Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Law Of Attraction’

What does your product offer your clients? You might answer “better techniques” or “improved processes”. But the reality is that what a client wants to feel is that she’s achieved a desired end result. Whether your product is business coaching or hypnosis, the end result is all that matters to your clients. To successfully market your product, you must package it in a way that reaches the client’s desired end results.

Sell Results, Not Techniques

Let’s use the example of cold calling techniques as a product that meets many people’s needs. They may need better techniques for making cold calls, but what they want is to feel good at the end of the day that they’ve been successful.

To package your cold calling techniques in a way that sells, therefore, you must emphasize the desired end result—the confidence that they’ve done a great job. Do you see how that would change your marketing?

How do you know what result your target client hopes to achieve?

You must begin by really getting to know them. To successfully package a product targeted toward end results, you must know what motivates, excites and disappoints your target market. Until you’ve spent the time to get to know your target market, your marketing efforts won’t achieve the success you desire.

Using our example again, what motivates someone who regularly makes cold calls in order to sell? What does that person fear most? What could you promise them they’ll achieve by using your product?  Being able to answer those questions means stepping in close, observing and talking to people in your target market, learning what they read and where they shop. There is no substitute for the kind of information you can gather when you decide to learn more about your target audience.

Packaging an Intangible

One reason you might be having trouble selling your product is that people don’t know what they’ll get until after they buy it. For intangible products such as coaching or training services, it’s difficult to know how to package them toward an end result.

You could find yourself in a stalemate with your clients, in which you’ve generated lots of interest for your product, but no one will commit to buy. How to break that stalemate? By repackaging the product as something tangible, instead.

Here’s an example: Suppose your hypnosis clinic isn’t booking enough sessions. One of the tangible end results of hypnosis is smoking cessation. Instead of focusing your marketing on selling individual sessions, bundle sessions together into a “Smoking Cessation Package” instead. You’ll be surprised how full your schedule will be once you’ve packaged your product into a tangible end result.

By packaging your intangible product as something tangible, your clients know what results to expect. Rather than selling a process, sell the results of that process. Instead of booking sessions, sell groups of sessions targeting a specific result. You could even build a package of information products that clients can purchase off the shelf. Any way you make your product and its results more tangible brings you closer to success.

So, if you’re struggling with prospects who won’t commit, ask yourself “What can my target client expect to happen by using my product?” Then package your product, and your marketing, toward that goal. When you do, you’ll see the kind of business you’d always hoped you could have.

So, you want the big corporate clients, but they don’t want you.  Or so you think.  Big corporations can be the ‘cash cows’ of our world.  Along with their big size, they have big training budgets and that’s what we like and what we need.  But since they’re big, aren’t they only looking for big companies to provide their training?  Not necessarily.  You need to convince them that small is good.  Turn it to your advantage.  Make it a negotiating factor.

Your first obstacle to overcome in getting large corporate clients is their preferred provider list.  If you’re not on it, you can’t provide services.  Or can you?

One of my longstanding clients is the department head of a multinational corporation with over 150,000 employees.  They have the dreaded preferred provider list.  He shared with me two important pieces of information.  First, there are many instances in which he can overturn the preferred provider listing when choosing external consultants.  Second, he prefers using smaller companies.

The reasons he gave me for preferring smaller organizations are ones that you can use to help sell yourself:
• Smaller organizations value your business more and will give you better service.
• Smaller organizations understand the client’s needs better.
• Smaller organizations can provide a more personalized service.

So, use your small size to your advantage.  Let that big corporate client know that even if you’re a ‘one man band’, that’s a good thing, as it allows you to better serve their needs.

Another important point to remember in overcoming the ‘bigger is better’ mindset is the basic business concept of supply and demand.  There are only so many clients looking for training services, therefore, your service is a commodity with limited demand.  Any trainer can provide a commodity, right?  Wrong!  You need to prove that your service is scarce and valuable, not a commodity.

How can you prove to a client that you have a valuable service?  You need to believe it yourself.  It’s an attitude that you need to carry with you at all times, it’s an attitude around which you need to structure your business and it’s an attitude that will set you up for success.

But, it’s not about overconfidence – it goes back to the basic concept of supply and demand.  As a one-person show, you have only so many hours in the day.  Your time, therefore, is valuable.  Your goal in selling yourself is to provide more demand for your limited supply of time.

