then sell written documentations of the content after it’s over.  For this method, you must ensure that your content is so fascinating (and packed with indispensable information), that a generous portion of the audience can’t resist owning their own copies for future reference.

• Charge for recordings. Much like the selling of transcripts, you can sell recordings of your teleseminar.  Remember to make your seminar worthy of a second listen.

• Charge for transcripts or recordings in packages. Maybe a caller has dialed into her first teleseminar, and is so fascinated that she wants more information from past teleseminars.  Or, maybe your call times aren’t ideal for a few of your patrons.  In cases such as these, you can wrap up packages of transcripts and/or recordings and sell them to bring in profits.

• Recycle teleseminar information. Use your teleseminars to compile the information necessary for writing a book, an e-book, newsletters, or articles.  Again, you can realize profits above and beyond that initial call.

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about the teleseminar – including:

• the contagious energy that comes with speaking to a large audience
• the ability to take questions that simultaneously satisfy hoards of people
• the platform to spread the word about upcoming events
• and the chance to get the feedback that’s indispensable to your marketing plan

But possibly the biggest motivator?  The enormous cash-making potential of the teleseminar.

Utilize these tips and come up with your own ways of making teleseminars profitable for your business.  The goal is to do the work once, and to then develop ways to use that information again and again – and to generate profit with each turn.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

When you consider the meaning of the term “stepping up” in the figurative sense, it means to increase, improve and intensify.  It means saying “yes” to propelling yourself and your business forward in a BIG WAY!    If you want this to happen for you and your business, you need to understand the steps behind stepping up.  You need to know the valuable key to staying motivated and excited.  While it’s not always a smooth process, each step you take will move you closer and closer to your ultimate goals…

•    Master your inner game. There are always going to be challenges. That’s part of growth. Know that you have the strength to handle whatever comes your way.

•    Dare to dream the things that you right now think you don’t deserve. You can’t move forward or step up if you don’t think you have the right to.

•    Make the decision to raise your game. Feel the burning desire that caused you to begin your business in the first place.

•    Focus on your vision of what your business is supposed to look like. If you didn’t start out truly visualizing, do it now. Commit it to paper so you can remind yourself: How much money do you want to make? How many hours do you want to be working? What kind of lifestyle do you want to lead? What difference do you want your business to make?

•    Develop your plan. Seeing your vision of your business is one thing, making it a reality requires purpose and preparation.

•    Evaluate your assets. Your resources are likely right in front of you.  Look to your existing clients for feedback, referrals, sales and product upgrades. Build your prospect lists to increase exposure. A good team that gets your business going, products developed, and website running goes a long way in stepping up your business, as do joint venture partnerships which help to increase exposure.  Products are probably your best asset as an independent source of additional revenue that can really step up your business.

•    Design your products, programs and solutions for the top 20% of clients because that’s where 4/5 of your income will come from.

•    Think in terms of project income, not monthly income. Plan for the year, instead of planning month by month. Plan around big projects.

•    Remember:  just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If you try to do everything you think of, everything that you know you can do, you will do them all half-way. Choose only the best of what you can do and you will step up your business.

•    Take the first step without knowing what the next one will be. Take the leap of faith without a safety net. You can only see the next step after you take the first one.

•    Grow bigger than your obstacles or problems. Move forward in spite of the challenges. They are inevitable. Everyone who has experienced success has experienced obstacles. They just chose to move past and overcome them.

•    Recognize that the changes you experience when you are stepping up, in your life and in your business, won’t always feel good. They can be uncomfortable at first because they will be unfamiliar. But, they will be worth it.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

“Knowledge will not attract money unless it’s organized and intelligently directed through practical plans and action.” Napoleon Hill, from Think and Grow Rich.

I love this quote. It’s true that all of the knowledge, skill and expertise in the world won’t make you money and turn your vision into reality unless you have an actual plan for how to use them.

Before you can formulate your plan, however, you need to start first with your vision. You have to really see where you want your business to go.

The following questions will help you to plan to reach your business goals by first giving you a clear mental image of what those goals are.

How much money do you want to make?

Name your revenue goal for this year. You have to put a figure on it. When you voice that goal, don’t phrase it in the form of a question. You’re not asking someone’s permission to make that money. State, out loud, what you want to make.

If that figure is in your head, if it’s in your heart, and if it’s something you’ve been dreaming of, it’s absolutely achievable. Doreen Virtue says that God doesn’t give us our dreams without the ability to make them real.

So whatever the figure is, you have to name it to claim it.

