2013 - Page 6 of 16 - Small Business Coach, Women Business Coaching

Are you looking to find more clients to grow your business? I often talk about the “warm letter” as a powerful way to enlist the help of your current network of friends, family and colleagues. Most people know about 250 people before they even start networking. That’s a lot of contacts! Think how fast your business could grow if they all knew about what you are doing and how they could help.

One frequent question I get about the warm letter is, “Do I have to send a letter to everyone I know?” You may have certain friends or family members who you just don’t want to send this letter to. Maybe you think they wouldn’t be open to what you are offering or they are a bit more negative in the spectrum of things.

If you want to find clients, but the idea of sending the letter to these negative people is holding you back, the answer is simple. Do not send those few people your letter! They probably wouldn’t send you clients anyway right? Don’t let a few family members or friends prevent you from sending out warm letters.

Now, this is not permission to remove huge amounts of people from your list. That would shrink your network and the possible referrals that could be generated. Most people you know will be happy to hear from you and many will want to help.

The warm letter was an amazing referral source for me when I was starting out. You’ll be surprised who sends potential clients your way and how well this method to find clients works.

You can even add a P.S. at the end of the letter with a suggestion to sign up for your newsletter. You can say something like, “If you want to find out more about what I do and get some free strategies, go here and sign up. I’d love your support.” Don’t be afraid to be bold if you are coming from a loving place. If you’re loving, you can be bold – at least that is how I live my life.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you gathered your list of people yet to create your database? Include people from all aspects of your life. Here’s a suggestion of groups to reach out to:

Friends
Close family
Extended family
Exercise buddies
Church members
Volunteer friends
Previous co-workers
Current co-workers
Neighbors
Soccer parents
Networking connections

Add up everyone and see how many contacts you have to send your warm letter and find clients.

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.

Has this ever happened to you? Things are finally starting to fall into place. The phone rings, new clients show up and you start meeting joint venture partners to help grow your business. Yay! Things are looking up and then, it all suddenly falls apart. Clients don’t show up and meetings with potential partners are cancelled. What happened?

Sometimes, people who have made shifts in their mindset to attract clients still have some subconscious thoughts around not feeling that they deserve success. That means inside, emotionally, it’s like oil and water. The water part says, “Yay! I’ve got new clients, new partners and I’m making money!” Then you’ve got limiting beliefs represented by the oil part which says, “I don’t deserve to have a successful business.” As you can imagine, these two parts don’t mix well and actually can react to cancel each other out.

To help you get rid of those limiting beliefs, I recommend doing some personal work. You want to heal those feelings of not being deserving. To do this, you can try EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique or Tapping), hypnosis, or other types of energetic healing. I’ve been doing this kind of personal development work for years to help me get me where I am today.

There’s a great book by Marianne Williamson called A Course in Weight Loss that can be very helpful. I haven’t actually used it for weight loss but for working through limiting beliefs and other personal development opportunities. She has lots of exercises that you can do with journaling that help tremendously. She touches on shame, people you haven’t forgiven, people you feel judged by and things like that which I found very, very helpful for letting go of limiting beliefs.

So, when you have bursts of excitement about new opportunities coming your way and they are followed by cancellations or people falling away for whatever reason, take the time to look within. Sometimes it’s just that kind of week. But other times, if you do the work, you will uncover limiting beliefs that hold you back from the success you crave and deserve. If this happens, don’t feel badly. Discovering what prevents you from attracting clients and finding success is the best way of working through it.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you are encountering these types of starts and stops in your business, I also recommend making a big list of all your beliefs and feelings. Write down everything that comes to mind about not deserving or being worthy of a solid business or anything you want in life. Get it all out so you know what you are dealing with and can start to let it go.

A saying I share with the students of The Client Attraction Business School (CABS) is the following: A strong focus now creates a different future later. I believe in having a strong focus on getting things done, which often means implementing the things on your to do list. I understood very early in my business that you don’t get results from things you don’t implement. You can know a lot of things, but if you don’t take action, there’s nothing to show for it.

