Many times, businesses need to endure a breakdown before a breakthrough can be felt. Sometimes, the bad times are the only times that spur the need for positive change. In other words, even if you’re struggling with simply “making it,” there’s plenty of hope.

I know you want an endless supply of customers – a flow that’s as intense as you’re willing to handle. But there’s an important element to consider before moving forward. You must ensure that any success you’ve experienced to this point isn’t just a symptom of luck. I like to say that even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day. If you glance at the clock randomly, there’s a chance you might get the right time. And if you do, you might be fooled into thinking the clock is working. But it’s not.

You have to make sure that people are coming to you because of the one-of-a-kind value you’ve offered them, not because they’ve stumbled upon you.

There’s no denying that you have a treasure trove of valuables to offer. You have gifts, talents, and abilities that are guiding you toward your perfect mission. You know there are people out there that would greatly benefit from what you have to offer. But when you can’t find those people, or they can’t find you, it can be a painful disappointment. Because your venture really is your calling, right? Or isn’t it?

Every business owner has a calling, and to truly find success in that calling, that business owner needs to be assured that their distinctive abilities are made apparent by that business.

Often, your attempts at furthering your business aren’t the problem. Instead, it might be that you have missed something that’s fundamental to attracting clients: finding that one thing that only you can offer, and that consumers are looking for.

If you are passionate about something, and it happens to also be a God-given gift, then somewhere in the world, there is a demand for that service. God isn’t wasteful. He wouldn’t give you something and not create an equal and opposite need for it.

Your challenge is to find the channel through which you can deliver your true value to those who need it. Frederick Buechner defines vocation as the place where passion meets the world’s greatest hunger. This is a beautiful statement. It reinforces the idea that we’re all here to do something or be someone. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us how to make the connection, or how to keep ourselves in business.

To get a better grasp on this channel, take the time to reflect on you. You are a vehicle for delivering the gifts that the world is waiting for. Put your gifts in writing, and assess them. Then ask yourself these questions:

• How do my gifts complement one another?

• How can my talents be combined to create something unlike anything the world has ever seen?

• Does that combination meet a need?

• If not, can I find a legitimate need?

• Or do I need to find a new and different recipe for those gifts, based on a need I know I can satisfy?

Carving out your vocation using the talent and need factors will go miles to pull your business through adversity. In times of adversity, luck is nowhere to be found…but true value never dwindles.

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

Establish a Problem
First, you must establish a problem that your potential prospects face. For example, one of my students offered pain solutions for back pain sufferers. In her case, the problem that her clients faced was back pain. Think about what you’re trying to sell, whether it’s a seminar, class, or product, and what problem it addresses. That’s the problem you want to establish in your sales material. By introducing the problem that your product solves, you’re setting yourself up to provide the solution.

Show How Your Product Solves the Problem
Once you’ve established the problem, show your potential prospects how your product solves the problem. For my back pain student, her product reduced and eliminated back pain – chronic back pain that her clients simply couldn’t eliminate. Talk about how your product does what it does, and what your client will gain by utilizing your product. If possible, talk about other solutions to the problem, and why your product does it better.

Add Testimonials to Build Value
If you have them, this is a great point to add testimonials. After explaining how your product solves a problem, let one of your clients show the value of your product by including a testimonial about how they had success with your product. For pain sufferers, a good testimonial might be someone saying something like “I had back pain every day before I used this product, but after only a few days, I’m pain free! No more expensive chiropractor visits, endless pain pills, and living every day in pain!” Adding testimonials helps to build the value of your product and add credibility.

Quantify What People Gain
Don’t assume that people will inherently see the value in your product once they know what it does. You have to tell them why your product is good. Quantify what they gain. For back pain sufferers, they gain an end to back pain. But they’ll also be able to stop spending a lot of money on expensive chiropractor visits, pain pills, specialists and other expensive pain-related products. Spell all of this out to your prospects so they’ll see what they gain in writing; don’t just expect them to figure it out for themselves.

Present a Value Proposition for Every Product
You must present a value proposition for every product you sell. Whether you’re selling e-books, coaching programs, seminars, workshops or physical products, you must always establish a value proposition. If you do it well, your product will sell itself – you won’t have to convince people to buy, because the product will convince them!

Of this, I am positive. And you need to be positive about it too.

