Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for the ‘Cash Flow’ Category

Running an event can provide you with a substantial profit. You can earn revenue from the event itself, or from selling items during the event. With the many revenue options available for making money from an event, people still miss out on some great revenue opportunities. Here are some insider tips for increasing your event revenue that most people don’t consider:

Provide Tiered Pricing
If you want to open your event to the widest possible audience, consider creating a tiered pricing structure. You can quote a relatively low ‘entry-level’ price for just admission to the event. You can also add a ‘premium’ or ‘deluxe’ event attendance, with carefully-considered extras. You might add a product free of charge for attendees who sign up for the premium package. You might also add one-on-one time with the event organizer, keynote speaker or other key event guests.

In this way, you can provide basic entry to wider range of people, while still raising the overall cost of your attendance. If you provide basic entry for $100, or a premium attendance for $200, your average revenue will increase, depending on how many people choose the premium option. You can also add a pre-registration option at a lower rate, and then charge the full rate for registration at a pre-designated cutoff point.

Offer Trial Memberships
If you have a product that functions as a subscription, such as an information distribution service, you could offer attendees at your event a ‘free trial.’ A 30, 60 or 90-day trial is typically long enough to provide attendees with a good understanding of the service and its benefits. You’ll find that many people like the service and stay in the program; giving you an ongoing revenue stream once the free trial has ended.

Open Up In-House Opportunities
One great function of an event is to promote your in-house opportunities and services. Events are a great way to convey information about your services to attendees, and convince them that you’re the person with the expertise and systems in place to serve their needs. If you’re promoting in-house opportunities, though, your event can’t be planned exclusively around that. Unless you’re hosting a free event to reveal a new product, people expect to receive a certain level of value from your event; not an extended marketing pitch.

Convey valuable information at your event. Answer important industry questions; questions that you have the expertise to answer because it’s in your field. Provide information about a product. Give your event a purpose beyond simply promoting your services or products. A good event coordinator can find opportunities to work in-house services into the event’s structure at key points, and begin to build a relationship with attendees to meet their ongoing needs.

Be creative in the ways you leverage revenue at your event. Offer a tired pricing structure, which typically yields higher event revenue than a single price. Provide trial memberships to subscription or ongoing services, to demonstrate the value to your attendees and create an ongoing revenue stream. Finally, find ways to promote your in-house services to your audience throughout the event.

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

Many entrepreneurs, small business owners and other professionals find themselves focused on earning an income, finding new clients and the day-to-day struggle to survive.  Having enough income and cashflow to grow your business rapidly is not an uncommon problem.  I often hear people talking about their expected income for the next day, weeks or months ahead.  They focus on knowing where the next paycheck is coming from because they don’t have enough confidence in their existing client base or cashflow.   They fear their income will dry up.

Have you ever felt like that?  If that sounds like you, then it’s time to STOP focusing on your income.  It’s time to start focusing on a long-term plan for success and diversification.  But how?  How do you free yourself from the day-to-day financial worry and really start to thrive?

The answer simply lies in starting your own high-end coaching program.   A high-end coaching programme (when designed and delivered the right way) will provide enough guaranteed revenue to enable you to stop worrying about money and be free to focus on your long-term success!

This is how the strategy works …

Sell Once a Year to Generate Guaranteed Revenue

• With your high-end coaching programme, if you market and sell the right way, you will only need to focus on the selling once and then you’re done for the year.

• Create a program with a limited number of spots, and you’ll only have to sell long enough to fill those spots and then you can focus on serving your clients and creating alternate revenue streams.

• Create a program with a fixed time limit, such as my annual programme, and you only have to sell those spots once per year. Then you’ve got the commitment for the income, and you’re free to focus on other areas of your business. No more worrying month-to-month whether you’ll have enough cash for next month; with a high-end coaching program, you can earn enough money to free yourself up for other pursuits.

Free Yourself Up to Look at the Big Picture

One of the biggest benefits for you and your business of creating a high-end coaching program is freeing yourself up to look at the big picture. If you’re like most people, you spend countless hours per week working on finding enough business, and the rest of your time goes to satisfying your existing clients. You never have time to think about the long-term plans for your business, or how to diversify your revenue streams.

Once you have the committed income of a high-end coaching program, you can stop spending so much of your time selling yourself and your services because you have a guaranteed revenue stream. Instead, you can focus on creating the other steps to achieve success in your business, and put together a long-term plan for your business!

In order to truly become successful in your own business, you’ve got to stop focusing on immediate income so you can begin to build a road map for long-term success.   Worrying about your day-to-day income is short-term thinking and can seriously hamper your long-term business success. When you start a high-end coaching program, you get financial commitments for a large portion of your revenue and begin looking at other ways to improve your business success.

