April 2014 - Small Business Coach, Women Business Coaching

When your service fees run in the thousands, one thing that can help your prospects say “yes” is to allow them to make payments. Sometimes business owners find this problematic. There can be confusion because when clients don’t meet deadlines or put off decisions, they feel they can’t collect the payment as originally agreed.

My students ask how they can collect the balance of payments when they haven’t finished providing the services. For example, if your client hasn’t made the decisions needed to complete a website, you can’t move on to the next section or complete the project. This is where the confusion often shows up. Look at it this way though: the payment plan timing needs to be separated from the service provided.

When I offered nutrition counseling years ago, the program lasted for six months. People gave me six $200 checks at the start of the program. Five of these checks were post dated for the future and my clients understood that those checks would go through even if we didn’t have sessions that month. (This, of course, was before I had a merchant account or accepted credit cards.)

Offering to accept payments is a courtesy to help clients pay for your services more easily. But it’s not dependent on when they make decisions or have their sessions. The installments are just a payment plan to make it easier to engage your service. So, if a client drags her feet about decision making or cancels sessions, none of these things disrupt the payments. Installments move forward as agreed.

Here’s how you can talk about this to get clients and make the process clear from the beginning: “The fee for my program is $3,000. If you chose to do installments, we’ll be happy to set that up over the next (number of months). These payments are a convenience for you to make the fee more affordable and allow you to take advantage of the service provided. However, the commitment is the same whether or not you pay all at once or over several months.”

Discussing this upfront with your clients will solve a lot of problems. They’ll know that using your services is up to them. You will not have to worry about getting paid when a client decides they need more time, wants to take a break or is too busy to focus. Those situations no longer impact your fee collection.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you have clients who are behind in payments, now is the time to address the problem. Explain how they have agreed to purchase your service and payments are due on schedule. Installments are actually a convenience and are not optional. This will help you get clients to follow through on agreements and probably help move projects forward as well.

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.

Using video is a very effective strategy to attract clients. Video gives prospects a sense of who you are and what it would be like to work with you.

Some of my students tell me they feel more comfortable writing out a full script for their videos. Without a written script, many feel they fumble or forget important information. They want to use the script to be sure they cover all the points in order so what they say makes sense.

In my own experience recording video, I often wanted to use a teleprompter. But, I often found that a bunch of additional problems cropped up working with the teleprompter including:
• It took a while to write the script and get it right
• It didn’t sound authentic when I read from the script
• I wanted to change the script during recording because it didn’t sound right
• It took to time to reload the script and start over again

What I discovered was that a short video of a minute or two could sometimes take three hours of production time! So I put away the teleprompter. The next stumbling block for me came up when I tried winging it. Sometimes I recorded many, many takes for just one video in order to get it right.

As time passed, I started to get more comfortable in front of the camera. Even still, occasionally I would forget a big chunk of information. My solution was to get a big index card, write my three to four main points with a sharpie big enough to read from a distance, and hang it just below the video camera.

Yes, you could see my eyes shift down momentarily to look at the card, but my voice sounded authentic from not being over-rehearsed. You’ll need fewer takes to get a good video because you’ll come across more naturally. Plus, you have your main points right in front of you to keep you on track.

If you still prefer to use a script, try this. To help get the details into my head for a short two minute script, I recorded myself speaking into my iphone. Then I would play it back several times while doing my makeup for the recording (or whatever you do to get ready). This would get the language into my head without reading it over and over.

By the time I got in front of the camera, the script had been drilled into my head, so I didn’t have to read live from the teleprompter. Overall, I have found the best thing is to be yourself. There’s nothing yummier to attract clients than when you are comfortable being yourself and sharing your brownies.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you been working on creating videos for your business? If you are not sure what to talk about, try looking through old blog posts, think about the big problem your clients have and the solution you offer, or answer common client questions. Video is a great tool to attract clients.

You are ready to get out there and start speaking in front of groups, which is one of the best ways to get clients. To do this, you need a strong signature talk. You may be wondering how to write your speech and what needs to go into it. It’s actually really simple. Here are five steps for creating a hard-working signature talk that helps you get clients.

1. Start with your compelling story. Tell your own compelling story and put in the emotions you went through as well as the transformation you achieved. I started my story with, “I want to take you back to 1999” and then I told the audience my entire compelling story.

2. Explain how your story relates to your business now. Link your compelling story to why you are now working in your current business. I used to say, “I’ve dedicated the rest of my professional life to helping entrepreneurs attract more clients and today I would like to teach you the 10 steps of the Client Attraction System”.

