Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘more sales’

Determine and implement your income streams and enjoy a flood of income on a consistent basis.

Income streams are essential to building a high six- or seven-figure income. Ultimately, to be that successful, you not only need to determine your income streams, but also the order in which you should do them.

One thing you shouldn’t do is trade your time for money. Even if you charge significant sums of money in exchange for your time, this type of revenue isn’t a steady stream. It doesn’t flow into your business without your physical presence to guide and propel it.

The bulk of your income needs to come from leveraging products, programs, events and other more passive types of income.

My own million-dollar plus business relies on no more than five income streams. I like to keep things simple, and these income streams do the trick.  Here are some tips to help you implement your income streams.

Get really good at planning.

Plan at least one year in advance. Look for the two, three or four projects that will yield the big income – the projects that will take you easily to your income goal and beyond.

Determine which projects you’re going to work on during each quarter, rather than month by month.  You may find that you will be working on only three or four big projects across the entire year, but they will be BIG projects, with big revenue.

Connecting those projects so that one leads naturally to the other will also help to maximize your revenues.

By planning, you’ll know precisely where the revenue will come from, how much you’ll earn from each project, and where to focus your time.

Determine which income streams to implement.

Start by creating a product that requires no fulfillment from you. This cannot be a predominantly time-based product. The idea is to offer a product or program on your website. When the order comes in, the fulfillment house – the company that ships the product – fulfills the order without any further input from you.

Offer a Rolls-Royce program. Designed for your top tier of customers, this program is that extra-something-special that elite clients crave. It’s set at a much higher price point, but they’re willing to invest because of your credibility and the value you bring to the table. It’s never too soon to offer your Rolls-Royce program; in fact, I encourage you to start at the top and actually create that program first.

Offer a continuity, or subscription or membership program. This concept turns a one-time sale into recurring monthly income because people are automatically billed once they sign up for the product or program the first time.  This is actually one of the criteria big companies use to evaluate products sold on infomercials – there needs to be an ongoing element of continuity.

Big paydays are another essential income stream. Plan your year around periodic big paydays, such as live events, teleseminars and talks, which will bring in huge windfalls of cash to boost your income significantly.

If you’re hesitant about these big paydays, allow me to inspire you: my first three-day event, with all the income streams that came from it, was worth more than $375,000. You need to implement all of your income streams so that you make money in many different ways from a single event.   And if you’re looking for more inspiration – be sure to register for the Event Money Machine – it’s your last change to register for my very first telesummit!

Once you determine and implement your income streams, the experience will amaze you. There is nothing quite like that flood of income that comes in on a consistent basis.

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

If you’d like to know more about making money with your events, register for her free Event Money Machine Telesummit.

Every consumer wants to know what’s in it for them.  If he gives a bit of his hard-earned money, what will he get in return?  If she donates an hour of her valuable time, what can she expect to receive?

Whether the consumer donation is money, time, or loyalty, those consumers want to know that what they’ll receive will greatly outweigh what they invest.  Dan Kennedy put it well when he referred to this concept as, “Selling money at a discount.”

This is the duty of your teleseminar’s registration page.  Not only should your registration page name a common problem, agitate it, offer a solution, give benefit bullet points, and offer simple registration and payment, but it should quell fears, silence objections, and calm arguments…with a call to action that springs to action, even before those objections are formulated.  Before your prospect has a chance to ask him or herself, “What’s in it for me?” or, “How is this going to better my position?” or, “How is this going to save me money?”, you need to thoroughly answer those questions for them.

You can quantify the cost of any topic. No matter the subject matter, you will always be able to find proof that you will save your customers money, time or grief.  Consider these examples:

• If your topic is business related, and the foreseeable objection is price, include a statement like this:  “For an investment of X, you’ll get the information to avoid the problem of Y, which if left unchecked, will cost you 100 times X.”  For example, you can show your readers how spending $50 will save them $5000.

• If your topic is weight loss related, you can quantify the cost in this manner:  “You’re already spending money on this problem, in the form of high insurance premiums, gym memberships, weight loss programs, and clothing.  You’ll spend far less than all of this to participate in this teleseminar, which will eliminate the need for most of your current money spending.”

• If your topic revolves around parenting, consider presenting your quantification this way:  “How much money are you spending on guilt gifts for your children?  What if a great parent/child relationship was to replace those gifts?  You would save money and gain what you really want.”

• Or, if your topic has little to do with money, and a lot to do with emotional cost, you can quantify your clients’ investments like this:  “Isn’t it worth X to never feel Y again?”

You must calculate the actual monetary amounts for your registration page readers.  Don’t expect them to do the math – they may click away without ever seeing the true monetary benefit that you’re offering.

Even if you’re not able to attain a sign-up from every reader, a good call to action will break through denial, and push those people closer to a sign-up next time you host a teleseminar with a similar topic.

