When I started building my business, I used the “warm letter” to let people know what I was doing. It worked as a great referral source to get new clients. Over time I thought, why not send a follow up to the warm letter? That’s how the idea came to me to create a whole campaign of letters. This sequence of letters can continue to drive referrals with every new mailing. It’s literally a referral driving machine.

Why does it work so well? Because you are educating your contacts and inviting them to refer to you. Try this series of letters to see how your network reacts. You’ll generate prospects and referrals at a surprising rate.

1. Warm letter. Your first letter let’s people in your network of contacts know what you are doing now. Tell them about your business and who your ideal clients are. Ask them to keep you in mind when they meet these people.

2. Interview With. Follow up with the “Interview With (Your name)” which explains what clients can expect and answers potential objections.

3. Case Study. Provide a case study that illustrates the problem one of your clients had, the solutions you helped them discover and the success they experienced as a result of working with you. This is a very powerful marketing tool since it gives readers a specific example of the service you provide.

4. Testimonial. Share a success story written by one of your clients. This testimonial gives you loads of credibility and again helps the reader connect with exactly what you do. This kind of letter can jog a person’s mind to think of who could benefit from a service like yours.

Additional Tips

• Personalize letters so that every reader feels like you are talking to him or her.
• Commit to a full series of letters over several months to maximize your exposure and results. People need to see and hear things multiple times before they refer people or buy.
• Send letters to all your contacts because you never know where a good referral will come from. Don’t be shy.
• Be consistent – send a letter every single month for the time frame you have chosen.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
To make the “warm letter” campaign easier, plan out what you want to send for several months at a time. This way you don’t have to think about what to do every month. It will all be decided ahead of time so all you’ll need to do each month is execute. You can use the testimonials you already have to send as is or create a case study as well. By spending some time up front, you will save time later and ensure your letter goes out every month to generate those important referrals.

Derek and I recently attended the Stevie Awards for Women in Business at their annual dinner in New York City (it’s the Oscars of the business world.) I was honored to receive the Gold first place award for The Female Entrepreneur of the Year (see the video here…) and to also receive silver and bronze awards for Coach of the Year, Maverick of the Year and Company of the Year! For me, it was a wonderful night of reflection and appreciation for all the amazing opportunities that I’ve been blessed with on this journey, and frankly it hasn’t all fully sunk in yet. Who would have thought 12 years ago when I first started my business that this would ever happen! I’m so profoundly grateful that you are part of that journey as well and I’m looking forward to seeing what else the future holds, for you and for me.

When you start creating your packages, you want to be sure you have different levels to serve clients who are in different situations. Rather than simply creating a program and pricing as you like, I have found a method that speaks directly to your prospects and helps them to self-select the best program for them. Here’s what I recommend as the method to choose your package and pricing levels.

Think about your packages based on the different levels your clients fit into. How can you separate your prospects and clients into categories or groups who share similar concerns? You can see how I’ve done this at www.ClientAttractionWinnersAcademy.com

Create Client Profiles
My first step was to create client profiles to really examine who these people are and what kind of help they need. What are their concerns and burning questions? What do they need help with most? I created these profiles for three levels to start with three profiles
1. Ramp up Rachel (Rob)
2. Leverage Lucy (Larry)
3. Visionary Vicky (Vince)

Details for each profile include their immediate, driving need, income range, and a description of where their business is currently and what their issues tend to be.

Create Programs that Fit Client Profiles
By clarifying what’s happening at each level, you help your ideal prospects to see themselves and know what they need. This makes it easy for them to see which program fits best.

Using this model, you are creating a program based around a particular person or around a particular issue instead of just creating different programs.

Client Profiles Help You with Pricing Decisions
This makes it easier to price your programs too. So for example, in the Gold program, I’m giving more access, content and value than people charging three times as much. I’ve kept it really affordable for people who need more clients and more money.

My next levels attract prospects who have more money and clients.  What they need is to learn to leverage their business so they can afford a little more and ultimately they want a little more access.