3. Share the steps of your proprietary system. Spell out each step in your system so they get a lot of value from your talk. Remember to focus on “what” your prospects need to do and save the “how” for later programs. If you give people everything for free, they won’t be likely to get the same amazing results possible as they would by working with you.

4. Weave in client examples. Sprinkle client success stories throughout the steps of your system to reinforce the learning. This helps to make the results you speak about feel more real for people in the audience. Your examples show them how well your system works.

5. End with a soft close. I recommend using a script like this to get clients at the end of every speech. “I just shared everything you need. Some of you will go ahead and make that happen and some will want to work directly with me to make it happen faster and get your questions answered. Either way, don’t let this be “shelf-help” where the information collects dust. Do something about this and if I can be of help, come up to me. I’m very accessible. I’m very approachable. Let’s set up a conversation for tomorrow and see if I can help. I want to hear about your situation and we’ll see if I can help.”

Every time I did that, I would have three, four or five people come up to me depending on how large the room was and I would pick up new clients.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
It’s time to create your own signature talk to get clients. Review your compelling story and your proprietary system and polish these elements if needed. Pick your best client examples and then put together your talk. I recommend having a few versions. You probably need a 15-minute, a 30-minute and a one-hour presentation. Now you are ready for any opportunity no matter the length.

When you are building your practice, sometimes you choose to work with a client for free for a number of reasons:
• Gain experience with an ideal client
• Minimize risk of trying out a new program
• Build up your client testimonials
• Give back to the community by offering services to a select few who cannot afford you

While paying clients are of course more desirable, the freebies often provide their own advantages. There is nothing wrong with having a few practice clients who can help you attract paying clients, as long as you set clear boundaries.

I’ve heard from people who spend so much time with non-paying clients, they don’t have time to market themselves and attract paying clients. Obviously that’s a problem as growing your business always needs to be your primary concern as an entrepreneur. Building your practice is the main focus until you have enough money coming in to pay your bills and meet your own needs.

Truth is, establishing boundaries can be a problem with free or paying clients. That’s why learning how to be clear about your working relationship is important no matter what stage of business you are in.

How to Establish Clear Boundaries and Handle Non-Paying Clients
1. Use an agreement with all clients. Whether or not there is a fee involved, clearly outline appointment times, number of sessions and length of sessions, what will be covered, etc., in a formal document. This helps your clients understand exactly what services you are providing. Don’t leave things vague or up in the air.

2. Place a cap on the extras with non-paying clients. Sometimes, to sweeten the offer with fee-based clients, you provide unlimited emails or 5-minute calls. But, with your free clients, you can cap this so they don’t overdo the extras and drain your time. This is essential to ensure you have time to market yourself and attract clients.

3. Investigate other forms of payment. Sometimes a client comes along who is ideal, except they don’t have the funding to pay your fee. If you still want to work with them, ask if there is some other form of trade that might be an option. For example, perhaps they have great connections and can refer you, so you can attract clients who will pay.

4. Don’t get wrapped up in the drama. It’s really simple to get wrapped up in the drama around your clients and their needs. Just say to yourself, “OK, what do I need to do? I need to tell the client that we need an agreement in place for a particular amount of hours until he can start paying me.” Discuss this with your clients and finish by asking, “Is that fair?” That’s a really good question to ask because you’ll most likely gain their agreement.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you aren’t currently using an agreement, then it’s time to create one. Be sure to explain the elements of your working relationship and what services you are providing. Be specific and quantify things like number of appointments, length of appointments, when time with you expires, how they can continue when they complete the first round, materials included, etc. Establishing clear boundaries protects your time and helps clients feel comfortable knowing what they can expect from you.

If you are working to attract clients and create a positive mindset, affirmations will help get you there. What a difference they can make! In case you aren’t familiar with this mindset technique, an affirmation is a positive statement about a goal you want to achieve, written in the present tense as if it is happening right now.

The First Step is to Write Your Affirmations
You want to craft a series of positive statements about the goals you wish to accomplish. For example, you might write about your business:
• I attract clients easily and my business is flourishing and growing
• This year my income will reach $___ or higher (be specific!)
• I find the ideal virtual assistant who will help my business grow

You might also write a few for your personal life:
• I feel energetic and excited today.
• Good things come easily to me.
• I love my life, my family and my home.

Affirmations Need to Be Positive
Make sure these statements are written about what you want to attract or feel versus what you don’t want. For example, you want to avoid affirmations like: “In the future, I don’t attract clients who can’t afford my fee.” This sentence has two things working against it:
1) Putting the time frame out into the future vs. making it about now
2) Talking about what you don’t want instead of what you do want.

