Research the People You’re Meeting

If you’re meeting someone in particular, research the person or people you’re meeting. Lots of resources exist that can give you both professional and personal reference material. The Web is a source of myriad information, with things like company websites, personal bios, work histories, resumes, portfolios; depending on who you’re meeting, you may be able to find a wide range of information about your contact.

If the Web doesn’t yield any useful information, you could check with the company where your contact works, to see if they have any marketing information containing professional info about your contact. You could also check periodicals, such as magazine stories, newspaper articles or professional interviews. Depending on how public the person is that you’re meeting, you may be able to find everything from the name of a spouse to the first place he or she worked out of college.

Use the information you find when you meet your contact. Talk about common interests, such as being dog owners, adoptive parents, yachters; whatever common bond you can form with your contact can help you form a good relationship. Ask about things near and dear to the person’s heart – not just business talk – and you’re well on your way to forming a real connection.

Ask Questions and Show Genuine Interest

Get to know people to form real connections. Ask questions about everything; not just their professional life, but their personal interests and family life, too. The more you can show that you understand, know and really “get” the person, the better your relationship will be, and the more business opportunities you’re likely to gain. Be a real person to your connections, too – if your new business partner volunteers information about his wife, talk about your wife. The more personal you can make your relationships with people, the better your long-term success with those relationships will be.

Have Fun Making Connections With All People

Everyone can have fun building good relationships – all you have to do is be genuinely interested in people. Enjoy getting to know your business colleagues, or even that woman you met on the street the other day. Forming connections with people can help in all aspects of your life, and even random connections can help your business in unexpected ways. You never know when someone will refer a key contact; an affiliate who may have great products for your prospects, or a business or distributor that could make your product a high-demand success!

Don’t just see people as stepping stones to a better business. Form real, legitimate connections by getting to know people, and I promise good business will naturally follow.

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

It’s not your “About Me” page. It’s not your “Testimonials” page.

It is the page where people give you their contact information and purchase your products or programs. That is the goal of your business.

To achieve that goal, you need to get people to opt-in. Nothing else can happen until they do this.  That is why the design of the page where they opt-in – your squeeze page – is so important.

Getting your prospects to hand over their contact info isn’t always easy, but if you focus on your squeeze page set-up, you will successfully obtain client information, build your list and make sales.  Use my tips below to maximize the effectiveness of your squeeze page.  These strategies work!

•    Make your homepage a squeeze page

To get maximum results, make your squeeze page your homepage. This will lead to a significant increase in your opt-ins and in your list.

•    Model successful squeeze pages

To get ideas for your new home page, model other successful squeeze pages. Look at other people’s pages with new eyes. Emulate the elements that make them successful while using your own unique copy that speaks to your own target audience.

•    The important information should appear within the browser window

The pages that are most attractive give the most important information at the top, without having to scroll down. Everything your visitors need to see should appear within the browser window in front of them. Don’t make them have to “lift a finger” to find the best of what you have to offer.

•    Use headlines and bullets to present your message

Announce your best information in the area that most people notice first – the headline. Develop a headline that will grab your visitors’ interest and get them to stay online to hear the rest of your message. Use a prehead and a subhead to deliver your best copy.

Successful pages don’t include one long paragraph of copy after another. A successful squeeze page presents its best content as great mini headlines in a bulleted format.

•    Make big, bold promises

Use numbers within your bullet headlines. State that you’re going to solve problems. Make big promises in your bullets. You’ve done the research, campaigns and surveys to determine what your target audience wants, now highlight that information in your bullets.

•    Make a personal connection

Your target audience want to know who you are.   Don’t keep your personality a secret. Make your squeeze page personal. People buy people. Although we’re all speaking virtually, on Twitter and on teleseminars, people want the personal human connection.

They want to know you. They want to see the person behind the site. At the very least, include a photograph of yourself. Add audio and video to increase the personalization.

•    Use a thank you page

Don’t lose that personal touch once your visitor has opted in on your squeeze page. Your thank-you page is a great place to further your relationship and offer your new client even more. You could make another sale just by asking for it on your thank-you page.

•    Remove Navigation Bar and Banner

There are a couple of web page staples that should not appear on a successful squeeze page. These items do nothing to help you get people to opt-in. So, strip out the navigation bar and ditch your banner. They should not be on your squeeze page.