Do you recall the devastating tsunami in Sri Lanka at the end of 2004? There was a Swedish woman on the beach that day who became known as “the angel on the hill.”

She noticed the first part of the tsunami – the warning. She observed that the tide went out really quickly and was revealing the seabed. It so happened that years before, she had been working as a journalist and had done a broadcast in Hawaii about the impact of tsunamis.

At that moment, she was one of the few people that recognized and understood what was happening. She was able to warn many people to get off the beach immediately. Who knows how many lives she saved just by that action?

After the two waves subsided, people were in shock, and many badly injured. They assembled for safety on this hill, where this same Swedish woman tended to many injuries. It turned out that she had completed two years of a medical degree a few years earlier.

Though she wasn’t a qualified doctor, that two years of training had given her just enough knowledge to save many lives.

And, here’s what I want you to take away from this true story.

She had been a journalist and that hadn’t worked out. She had gone to medical school and that hadn’t worked out. And quite possibly, up until that day in her life, she may have had well-meaning friends and relatives and colleagues saying to her, “You’re in your 30s now. When are you going to get your act together?”

She had obviously tried a few different careers that hadn’t played out in the way she probably expected them to. But, from another perspective, she had the perfect training to save lives that day.

So, stop being so hard on yourself. Stop lamenting the things of your past or thinking they were a waste of time, or that you’re a failure for not following through on them. So what if you’ve lost interest in a promising hobby you might have had as a child. It’s no big deal if that musical instrument fell by the wayside when you got older.

Don’t beat yourself up over it.  Stop looking at these things as though you are a quitter or that you lack commitment.

How about looking at them from a different perspective? How about seeing everything that you’ve done in your life, and every single thing that has happened to you up until now, as the perfect training for adding the most value to your life today?

What greater value could that Swedish woman in Sri Lanka have had than to save the lives that she did?

You are in a position to add value, too. Don’t use your past as an excuse or justification for not moving forward. You need to look at your past in a different way. You have the perfect training to get started on what you want to do in your present. Your past experiences are all signposts leading to the next step, the next place you need to go.

You have a brilliant foundation to build upon right now.  So Step UP!, take action and move forward to where you truly want to be.

You are the only person on earth who can answer that question. But, the catch is, you have to answer honestly. There is no point in trying to fool yourself.

Somewhere inside of you, do you know that you could be playing a bigger game, reaching more people, raising your bar, thinking bigger, and getting bigger results? If these feelings resonate with you, you have to be honest with yourself about whether or not you’ve been playing small.

I had to do this myself some time ago. I realized that I had achieved a good deal of business success by most people’s standards.  But, I also knew that I had been playing it safe, that I hadn’t been putting it all on the line as I had in earlier years of my business. I had become a little bit complacent.

So, I made the decision to step up.

If you discover that you have indeed been playing it safe, the first thing you must do is make a decision. Make the decision to step up.

If you want to reap the huge rewards, you need to take the big risks. You need to make that leap of faith.

I highly recommend that you read Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich, to help you make this decision to step up. It will give you the insight and inspiration to help you recapture that feeling of burning desire.

How long has it been since you’ve really felt a burning desire to do anything? Not just a desire, but a burning desire.

Last year, that feeling inspired me to set a goal for myself – to make a half million dollars from a single project. I knew how to make that much money working all year, but I had never made that much from a single project before.

I ended up exceeding my goal by $130,000.

Focus on the aspects of your business that truly excite and inspire you.  Think about the goals you’d most like to achieve – the ones that might seem more like wishful thinking to someone else – but that you have a burning desire to accomplish. If you’re willing to set those big goals, then you must be willing to step up and do what it takes to achieve them.

The results you want to achieve are within your reach. In order for you to reach the fruit of the tree, you’ve got to make the decision to step up and go out on a limb.

—–

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. Read about her amazing new programme, Stepping Up! http://www.clientmagnets.com/steppingup

Not so fast…

If there is any time lapse between the closing of the sale and the delivery of the customer’s product or service, at some stage you will need to address the “buyer’s remorse” phenomenon.

If your customer falls under the weight of buyer’s remorse, he or she might have feelings of guilt associated with a high price tag, credit extension, or disapproval by others.  The client might begin to fall off of their “purchase high” and start to consider their new, reduced spending power; or they might wonder if they should have done more research or waited for a better, newer version of your product or service.

Your job is simple:  you must keep buyer’s remorse from ever showing its face…by using a Stick Strategy.