Here’s how to turn this statement around so that it will work for you:
“I attract ideal clients who pay my fee easily and get great results working with me.”

These positive statements set you up energetically with an optimistic outlook about what you want. For affirmations to work, you need to repeat them on a regular basis so they get into your subconscious mind, which is the place where all manifesting originates.

Use Affirmations Twice a Day
I recommend working with affirmations at least twice a day. In the morning after waking, you are in this foggy place where you can bypass the conscious mind and go straight to the subconscious. The other ideal time is at night when you are fading before falling asleep. Both times give you access to that part of your brain.

Try Positive Expectations
In addition, I also hold positive expectations during the day. One of my favorites is “I am positively expecting great results no matter what I see in front of me.” I have that posted everywhere in my house and office so it has worked its way into my subconscious as well. This is a powerful tool for shifting your mindset and creating the results you desire.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you created your affirmations yet? If not, take time right now to get started. Even a few positive statements can have a wonderful impact on your business to attract clients.

You can write them every day, read what you have written daily or speak them out loud to yourself. Take a moment at the end to express your gratitude for these statements coming true.

Sometimes my students struggle with how to price their services. There might be a particular service or segment of your knowledge that you feel has more value. You might have an idea that you should charge more for this piece, but feel unsure whether that is fair. Here’s how I look at it.

Reframe How You Look at the Value of Your Knowledge
You need to reframe how you are thinking about this. You are putting a price tag on the full value you offer. While this may feel awkward, this is how many businesses are structured and services are priced.

Deeper Knowledge Has More Value
Your pricing strategy should reflect that some information is simply worth more. Think about how you will change someone’s life or business and how they will succeed with your help and knowledge. That is worth a tremendous amount to your clients. So, you need to be charging accordingly to reflect this value in order to attract clients or you run the risk of not being taken seriously.

Attract Clients with Multi-Level Programs and Pricing Tiers
If you have different levels of valuable information to share, you can offer it in two or more parts or stages. Start with the basics of your program or knowledge at a lower price point so more people have access to it. Then, for those clients who want more on a particular topic, you come up with the higher level program that has absolutely everything covered and allows you to share your knowledge and expertise on a deeper level at a higher price point. Maybe it has audio recordings, transcripts, video, ebooks, exercises and worksheets. Worksheets are actually an amazing gift to clients because it helps them park all of their ideas and helps them work things out on paper. This way they can record their thinking and strategy all in one place. Anything that I do includes worksheets and exercises to firm up the learning.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Do you have an area of expertise that is worth more than the rest? Make sure you put the proper value on it and price it accordingly. When you have at least two levels of programs, beginners can get the basics of what they need. And your more serious clients get the advanced knowledge and details they need as well. This way, everybody wins including you. You’ll attract clients to build your business and get well paid for your services.

As you work to grow your business, there are many options available to attract clients along the way. One thing that may tempt you is the idea of licensing your proprietary system and/or training coaches or trainers to teach it to others. This can be a lucrative revenue stream but first I recommend you follow these steps before moving into that arena.

Step #1: Fill Your Own Practice. When you are working to attract clients and fill your practice, everything else that doesn’t focus on this goal is a distraction. Your first priority is to fill your own practice to build a strong business. So you network, run free teleclasses, offer your IFO, etc., all designed to fill your practice to capacity.

As I often say, the fastest path to cash is with individual coaching clients. Many people want to run groups or teleclasses before they have a full practice, but unfortunately this often doesn’t work. You need to have a big list to market to before you can start groups that will garner the kind of success you hope to achieve.

Step #2 Create Groups. Once your practice is filled and you have a waiting list, that’s when you are ready for the next step. Now you can start creating groups, boot camps, seminars, and masterminds and attract clients like crazy. This phase can last for several years and you’ll make very good money helping lots of yummy people get really great results.

Working with groups gives you the opportunity to reach so many more people. Group work is very productive and also more affordable to those who participate than individual coaching. This is when you make your work more accessible and you start to leverage your business.

Step #3: Certify Other Coaches and/or Trainers. Once you get to the point where you can no longer satisfy the demand for groups, then it’s time to consider licensing your proprietary system or training other trainers or coaches in your method. You will have a very successful business that is ready to expand to the next level.

Don’t Create Your Own Competition
If you try to train other coaches or license your system before you have a solid foundation and strong business, all you really end up doing is creating competition for yourself who will make it harder to attract clients and fill your practice. Yes, you’ll generate revenue but you’ll also expose your practice to other people who now know how to do exactly what you do.

