When you are creating your packages, start by thinking about the biggest package. Is your goal to work with clients for at least three months? Is your service the kind of thing that is best offered by season? For example, do you need to provide enough sessions to last through the fall, spring or summer? When clients stay with you for longer periods, they get so much more help and support to accomplish their goals.
Here’s another way to look at it – when you have clients who stay with you longer, you won’t need to get as many new clients right?
At that top level, you want to make the package juicy with lots of great value. That’s what will help motivate people to want to work with you at this level. What kind of perks can you add on? Maybe you could offer:
- Books or audios
- Worksheets or workbooks
- Q & A calls
- Access to program recordings
- Additional but complimentary services
- Free tickets to workshops
You could even make each session longer. Rack up the value to make it nearly irresistible for prospects.
Once you have that top level figured out, then you can easily come up with the smaller packages. They will be pared down versions of your big package with less services, fewer materials or less time with you. This stepped approach works great to entice potential clients to want the top package – it will just make sense because it’s the best value.
The last step is to come up with memorable names that communicate what you are offering. You don’t have to get too creative. Sometimes the direct approach is better because it is easy to understand.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Is it time to create packages for your business? Whether you are a coach or run a martial arts studio, offering packages gets potential clients to commit to a longer time frame.
Review everything you have to offer so you can make the package irresistible. And if you are simply offering a series of sessions, then price the top level at the lowest cost per session to provide the best value.
Now, if you’re just starting out and trying to fill your practice in the FIRST place, then follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. The Client Attraction Home Study System™ gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. Easy. You can get it at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/NL2Ct4YJSL4[/youtube]
Today’s topic is about entry-level offers. See, in your business I believe that you should have more than one offer, whether it’s a product or a service that you sell. For many years I offered just one program and it was take it or leave it. That’s just what people did. They either took it or they left it. The problem was, not enough of them took it in the beginning for me to feel like I was really making the kind of money I wanted to make in my business. So, I decided to create a series of yeses.
Instead of having just one price point, I usually offer three programs. If you are my ideal client, you’ll fit in to one of the three. That’s a great way to do it, but there are also some people who say, “Okay, but what if my lowest program is so accessible that it cannibalizes, meaning it eats into the other two programs?” Well, there are couple of things you can do about that. (Click here to tweet this.)
First, make your biggest program the juiciest one. This means that it has the most bells and whistles and is the best value. I’m not saying the lowest price point, but the best value overall.
Next, have your entry-level program be a one-time thing that people feel they can afford. Once they take you up on it and have their session, you let them know that if they decide to go into one of your other programs, the fee they paid for your entry-level program will be applied to your higher-level program.
This allows them to experience you in your service, so they know that you are trustworthy. They know that they like working with you if they’ve gotten results and they want more. They feel good about you.
They’ll also experience what’s called ‘money burning a hole in their pocket.’ When you have a gift certificate or when you have this opportunity to take $200 or $400 or whatever amount and apply it to something else it really makes you want to do that.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Look at how you could do this in your own business. Look to see how you can expand your current offerings so you have more than one product or service to offer. Then decide how you’ll charge clients for a taste of what you do and then allow them to apply their investment toward a higher-level program if they’d like to continue working with you. Good luck!
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/frEmzIWUq3c[/youtube]
Christine Kane, Founder of UpLevel You, shares her experience as a Diamond client in the Client Attraction Winners Academy.
Within my second year of the Diamond program, I was at the point where my business was pretty awesome. People said, “Why would you want more?” Then I heard Fabienne saying, “It’s time to step up. Play a bigger game.“
I had always worked with coaches and I knew I needed that support. With Fabienne and Derek, I knew I would get the marketing and tactical “know-how” that Derek offers and the visionary and mindset expertise that Fabienne delivers.
In our first year with Client Attraction, we broke the million dollar mark. I had been earning $300,000 or so, so this was a big step. I made back my return on investment within a month. We transformed the business to an in-house team instead of relying on duct-taped together systems. I was able to purchase the ideal office space near my home.
Having private strategy time with Fabienne and Derek is very wonderful and intense. In a day-long strategy meeting, we can plan full product launches and I save all my questions for that special time together. I also take that time away to get clear on my vision. They help open the doors and show me the blind spots in my thinking. It’s always tempting to think: “I’ve got it now” but I like the support a coach can give. I am committed to serving my clients and in order to give them the highest level of service, I need to have the support of a team like this.
Everything you’ve heard about Fabienne and Derek is true. Take that chance to work with them because its really phenomenal.