A Stick Strategy is simple.  It involves offering a gift that fulfills your customer’s need for instant gratification, and then staying in touch with them to reinforce the benefits of their decision, until they receive the product or service that they purchased.  In other words, remind them regularly that they’ve made a good decision.

Example of a High-Cancellation-Risk Sale:

A motivational speaker offers two types of events:  a 1-day workshop and a 2-day weekend seminar.  She starts marketing and taking reservations for the 1-day workshop only 6 or 8 weeks in advance.  But for the weekend event, she starts accepting bookings up to 4 months ahead of time.

Her customers who book 4 months prior to the 2-day event are much more susceptible to the effects of buyer’s remorse.  A lot can happen in 4 months – people move, their family situations can shift, their employment might change – and that might prompt them to eliminate her seminar from their new schedule.

It’s especially important that this business owner stays in contact with her weekend seminar customers during those critical 4 months – to make sure that those clients remain interested and on-board, without regrets.

Follow these simple steps to keep your waiting customers on-board:

• Immediately following your customer’s booking, make a good-will gesture (e.g.  a digital report, an insider preview of your service, a free sample, coupons to use in the meantime, or anything that will reinforce their spending decision as a good one).

• Keep a list of people who have signed up for one particular service, and use that list to send industry tips, answers to commonly asked questions, or special bonus offers throughout their wait – and be sure to reference the date of the upcoming service in every piece of correspondence.  This will keep their interest piqued, their energy levels high, and will shoo away that bothersome remorse bug.

• You can also send a friendly note part-way through their wait. A simple “Hello, can’t wait to meet you at the conference,” or, “Here’s the seating chart and your nametag.” can boost their obligation to the commitment that they’ve made.

• Keep customers-in-waiting involved. Maybe you’re thinking about making an addition to your service – send a note asking for their opinion on the change.  Or, ask them for feedback on the booking process.  In short, make them feel that their opinions are important.

Maybe you have felt buyer’s remorse yourself.  If you have, think about how much better you might have felt if you’d gotten a free gift right away, or if someone had contacted you to ask for your input.  Would you have been more willing to “Stick?”

Make your customers stick with you…all it takes is a healthy dose of communication and a little dollop of good-will glue.

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

Most people running businesses on the Internet have attended at least one teleseminar. Simply put, a teleseminar is a conference call where useful information is presented, along with an offer for a product.

Today’s internet-based telephone services allow hundreds of people at once to participate in conference calls. As a featured speaker, you have the power to reach large groups and present your offer with very little cost involved.

Whether you advertise this call to your own client list or partner with another business to expand your reach, hosting a teleseminar can quickly build your business with a minimum of time invested on your part.

How Do You Plan Your Call?

Planning a teleseminar can be simple when you use easily-available tools. Here’s are some of things to do when planning your call:

• Sign up for a conference call service online. Look for one that offers low-cost recording services or make arrangements to record your teleseminar some other way.
• Schedule your call with your service, if necessary, and get the call-in details for your marketing.
• Create your marketing campaign – email announcements, method of enrolling (sign-up webpage works best), call topic, and reminder email messages.
• Decide if you’ll allow those planning to attend to ask questions in advance; this is a great way to gather material for developing your content.
• Announce your teleseminar in an initial email message, then follow up with subsequent invitation emails and call reminder if they sign up.

What Should You Say?

This call is your opportunity to share valuable information your client base can use, as well as make your offer to serve them further. A business coaching firm might, for example, share “Ten Vital Steps to Surviving a Layoff” during the teleseminar, and then offer coaching services at a reduced rate for those attending.

Put together about forty-five minutes worth of useful, interesting content and allow time for questions at the end (most conferencing services allow you to “mute” callers until your Q&A session). Craft a strong three to five sentence offer for your product or service and give a discount good for a limited time after the call. Create a separate sales page on your website to allow you to track the teleseminar’s impact.

Practice your content until it rolls naturally;  you won’t hold your listener’s attention by reading verbatim from a script! If possible, have someone well-known in your industry introduce you to add even more credibility.

How Can You Leverage it Later?

By all means, plan to leverage the teleseminar far beyond the call date. This can be done several ways:

• Create an .mp3 or CD of the call and offer it as a premium for purchases.
• Write a series of articles based on the call transcript. Post them to your website or in article directories, to drive search engine traffic.
• Use the questions asked at the end of the call to identify the need for new products or services.
• Use those same questions to create a series of podcasts or blog posts of interest to your client base.