Rather than naming a general, round figure – 100,000, a quarter-of-a million, or a million -  be more specific.  Round figures aren’t real enough for you.  Calculate what your dream life would cost you, and then cost it out. It’s rarely going to be a round number. So, get really clear on your revenue goals.

What kind of lifestyle do you want to live?

Think about your lifestyle goals. How much do you want to be working? For example, do you want to take extended vacations and not work for a couple of months?

I decided last year that I didn’t want to work more than three days a week. And now, I don’t. There are plenty of things that will test your decision. You have to decide what’s right for you, and get it down on paper. Remember, the point is to visualize how you want things to be.

Will your business make a significant impact?

Finally, your vision is probably not solely about serving yourself. I’m willing to bet that it’s not only about money and a nice lifestyle, although these are great to have.

I believe that all of us are here to make a difference.

What are your impact goals? Know who the people are that you want to serve and what contribution you want to make. What do you want to be remembered for?

Mapping out your vision of your business, in your mind’s eye and on paper, will give you a good idea of what you want your business to look like.

The mental image and visual reinforcement will help you to develop a plan for making your vision a reality.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Your sales letter is one of the key documents of planning your event. A sales letter is the basis for all of your marketing materials for your event. A good sales letter can be a stand-alone point of contact with your clients, or a sales letter can serve as the basis for an entire marketing campaign. Before you ever set pen to paper in creating your sales letter, you must prepare this vital document.

What is a Sales Letter?
A sales letter is the core of your marketing campaign for your event. The sales letter is like a sales presentation in print form. It tells your prospective clients why they should attend your event, as well as overcoming the anticipated objections to attending your event. When crafting a sales letter, you must give your clients a reason to attend your event, and overcome apathy and objections to your event.

Detail the Benefits of Your Event
One of the most important things you must do when preparing a sales letter is to detail the benefits of your event. One common mistake that new marketers make is to assume that attendees will automatically realize the benefits of attending an event. Many event organizers will state one or two benefits to the event, and then fail to list other relevant details. In reality, though, you should make a detailed, comprehensive list of all of the benefits that attendees get from coming to your event, and find a way to work all of these details into your sales letter.

Never assume that attendees will reach the same conclusions as you about the benefits of your event. Spell out the benefits to ensure attendees reach the appropriate conclusions and are more motivated to attend your event.

Overcome Objections to Attending Your Event
In addition to listing all of the benefits of your event, a good sales letter will anticipate and overcome all of attendees’ potential objections to attending your event. Do you think the price might be a sticking point for some of your attendees? Rationalize it. Is the location a problem for attendees? Point out the benefits of the location, and why your attendees should come anyway.

If you provide information to overcome all of your attendees’ objections to your event right in the sales letter, attendees will have less of an excuse not to register. Before you can draft the sales letter, though, you need to anticipate all of these objections based on your target audience. Create a list of potential objections, and why attendees should come to your event anyway.

Remember, having an effective sales letter is vital to your event being a success.
Whether you’re writing the sales letter yourself or hiring a copywriter to do it for you, prepare your sales letter before you ever write a single word. Be sure to make a comprehensive list of benefits and potential objections that attendees might make to coming to your event. If you draft the sales letter yourself, these lists will serve as the basis for your sales letter. If you hire a copywriter for your sales letter, you can pass this information on to your copywriter, who will then have a good basis from which to begin drafting your marketing materials.

Spend the time upfront planning out your sales letter, and you will reap tremendous rewards as your sales letter sells out your event for you.  Enjoy the planning and enjoy the success!

Want to learn more about how to make money with your own events? Visit our Event Money Machine Blog. You’ll learn about an amazing Telesummit being held later this month. Tickets to this event are FREE – so join our priority notification list to be the first to know when they become available.

Do you think your database of customers isn’t large enough for you to reach your sales goals? If you think that the only way you can make big money is with a bigger list, don’t believe that for a second longer.

Even if you have only a very small database, you can extract very large incomes from it.

Plenty of successful people started with no database and were able to meet their goals, including me and many of my mentors. I did not have a database when I began. I created one as I went along.

Don’t use what you perceive to be a lack of potential clients on your list as an excuse for not making the money you want. You don’t need a large database to make a lot of money. You can still reach your sales goals. You just have to want it badly enough.

What you need, more than a larger list, is to believe in yourself. If you present your product or service with a positive belief system, the customer list you have will pay the type of prices you’re asking.

One of my mentors, has a mastermind group with only 12 people. A very small list, but they pay $100,000 a piece. If only 3 of them sign on for a product, that’s significant earnings.