•    Test, measure and improve your conversation rates

Make sure you test and measure your conversion rate on your squeeze page. Find out how many visitors are actually buying into your offer. Regularly measuring your conversion rates will tell you what’s working and what isn’t on your page.

When you apply at least one of these tips, and you will see an improvement in your conversion.

Make a checklist and work through it. Improve your squeeze page one component at a time and you’ll be in a much stronger position – I promise!

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

One-day workshops may be good for clients who have limited time or budget but want to make a difference in their business. In a one-day workshop, you can begin to create the foundation for a successful business owner to make a transition in the way he or she does business. However, a one-day workshop isn’t a magic medium for you to create an army of happy, successful businesspeople. You can only share so much information through a one-day workshop, and you’re essentially always starting clients out on the same basic level; they never progress past the techniques you can cover in a single day.

If you’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge about success in your medium, business or industry, you might consider selling e-books. E-books are typically a compilation of knowledge and techniques that people can use to work on their own and boost their business. E-books can provide a revenue stream, but they’re typically limited in scope.

An e-book cannot begin to convey all the accumulated knowledge and business acumen of years in an industry or field.  Like one-day workshops, an e-book can help build a basic foundation for client success, but many clients never progress past that basic level of knowledge and technique contained in the e-book. This makes e-books great for introductory materials, but ultimately too limited to help clients achieve overall success.

Top-Level Coaching Programs are Great for Client Success
Top-level coaching programs let you really share your accumulated wisdom and business expertise with your clients on a basis that can help them achieve success. Unlike e-books and one-day workshops, a top-level coaching program typically enables you to work with your clients one-on-one to help them develop the skills and techniques specific to their field. You can help your clients set goals and achieve them with your expertise; you’re not just leaving clients alone to blunder around and try to build on a basic foundation.

Top-level coaching programs provide clients with an ideal medium to move beyond the basics and truly grasp success. This is good both for you and your clients. If you’d like to help your clients achieve real results, it’s time to move beyond e-books and one-day workshops and consider launching a top-level coaching program.

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

Marketing Mastermind Call:

Boost Your Speaking Sales with “The Invisible Close”

Tuesday, 27th July, 2010

8:00pm UK Time (3pm EASTERN, 12 noon PACIFIC)

It’s a disservice to let interested consumers walk away without securing the benefit of your fabulous products or services. They came to buy from you. Give them what they need to say “YES!”

Join me and my guest Lisa Sasevich, the “The Queen of Sales Conversion, for this action-packed call where we will be covering…

• Exponentially grow your platform sales using Irresistible Offers

• Get massive results without being “salesy”

• Maximize your profits with no marketing budget!

• Simple, no-cost things you can do to instantly double or triple your sales conversion.

• The secrets to inspiring someone to act now…without being pushy or “salesy”!

• How to craft your “Irresistible Offer” to support Big Sales and your Big Life!

• And most important, how to share the wealth of your wonderful and unique talents and receive wealth in return!

This call is FREE for my hundreds of Marketing Mastermind and Stepping UP! members. They also get the CD and transcript of this call at no extra charge, plus a tonne of other member benefits – such as access to our online members forum.

Not a member?  Then click here to join the Marketing Mastermind Group today so you can take advantage of this call and all the other member goodies each and every month.

I look forward to “meeting” you on our call.

Best Wishes
Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

PS – Even if you can’t make the call, all Mastermind members receive a FREE CD of the call as well as a digital version of the audio and transcript! Take advantage now.

One of the boys rushes around frantically with a net trying to catch the birds. Every time he gets close, the birds fly away. There’s lots of squawking, and feathers flying. The other boy stands quietly, holding out some birdseed.

One boy is trying very hard, and is probably exhausted, while the other hardly seems to be working at all.

Which one will get the results he’s looking for?

Instinctively you know it’s the boy with the birdseed who will be more effective, and a lot less sweaty.

When it comes to marketing and trying to attract clients, you want to act more like that second boy. Unfortunately, though, most people tend to act more like the first.

A lot of the things you might be doing, that are considered to be traditional marketing techniques, might actually be counterproductive. You could well be chasing people away.

Effective marketing techniques used on the wrong market will only provoke resistance, and build defensiveness. You could be running after people, figuratively speaking, with barrages of email, rounds of cold calls and direct mailings, and quite possibly be achieving the exact opposite of what you want.