Teleseminars are an easy way to create interest in your products, increase your sales and provide content for future initiatives. Put your own teleseminar in motion today and find new customers waiting on the other end of the line.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

To make that happen, you need to create products that are irresistible. There are a few universal principles to develop truly appealing products.

1. Find a hook. Recognize the “miracle cure” the public is looking for, and present your product as the closest thing possible to that miraculous fix.

One example is Yanik Silver’s Instant Sales Letters product.  Yanik has achieved great success with this product. They are his “miracle cure” for people who need to create effective sales letters, but don’t have enough time to write them. So he put together some fill-in-the-blanks templates to make it easy to prepare sales letters.   Of course, clients may have to do some tweaking to make a template work for their specific purpose. But the point is, they work.  Even if the template needs to be revised, they’ve still got a Sales Letter. And that is very attractive to people with little extra time.  The Instant Sales Letter product is a hook for them – the “miracle cure”.

2. Focus on the content first and the format second.

When you are planning your content, think about what you’re going to cover rather than how you’re going to cover it. Don’t decide that you are going to offer an e-book or a teleseminar until you know what information you will be including.

The format should be secondary. It should be based on what makes the most sense for your market, and what fits best with the product.

As you are mapping out your content, outline everything that your product will cover. You don’t need to include every single detail you know about the topic. Include the information your prospect needs in order to get the results they want. Include the detail that will get their immediate attention because you’re providing the solution they need.

Brainstorm all of the things that your end user will need to get the results that your product will deliver. Write the question “what will they need” in your journal, or put it up in your office. It will act as a prompt for your subconscious mind to come up with the answers.  Use can these answers to create your outline.

3. Use the “why-what-how-what if” format.

Why is each particular point important?
What is the specific item or step in the process?
How will the user implement it?
What if things don’t go according to plan?

Using this format helps you to bring the pieces of your product together.  It allows you to edit as you plan. You are assembling what you already know, putting it together quickly and editing it quickly into a usable format.

4. Be flexible and open to the fact that your outline may change. That’s okay. You will still have the main outline, the “bones of the structure”.  You can always move the main elements around until you get the right fit.

5. You don’t have to create your product in the order that you’re going to deliver it.

Create your product in the way that will allow you to get it done quickly. Start with the areas that are easiest for you. That will give you some momentum to keep going with the more challenging elements of your product.

Once you’ve paid careful attention to these points, you will be able to quickly create a product that clients will be clamoring to buy because it resolves their needs and wants.

Use these steps to get started on creating your irresistible product.  Give your clients what they are asking for, give them what they WANT!

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

Write your Free Report as a Sales Letter in Disguise
When the content of your free report is so interesting that the reader cannot put it down, they have likely become so caught up in the content that they didn’t notice that they were being sold to. A master of accomplishing this feat is Richard Schefren, who so clearly accomplishes this in his Internet Business Manifesto. His manifesto effectively works as a sales letter in disguise. How does he accomplish this? He follows the rule of thumb; he establishes need or greed in the eyes of the reader.

Establishing Need in the Eyes of Your Reader
One proven method of selling is to satisfy a consumer’s need. But, how can you accomplish this within a free report? The first step is to help identify the prospect’s need. If you are offering a course in time management, your goal in the report will be to discuss case studies of individuals and professionals who have dramatically improved their lives by implementing time management techniques. By building a clear need in the prospect’s mind for time management techniques, you can offer your solution as the answer they need.

Establishing Greed
The other angle that you can take is to establish greed. When a prospect salivates at the success possibilities outlined in a free report, they often strive to find out how they may be able to accomplish the same results within their own lives. To establish greed, share stories, testimonials and results that can be achieved with your system or by attending your seminars.

You don’t always have to limit your examples to existing clients, or even individuals who have attended your seminars. For example, if your seminar provides valuable time management techniques and you happen to know that Alan Sugar utilizes this exact technique, you can mention legitimately, that “This is just one of the things that Alan Sugar, powerful leader, has used to help him build an 800 million-pound business.”

Consider examples you can draw from to include within your free report to build credibility and to establish greed among your readers. This is especially important when you are just beginning, as you will not have the wealth of stories and examples of which to draw from. But, this fact does not have to limit you. Build a powerful association with your techniques and teachings by including relevant stories into your report.