Even if you’re hosting a free teleseminar, you must use your call to action to convince prospects that their investments of time will save them money, time or angst.  In other words, you must convince them that participating in your teleseminar will literally make them money, or trap the money that they already have in their pockets.  You must convince them that investing one hour can save them five hours of work.  Or, convince them that investing one hour will save them hours of sleepless grief.

Your call to action should do just that:  call for action to be taken.  In fact, it should be so powerful, so undeniable, and make such good monetary sense, that your readers won’t be able to help but spring to immediate action.

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

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

Once your teleseminar is over, the income stops, right?  Wrong.

Whether you’ve chosen to conduct a free or paid teleseminar, it’s only the beginning of your earning potential.  One of the things you can do to keep the money rolling in is to have your teleseminar transformed into a product to sell.

Maybe your participants want to see what they’ve just heard, in writing.  Or, maybe the teleseminar wasn’t conducted at a time that was convenient for them, but they’d still like to learn about your topic.  Or, maybe they’re anxious to share what they’ve heard with their friends, in concrete form.

If you choose not to offer a transcript of your teleseminar, there’s no telling how much profit you could be losing.  Here are some guidance points for creating a transcript, and drumming up additional cash flow:

• Create a sales page for your transcript. Your teleseminar’s registration page’s text can serve as a basis for this.  You’ll simply need to add some graphics and fulfillments.  A standard webpage will never sell a transcript.  You’ll need real sales language…the kind you used to fill your teleseminar.

• Record your teleseminar. You can request that this be done through your phone service provider, who can send you an MP3 recording afterward, or you can purchase a recording device (like an Olympus WS-100) to record it on your own.  Then hire a transcriber to put it into writing.

• Hire someone to edit the transcribed text, so that it more closely resembles an article, with headings and sections, so that readers can easily access the information and sections that they’re most interested in.  Typically, transcriptionists will type text that runs on and on, from one subject to the next.  Segmenting the information, and removing conversational elements, will make the document more reader-friendly.

• Hire a graphic designer to design a document cover for the transcript. This image can also be used in the sales letter.

• Decide if you’d like to offer digital transcripts on PDFs, or if you’d like to ship out hard copies.  Whatever your preference, hire someone to handle distribution (like 1ShoppingCart for instant, digital copies, or a company that specializes in creating on-demand hard copies, as orders come in).

• If you’re planning to distribute paper copies of the transcript, don’t sink a boatload of money into stocking shelves with copies waiting to be sold. It’s more cost-effective to have copies created on-demand.  Even though it may cost a bit more per copy, you won’t run the risk of losing your money in unsold, warehoused copies.

• The price of your transcript should range from the same as the cost of the teleseminar, down to a 25 percent discount.  Don’t price the transcript higher than that of the original event, but at the same time, don’t devalue the information just because it’s not live.

• The selling of your transcript doesn’t have to end when you hang up the teleseminar phone.  To the contrary, future customers might be interested in owning transcripts from teleseminars that took place before they were onboard.  Run promotions occasionally, highlighting a transcript.  Or, insert a blurb in newsletter, directing readers to a particular transcript’s sales page (choose a transcript that’s relevant to a current event or some other topic outlined in your newsletter).

Your teleseminar is like a flower seed.  You plant it, care for it, and enjoy its benefits once it matures.  But once that flower withers, your enjoyment of its advantages doesn’t have to end.

Harvest the seeds from that flower.  Plant those seeds by mentioning the availability of transcripts as you close your teleseminar, create transcript sales pages, insert newsletter blurbs, and promote your transcripts as the profitable products that they are.  Continue with this practice, and soon, you’ll have an entire garden filled with a rainbow of limitless income.

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

Everything that you do for your business, everywhere you go, you should always be thinking about getting people onto your mailing list. Building that list is so important to the success of your business.

But, you can’t stop with simply adding people onto your mailing list; you’ve got to take it a step further and get them to actually buy from you. A thousand people on your mailing list is certainly promising business potential, but you need to focus hard on how to convert some of them into paying business.

While you don’t try to sell to anyone and everyone, you do want to try your best to sell to those people on your mailing list. Naturally, they’re your best chance for a sale because they’ve expressed an interest in what you’re offering.

You’ve heard the expression, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink? In a sense, you have to look at the prospects on your list in the same way. You’ve led them toward your business, and while you can’t make them buy, you can make them very thirsty for what you’re offering.

In order to do this, one of the things that you need to think about – even before you start building your list – is what your sales process is going to be.

Once people have joined your mailing list, what will you put in front of them that invites them to get their credit card out?

That first offer should make it easy for them to say yes by having a low financial cost and a low emotional cost.

If you set the bar too high, if the only way people can spend with you is by shelling out a lot of money or committing to a long-term program, you are making it harder for them to say yes. It’s just too big a jump.

Think of your business as a ship and your prospects are on the dock. You wouldn’t expect them to jump onboard straight from the dock – you’d at least put out a gangplank to help them come aboard.

Before asking them to take a huge leap, make a big change, a big investment and a big commitment, give them the opportunity to know and trust you first. Extend the type of offer that will make your prospects feel less vulnerable. An initial low payment offering is fine – just make sure to present something they can buy.