Don’t take your eye off the ball. Stay focused on completely filling your practice. There is nothing more important. Attract clients, make money, keep the pipeline full and close sales – that’s what you want to work on.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
How is filling your pipeline going? Are you continually getting new prospects lined up, closing sales and bringing on new clients? Make that your main objective and let go of anything that distracts you from this goal.

If you are wondering how to increase your business and client attraction, the most important first step is to set a specific goal. So many people in business, especially those just starting out, don’t have a goal. They just want to get some clients. That does not really work very well.

I have very specific goals. Every year I know exactly what I want to earn and because of that I am able to completely focus in order to reach that specific goal. It’s not about being money hungry. It’s more like I know what I want to create and I know it’s possible if I have clarity on what the end result looks like.

Follow this step-by-step method to set your goal and create your own marketing plan.

The Goal Setting Process:
1. Set your goal. Let’s say your goal is $100,000 for next year.
2. Divide the number by 12 and you’ll get a monthly goal of $8,333.
3. Figure out how many clients you need to reach the monthly number with your current rates.
4. If you close a sale one-third of the time, (hopefully more) and you need five clients each month, that means you need 15 get-acquainted sessions every month to reach your number.

Now that you know the numbers you are aiming for regarding client attraction, you can start to think about marketing and what you need to do to make that number possible. Do you see how that works? It’s actually a formula.

The Marketing Plan Process:
To create your marketing plan, focus on those 15 get-acquainted sessions per month and look at your marketing pie. Think about each slice:
• How many speaking gigs would you need per month?
• How many networking meetings would you need to attend?
• How many warm letters would you need to send on a monthly basis?

Include JV partnerships, article submissions, social media, warm letter campaigns, and ezines– everything that’s part of the marketing pie. This is an easy way to build your plan, by backing into the goal you’ve set.

Now you may think this sounds overwhelming. But trust me, you will get into a routine. After you go through the process once, you are recycling the information. The overwhelm comes from not having client attraction systems set up. After you do that, the marketing is just something on the calendar that you take care of, delegate or both. In fact, for my students, many not only feel relief after setting up the marketing plan, but positive expectations about the client attraction machine they set in motion.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Get a year-at-a-glance calendar and map out everything you’re going to do. You’ll need to make time to do all of this work because marketing and client attraction are more important than anything else in your business. The only possible exception is the client work which is almost as important as the marketing.

When you are speaking live or conducting a free teleclass, you want to finish with a strong call to action for your audience. Years ago I created a formula that I’ve used successfully as a call to action that is authentic and pulls prospects towards you.

There are three main components to this call to action.

1. Deliver loads of content. Start your talk or presentation by delivering a lot of content with plenty of value. This is the foundation for all of the marketing you do and gives you credibility, sets you up as an expert and creates good will since you are willing to share your knowledge generously.

2. Seed in Client Success Stories. Next, throughout the presentation, seed in success stories to attract clients. By sharing these stories, you communicate, “I am for hire,” without saying, “Please hire me.”

This is one of the most powerful components to really prepare for the sale. You’ll share client stories several times during your talk. For example, talk about a particular strategy, then follow up by saying, “My client Jane, who I work with privately, took this concept and added another $5,000 a month to her business. Pretty cool huh?”

You are not only saying you work with clients, but you are seeding the talk with indirect testimonials or case studies as well. This makes the resulting success very real to the listeners. In a one-hour talk, you can probably share stories or case studies three to four times. Of course you don’t want to over-do it either because you don’t want to sound too “sales-y.”

3. Wrap Up with a Soft Close to Attract Clients. At the end of the presentation I recommend this soft close which works for private clients. I’ve used this with great success for many years. Here’s what I say to attract clients:

“I hope you’ve enjoyed the information. Please don’t make this ‘shelf-help’ in the sense that you put your notes from this talk on the shelf and never do anything with it. Please take action. Please implement.

However, if you found that you have questions, you feel overwhelmed, or you simply want to work with the concepts faster than you could on your own, please contact me. Let’s see if I can help. I’m very accessible. You can tell me about your situation and we’ll see if I can help.”

That’s it! If you’ve left your contact information, your business card, your one sheet flier and your testimonials on their seats, you will walk away with new clients.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
When is your next talk? Think about all the client stories you have. Then put them into categories about what points they support. Find the best three of four that fit with your talk and find places to insert them. Practice the soft close so you feel comfortable with it and then deliver to attract clients like crazy.

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