What I have found is that the more affordable the programs are for people, the better results they get because I’m only speaking to them about their problems and solutions. This is different than speaking to everyone at all levels at the same time. And, it’s so much better than talking beyond their level about things they cannot implement in their business because they aren’t at that stage yet.

The bottom line is to help your clients self select and pre-qualify themselves, so they say, “That program is for me.”

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Have you thought about the different types of clients you serve? Think about the clients you’ve worked with and see if you can sort them into categories. When you can do this, you are on your way to creating program and package levels that will allow prospects to self-select. That makes your job of closing the sale so much easier down the line.

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.

Your elevator speech is the way you succinctly explain what you do for people you meet at networking events. You share just enough information to encapsulate what you do and spark interest among the men and women you talk with. The point is to get the conversation going, right?

There is another type of elevator speech that I call the “Situational Elevator Speech”. Let’ say you’re at a holiday party. You are mingling with people you don’t know, enjoying appetizers and drinks. That’s not the right time to start with your regular elevator speech created for networking – it’s way too business-like.

But you can try this method instead. Just fill in the blanks for your business once the subject of what you do comes up.

“I have a service that helps _______people who struggle with ________, which means they don’t have __________. What I do is ______which means ________, which equals, _______.”

You keep drilling down and going deeper into what you do one step at a time focusing on the results and benefits. Here’s my speech:

“I have a service that helps entrepreneurs get more clients and make more money in their business. I tend to work with people who have a semi-successful business, but who really want to make a lot of money and right now they can’t because they don’t have the right marketing in place. Which means they don’t have enough clients, which means they can’t always pay their bills.

What I do is teach them how to build systems around marketing, get clarity about who they’re working with and close sales more often which means they make more money, serve more people and live a more freedom-based lifestyle.”

It doesn’t matter specifically what you say as long as it’s situational. The person you‘re talking to will say, “Oh, that makes sense.”

This method is more conversational because you are not cramming a bunch of business words into a single sentence or two. As you drill down to the benefits of what you do piece by piece, you are just expanding the conversation rather than selling people anything.

The whole thing about client attraction and what I teach is that you have to be yourself. You have to be authentic or it just won’t work. If it’s too formulaic, people will see right through you. They can smell a sales pitch a mile away.

So, it’s very important to talk about what your clients struggle with and the results of working with you and your service. And share this piece by piece as you drill down through all the benefits of working with you.

Now you are all set for all the socializing you’ll be doing during the upcoming holiday season.

Your Client Attraction Assignment
Prepare for your social interactions and opportunities coming up in the next month. You never know who you might meet and who could be your next referral source or client for that matter. Practice this “situational elevator speech” and the drilling down process, so you can feel comfortable with the method. That’s the best way to be authentic with what you are saying about your business.

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.

When I started out building my first practice, I was taught to offer only one program. This was meant to make things easy for practitioners. But, what I noticed with time is that many prospects would come for the free consultation or get acquainted session and leave without signing up.

With time, I came to realize that providing two or three options, for multiple price points or budget levels and different needs, helped me to close more sales. I firmly believe that options help prospects feel more comfortable making a choice to work with you. I also discovered how the choices for prospects need to be so clear that they can decide between the options on the spot.

I want to really reinforce this point. After years of coaching, clients still come back to me having created packages that are so convoluted and complicated, it’s hard to figure out what is the top level. Or sometimes it’s difficult to decipher the differences between the various options.

Even when it comes to naming your packages, selecting simple names is so important. When you use names like optimum, premiere and deluxe, clients have a hard time knowing which one is the highest level.

Why is simplicity so crucial to closing more sales? Because confusion can interfere with a prospect’s decision making ability. The minute a potential client walks away to “think about it” or speak to her spouse, or check with the accountant, you will likely never hear from them again because life gets in the way. This is called the Law of Diminishing Intent. The moment someone walks away to think about signing up – you’ve lost her because her intent to work with you diminishes surprisingly quickly.

Another way to make the decision for prospects easier is to pack the highest level package with yummy bells and whistles that aren’t available at the lower levels. This will make the highest level package so desirable it becomes hard to resist. Doesn’t that make sense?