One of the things I hear from thousands of entrepreneurs each year is that their to do list is a mile long. They feel stuck in overwhelm, not knowing what to do first, and therefore don’t do much or may end up focusing on the wrong things. Today, I’d like to share a tool that I have used many times in my business to help me prioritize my own long to do list.

A strategy for business success is to focus on one thing and one thing only, until completion. (Click here to tweet this.)

In this week’s video I share how to get out of overwhelm and prioritize your to do list using a mind map. I teach you how to build your own mind map using just a blank sheet of paper. When everything is written down and completely out of your head, the mind map gives you a great “bird’s eye view” of what you have going on in your business, in a way that is easily comprehensible.

Click here to watch so I can share my strategy for prioritizing and implementing tasks. These points will help you be more effective and efficient because you’re crystal clear on what needs to be done and in what order.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Create your own mind map. Use the strategies I have shared to prioritize your to do list and take action. These points will help you be more effective and efficient because you’re crystal clear on what needs to be done and in what order. You’ll find that now you’ll be able to implement more and get better results! Good luck!

I get a lot of questions about how to handle client cancellations. This is such a common problem, but many business owners have difficulty knowing the best way to deal with a client who cancels at the last minute. What I’ve found is that you need to know three basic concepts to address the situation.

1. Communicate Rules Up Front. When a client signs up, you send them your welcome letter and packet which could be sent via snail mail or email. Instead of many separate pages, you can create one big PDF document with all your policies and procedures.

In this document, spell out all the ground rules about calling, cancellations, in person versus phone or Skype, etc. Ask your clients to be sure to read the full document to avoid any misunderstandings later, then sign it and send it back to you. People like to know what the rules are because it makes things easier. In doing this, you are setting up boundaries before they start working with you so they know how you work.

2. Address Boundary Issues Directly. If a client breaks one of your rules or policies, I recommend that you copy and paste the section from your policy agreement and send it to them in an email. You can say something like, “I just want to remind you of my policy about cancellations so we understand each other. This is how I work. We’ll let it go this time. I know how life gets in the way. But please understand, next time you’ll forfeit your session” or whatever the transgression was about.

3. Services Are Prepaid. When working with clients who are signing up for a series of sessions with you, having them prepay for the service works best. Then they are invested in working with you. If they face potentially forfeiting a session, they are more likely to show up and follow your policies. This is a question of setting up boundaries and enforcing them. You don’t have to be mean. You can be very loving during this exchange about policies. The point is, your clients will know what is okay and what is not okay.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you created your welcome package yet? Do you have your policies all spelled about cancellations or other situations that frequently crop up with clients? Make time this week to prepare your policies if you haven’t already taken care of this. If you did this a while ago, take time to review and update them as needed.

Are you in a business start up and find yourself with money concerns? I can relate and went through this too when I was just starting. To help myself minimize fear, doubt and worry, I did a bunch of things to bring money in temporarily.

I tell the story often of how I started teaching cooking classes in my New York City apartment during my business start up. But I also took a part time job temporarily to bring in some steady cash while I was establishing my first coaching business.

Doing what you have to do to earn money until your business can support you not only helps you meet your financial obligations, it also helps you raise your vibration. When you are in a place where finances are tight, you feel a lot of fear, doubt and worry which means that you vibrate these emotions. Unfortunately, focusing on this tends to attract more reasons to have fear, doubt and worry.

But when you have money coming in, it’s a huge relief which allows you to move into a place of faith and confidence and that raises your vibration. When you aren’t constricted by fear, you have more energy to focus on building your business, on evenings or weekends, while making this transition. This is why I recommend not quitting a job until your own business start up is on a roll.

Having a temporary job or way to earn extra money, or staying in your job while your business grows relieves so much pressure and prevents you from sinking into fear, doubt and worry. Know that you are doing this only while you ramp up. At the same time, you are setting up your marketing, starting to network and working on your website. This way, once you decide to quit, you already have everything in place. I loved getting a paycheck so I could buy my printer and get a new computer and cover all those other start up expenses that do add up.

