December 2013 - Small Business Coach, Women Business Coaching

Recently I had a student ask me a question about expanding her business. She worked with small groups in person and was approaching the point where her space was nearly full. We talked about what she could do to attract clients and grow and came up with all of these possible steps to get moving. She could:

Get a bigger space
Use someone else’s space
Train an employee to run programs for her to deliver more classes
Go virtual with a webinar
Consider a secondary target audience, like corporations, etc.

What Are You Being Called to do?
If you have been thinking about an idea for a while, but you’re scared to do it, that’s one sign that you could be called to take this step. For example, I was scared to write my book and tell my whole story. But I also knew that once I did, I would feel fully self-expressed. This brings more joy to you and your work as well.

Inside, You Know How
Students sometimes tell me they don’t know how to take that next step or put things together. But I’ve been coaching for a long time and have found that usually, you do know what to do. The “not knowing” is simply a distraction that allows you to continue to procrastinate. It’s just an ego thing.

So you think you don’t know how to attract more clients or take that next step, but this is nonsense because if somebody threatened your life and said, “Do this within 24 hours,” I know you would figure it out and do it.

We all have things we deeply want to do to build our business and attract clients, but we’re not doing them because of a variety of reasons such as:

Fear of criticism
Fear of being exposed
Fear of failure
Fear of success
Fear of feeling foolish

The truth is, whatever it is that you have this deep desire to do, YOU KNOW HOW to make it happen better than anyone else. Reach inside and let the answers come forward. Make it easy. Make it fun. Make it lucrative. You don’t need to put heavy energy into the process. Just remember, you already know the answers so let them surface and be brave enough to apply them.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Whatever that big idea is rolling around in your head, pay attention to it! This might be your calling. Stop procrastinating and write down everything that comes to mind about how to make it a reality. When objections arise as to why this will never work, come up with another reason why it can work. Don’t let yourself off the hook so easily. Start thinking bigger to attract clients and grow!

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 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.

To attract clients, your blog and newsletter serve very different purposes. Obviously, the ezine is delivered by email and is created for outreach marketing. You are sending information directly to people who have subscribed which is like them saying, “Yes, I want to stay in touch with you and get your information.”

On the other hand, your blog lives on the web and people can come and find it when and how they please. It also connects to your social media profile and you can do all kinds of cool marketing with it.

So, the way you use these two marketing tools to attract clients is very different. You can blog everyday and people will find your material and your content. It will show up in the search engines. However, you wouldn’t want to email your list every day because they’ll get sick of hearing from you. That’s another big distinction.

You can certainly repurpose content from your ezine and post it to your blog. But, your blog provides a place to talk less formally than you would write for your ezine. It’s also a platform to cover so many more topics because you can post as frequently as you like. You are not bothering anyone. People are free to come and look at your rich blog content whenever they want.

Sometimes the audiences are also different. There are people who read my ezine who also read my blog. Yet, there are some who read my blog but don’t receive my ezine and aren’t on my list. Prospects can follow you for years through the blog. There is definitely value in both marketing tools to attract clients and build your practice.

Clients have asked me if they can just write the blog and not bother with the ezine. Honestly, I say no. If you’re going to do only one, my success has been built on the ezine. Your newsletter is not optional and at this point, the blog is not really optional either.

Your blog helps the search engines find you and rank your site. Plus, you are going to attract clients and prequalified leads through the web with good content because people are searching for it. By using the words in your posts that your ideal clients are searching with on the net, they will find you and the solutions you offer.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you have concerns about what to write about, look at your competitors to see what they focus on but of course you’ll want to bring your own perspective. Find ways to link topics to what’s in the news or the season for other angles on subject matter. Next, I recommend taking time to write a list of ideas. By keeping a running list and adding to it whenever something new comes to mind, you will be stocked with ideas so you never have to worry about what to write.

BlogPost12202013 I have a quote I’d like to share with you today and it goes like this, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This quote is just perfect for this week’s strategy about how you make your clients and customers feel. I call it The Yummy Experience Process.

Over time I’ve realized something about the human race: every single person on Earth loves to feel like they are significant. They want to matter in the eyes of others. We all want to feel loved. When you can make your clients feel special, they like being around you, which then makes them want to work with you.

Every single person on Earth, including your clients, loves to feel significant. (Click here to tweet this.)

Right now, your clients feel good because YOU make them feel good, by your presence, your energy, your gestures and the way you talk to them. As your business grows and as you aspire toward a more scalable business model (perhaps even taking you out of the picture over time), you want to do everything you can to maintain the connection your clients and customers feel.