Of course, you can change the amount to a figure that more closely represents your product or service, but the message is clear. My mentor, believes his program is worth the price, and he believes his database will pay it. You should believe the same about yours.

As you go along, you will obviously learn how to grow your database, but your ability to make money is more about your self-worth.

Not only do you need to believe that you would spend the money on the product you’re offering, you have to believe that the clients on your list would spend that much money, as well.

Believe that, and it won’t matter what size database you have. Self-worth controls your income. Not the size of the database. Not where you live. Not the clothing that you wear or the people that you know.

If you increase your self-worth, everything can be taken away from you and you will instantly have it back overnight. You will always make money because your income is definitely directly tied to your own self-worth.

It doesn’t matter what your product is or how many potential clients are on your list. If you believe you’re worth a million, you will go out and generate a million.

If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Have you ever come across a successful business, on the face of it, looks really simple and straightforward? You look at the website, at the marketing, and the products, and it seems like the winning formula is one that you could apply to your own business. Whatever they are doing can’t be rocket science, so you won’t have to be a genius to mimic it and get the same results.

So many people do this when setting up their business. They look at people who are getting the results in their business that they want in their own and think that it looks easy. It’s pretty simple to copy what other people are doing, apply it to their own business, and watch the profits roll in. They tell themselves that they can figure it all out on their own.

They are wrong.

If you think that you can easily follow someone else’s roadmap to success without direction, you will fall into the same trap. This is one of the lies that we tell ourselves, because it’s so much easier to think that we can teach ourselves than it is to seek that advice from others. You can use someone else’s experience to fast track your own success but it has to be done the right way.

There’s a simple method of doing this: invest in mentoring. It will help you realise how much you are holding yourself back by simply trying to copy other people.  You can also be assured that your investment will be returned more times than you can imagine. It’s amazing how much mentoring gives back to you.  It’s not just the information that mentors share with you, but also the fact of having someone who is already getting results believing in you.

Let me give you an example of the power of mentorship. One of my mentors is Yanik Silver, and my business has really changed since I joined his mastermind group. Just before I held my first big workshop, I talked to him about my plans. I was really nervous about it, because I’d never done a three-day workshop of that size, and I had never charged £1,500 for people to come to the workshop. I remember saying to Yanik, “I think this might be possible for me.” He looked me right in the eye and said, “Yes, I think you can do that.”

That simple sentence was the value I got from investing in him. It wasn’t that I needed specific information from him or advice on how to run my workshop. Instead, it was the fact that someone who was already very successful was able to tell me that I could be as well. I needed to hear it from someone more experienced than me, and it gave me the confidence to run the seminar the way I had planned it. That seminar was a great success – both for me, and, I hope, for the people who attended.

On the other hand, before one of my conferences, I did a series of preview calls.   A number of people emailed me at the end of the series telling me that they had gotten so much from the calls that they didn’t think they needed to go to the course. A year or so after the course, I did a bit of sleuthing, and from what I can see, none of these people had made any real progress. Not one.

I’m not saying that if these people had come to my conference, they would all now be multi-millionaires – I’m not trying to suggest I have all the answers for everyone. But it did make me wonder how many “goose chases” and “blind alleys” they have been down because they tried to progress on their own, or because they kidded themselves that they could do it without help.  I’ve tried that track and I know it doesn’t work.

My message to you: invest in a mentor’s help. And you will get help. There are too many pitfalls you will come across when you think you can figure it out on your own. If you keep telling yourself that you don’t need someone’s help, one year from now you will be no further forward in your business. You have a chance to do things differently, so take that chance and start achieving!

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Bernadette’s Stepping Up! members have been making amazing progress. This program includes ongoing support, free admission to one of her live events, and so much more! If you’d like more information: http://bit.ly/SteppingUP

Most people buy what they want, not what they need. Take for example, the new I-Pad that Apple recently rolled out, or the Barnes & Noble electronic reader, the Nook. Nobody really needs these things, but people certainly do want them.   When you create a product, the number one step is to find out what your market really wants, not what you think they need.

If you have an intuitive sense about your market; if you think you have an innate “feel” for what the people you are trying to reach really want, follow your instincts and your heart. This is what I call heart-based marketing.

Heart-based marketing relies more on your observations and feelings, rather than on market research analysis or consumer surveys. By simply paying careful attention to the people around you, listening to their conversations, comments and complaints, you can uncover the results they are really looking for in their business.

In other words, create your products by putting yourself in the shoes of your target prospects. Ask yourself the same questions they ask themselves, so that you can create a product that delivers the answers.