Affirmations and working on your subconscious mind raise your vibration and improve your inner game. But sometimes a little extra income can do wonders to perk up your outlook and your energy.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Are you in the process of a business start up? Take note of how much time you are feeling fear, doubt or worry. Before this takes over your waking thoughts, look for ways to earn supplemental income. This is the best way to manage your vibration and keep the focus positive when it comes to growing your business.

How to Build Your List with SEO I get these questions all the time from clients and people I work with. “Derek, what exactly is Search Engine Optimization, why do I need it and how does it work. More importantly, what specifically do I need to do about SEO?” And I don’t blame them because SEO is often confusing and overwhelming to people when it comes to online marketing and building their list.

In this week’s video I share my three most important SEO strategies—all in very simple and easy to understand language so you can incorporate the right SEO strategy for your business that will help you authentically build your list and get more clients.

Content is the new SEO. Relevant site content increases the odds of a higher search engine ranking. (Click here to tweet this.)

Click here to watch so I can explain just what SEO is, how it works, and share my three strategies with you. Once you start to follow my simple steps, you’ll be on your way to improving the rankings of your site in the search engines and as a result, building your list and attracting more clients!

Your Client Attraction Assignment

For each of the three strategies I shared, take a look and see what is missing or what you can improve. Knowing that content is the new SEO, perhaps a good starting point is to review past blog posts you’ve written and evaluate how they are relevant for the keywords and search terms you’d like to be ranked for. Where can you improve? Keep these points handy when creating future content to see how your search rankings improve as you continue to get better at prioritizing SEO when creating new content.

Public speaking is one of my strongest strategies for client attraction. There is nothing like connecting with people in person and giving them a sample of what you have to offer.

You may wonder what to talk about and how you should structure the presentation. Let me tell you what I did that worked so well for me with public speaking.

1. Start with your compelling story. I started by saying, “I want to take you back to 1999”. I tell the audience my whole compelling story so they know what I went through and can relate to me.

2. Tell people the result of your compelling story. I explained that I dedicated the rest of my professional life to helping people attract clients. This helps the audience know exactly what I am all about.

3. Spell out what you will share during your speech. Tell people what they will be listening to. I used to say, “I am going to share the 10 steps of the Client Attraction System. Step on is, step two is…” This lets people know what is coming so they know exactly what you are going to share.

4. Weave in client examples. Share stories of how you helped other people overcome their struggles. These examples help the audience relate personally to what you are talking about. Plus, the client stories may include people who had some of the same problems listeners want to resolve.

5. End by talking about working with you. This is exactly what I said that worked so well at the end of every public speaking event. “I just shared everything you need. Some of you will go ahead and make things happen. Some of you will want to work with me directly to make things happen faster and get your questions answered. Either way, don’t let this be ‘shelf-help.’ Do something about this and if I can be of help, please come talk to me now. I’m very accessible. Let’s set up a conversation for tomorrow to see if I can help.”

Every time I conducted my signature talk with this structure and finished up with this powerful ending, I’d get three to five people coming up to me, depending on how large the room was. And I’d pick up a few new clients every time. I’m sure public speaking, using this structure to craft your signature talk, will work for you too.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you written your compelling story yet? Start by thinking about what has brought you to do this work. Think about the challenges you faced and how you overcame them. Share the results and how you feel today having gone through this. Recap what you have achieved and why you do the work you do. Express the emotions to connect with people about the experience to make it compelling.

When you are looking to build your business working with joint venture partners, compensation depends on what type of program you are promoting. There is a difference in what you should pay for private coaching as an example vs. passive income products like a home study kit.

1. Private Coaching. With private coaching, you have to do all the work when you get the referral, so the compensation is usually lower for your partner – around 10%. When I was doing mostly private coaching, I didn’t actually offer a fee, but there were coaches who did offer me the 10% commission if I brought them clients.

If you are new to coaching and are working to ramp up and fill your practice, you might want to reach out to joint venture partners as one of your referral sources. Finding businesses who serve the same target as you do can be a very powerful marketing tool.

2. Passive Income. On the other hand, when you are doing passive income products you have already done all the work. The product has been created and is ready to sell. In this case what you need most is exposure to get more sales. That’s why you reward your partner more richly for their sales effort on something that doesn’t need any additional effort on your part. The fee is often much higher for ebooks and home study programs and can be as lofty as 60-75%.