Your Client Attraction Assignment
If you already have packages designed, named and priced, it’s worth checking to see if they are simple enough for easy decision making. If you belong to a mastermind group or have a friend who is also an entrepreneur, review them together to get some feedback. Then take that response seriously and consider how you might simplify things if needed.

If you haven’t created your packages and pricing yet, keep simplicity top of mind. Make sure your communication of these details can be conveyed easily. More than anything, you want this closing conversation with a potential new client to be so easy, they just naturally want to start working with you right away.

 

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.

If you’ve been in business for a while, you may have an assortment of clients and types of work that you do. But after working with the Home Study System, you have identified the one particular area that you really want to concentrate on. How do you make this transition to focus on your niche?

I recommend that you build up to it. The last thing you want to do is let go of all your current clients to start fresh and then have no money coming in. That creates the 3am sweats, right? When you are still in the business building phase what you want is more clients and more money.

The idea is that you don’t have to turn away business while building your niche. You can say yes to referrals and clients who come to you for your services to keep the cash flow moving. However, you can start to focus your marketing to attract your niche.

Here’s a great example. I had a client who is a videographer. She shot all kinds of videos from weddings, to business, to Internet marketing. But her true passion was shooting videos about dancing. When she went to networking events, she started to say something like, “I’m a general video producer with a growing specialty in dance video.”

Now this client didn’t turn away other video business while she was growing her dance niche. She took all the jobs that suited her needs to get more clients and more money. Then, as her video business grew, she could afford to become more selective about the jobs she took. With time, she finally got to the place where she could decide to only shoot dance video and has stopped doing all other types of video.

By being clear about your niche and applying the marketing systems, you can grow the part of your business where your true passion lies until you can focus solely on that work. As you get more and more clients in your preferred area, you will shift your marketing materials until they only promote your niche. Step-by-step is just a smart way to go.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

Are you struggling to balance the work you want with the work that brings in cash? Think of how you can integrate the two. This way you can talk about what you do and the niche you want to grow. Look at your marketing materials for ways to increase your niche slowly. As you start making this transition, so much more about your niche will become clear. That’s why you want to let it build while you are still bringing in clients to support you through the shift to your ideal 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 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″ heigh=”352″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6c3wUNL4yQ[/youtube]

I’ve been nominated for a Shorty Award!

The Shorty Award is for excellence in social media and I’ve been nominated in the #mom category. I’d love to have your support (and vote.)

Why do I want your vote? It’s not about the award — but to inspire women and moms out there who use social media and Twitter for marketing their business AND manage their busy life as a mom. It takes a special talent to do both (moms, you know what I mean here.)

And there’s a gift for you if you vote for me… I thought: “What can I do to say thank you?”

Well… I’m offering a free training call on how to balance motherhood and running your own business for your vote. I get asked all the time: “How do I manage it all? Running a business, being a mom of 3 kids and doing so much.” It takes a lot to do it all – and I’ll share it all with you on this special free training call if you vote for me so we can inspire moms everywhere.

Visit http://fabienneshorty.com to vote and we’ll track the votes after the awards (vote by February 18th) and contact you to join us for the call.

From the bottom of my heart – thank you!

Hugs,
Fabienne

[youtube width=”600″ height=”367″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA_idflHwy0[/youtube]

My video tip for you today is all about the importance of creating your signature system – and how to get started today. Your signature system is really key to multiplying your business over and over. It becomes the basis for your bootcamp, three-day workshop, even the book you’ve always wanted to write. I’ve done this with my own Client Attraction signature system and I teach my Platinum and private level clients to do the same in order to leverage their business. So, where do you even start? Come on, overcome your analysis paralysis with me – watch this short video for this important strategy for growing your business.