Do you have a lot on your plate right now? Maybe you are planning to offer several programs this year, introducing a new package, creating a new home study course, etc. Then new opportunities pop up as you consider working with JV partners, or the media calls, or someone asks you to do a big presentation.
Whew, that’s a lot of stuff to accomplish and keep track of! How can you prioritize so many projects? How do you even decide which projects to focus on, what to let go of and what to do first?
These are good questions to have to find answers for, right?
Personally, I have experienced this pile up in my business from time to time. So, you know me, I created a system to help me when I’m faced with the potential of being overwhelmed.
You want to look at projects and opportunities keeping these four questions in mind:
1. What’s going to bring in the most money?
2. What’s going to make that money in the shortest amount of time?
3. What’s going to make that money with the least amount of effort?
4. What’s going to make that money and have the longest impact going forward for your business?
You can actually put all four together in one sentence:
What’s going to make you the most money, in the shortest amount of time, with the least effort and the longest impact going forward?
When you put each project to this test, and insist that every opportunity has to meet all four criteria in order, that clears things up pretty quickly.
There have been times when “nice-to-do” projects have come across my desk during a period that I felt swamped. Even though I’d love to do it, I need to decide if the project or idea is worth the risk to more important projects. I know I need to stay focused to continue building my business. Putting my opportunities to this test has been amazingly helpful. I know you’ll find this helpful in your own business so you can figure out what to reject, accept, and do first.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Do you have a huge to-do list that weighs you down? Maybe you have ideas, but you aren’t sure which one to do first? Whatever the case, put each opportunity to this test. Then, be willing to let go of those projects that cannot meet this criteria. That way you know you are making smart choices and your efforts will pay off.
Now, if you’re just starting out and trying to fill your practice in the FIRST place, then follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. The Client Attraction Home Study System™ gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. Easy. You can get it at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/2Ujj5zR_jMQ?hd=1[/youtube]
Today’s topic is the law of association. You might be thinking, “So, how does this help me get more clients?” The law of association is one of these universal or spiritual principles that really apply everywhere.
It’s something that is one of these shortcuts or trump cards for entrepreneurs who understand what it’s all about. It means that if you want to multiply your business very quickly, you must not be a lone ranger. The law of association states that whom you spend your time with and whom you listen to dictates how big of a game you play in your business. (Click here to tweet this.)
It also dictates the level of your income. Imagine you’re right here, by yourself working in your office and you’re just by yourself and kind of doing things the way that you’ve been doing them. Then, imagine that instead you’re surrounded by people who champion you, who stretch you to think and play a bigger game, who give you resources and you have a strong mentor who pulls you into our future. Can you see the difference between these two entrepreneurs? This one will take teeny, tiny incremental steps in getting to their next level and this one will grow by leaps and bounds because of the expectations of their peer group.
When you are surrounded by people who expect more from you than you expect from yourself, you produce more. You grow faster. You turn years into months and months into days. Whereby here, you don’t know what you don’t know about getting to the next level. I believe that your income is directly proportionate to the expectations of your peer group. If you are walking through life on a journey with people who play a bigger game, instantly you begin playing a bigger game. You begin taking more action than you’ve ever taken before.
This is why I believe that if you want to succeed in your business you must surround yourself with other advancing people; people who believe that their future is greater than their past as opposed to some of the people that you may be spending time with now, who complain about the price of gas or who have a scarcity view of life.
I believe in surrounding myself with people who believe in abundance, who believe in advancing to the next level, and who champion a winner. That is a mark of a winner, someone who will encourage you and champion you
When you surround yourself with people who aren’t this way, I believe that you drown in their mediocrity. It’s very easy to spiral and to think like the people you spend the most time with. So, who do you want to spend the most time with? I want to spend time with people who are up to big things, who have exciting things to talk about, who are very giving and generous, but also who want to create more for themselves. They’re not happy with the status quo. They want to keep going. They’re always asking, “What’s next?”
When I spend time with people like that I play so much bigger in my business. In fact, I love to be in a group where I’m the person who’s doing the least well, if you know what I mean. I belong to some mastermind groups where sometimes some people in the group make $2 million a week. Now, that might seem like a lot to you, but I love to be in conversations with those types of people.
To accelerate your own abundance, I invite you to surround yourself with people who are doing really well. Model people who are already living the life that you want to live. If there’s somebody that inspires you and motivates you and you think to yourself, “Wow, I want to be like that person. I want my business to be like that person’s business,” then study them. Study them. Study from them. Read their books. Attend their seminars. Coach with them. Join their mastermind groups. Do whatever you can to emulate them.