Many information products are sold by affiliate program with a highly attractive commission fee to maximize the number of prospects who see it. Your profit comes from the volume sold, rather than worrying about each individual sale.

3. Group Programs. The third option is working with joint venture partners to sell a group program. You often would promote and conduct a call together, then sell the group program to your partner’s list. For this arrangement, the fee is somewhere in the middle, maybe 30% to 50%. Even though you’ll be running the promoted program alone after the joint call, the number of attendees is much greater than you could ever get on your own, so it’s worth sharing the profits.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
How can you decide how much you will pay for a new client? Simply ask yourself the question, “What am I willing to pay? Would I pay $100?” Most people would answer yes to that. Then push the envelope and ask yourself if you’d pay $1,000. Depending on what your fee structure, that might be way too steep a cut for a joint venture partner. Figure out what is in your comfort zone and try it for a while. See how it works. You’ll discover if this is enough to motivate partners to send you referrals and if it provides the income you want.

Today I’d like to share a strategy for attracting lots of clients, without ever having to leave your desk. It’s about marketing to your prospects by giving them really good ideas and great content—something they can use. In fact, if you want prospects to be attracted to you and to hire you, you must first provide high-content and high-value in everything you do, especially your marketing.

Now, that might seem counterintuitive at first. You might be thinking, wait a minute, why would they hire me if I gave them everything I’ve got for free? Well, the idea here is not to give EVERYTHING away for free, but to give them enough that they see how valuable your expertise is and let them know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The idea is that they say to themselves, “Wow, if her FREE stuff is that good, I bet her PAID stuff must be great!” That’s when they want more.

People stay tuned in to your marketing when you add value beyond what others in your space are offering. (Click here to tweet this)

Watch this week’s video to see what too many of your competitors or colleagues are doing wrong when it comes to their marketing and how you can avoid the same pitfalls. I’ll show you why you never have to worry about giving away too much good content or high value and how doing just that will get you hired more often.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Take some time to really evaluate how you’re marketing to prospects and clients. Are you giving good value? Are your prospects getting something from your free stuff or are you simply pitching with no value? If you’re not providing high-content, high-value then it’s time to make some changes. I promise you when you do, clients will come out of the woodwork to work with you.

When you first start a business, sometimes you encounter the classic Catch-22 problem – how can I market my business to attract clients so I can make money without actually having the money needed to pay for the marketing?

This is what I discovered back when I started 12 – 13 years ago. The good news is there’s always a way to make some money. At that time, I didn’t have enough clients or enough money. Yes, I’ve actually been in that tough spot.

But I believe in taking a “no excuses” approach. So, I got creative. I thought about all of my skills, one of which is cooking. I went to the French Culinary Institute and loved cooking, especially simple food. Turns out there were a lot of people who didn’t know how to cook simple meals.

That’s when I started a cooking class in my tiny 300 square foot New York apartment for $35 a person. I’d get 10-15 people who would sit on my couch and I’d teach them how to roast chicken with potatoes and green beans. I held three to four of these classes each month and made about $450 each time. This helped me fund my marketing to attract clients and to bridge the short-term financial gap.

Other ideas include services like babysitting, house sitting or even a tag sale. I recommend brainstorming a list of 50 ways to earn cash. And don’t stop until you get to fifty. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of the ideas you come up with and once your list is complete the universe helps to make it happen.

You can also go after what I call “low-hanging fruit” – the potential clients who are interested in working with you, but haven’t signed up yet. Those people represent money to you, so go and close them.

Anything you can think of that can bring in money immediately will help. Just don’t include the longer-term projects to market your business and attract clients because these will take more time.

The money you need is all around you. It’s a question of looking for it, writing down ideas, then taking action on them. Money is everywhere in the form of opportunities. Get creative and be resourceful. Just think about what you are really good at and go from there.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you made your list of the “50 Ways” yet? Take out a sheet of paper and get creative. Think about your skills and what you like to do. Think about the people you know and if they have expressed a need for help with something. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can come up with 50 ways to make money fast.

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