Keep this in mind, as well: The best time to have someone buy is immediately after they’ve signed up for your free offering, whatever that may be. When they sign up for it, they automatically join your list.
The instant that happens, put an offer in front of them. That will separate the people who are serious – the ones who are willing to invest – from the browsers.

The prospects who are willing to invest are proving themselves to you, and should get better and more offers from you.  Don’t spend too much time on the browsers until they indicate that they’re serious.

So think about a low-cost, low commitment initial offering, and then present it to people right after they join your list. That’s the time when most of them are ready to buy.

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

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

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

You know that you have a great product that will really have a positive impact on your market. It will fulfill their most urgent needs quickly and effectively, if only they would just try it.

There are ways that you can encourage potential buyers to purchase your product…

TIP 1:  Offer A Free Sample Of Your Product

When introducing your new product to potential clients, consider offering a component of it for free. Give customers a glimpse of what they’re missing out on with your free offer.

The key is offering a glimpse.  Don’t give away too much. If you give away too much in the first instance you may find potential clients settling for the free component.  That is not going to benefit them or you.

Consider sharing your free offering for a limited time. Be careful not to devalue your time. That is the challenge and balance is required.  If your free offer runs for too long, potential clients get accustomed to receiving your “freebies” and won’t appreciate the value of paying for your products and services.

As you go down the route of offering something free, be sure to state your intent of charging your clients in the future.   State your intent at the outset. “This would normally cost X per month. But as an introduction, you are getting it free for the first three months.”

Plan for the fact that most people will not buy from you the first time around. I have had clients sit quietly on my list for years, never buying anything from me. They’ve received my free newsletters for a long time, and then suddenly, they decide to make a purchase. Don’t presume that just because your clients aren’t buying now, that they never will.

Keep in touch with them through your free offering, whether it’s a newsletter or limited time offer. What you’re actually doing is building a relationship and goodwill that could pay off monetarily later on.

TIP 2:  Offer A Guarantee

Offering a guarantee is a great way to show customers that you have complete faith in your product or service. It shows that you are confident enough to guarantee the results your product provides.

Guarantees are a very common aspect of product marketing.  The reason that many people don’t offer guarantees is they’re afraid customers are going to take advantage of them.

Yes, that is going to happen, on occasion. Someone will ask you for their money back.  They probably haven’t even read or used the product yet to determine if it will meet their needs. They are just after getting their money back. While this may be frustrating to you, you just need to get past it. It’s part of business.

Dan Kennedy surmises that if you’re not getting 10 percent of your products returned, you’re not selling hard enough. That’s a great theory to keep in your mind and put a positive spin on what you may have perceived as a negative scenario.

The extra sales you will make because you’re offering a guarantee will far outweigh any loss that you make on returns.

You should absolutely guarantee your product, particularly when you offer your first product.

Both guarantees and free offers offer another added benefit. They provide more opportunity for really helpful feedback that will help you improve your product.

Are you trying to be all things to all people in your business? Or, even in your personal life, for that matter? If you are, your head is probably spinning, trying to figure out exactly who you are and exactly what your expertise is.

You may think it’s easier for you to offer a general selection of services.  The broader your area of expertise, the more clients you think you’ll attract. However, quite the opposite is true. When you stand up and declare your specialty, clients will view you with confidence and place greater value on your knowledge and skills.

You can make this happen on purpose, or if you really take notice, you might see a trend regarding the clients you attract. For example, one client of mine is a coach and a mom who wasn’t specific about her audience or her specialty. In her words, “When I started out, nothing really happened.”

In her case, she started attracting clients who were moms. She was a mom herself and other moms could relate to some of the scenarios she presented in her business. Her niche more or less found her, but she realized it and focused her business around that niche.

Now she’s known as an expert. Journalists cite her as a source for articles, which results in lots of PR for her company. And now, she has clients calling her who aren’t even moms, asking her if she would consider working with them.

That’s a nice situation to be in – people asking if you’ll take them on as a client.

Being recognized as an expert rather than a generalist can make a tremendous difference in your business. No one is going to hand you a “certified expert” certificate. The secret of being an expert is having the guts to appoint yourself as one.

You aren’t claiming knowledge and expertise that you don’t have. You just need to take the step and say, “I am now an authority on…” or, “I specialize in…”  It’s amazing how quickly things can organize themselves around that.

The fact of the matter is that you probably do know a lot of facts and figures about your particular area. You notice similar problems or situations that come up over and over, and you learn how to address and solve them. Because you look for that information, you do become an expert.

Each step leads to the next step. Once you recognize these recurring topics, you are familiar with the environment that leads to them. So, if you were to write an article, or speak to a potential client, the specific phrases and language you use will resonate with them because they have also used them repeatedly.

That person will get the feeling that you really understand what they’re going through. That’s what clients ultimately want, and that’s what you can give them by specializing.

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