At the same time, surround yourself with people, perhaps it’s a mastermind, who are already playing that bigger game because when you do that, that is what I call the ultimate shortcut. I believe that you can do things slowly or you can do things quickly an elegantly and gracefully.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Look around and see who’s business you want to model your business after. This is what I do in my own life. I look in my industry and I say, “Okay, I’m ready to play the next level. Who in my industry is doing what I do, but has an extra zero to their income than I do?” Then, I learn from them and then I hire them and then I work with them.
I invite you to do that. By all means stop being a lone ranger and stop learning from people who are your peers as opposed to people who will pull you into your future.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/vYYVKvfHhKo?hd=1[/youtube]
A year ago I was watching the Mindset Retreat livestream. An acquaintance of mine posted on Facebook that she was there, so I was interested to see what it was about – I almost took the laptop out to dinner with my family because I was compelled to keep watching. I watched the panel and really resonated with one of the panelists, who was also a mom. Back then, in my business I was sneaking in emails to clients at stop lights, while attending my daughter’s basketball game, at the grocery store – it was unmanageable.
I started with the Bootcamp, which doubled our business, so then I joined Platinum. The Platinum retreats are great. The relationships here are strong because the people understand you as an entrepreneur and its hard to find that in other networking groups. I get a lot of ideas during the meetings and the group helps generate new ideas. It’s a good balance of technical and business resources, too.
Our numbers are phenomenal. We are up 161%! Our goal for this year is 1 million in sales and we will accomplish that easily.
A year ago, I had one person helping and was just starting a new bookkeeper. Now we have a really great team, with a team culture that we learned from Fabienne and Derek. What’s more important is: I’m not working until 3 am anymore and now I can spend time with my kids. I feel less stress.
If you’re thinking you can do it all on your own, you probably can, like a hamster in the wheel. You’ll fall out of love with your business and you’re going to shut down. You just can’t do it on your own. Get the help, get the guidance and grow the business. It’s an amazing feeling.
Are you having trouble setting your fees? For some of my clients it’s not easy to set a proper fee. You might hear yourself wondering things like, “Who do I think I am charging that much?”
Let me share something that has really worked for me. This strategy changed my life when I started noticing how much I did not want to become a commodity. This is such an important stance to take about your fees and your business, I want you to say this out loud right now. “I do not want to become a commodity!”
Particularly in the field of coaching, potential clients may talk to several coaches and ask how much they charge per hour. They are trying to compare pricing, thinking each coach is the same, but what you offer can be very different. So that is not how you want to be seen!
The solution for me was to create packages and programs instead of the “by the session” kind of fee structure. The idea is to blur the lines so prospects can’t really tell what you charge per hour. This shift was miraculous for me.
Years ago I was charging a fee for a certain number of coaching hours per month. But my dream was to have fewer clients and be able to spend more time with them. To make my dream possible, I needed to double my fee. That triggered all my issues. “Who am I to do this? Will I really give them that much value that they’ll pay me this amount?” You get the idea of what floated through my head.
I decided I didn’t want the people who were price shopping. That’s when the idea popped into my head to create a program instead of my hourly fee to blur the lines. So clients would get a fixed amount of phone time, but they also got email access, the Client Attraction Home Study system, five minute check-ins by phone, a three hour in-person meeting at my office and other materials!
Blurring the lines helped people see incredible value with all the materials and access so they couldn’t tell how much I charged by the hour. When you do this too, you can make more money and prevent people from comparing your rates.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you are still charging by the hour, I recommend you shift to packages. The only way out of the hourly rate trap is by creating more value in how people work with you. Spend time this week thinking about all the different ways you can work with people and add value so you can avoid the commodity pricing mindset prospects can have.
Now, if you’re just starting out and trying to fill your practice in the FIRST place, then follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. The Client Attraction Home Study System™ gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. Easy. You can get it at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/jvoWHzyf3b8?hd=1[/youtube]
Today’s topic is something that people ask me about all the time. What do you do when all this stuff that I’ve been teaching works and you get to full practice capacity? You can’t take on any more clients without pulling your hair out and there’s just no more ‘you’ to go around.
The first thing you can do is create a waiting list. That’s good for the short term but it doesn’t really do much because you still have them waiting for you.
Second, you can raise your rates. You can decide to either raise your rates just for your new clients or to raise your rates with all of your clients. You may be saying (because I’ve heard this for the last 12 years of coaching people), “Oh, but Fabienne, they won’t pay for that.” Sure, some of your existing clients will fall off, but yes—some of them will pay for that, especially if you have a waiting list. It’s been my experience that in the past when I would raise my rates every three or four or six months, people would just gladly pay for it. If you give good value, people will pay for it. And even though others fell off, you will end up making more money because you have all these new clients paying the new rate. (Click here to tweet this.)