So if you want to see an end to your day-to-day financial struggles and the beginning of long-term success, it’s time to start your high-end coaching programme!

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

How much money do you want to make this year?

If you’ve answered this question with a round number, like, $100,000, or $1,000,000, or an, “I don’t know,” you don’t have a goal, you have a wish.  It’s imperative that you know your goal income numbers, specifically.  You must know how much you have to net today, this week, and this month in order to land the yearly salary that will support the lifestyle that you desire.

Here are some get-specific Millionaire Mindset methods:

• What would you like to do in the next year? Move?  Take your dream vacation?  Send a child to college?  Hire someone to manage all of that stuff for you?  Or make it possible for your spouse to leave his or her job to come to work for you?

Don’t forget the smaller costs that go along with each large goal, like the cost of providing your newest employee with a company car and fringe benefits, travel costs, tuition, and your existing lifestyle costs.  Don’t estimate.  Make phone calls.  Get current pricing on airfare, college tuition, health care, or whatever bills you’ll have to foot.  Write it down…you’re going to need it.

• Now that you’ve done the addition, do the division. Break out the calculator and find out how much you’ll need to net in a month, a week, and a day.  This will give you a manageable and reachable goal path.

Lots of people say they want to be millionaires.  But if you ask them how much they need to make this afternoon to stay on track for that wish, you’ll likely be met with a dumbfounded look.  Once this step is completed, you will be distinctly separate from those with a wishing frame of mind.

• Challenge yourself in the pursuit of your income goal. If that means working an extra 30 minutes to meet your daily income goal, do it.  If that means negotiating on a deal, even if you’re not comfortable with negotiation, then do it.

When you know how much money you need to earn this week, in pursuit of the big goal, you’ll be encouraged to do the things that aren’t so desirable.  Every time you challenge the boundaries of your comfort zone, those boundaries will soften, and your comfort zone will grow.

A goal like, “I want to make a million bucks this year,” will never incite you to rewrite an email or to hold firm on your retail price for an item.  But if your goal is, “I need to clear another $50 today to stay on track,” you’ll push right through, because you will connect those little tasks with your big goals for yourself, your family, and your lifestyle.

• Successful business people always know their numbers. They rifle off their conversion rates, costs, costs of sale, and precise percentage profits.  Businesspeople who don’t know are probably losing money.

• If the thought of calculating, relating to, or speaking about numbers frightens you, then hire a business manager to do it for you.  Investing all of your energy in working in your business, without working on your business, will be detrimental to your income goal.

• The numbers might be simple now, but if your goal is to make a million dollars, or any other impressive number, you’ll have to expect the money flow, in both directions, to become more complicated.  Adopt a know-your-numbers attitude now, rather than jumping into a sea of number soup when your chances of drowning are high.

In short, know how much money you need to make.  Then know how much money you need to make this week in order to reach that goal.  Name it, and then claim 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

You see an advertisement for a high-priced training course that you know would fill in a lot of business blanks for you.  You know that this course covers exactly what you need to know to move your business to the next level.  Will you decide to sign up for the course or will you pass by?  How do you decide if you will attend or not?  Will your decision be based on your current income or the income you can realize once you have that training under your belt?

More important than the answer to this question is the thinking that you used to arrive at your answers.  Did you think, “My current income won’t support a payment like that.  I’m going to have to pass”?  If you did, you’re making decisions based on your current circumstances, and if you continue to limit yourself that way, you’ll severely cripple your ability to grow to the great potential that is within you.

In order to grow and reach our true potential, you must change your current mindset. Any time a threshold is to be crossed (in this case, a monetary one), a change in thinking must occur.  If you can manage to set yourself on the right course, some of those changes will happen naturally, while others will have to be consciously changed in order to get results.

One of those changes is in the way that you make decisions.

Another working example might be an investment in your business.  What if you meet a dynamic systems expert, whom you know would be able to streamline your business operations so that you can concentrate on making the money that you’ll need to promote the lifestyle you desire?  But, what if the fee for that expert is $25,000 – money that you don’t have lying around, just waiting to be spent?

Here’s the question you might ask:  “Will I invest the money, or not?”  But here’s the real decision:  Will you view the $25,000 through the lens of your current situation, or through the lens of your ideal destination?  Even though you would rather not spend the money now, how will it compare to the $1,000,000 you’d like to make this year?

That puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

Those who continue, time after time, to make decisions based on their current circumstances are often saying “No” to themselves.
In order to make decisions based on your destination, you need to venture outside of the boundaries of your comfort zone. As difficult as this can seem, no progress can be made without doing so.  If you make an investment that you might be uncomfortable with, based on the future, as opposed to the present, you will work harder to make sure that the investment will work for your business.  In other words, that step outside of your comfort zone moves you along the path to your goal more quickly.

Your current circumstance is the direct result of decisions that you’ve made.  If you’re not in your ideal situation, that simply means that you have made some poor decisions; but that doesn’t mean that you can’t change your thinking and look to the future – starting right now.

So what will it be?  Current situation or ideal destination?

Would you rather be paid for your teleseminar, or give it away for free?  At first blush, your answer, of course, would be, “Get paid.”  But I must admit, I’ve presented you with a bit of a trick question.

The truth is that whether you ask for money for participation in your teleseminar, or you offer spaces at no charge, you can still harness money-making power.  A paid teleseminar will deliver up-front revenue, but free teleseminars also hold possibilities for making money:  from the subsequent selling of transcripts, recordings, packages, articles, e-books, newsletters and print books.

A common misconception is that people will jump on a free teleseminar just because it’s free; that sending out an email announcing it is enough to get participants – Not True.  If people view their time as more valuable than what you’re offering, they won’t set aside an hour to participate, even if it doesn’t cost them a penny.  For this reason, it’s important to realize that filling the phone line for a free teleseminar takes just as much effort as filling the line for a paid one.

When you use the word “free,” it’s important to put specifications on that freedom.  If a teleseminar is free to everyone, people might assume that it has little or no value.  But, if you make it free to members of a certain group (newsletter subscribers, new clients, current clients, members of your club, etc.), those people will see that they have earned the right to partake in its value.

It’s important to assign a value to every teleseminar, whether there’s a price tag or not.  Maybe participants are getting it at a discount, or maybe it’s free only to select people.  Either way, let them know what they would have paid.  This increases the call’s perceived value.

The free teleseminar has its advantages and its disadvantages. It’s up to you to allow its advantages to work for you.   Here a few pros and cons that might help you to find that balance:

Free Teleseminar Pros

• As long as the topic is exactly what they’ve been hoping for, people will be more likely to “invest” in a free call.

•  If the free call is marketed to members of a certain group, they will feel more inclined to partake in something they’ve earned.

• The law of reciprocity boosts your chances of selling post-teleseminar transcripts, recording, e-books, etc.

Free Teleseminar Cons

• If you don’t market the free teleseminar effectively, it could be dismissed as having little or no value, because it’s free.

• If you offer too many free teleseminars, you could find yourself being taken advantage of, for your free advice.

• Participants might not be serious about the topic, reducing your chances of post-teleseminar sales.  They might say, “It’s free.  I’ll take advantage of it,” and that will be the end of their commitment.

It’s also important to avoid making every teleseminar a paid-participation one.  It won’t be long before your audience is protesting (silently or audibly) that they never get anything for free.

To avoid finding yourself at either extreme of the free/paid teleseminar spectrum, it’s a good idea to offer a mixture of both free and paid.  This will prevent you from being taken advantage of, and it will keep your audience happy with occasional “free gems.”

Free isn’t a bad word.  In fact, it’s the root of freedom…which is at the heart of financial freedom.

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

Looking for an opportunity to shine from the depths of the direct mail slush pile?

Though it might sound a bit cliché, everyone, even those of you who feel encumbered by a limited budget or a relatively small business volume, can do that.  Whether you’re sending out 10 pieces of mail per week, or 1,000 pieces, you can not only entice people to open your mail, but you can keep their attention with a creative, lumpy insert.

Maybe you have, at times, felt intimidated by the “big boys” – the companies who have thousands or millions of dollars to spend on direct mailing.  But, despite what you might have come to believe about these huge corporations, you actually have an advantage over them for creative direct mailing.  If you have an inventive idea for lumpy mail, you don’t have to sit in countless meetings with marketing committees, pitching your idea, enduring criticism, and perhaps, ultimately, having your idea shot down.  You are your final decision maker.

When you’re creative with your lump mail insert, you can spur your recipients to action.  Here are few examples to stimulate your imagination:

• If you’re intent on helping companies and individuals to find their own hidden treasures, you might consider including an old-fashioned scrolled treasure map with your promotional letter.

• If you consider a message to be of the utmost importance, you might want to stuff it into a bottle before mailing it.

• If you’re hoping to entice inactive customers to fall back in love with your company, you might insert a boomerang with a message like, “Boomerangs always come back, don’t they?”

• If your company has a mascot, you can have a lovable likeness of him or her reproduced as a lump.