So, you can utilize your free report to establish need or greed. As you sit down to map out your free report, ask yourself, “What can I include in my report to get people recognizing that they need the ongoing solution that I am going to offer to them?” Or, ask yourself, “What can I be adding into my free report that will get people excited or inspired regarding the possibility of acquiring and mastering the techniques and skills that I will be teaching to them?”

Answer these two questions as you create your report content, and you will be creating a powerful and effective marketing tool.

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 with invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease. Register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Often, it’s easy to believe that if something is easy for you to do, then surely, no one else can benefit from it, or would want it.  We’ve been conditioned to believe that we can only use the things that we’ve worked for, or paid for, for profit.

What’s important to remember here is that what comes easily for you might be highly valuable to, and worthy of payment from, other people.

My friend Veronica is a good example.  Before I had assistants to help me with administrative tasks, my desk was a paperwork wasteland.  When Veronica called on me, early in my career, she found my desk buried beneath a clutter of papers.

Veronica tackled my messy office, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was transformed from a disaster zone to a well-organized, functioning space.  My wonderful friend had offered her true value, her talent, to me in a way that not only helped me, but left me awestruck with her ability.

Organization is not impossible for me, but it’s not easy, either.  Tears of gratitude filled my eyes when Veronica had finished with my office space.  The value that she presented me with was immeasurable.

As I explained earlier, sometimes it’s difficult for the giver of true value to understand the impact they can have.  Veronica seemed taken aback with my pouring out of emotion.  She looked at me, as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”  She had difficulty accepting my thanks.

You can help yourself to market your true value when you:

• Identify your inborn gifts and talents; the things that come easily to you.

• Combine those true values into a package that you can offer to the world – something unique that offers significant benefit.

• Identify a genuine need that can be fulfilled with your true value.

Now, this might seem like a speech you got back in grammar school or high school, but it’s still important to remember:  don’t choose paths because they’re “cool,” or because they’ve been successful for others.  You’ve got to stay true to you.

Don’t think that your abilities are insignificant just because they come easily to you.  In fact, your thinking should be moving in the opposite direction.  You were given your talents by God for a reason.  When you use them purely and fully, you automatically offer something that cannot be duplicated by another.

Because you are unlike any other person on Earth, your unique abilities can be combined to equal a unique contribution.  Everyone’s looking for the next big thing.  Seems to me that if you want to find something unique and valuable, you need only to look inside yourself.

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 with invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease – register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Sway potential clients in your favor by taking away the risk of doing business with you and making your offer irresistible.

•  Offer a  guarantee. Personally, I have a guarantee when I’m offering my products or workshops. There is some grey area here, however. Some of my higher-value coaching services are more time intensive for me and don’t include a guarantee. The reason I don’t offer one is that I don’t want to give people an opt-out clause. When these high-caliber people step up in a big way and want to get the results that a high level coaching from me can deliver, I want to know that they’re fully in the game.

It’s a big challenge to make a massive transformation or a big leap in business. You don’t want clients like these to be running for the door or the emergency exit the moment the going gets tough. So, in some cases, guarantees are counter-productive and could actually end up helping clients resist what you’re offering.

So, you have to decide whether or not a guarantee is right for your market.

•  Alleviate their fears. Sometimes people won’t sign on or purchase something because they’re skeptical that what worked for other people won’t work for them. You need to show them how, even if they may have failed in the past, this time they will succeed. Include additional follow-ups or features that your competition doesn’t provide to show that you can help them accomplish their goal or fulfill their need. Be creative and really give some thought as to how you can remove the risk for your potential clients.

•  Make your offer irresistible. Pile on so much value that there is just no way they can lose. Include all the things your targeted clients could possibly want so that they just can’t pass your offer by.

There are few different ways to do this. Quantify the benefits of your services. For example, if you’ve got a program where for a $1,000 investment, your client will be able to make or save $10,000 in the next three months, you need to tell them that. Don’t assume that they will figure that out. Quantify the benefits specifically.

If there isn’t an easy financial comparison in your business, you do need to dig a little because this can really help you and help your clients. They will be able to wrap their heads around what you’re offering and make an informed decision because you’re giving them all the information they need.

The more you quantify, make your offer irresistible, and remove risk, the more successful you’re going to be.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com