Don’t underestimate the importance of this. For example, someone who is a coach might develop a product designed to give clients more balance in their lives. While “balance” may well be what his clients need, it isn’t necessarily the thing they want. It’s the coach’s perception of what they want. And if the coach develops and markets the product from his perception, clients aren’t going to want to buy it.

Think the same way your clients think. In the example of the coach, clients are not looking for a tool to give them balance. They are looking for more time, less stress, and more quality interaction with their family. There is a subtle, but significant, difference between what the coaching tool provides and what the clients say they want. The product or tool needs to offer a solution that clearly will give clients more time, less stress. In the long run, they will achieve balance, but that is not the thing they want.

Listening to clients with your heart will increase your opportunities to develop successful products.  Focus on what clients actually say they want, then highlight those wants when you create and market your product.

Staying open-minded, tuning into your target market, and really listening is the heart-based approach to identifying what your clients really want.

When you’ve discovered that very thing your prospect really wants – move on to providing and delivering it to them.  You’ll not only have a very happy customer, you’ll have a very healthy bank account!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

You could be missing these few KEY strategies

Do you have a BIG VISION for your business – but feel stuck and confused and wondering what specific activity you need to focus on right NOW to get results? Ever feel that there just aren’t enough hours in the day? Are you brimming with good ideas that you never actually get the time to IMPLEMENT? Have you ever wished you could clone yourself so you could simultaneously focus on bringing in much needed cash while also pursing the bigger opportunities and projects that take longer to bear fruit?

For all the answers join me for my upcoming LIVE event …

More Leads, More Clients And More Sales

7th-9th May, 2010

Heathrow London

http://bit.ly/SteppingUP

I put this program together because I’m tired of watching talented people, who have a big contribution to make, and who SHOULD be heading up thriving, profitable businesses that allow them total freedom, suffer and struggle simply because they’re missing a few key strategies.

At ‘More Leads, More Clients, More Sales’ we make the path from where you are right now to ‘$$$ in the bank’ as short and direct as possible. This is fluff free, high content, proven strategies that you can apply right away to get results.

This event is all about putting  key strategies into YOUR hands, then helping you to IMPLEMENT them so you get results.

“Stepping Up!” Members Are Invited To Attend As My Guest.
Not a Stepping UP Member?

Find out more here: http://bit.ly/SteppingUP

If you have a great idea or product to share, how do you get it in front of the rest of the world? How do you make sure that the knowledge and expertise you have to offer is discovered by the people who need it?

While you could present your service to individual people in individual settings, booking endless appointments and traveling from one location to another, that strategy is very time-consuming and certain to diminish the quality of your life.

You may charge and earn very good money for presenting your services this way, but there are only so many hours in a day. You will only earn the amount of money you can make in those hours and you likely won’t have a lot of quality time for yourself. In addition to this, you are limiting the number of people you can serve and help.  All this gives you very good reason to productize your services.

What I mean by that is for you to take the knowledge and expertise that you personally deliver to clients and convert it into a product or programme that can deliver the results for you.

By creating products and programmes, you will do the work once, and then get paid over and over and over again.

For example, if you offer a workshop that draws a large attendance and earns high revenues, don’t stop there. Turn that single event into a product that continues to earn money. Record the workshop and sell DVDs on your website. You will compound your initial earnings exponentially, just by creating a single product.

Take yourself out of the delivery process, in the physical sense. But leave all of the information and expertise and character traits that make your offering unique.

Do this effectively so that your product is truly reflective of your services, but be efficient as well. Don’t get overly caught up in trying to create the perfect product.

Product creation is not about product perfection. It’s about getting your product on the market. You can always tweak and revise it as you go along, which will give you an upgraded product to add to your offerings later on.

Here’s a philosophy to live by. An okay product that is out there serving your clients while making you money is better than the best product that is still in development. That latter one won’t put any money in your bank account.

The best product idea ever is still just an idea. It isn’t going to earn you any revenue. You don’t need to spend months getting your product ready to go on the market. Get your product up and running – quickly.

Spare yourself the time slaving over yet another round of editing documents or perfecting of audio files. Focus on the profits that are waiting for you by getting your product out there now.

Put your time and creative energy into developing your products and programmes.  Make sure they are representative of the qualities that make you so special. Then get them onto the market as quickly as possible to start generating revenue.

Developing products and programmes will not only increase the number of clients you are able to help, and increase your income, but also give you more free time to enjoy a quality lifestyle.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com