Your signature system is actually rather easy to put together. You want to start by getting everything you know about your system down on paper. Document your unique process from start to finish – and don’t worry so much if you’re leaving something out. Your signature system brings your clients in so you can always give them more later.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

1. Write down all the key components. Use bullet points. Include everything you know for sure about your system. Brainstorm.
2. Group all your bullet points into categories. Then give each category a label.
3. Put your categories in logical, chronological order. You want them to follow a step-by-step order that makes sense to the user.
4. Lastly, give your system a results-focused title. And Voila! You’ve got your Signature System.

An effective signature system is the basis for multiplying your business in so many ways. It’s an essential tool for multiplying your business to that next BIG level. Have some fun with it – the key is to just get it done.

© 2011 Client Attraction LLC. All Rights Reserved.

If you enjoyed this video, please post your comment or question below and share it with your friends and colleagues who would find it beneficial.

[youtube width=”600″ height=”367″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwJfD7abZMc[/youtube]

Today’s video is about how to stop doing everything yourself in your business. No matter what level of business you’re in, you need the right resources and systems to grow your business to the next level.

Ever been to a restaurant and notice the number of resources they have on hand to serve you? It’s all about the “front of house” and “back of house.” Front of house means the Maitre D’ and the servers, all the beautiful tablecloths and flowers, and more, all the things that belong to the experiential part of your visit. Back of house refers to all that goes on back there in the kitchen that you never really get to see, the” administrative stuff,” if you will.

Most likely, you’re trying to do both “front of house” and “back at house” in your business, at the same time, all on your own. There are so many behind-the-scenes aspects of running your business, that at some point of your business success, you can’t actually do them ALL, however much you want to hold on to the controls. When you do so, you leave a lot of money on the table.

For you to grow your reach (and grow your income), you need more time to focus on what actually brings in more clients and income. How do you get more time in your solo business? LEVERAGE. Leverage is getting the necessary resources (people, systems, automation and delegation) to free up your time so you can focus on the money-generating activities (client work, marketing, business development, etc.).

Your assignment today is about leveraging certain aspects of your business by using systems and support. Create more time in your day so you can attract more ideal high-paying clients and make more money.

Your Client Attraction Assignment

1. Make a list of ALL the tasks you’re doing during the day.
2. Add a dollar amount to each item you think you can pay someone else to do that for you like errands, filing, scheduling, shipping, editing, phone calls, etc. (it’s actually more inexpensive than you think).
3. Group similar tasks together by dollar-amount and then by category (website, administrative, personal, etc.).
4. Identify the resources (assistu.com, craigslist.com, elance.com, odesk.com, guru.com) where you can hire someone who would be happy to take these tasks off your plate.
5. Start to delegate the lowest dollar amount tasks first and focus your available time on further business development and marketing to your ideal clients (and making room for more clients).

If you enjoyed this video, please post your comment or question below and share it with your friends and colleagues who would find it beneficial.

Fabienne Fredrickson, The Client Attraction Mentor, is founder of the Client Attraction System®, the proven step-by-step program that shows you exactly how to attract more clients, in record time…guaranteed. To get your F.R.E.E. Audio CD by mail and receive her weekly marketing & success mindset articles on attracting more high-paying clients and dramatically increasing your in.come, visit www.attractclients.com.

I’m so thrilled to share some exciting news with you! ClientAttraction.com has been ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies for 2011! We came in at # 599 in the 5th annual Inc. 500|5000 listing. We were also identified as the 20th fastest-growing private company in the media category, the 10th fastest-growing private company in Connecticut, and among the Top 100 for fastest-growing companies that are women owned. Click here for the full press release.

Wow, to see the results in black and white is truly a humbling experience for me and I share it with you not to boast but to hopefully inspire you. As entrepreneurs we are all engines of the new economy – in fact, we create our own economy. Yes, these are challenging times but instead of focusing on doom and gloom, if we take personal responsibility for our own growth, get resourceful and look for those opportunities where others see nothing, we can experience success beyond our wildest dreams.

I want to extend a warm hug and sincere thank you to every one of my subscribers, clients, students, and customers – you’re the reason why I continue to do what I do. This milestone for me is just a reflection of all of YOUR success and while I celebrate this honor, I celebrate each and every one of you!