You need to put yourself in the power position.  Put yourself in the position where you have more prospects than you can handle.  When you can look a potential client in the eye and say with all honesty “If you want to work with me next month, these are the two days that are available.  And you need to let me know by the end of the week whether you’re going to take these two days because I have two other clients that are interested”, you are creating a sense of urgency.  When you create that sense of urgency, you are putting yourself in the power position.

I’m not suggesting that you should pretend you have a full dance card when you don’t.  People can see right through that.  I’m saying that creating more demand for your limited supply of time is part of the cycle that will create the sense of urgency which in turn puts you in the power position.

Use your small size to your advantage. Overcome the “bigger is better” mindset and you will be able to get your client to overcome it as well.

Marketing your own business can really feel like an uphill struggle sometimes, can’t it?

Some marketing campaigns produce okay results, but at times you probably feel like you’re doing a lot of hard work to get that result. But there are also those marketing campaigns that just take flight. Where you feel, “Oh my goodness, there’s some big energy going on here and all I really need to do is steer and hold on as best I can.”

That’s the kind of marketing campaign and feeling I want to help you achieve.

Firstly, you need to know exactly what your market really wants. That, to me, is the foundation of successful marketing: understanding what your potential clients really want at a logical level and an emotional level.

Knowing what your market wants is the foundation. But just like a house that is up for sale, that strong foundation needs personal and finishing touches to set it apart from other houses, and make it appealing and attractive to prospective buyers.

One of the first things you need to focus on when it comes to marketing your business is really emotionally engaging your audience. In order for your audience to be emotionally engaged with your business, they need to be emotionally engaged with you. There has to be a certain degree of personal revelation.

Now, this is something that you may find difficult. Often, business owners have this rule, this mindset that, “This is business and this is personal and never the twain shall meet.”

But, and I’ve shared this many times before, one of the best ways to create likeability in your marketing is to reveal things about yourself. Especially things that you may consider weaknesses or things that you’ve had problems with in the past.

Dan Kennedy, the marketing consultant, is a real proponent of personal revelation. Whenever he works with someone’s business, one of the main marketing tools he uses is to try to create a business around a character.

Here’s an example…

Let’s say there is a company called “ABC Carpet Cleaners.” How about changing the name to “Ted Harris Carpet Cleaners”.  Then featuring Ted in the marketing of the business, telling the story of Ted and his two sons and why Ted is in business.

The idea is to build Ted’s story, taking a commodity business – carpet cleaning, and turning it into something different, something extra. It’s about connecting with your prospects at an emotional level.

So think about how this could apply to your business.  Are you leaving out what it is about your business that makes it special? Are you telling your story? Can customers put a face to your business? (a simple photo on your web site or business literature is a quick fix for that).

Set aside some time to really analyze how you have been marketing your business. Are you making your business personal?

If not, it’s time to make some changes.  Helping your prospects connect with you on an emotional level will make your marketing take flight and your business soar.  Try It!

Today I want to make the distinction between taking action and taking inspired action.

If your predominant feeling is of overwhelm, not enough hours in the day, too much to do and not knowing where to start, chances are that you aren’t taking inspired action. You may be taking ‘required’ action or ‘tired’ action, but not inspired action.

You will find that your path to becoming a Client Magnet runs far more smoothly when you are taking Inspired Action. If you feel like you are bumping into one obstacle after another, or simply finding it hard to get motivated, you are probably taking action which is required or tired, but it definitely isn’t inspired.

When you are following inspiration, you don’t need to think about motivating yourself, because the desire to do it comes naturally. Inspired action is naturally pleasurable and enjoyable. It usually has a sense of ease around it too. You don’t need to force yourself in the way you need to get required action done.

Taking inspired action is the opposite to how most of us approach our lives. The typical formula goes something like…

• see a problem,
• set a goal to address it,
• work out what actions you need to take to reach the goal, then
• motivate yourself to take those actions, however unappealing they may be.

In contrast, the inspired action approach goes something like this:
• set your intentions for what you want,
• visualise it as though it is already happening for you.
• Get into the feeling place of already having it, and
• allow the inspired action to come to you.

Now some people have a thought that pops into their mind immediately. You might get a picture, or a word or phrase. The more you practice this, the easier it becomes to receive the inspired action. You will probably develop your own unique method of recognising an inspired action.

The next thing to do is follow up on that thought!

There is often a sense of co-incidence or perfect synchronicity when you take an inspired action.