The next steps to take once you’ve filled your practice are to learn to clone and leverage yourself. This is where you have to start thinking about what you can do with your intellectual property—all of that knowledge that’s in your head. Consider creating a product where you teach people what you do with private clients and you put it in a box. This is big in the information marketing business, which is really the advice-giving business. You can put all of your knowledge in a box and sell that box.
You can also begin to work with groups. Many years ago when I had a full practice of clients, I decided to create a group program—my Boot Camp—which allowed me to teach this information to a group of 12 to 20 people at the same time, but at a reduced cost for them. So I actually made more per hour than I did with private clients, but individually they paying less.
You can also teach this as a seminar. Take all of your knowledge, teach it as a two or three day seminar and charge $1,000, $2,000, $3,000—whatever you want to charge.
Lastly, begin to bring on associates. These are people who you can train to work with you to teach all of the surplus clients. (We don’t like to think of them as surplus clients. Everybody is significant and important but you know what I mean, the ones that you can’t handle.)
So those are some of the things you can do when your practice fills to capacity, and we teach all about this in the Platinum Mastermind of our Winners Academy. It’s all about leveraging and really getting to that next level by cloning yourself through team, systems and technology. This is a really important theme that you must think about when you get to about $75,000 or $100,000 in your business and you don’t have any more room for clients and no more time to spare.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Even if you’re not yet at full practice capacity, start thinking about what you will do once you get to that place. Create a plan for the future. And if you’re at full capacity now, start leveraging and cloning yourself by implementing some of these suggestions.
Join Fabienne and Janet Hanson for this conversation about inspiration and courage, while you discover “best practices” on how to play your own bigger game. Enjoy!From 2004 to 2007, Janet was a Managing Director and Senior Adviser to the President of Lehman Brothers.Janet is also an avid investor and frequently speaks and writes about the importance of women becoming astute, lifelong investors.
Janet is a member of the Kellogg Center for Executive Women’s Steering Committee. She is a member of the Forbes Executive Women’s Board. She is a former member of the Board of Trustees of Wheaton College and a current member of the Board of The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. She is an Associate Fellow of Pierson College at Yale University and serves on the Advisory Board of The Center for Work-‐Life
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Transcript
Some clients have asked me when just starting out how to create their own intellectual property. They are worried about creating original content versus leveraging materials that others have developed.
This is something you need to be very careful about. As you know most intellectual property is protected legally with copyrights and even trademarks.
Recently, one client asked me if she could use my elevator pitch process. And if not, how could she possibly make up her own system when so many already exist out there. This is what I recommended.
If you want to quote or use something from a book or another expert’s system, do so, but make sure you give the author full and proper credit. You may also want to ask for their permission. If you are including someone else’s material in anything written, whether it’s printed or on the web, be sure to cite the original source.
On the web, you can even add a link directly to the author’s materials. This actually will drive traffic to the author’s site so they might feel flattered and appreciative.
I’m not an attorney, so don’t let me be the final word on this. Please check with your legal advisor to be sure you do things the proper way.
I myself have done this. For example, at the Mindset Retreat, I taught things there that I borrowed. The list of 22 emotions is from the book Ask and It Is Given. I told everyone the name of the book and that I thought they should read it. I even mentioned the page number where the list of emotions came from. I’m not going to pretend that I created the list of 22 emotions or take the list and make it only 21 emotions and rename them all. I give full attribution to the authors of the book when I use it. Does that make sense?
Keep in mind that this does not just apply to names of things, but also to systems, processes and even formats. You need to give credit for all of that.
I believe in teaching what your experience has been – I call this “talking your walk”. That means you do it first and have success. Then you can share with others and tell them how you did it. That way you can figure out your own unique process and create your own proprietary system. And if you still want to use someone else’s tools, that’s OK. When done correctly, it’s like offering referrals to the author right? There’s plenty for everyone.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Think about your own unique process. What did you try? What worked really well? How is what you have done different than other similar experts? Figure out what you did so you can talk your walk and create your own proprietary system.
That’s why people say to me, “Oh your stuff is really authentic and it’s the real deal.” That’s because I use it every day. When you share your experience authentically, people are drawn to that.
Now, if you’re just starting out and trying to fill your practice in the FIRST place, then follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. The Client Attraction Home Study System™ gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. Easy. You can get it at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.