• If your company helps people to find resources, for instance, you might want to include an ornamental needle-in-a-haystack.

• A complete comprehensive service might be accompanied by a small, silver platter and the statement, “I’ll give you everything you need for start-up on a silver platter.”

• Fortune cookies can be purchased, complete with customized messages inside, that deal specifically with your purpose or promotion.

If you’re stumped for lump ideas, there are resources that can help.  Two examples are www.LumpyMail.com and www.ImpactProductsMarketing.com.  There, you’ll find lots of creative ideas for lumps.  Maybe you want to announce a promotion, invite inactive customers back to the fold, broadcast an upcoming campaign, publicize a grand opening, or announce a new product or service.

Simply using bulk to create a piece of lumpy mail will, indeed, prompt people to open the envelope, but if you want to stay with them for longer than it takes to empty your promotional pen of ink, or to use that pad of custom sticky notes, you’ll want to put some innovative thought into your lumpy insert.

Make your mail memorable with creative lumps…because when your lump is specific to your purpose, and unlike any other lump, it deems you memorable, worthy of the call or the click, and the investment.

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

Writing a sales letter is a practice in anticipating what your prospects will think, and overcoming their objections. When you’re writing your sales copy, it’s invaluable to be able to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and predict what they’ll think when they read your copy. It may be difficult to predict all of the objections that your prospects will have to your sales letter, but one thing you can easily manage is this: catch the catch. Explain why you’re offering such a great deal or such a great product to your prospects, or they won’t believe your pitch.

Prospects Look Out for Deals that are Too Good
From an early age, most of us are told “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” By adulthood, most people feel that they can judge whether a deal is good or not, but that little doubt lurks in the back of most people’s minds. If you do a great job of establishing the value of your product, and justifying your price, people might have trouble trusting you or your sales copy. If you make your product sound “too good to be true,” you have to explain yourself to your prospects or risk loosing sales.

Reasons for Offering a Great Deal
A few key phrases can help diffuse worry over a deal being “too good” and convince your prospects that you’re on the up-and-up. With one technique, you explain to your prospects why a product like yours normally costs more, and how you’ve managed to change the production method to realize a cost savings. Then, you can say something like “I can pass along my cost savings to you.” This lets the prospect know that you know you’re offering a really good deal, and gives them a reason for you offering a good deal. If you don’t explain this to them, they’ll think that you’ve misrepresented the value of what you’re selling, and will turn away from your product.

Another technique involves presenting yourself as the “good guy” and responsible community member to your prospects. For example, you could tell your prospects that a colleague has recommended that you charge more for your product, but you’re “not greedy,” so you’ve chosen to offer it for less. One successful copywriter said “This is such a valuable skill set that I’m offering it at this price so as not to price it out of the hands of the people who need it most.”

In most cases, it doesn’t really matter how you overcome the “it’s too good to be true” objection – just that you address it somehow. When you re-read your sales letter, look at it from the eyes of a potential prospect. If you find yourself thinking “What’s the catch?” then you probably need to re-work your copy, or add in some language explaining why you’re offering such a great deal. With this technique, you can overcome the mental objections of the prospects, and you’re that much closer to making a sale!

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

Have you drawn the attention of potential clients? Are you giving off positive vibrations and getting plenty of hits on your web page?

Do you feel that you are doing everything right marketing-wise, but you’re still not closing the sale?  Are you blaming your business circumstances on the economy?

While this is a more difficult economy to operate in than it was a few years ago, and people are more prudent with how they’re spending their money, the economy has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to close the sale.

I recently compared notes with some of my internet marketing buddies. The general consensus was that up until last year, most of us had done quite well because we were getting the low hanging fruit. We were achieving our goals and earning revenue that was easily attainable and didn’t require a great deal of effort.

But last year, most of us had to go a little further, work a little harder and dig a little deeper to get the results. My business grew, as did the businesses of most of my mastermind colleagues.  We would not allow our businesses to be affected by what people were saying about the economy.

Nor should you. Your ability to close a sale has more to do with the effectiveness of your presentation than it does with the state of the economy.

If you’ve got the desire, the proper mindset, and the ability to communicate the need for your offering, the clients are out there.  And, they will buy.

If a customer has a need for your product or service, and the means to pay for it, whether or not you close that sale depends on how well you communicate why they need to buy it.

Have a good listen to what you’re saying to your potential customers. Make certain that you are giving an effective presentation and not backing off on any of your selling points.

Give customers all the information they need. Explain exactly how your product or service will deliver the results they want.

