Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘sales strategies’

Are you thinking about starting a high-end coaching, consulting or mentoring program? If you’ve got years of accumulated knowledge, a top-level program can be a great way to share that information and help your clients achieve success. It may be time for you to stop running one-day programs and selling books and launch a top-level coaching program, instead. You can provide great results for your clients, and truly share your information in a significant way through these programs.

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

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

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.

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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

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There are several universal principles that apply to attracting all types of clients. But, if you really want to focus mainly on corporate clients, there are some areas where your approach will need to be different.

List-building is essential, whether you want corporate or individual clients, but to effectively build your list of corporate clients, you’ll need to employ alternative methods to the usual online blogs, teleseminars and social media.

While these do increase your exposure and will help to grow your list, attracting corporate clients requires you to be doing a lot more offline rather than online. This is the most significant difference between being a magnet for corporate clients as opposed to individuals.

•    Get your articles published – not so much online as in trade magazines that are read by your target audience. This is a phenomenal way to build your list, and it will also enhance your credibility and expertise in your area. When a potential client sees your name attached to a publication that they trust and turn to for trends and advice, they will be more than eager to get on your list.

•    As tempting as it may be, limit sending companies your automatic newsletters or articles online. Corporations and large companies often have spam filters in place that will intercept your material before it’s ever read. Treat your valuable content better than that by making sure it gets into the hands of your intended target market through print media.

•    Advertise at the back of the trade magazines that are prominent in your field. To start with, pick the ones that you read yourself. Your ad doesn’t have to be large or costly. A small classified ad offering your free report can generate some very good leads for you. In fact, when I was first venturing into the corporate track I landed a £50,000 contract with just a small classified ad.

•    Do an offline mailing. This can actually help you to build your online list for later, as well. For example, one of my clients wanted to target corporate women. She put together a mailing campaign promoting a teleseminar to 500 people, and received responses from 125 people. While she physically put something in the post, the contact information she received back included email addresses, which she added to her list.  Once you establish a relationship offline, you will be able to maintain it by contacting your clients online whenever you want.

If you’re going to target corporate clients, you need to think in terms of offline, as well as online, marketing strategies. Of course you shouldn’t abandon the benefits that online exposure can give you, but don’t discount the advantages of doing business the old-fashioned way, before the advances of modern technology made it so easy to reach large numbers of people at once.

Want to learn more about attracting Corporate Clients? Join Bernadette on her FREE Masterclass – all about landing lucrative corporate contracts: http://www.clientmagnets.com/corporate/

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The Receiving Zone: Get Cash Flow with what you NOW KNOW!

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

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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

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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

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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

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

One-time Webinar

How To Deliver Your Expertise Online And Get More Clients

Wednesday, 30th June, 2010
8.30pm GMT/ 3.30pm EST

You can have FREE access to a one-time webinar with myself and one of my VIP students, Nicola Bird. If you’re a coach, consultant or trainer you need to be on this webinar.   Nicola Bird will reveal how she used JigsawBox to generate an income stream of over $24,000 of revenue in one month.

Here’s some of what we are going to cover …

• The number one reason your business model means you’re not getting as many clients as you should be (HINT: 95% of solopreneurs are making this exact mistake!)

• The four reasons why YOUR COMPETITORS will soon be delivering their expertise online

• How to SAVE TIME AND MAKE MORE MONEY by creating ONE set of content and using this as the foundation of your business

• How to use JigsawBox as a perfect platform for upselling HIGH-VALUE COACHING and CONSULTING

• How JigsawBox can help you deliver your expertise online EASILY, even if you’re a complete technophobe!

• The ONE THING you must do with your JigsawBox to START ATTRACTING CLIENTS quickly

Click here to claim your VIP invitation

Best Wishes
Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

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What is your definition of opportunity?

Imagine that it’s a typical week for your website – the one that you have planned, designed, to which you have driven traffic, and through which you have made booking and registrations possible. Let’s assume that during a given week, 100 visitors cross into the realm of your site; 2 of them make the decision to purchase; however 98 of them leave without investing in your product.

What number captures your attention in the above example? Is it the 2 buyers? Will you wait for another 2 buyers next week? Will you count on luck, or “spray and pray” to deliver a sprinkling of voluntary customers next month, and next year?

Or, do you view the 98 departees as 98 new opportunities for sales?

In truth, your best profit potential lies in the 98 visitors who chose not to buy. If you plan well, after they leave, you will have 98 names and addresses that can lead to potential sales. All you need to do is have a plan for following them up. Just think – if you can get even 2 of those 98 to say “yes,” you have converted a larger percentage than you did with your sales page alone.

Here are some points to show why you should be following up:

• When you follow up with website visitors, you are targeting prospects who have already expressed an interest in your product. They clicked, which means, at the very least, that they are curious. For my regular readers, you know that this means you have gathered an audience of people with “raised hands.”

• Targeted follow-up correspondence answers questions that many of your visitors are not willing to ask (and many people have the same types of questions). Every time you answer a question, you take the opportunity to dispel an objection or a fear.

• Follow-up breeds interaction, which begs conversation. Think of your follow-up e-mails, postcards, and teleseminars as ice-breakers in a conversation that everyone wants to have, but no one knows how to broach.

• Marketing research doesn’t lie. It tells us that more follow-ups equal more conversions. Stay relevant in the minds of your prospects, and you’ll be the first person they turn to when a problem arises.

• Follow-up is a circular phenomenon. It gives you the information you need to devise better methods of follow-up. When questions are posed, and objections voiced, you are given valuable insight into the minds of prospective clients. With this information, you can plant more seeds and dispel more fears.

• Follow-up contact is an invaluable vehicle for conveying the idea of urgency. If a conference is set to take place 6 months from now, people will put off registration. But, if you can communicate a special offer through follow-up correspondence, you will light the fire to sign up. Often, discount deadlines and space limitations work well.

To increase conversions and increase your sales, it’s absolutely necessary you follow-up with all your prospects – even the prospects that don’t buy from you. You cannot follow up too often – you just need to vary your medium to keep your prospect engaged.

Don’t hesitate to use the invaluable follow-up for attracting and retaining clients. Leading prospects to your door is never enough – you must give them the incentives to revisit, and to invest.

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

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