For example, no matter how effective cold-calling may be for me or someone else, if you detest doing it, your negativity will prevent it from being effective for you.

Even if you are using marketing techniques that are proven to attract clients, if you do them with the negative energy of chasing – if you give off the sense that you are giving simply in order to get – you will end up like the boy who is chasing the birds. Tired and without any bird in the hand.

You want to break down the barriers between you and your prospective clients, not create more of them.

Make sure that the things you are doing marketing-wise, both online and offline, will attract clients to your business. Doing what everyone says is the right thing, but doing it with the wrong energy, won’t produce results.  Do the things that feel right to you. That will bring the positive energy into your marketing, and your clients will feel it.

You’ll know when you’re being a client magnet because it will feel easy. It should feel enjoyable, and you will have an abundance of clients.

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

Thursday, 15 July, 2010
8pm UK, 3pm Eastern, Noon Pacific.

Have you been working hard to establish your business, but the rewards don’t match all the efforts you’ve been putting in? Are you tired of trading time for money – and want to discover new business models that can help you turn your expertise into more money – and free up your time. Do you feel that you’ve ‘paid your dues’ but are yet to collect?

My friend Kevin Nations and I are in the Receiving Zone, and between us have an impressive track record of helping our clients to get into the Receiving Zone too, and now it’s YOUR TURN.

So register now for this ONE TIME call:  http://www.thereceivingzone.com
On this special call that we’ve called “The Receiving Zone: Get Cash Flow with what you NOW KNOW!”, we’re going to show you:

• How to get others to see that what you have is WORTH investing in (price objections will be a thing of the past when you master this)

• The ABC formula that may be costing you cash (HINT you might be following this formula without even realizing)

• Why some of the BUSY WORK you are currently doing will not produce results (and may even be holding back your success)

• What you need to do RIGHT NOW to get into the ‘receiving zone’ and finally get the recognition and rewards you deserve

JOIN US as we explain why all your hard won expertise and efforts WON’T pay off – unless you get into THE RECEIVING ZONE. Spaces on this call are LIMITED. So reserve your spot right now by going to http://www.thereceivingzone.com

Best Wishes
Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

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

And what, you ask, is the best way to accomplish this magnetism?  Emotional Appeal.

When you respond to something that people want, they will allow you to give it to them.  Don’t tell them what they need – their mothers can do that for them.

When choosing a topic for your teleseminar, remember that you need a strong, satisfying hook that will make readers say, “That’s exactly what I want right now.”  In other words, you must promise to satisfy a profound want that they have.  If a teleseminar topic sounds like one more add-on to their busy schedules, you won’t make the cut.  But, if a teleseminar topic sounds like something that they simply can’t live without (or the answer to a prayer), you will easily take the timeslot.

Every prospect has a need.  It’s your job to find out what the overwhelming emotional needs of your audience are.  Every member of that audience will want at least one of these elements:

• good health
• wealth
• extra time
• popularity
• good looks
• confidence
• respect
• comfort
• success
• enjoyment
• parenting success
• personal prestige
• contemporary style
• pride in possessions
• efficiency
• authority
• more / better sex
• satisfied curiosity
• no more embarrassment
• attractiveness
• knowledge of secrets
• intelligence

Now you might be asking, “How will I know what the emotional needs of my audience are?” The answer is simple:  Listen.

When you get questions and feedback from your audience, take notes, determine where the biggest emotional desires lie, and use that data to create a teleseminar topic that satisfies the wants of a large portion your audience.

For instance, if you’re coaching sales people, you might assume that their biggest motivations are making money.  But if you read their e-mails and listen to their voices, you will uncover the deeper emotional needs beneath that desire.  Maybe you’ll find that a large portion of your audience is competitive – that they want to outperform their coworkers or their competition.  In that case, you would put together a teleseminar that hits on the notes of success, envy, and personal prestige.  More people will sign on, because you have chosen to focus on them (and their wants).

Even if you’re only getting comments and feedback from a portion of your entire client base, the statistical data will still ring true…listen to the emotional revelations of the majority.

Your topic is the foundation, and the biggest determinant of financial success, for your teleseminar.  It must fill an emotional need, no matter how buried beneath the surface that emotional need might be.

Don’t tell people what they need; cater to what they want. Know your audience as intimately as professionally possible.

You should never have to guess on a teleseminar topic.  If you listen closely and carefully, the pain in your audience’s words will determine that topic for you.

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

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