This may require you to explain your offering in a little more detail. Give clients as much of the finer points they need to make it just seem logical for them to make the purchase.

Once you get them to understand why, that sale is an automatic close.

If you have something a person needs, and they have the means to pay for it, you have every reason on earth to believe that you can close that sale.

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

Can you envision yourself making $500,000?

I don’t mean imagining that you’ve won the lottery. Can you actually see yourself earning $500,000?

If you set a goal that is believable for you, you’ll not only realize that goal, but as you break through it, even more will become possible for you.

If you can’t envision such a high number and think it’s beyond your reach, don’t set your sights on that number straight off. Doing this will just cause a disconnect between what you want and what you think you can make. You will be starting out with a limiting belief.

I worked with a mentor who shared a story about his wife. She worked for an insurance company as a sales manager, making $29,000 a year. When he asked her if she could see herself making $100,000, she said “no.” When he backed down that number to $50,000, she said, “yes.”

Once she settled on that amount, which felt reasonable and comfortable, she not only achieved it, she far exceeded it. By the end of the year, she had made $499,000.

The important point is that she started out with a vision she could believe in.

What do you truly believe is possible for yourself?  Follow these steps to set believable goals that you can achieve.

Step One
Pick a number that’s a stretch from where you’ve been before, but one that you can actually believe in. If you go too far in the other direction, and begin with a very high number, you will stall out. Your non-belief in making that money will be stronger than your belief in getting it.

Step Two
Start where your belief system is. If the most you’ve ever made is $30,000, stretch that number to the very edge of what you can actually see yourself making.

Step Three
Honor small advances. If you only see a $5,000 or $10,000 increase, that’s fine. Start there. As you make that little advance, you will increase your belief system in many different areas and rapidly advance that number.

Step Four
Once you make that little jump of $5,000 or $10,000, not only do you see yourself make it, but you start to believe in the whole process. When you actually believe in the process, it will have an expansive effect on you. Now you are able to see that this can go anywhere.

You will open yourself up to what is actually possible and really start believing it. That’s when you will take off.

Your ability to make that higher end income is really about knowing where you are in what you believe. Not only will you set believable goals, you will be successful in achieving them, and in surpassing them as well.

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

Most people don’t realize it until they host their first event, but a thousand little details go into planning an event. The event organizer must consider everything from marketing the event to organizing speakers, handouts, food, lodging and other relevant event details. If you’re hosting an event and you’re the main feature of the event, you have far less time to focus on these thousand-and-one details that go into a successful event. Dealing with the details becomes an integral part of handling event logistics.

The Logistics of Planning an Event
The logistics of planning an event require you to negotiate the details. You must coordinate the venue, any food and refreshments, the temperature, handouts, lighting, lodgings and many other details. If you’re using an A/V system, you must make sure the equipment is where it’s supposed to be, and fully functional.

If you’re coordinating an event with multiple speakers or sessions, ensure that each participant’s needs are met. The event itself requires coordinating these logistics in the days and weeks leading up to the event, a flurry of activity the day before and the morning of, and managing details during the day of the event.

Balancing Logistics with Price
The specific logistics of your event vary depending on the price point of your event. If you’re charging a low price point, you’re probably not providing refreshments, meals, or substantial handouts. Conversely, if you’re charging a high price point, you might want to provide your attendees with special little touches that make the price seem more justified, including handouts, promotional materials, refreshments and a meal.

Handling Logistics When You’re Presenting the Event
When you’re planning and presenting at an event, not only do you have the details to manage to ensure the event runs smoothly, but you must also think about your presentation. If you’re running around the morning of the event taping cords to floors or thinking about your lunchtime refreshments, you’re not getting yourself into the right mindset for presenting at the event.

If you’re presenting, you might want to hire a professional that has event management experience to take care of the details for you, leaving you free to focus on your presentation. If you do hire a professional to deal with the logistical details, make sure you’re hiring someone who has experience dealing with event logistics. Hire someone with whom you are comfortable presenting your image, as the way they handle the event will reflect on you as the host and presenter. If you hire an event manager who won’t provide the customer service experience you want, or who doesn’t know how to manage the details in a way that is acceptable to you, you have only yourself to blame if the event is not well-received.

Think about the logistics of your event during the event-planning phase. Don’t wait until the last minute to decide how you want to handle logistics, or realize you’ll want to hire an event manager to free up your attention for the event itself. Make a list of the details you need to manage for the event, and determine whether you’re comfortable managing the details yourself or whether you want help. Eliminate details that are cost-prohibitive in a low-budget event, or add handouts and giveaways for a high-budget event so your attendees feel like they’re getting their money’s worth for the event.

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