So what’s the key for continuing the connection as you grow your business? Watch below as I share my recipe for ensuring each and every client has a Yummy Experience, even as your business is scaled many times over.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Start by listing all the ways you currently make clients feel special—from the beginning to the end of their journey working with you. Then list all the ways you can begin to systematize and automate the way you make them feel at each “touch point” in your relationship. Put them in chronological order and document them in detail so that anyone on your team can implement each step and replicate a yummy experience for your clients as your business begins to grow and expand.

Ensuring your clients and customers always feel special, even when you can’t personally be there for them, will bring about a huge shift in your level of client retention and the years that people stay with you happily and provide referrals. Best of all? It feels amazing.

Creating your Irresistible Free Offer (IFO) is a powerful way to attract clients and start building a database so you have people to market to. This is also how you begin building a relationship with prospects. Many readers have already taken advantage of my IFO which is my free CD available on the top right corner of the ClientAttraction.com home page. If you are ready to create your own CD, follow these steps and it will be done and ready before you know it!

1. Write a script. I recommend creating an interview for yourself. To attract clients, come up with 10 questions your prospects need answers to. You don’t need to write your answers down word for word. In fact, it’s better to just use bullet points so the conversation will sound natural.

2. Find someone to interview you. I worked with a gentleman who had been in radio for 25 years. But you might know someone in your network who has radio training or has done a lot of speaking. Delivering your content in the interview format makes it so much easier to talk about yourself. Plus, the exchange between the two of you can be more fun for listeners.

3. Practice! Make sure you run through your answers many times to sound more natural in how you convey your message. You want to seem confident so listeners hear how well you know the material you are sharing.

4. Record the Interview. There are a variety of free services to record your call. You can try www.FreeConferenceCalling.com or Skype, but there are several others as well. These services make it possible for the person interviewing not to be in your presence. If you do want to be face-to-face with the person interviewing you, record the conversation with the microphone in your computer. Many new computers are well equipped to make recordings.

5. Edit the Recording. In case you made mistakes or there are spots where you started over, have someone to edit the audio for you. If you are good at learning new software, try Audacity.SourceForge.net which is free audio editing software. I’ve heard it’s easy to use. In addition, you may want to add a musical introduction and ending for a more professional finish.

6. Duplication and Fulfillment of CDs. For fulfillment, try a service like DiskDuper.com. Not only do they create the CDs, they also print the accompanying letter, stuff the envelope and ship, making the whole fulfillment process completely automated. You’ll be ready to attract clients before you know it!

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you’ve been thinking about creating a CD, spend time digging into what type of information your ideal clients would do anything to get their hands on. What solves their big problem – the one that wakes them up with the 3am sweats? This is how you know you’ve got a free product that your prospects are going to want so you can attract clients.

When you are launching a new program, you may consider kicking it off with a free, introductory call to get people interested and registered. But how do you get people to register for that free call? Here are seven ways to find clients for a successful kick off.

1. Network Like Crazy. Go to as many networking events as you can find to meet lots of new people. You can create a special event card that communicates details about your free introductory event and hand that out instead of a business card.

2. Leverage Your BNI Team. Ask your BNI networking team to tell people about the program. Provide those same cards about your free call to your team to hand out as they meet people who seem like good prospects for you. BNI connections work likes your sales team to help you find clients.

3. Announce in Your Warm Letter. This month, when you send out your warm letter, announce your upcoming program and free introductory teleseminar. Invite the recipients to attend and also tell their friends and colleagues who might benefit from the information you’ll be sharing.

4. Promote via Social Media. Spread the word about your upcoming free teleseminar to your fans and followers. You may want to announce more than once at different times of day to make sure your connections see the information.

5. Blog about Your Event. Write a blog post that touches on some of the topic you’ll be covering in your free teleseminar. You can then use the link in your social media posts to drive traffic to your site and find clients.

6. Call People on Your List of Low-Hanging Fruit. Yes, pick up the phone to personally invite prospects on your list of low hanging fruit. This is a great excuse to reconnect with people who expressed interest in the past but haven’t chosen to work with you yet. Your upcoming free call may be the thing that converts them into paying clients.

7. Partner with Complimentary Service Providers. Reach out to complimentary service providers who have people in their network who would benefit from this teleseminar. Invite them to share the opportunity with their audience by doing a free call with them or sending an email announcement about your call. You can provide an incentive for any of their contacts who do join the new program after the free call. JV partners can be wonderful resources to help fill your programs.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you are launching a new program, plan ahead to take advantage of these seven ways to find clients. If you take time to think out all the details, you can create the opt-in page and then use that url in all your promotional materials. A small amount of time strategizing and planning out your approach will help all the pieces fall into place to create the successful launch you want.

BlogPost12132013 Sending an email newsletter is an essential Client Attraction marketing strategy to stay in touch with your clients and prospects. It allows us to deepen the relationship with our email subscribers by providing useful and engaging content. We position ourselves as their problem solver or solution provider, which in turn makes readers more likely to consider working with us or buying our products and services.

In previous video strategies, I’ve shared techniques for choosing the different elements for creating your email newsletter, as well as how often and when you should send it.

Your audience will read your newsletter if and only if the content is valuable. (Click here to tweet this.)

Last but not least, I’d like to talk to you about the Format and Layout of your email newsletter. This week, I will share with you our Client Attraction tested-and-proven format and layout. Watch below to discover the strategies and techniques you need to know to make your email newsletter as successful as can be.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Look at your email newsletter as if you were an email subscriber on your own list. What format and layout elements are in line with what I’ve shared here? What do you resonate with that you feel will be most compelling and engaging for your readers?

If your format or layout doesn’t support the objective of having your readers consume and interact with your content or call-to-action, what can you change? Go ahead and make some changes here and there…your email newsletter will be transformed.

Let me know your progress in the comments below. Until next time, Happy Client Attraction!

As I’ve mentioned previously, using photos on Facebook is a great way to get more viewership of your updates and more fan engagement. And as you know, the more engagement you generate, the better it is for list building.

However, scheduling posts with photos on Facebook has a bit of a trick to it. There are some methods that work for other social media platforms, that aren’t the best for Facebook when photos are involved.

For example, Hootsuite is a wonderful way to schedule your tweets with photos or links. We use it for managing our Twitter account and maybe scheduling some campaigns or promotional tweets or other automated feeds for Twitter updates. That’s what Hootsuite is fantastic for.

Yet, when you use this service to pre-post on Facebook with photos, the photo will not be prominent when the update goes live. That’s why I don’t recommend Hootsuite for Facebook posts. In addition, Facebook prefers direct interaction rather than using an automated service and limits the exposure your posts will get when scheduled this way.

Your Facebook Fan Page Has Its Own Scheduler
What’s the solution? At Client Attraction, we use the Facebook scheduler. In Facebook, on the Fan page, you have the ability to upload photos, write descriptions, and put in links. But, instead of clicking “Post”, you can click a button that looks like a small clock icon to pre-schedule your updates and have them go out automatically. Doing it this way, the photos will post correctly as if you were doing this is real time.

One caveat: although things change minute-to-minute, you have to use your laptop or desktop computer with the Facebook scheduler. Unfortunately, it might not work from your iPad, iPhone or other smart phone or tablet device.

At Client Attraction, we set up everything for the week through the computer on Monday mornings whether it’s promoting blog posts or promotional messages or whatever we have to communicate and share. The bottom line is, from our experience, there’s no ideal way we’ve found to do all of the social media from one comprehensive platform like Hootsuite etc. More tools are being developed all the time with greater functionality, but we’re all at the mercy of the platform for now.

There’s always a balance between automation and some manual time and effort needed to make it all work the way we want it to and every time. Sometimes we have to juggle both to get exactly what we want with social media posts, scheduling and automation.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Working smarter not harder is certainly the way you to go. So, pre-scheduling your Facebook posts is the right thing to do. Leverage Facebook’s scheduler for posts to your Fan page to gain the most exposure for your updates. Over time, more fans and more engagement with them can be one of your sound list building strategies.

Most of the time, your standard package will work for clients. You might have a three month program that includes 12 calls and that seems to satisfy most prospects. But there are occasions when potential clients need something tailored for them. Maybe they want help faster than the usual three month timeframe. Maybe they want a chunk of your time up front. Maybe they don’t want a set schedule, but just want to call you on an as needed basis.

You can make all of these options work when you create a flexible package. This is what I have done for Multiplier Track (Sapphire) students of the Client Attraction Business School – they get a half day with me in my office, and then they get 10 hours of coaching with me to use as they wish over a period of six months to a year.

Attract More Clients with a Flexible Package
Some clients have their first call with me for two hours and then use an hour every week. Some do half hour calls every week while others prefer 45 minutes. Some people don’t talk to me for three weeks, and then do 90-minutes. When you create a flexible plan, you can accommodate all of these preferences for working with you.

How Does the Flexible Package Work?
You can create a program that includes a certain number of hours and then explain how flexible the call schedule can be. You might start with a standard two-hour coaching session by phone, and then clients can choose what they need from there. Tell clients that they are in control and this program has been created for people who have something big coming up where they need help and guidance now.

The good news is that you can keep the same price point because you are still providing the same amount of coaching time, but your clients choose the time frame. This kind of flexible package helps attract more clients since it accommodates almost any way people may want to work with you. Clients feel empowered that they can get exactly what they need from you when they need it.

Attract More Clients When You Enhance Your Packages
Now if you want to avoid commoditizing and trading dollars for hours, here’s how to do it. Add more value to the package such as recordings of your sessions, throw in your home study system, and offer unlimited email and 5-minute phone calls. This starts to blur the lines and makes it harder for clients to see how much you charge per hour which inhibits the unwanted sticker shopping mentality.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Is it time to rethink how your packages are structured? Start by considering how you could make your packages more flexible. Ask yourself what else you could include to enhance the program. Get creative to appeal to the group of prospects who wants to customize the way they work with you to attract more clients.

Often, we entrepreneurs forget how much we’ve accomplished or how much abundance we have in our lives. We’re so quick to move on to the next thing. Some people go so far as to focus obsessively on the 2 percent that’s not going well, as opposed to putting their attention on the 98 percent that is going really well.

Keeping your focus on what’s new and good, as well as on what you have accomplished, is important because it gives you a feeling of confidence. It becomes proof that if you were able to do this, then surely you can do that too. It requires that you acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments, significant and otherwise. But for many people, this is easier said than done.

When you measure your accomplishments by looking forward to the always-advancing ideal, you fall short. (Click here to tweet this.)

One of the exercises I share with my clients is the Elusive Carrot concept. Imagine that you have a headband on, and there is a long stick strapped to it, sticking right out in front of you at about a yard’s distance. Next, imagine that at the end of that stick is a carrot.

The carrot is your goal in life, or something big that you really want. As you go forward toward that goal (the carrot), this carrot advances by the same amount, every time. It’s just the nature of things.

Comparing your results against the Elusive Carrot is an inaccurate measuring stick because you’ll always fall short, which means you will always feel not good enough. If I were to ask you to measure your successes another way, your feelings could change instantaneously. Watch below to discover my key strategy to measuring your successes in a way that builds confidence and allows you to truly appreciate your results!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/2voLPV0lYI8[/youtube]

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Please take a few moments to “measure backward” and think about and answer the five questions I posed:

How has your life improved in the last twelve months?
What do you do easily now that you once thought was impossible?
What have you accomplished this year that you couldn’t have accomplished three years ago?
What is one outcome you experienced this year that would have been inconceivable before?
What are your results this year, compared to your results last year at this time?

When you measure your successes backward, against where you were before, an entirely different set of feelings shows up. You feel optimistic, confident, hopeful, satisfied, surprised and appreciative. You take pride in your accomplishments, which brings you confidence to tackle the next big goals. And confidence touches EVERY single part of your business. Try it!

When you have written a new blog post, there are three ways to post the information on Facebook. At Client Attraction, we have done quite a bit of research and testing to discover what works best to get the engagement you want with fans. So let me share what we have learned.

1. Use the Social Media buttons from your own blog. When you are visiting your own blog post, you can share directly from the button on your own page. When you click on the Facebook button, sometimes this just creates a “like” on Facebook with a link to the post. Sometimes a dialog box comes up so you can actually make a comment about your post on Facebook. The problem with this method is you can’t be sure how Facebook will see your blog photo.

2. Paste your blog post’s URL into the Facebook status update. You might want to shorten the URL with Bitly or another link shortening service. Facebook sees this as a URL post and from all the research they have done, URL posts don’t get as much engagement or as many clicks, Likes or Shares as a photo post.

3. Post the blog’s photo on Facebook, then comment and paste in the URL. This third method is what we found to be most effective for gaining engagement with our fans. We copy and save the picture associated with the blog post, upload that to Facebook, and then in the description, we put the link back to the blog post.

What Facebook visitors do is scroll through their newsfeed until an image gets their attention – it attracts their eyes towards the photo vs. just a URL link. Next they look at the description as part of their curiosity, wanting to know what the picture is about. That’s what makes them click the link, driving them back to the blog post on our site.

In addition, because the image is so much more compelling, it’s gets so much more visibility. This increases your chances of being seen by fans and that they will share with their friends which is what stretches your exposure. It also builds your engagement ranking which ultimately gets you even more exposure and possibly more fans.

So, this is the model we use at Client Attraction for building Facebook engagement. We tested the system versus just posting the URL from blog posts directly and the percentage of engagement is through the roof.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
How do you share your blog posts on Facebook? If you haven’t been following our system, you can start today. You can even repost photos from older blog posts that are your favorites and get them seen again by a bigger audience with our tested system. Great photos are not only good for readership on your blog, but also make a big impression on Facebook as well.

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