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Today, I want to talk to you about the inner game of client attraction. The marketing piece of client attraction is considered the outer game. It is what you do, it is the actions that you take, figuring out who your ideal client is and getting out there in a big way and all that good stuff.
And then there is the inner game. (Click here to tweet this.)
The inner game of client attraction is about your attitude. It is about what you believe and expect to be true about your business, about clients, about how much you charge and how much you are willing to play a bigger game in your business, in your marketing, in anything you do.
At Client Attraction, I always talk about playing a bigger game whether it’s in your marketing or in your mindset. Here is what happens when entrepreneurs attempt to go to the next level of their business. Perhaps it’s holding your first workshop or writing a book for the first time or speaking in public or raising your rates–a lot of times fear will come up. Fears like, “Will they criticize me? Will they want it? They won’t pay for that. I’ll flop.”
There is fear of failure. There is fear of success. There is fear of overwhelm and not getting it right. Fear is actually the biggest obstacle that you’ll face when moving toward the next level in your business.
How do you manage the fear? How do you handle it? My three tips will help you move through the fear so you can play a bigger game with your inner game.
1. Shield yourself from any negativity. If there are people in your life who don’t have a belief that you can make it or that you can do it, shield yourself from that. Shield yourself from anything negative, even the news. I know that’s controversial because some people don’t believe that you can live without watching the news but I believe by doing so you can stay in a place of positive expectation.
2. Stay in a place of positive expectation. What is positive expectation? It is believing in something that has not appeared yet. It means to positively expect great results no matter what you see in front of you and just staying in faith that what you want is on its way to you.
3. Take massive action. Once you are able to shield yourself from the negativity and stay positive, you’ll want to always be taking action. You can’t just sit there and say, “Om! Bring it to me.” You’ve got to be in action.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Identify what big leaps are you are about to take and think about the fears that are currently holding you back. Now work through the three steps—shield yourself from the negative, stay in a place of positive expectation and take massive action—in order to move through those fears and come out on the other side with all the success you desire.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/sJtlSDdSIGQ[/youtube]
Today, I want to talk to you about being more authentic in your marketing. One of the things that really changed my business many years ago is when I started taking down the walls and allowing myself to be more authentic, more real, more genuine, not just in my own life, but in my business. It worked in all areas of my life. That’s how I got together with my husband (not to over-share or anything), but I just took down the walls and I started letting people in, in my personal life. It was amazing what happened.
I started thinking, “What would happen if I did the same thing in my business?” Today, the number one thing that people say to me, especially if they come to one of my live events or join me on a livestream, is “Fabienne, you are the real deal. You are so authentic. You’re so relatable. You’re so vulnerable. This is why I trust you. This is why I feel like I want to work with you. This is why I hired you.” There’s nothing better than hearing that because people who have just met you just days before feel that they trust you. (Click here to tweet this.)
Here are the five ways that I have become more authentic in my marketing for my business and how you can be the same in yours because it does result in more clients, more money and it helps you multiply your business.
1. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable in your business. I don’t know if you were in corporate, but I was for eight years and everything had to be so polished and perfect. You weren’t allowed to make mistakes. In fact, it was all about covering your tush and pointing the finger at other people. Maybe you experienced that like I did.
What I have found is that the more vulnerable I am in my business, letting people in, the more clients I get. This happened the minute that I started being more vulnerable and weaving in some of my experiences in my business. People started coming out of the woodwork.
I have said this before in these videos and I will say it again, “People like a little bit of grit. They don’t like all the slick.” Now, you cannot be a basket case. You cannot air all your dirty laundry. You’ve got to stay somewhat professional and polished, but let it be okay for you to be a little bit vulnerable.
2. Let people learn from your mistakes. I have had clients say to me for years, “Oh, I just love it when I hear about your failures, Fabienne.” At first I just didn’t know what to make of that, but what I’ve learned is if you can put yourself in the trenches with your clients and not on this big pedestal where you’ve got it all figured out, they trust you and they feel closer to you. They feel more connected to you.
I say this to people all the time, “Listen, there is no such thing as marketing nirvana. I will never figure it out fully because marketing keeps changing, so I’m in the trenches with you. I’m going to continually learn. However, I may just be a few steps ahead of you, so I’m going to give you everything that’s working for me.”
I always say, “I have not figured it all out with my mindset. I still have mindset stuff that I need to figure out, but hey, I’m a lot further along than I was 10 or 20 years ago.” I’m in the trenches with you. I keep working on my stuff. Share your experiences with them. Share your failures. Let them learn from all the things that didn’t go so well with you because if there’s a person that’s just a little too perfect, do you really trust them? Not possible. Or else, even if you did trust them, you don’t feel good about yourself around them. If you want to make your prospects and clients feel good around you share your failures.
3. You must really care about people. This is a big one and as you may know in my company, we have this mission statement that says, “We do everything with authenticity, integrity and love.” I know it could sound crazy having the word ‘love’ in our mission statement. But, yes we do.
Here’s why. I may have met you and I may not have met you yet. I hope that if we haven’t yet, that we get to meet you one day really soon, but the idea is that I probably know who you are. You and I are cut from the same cloth because we are both entrepreneurs and we are wired in a different way and we are here to be a catalyst in other peoples’ lives in a way that some other people simply aren’t. Even if I haven’t met one of my followers, fans, prospects or customers from around the world, I still love them.
I still love you. Kooky concept for some people, but there are legions of people that I haven’t met yet that I love. When you love somebody you care for them. You act with love and you give with love and you just genuinely care.
When you post something on a website or in an article or you do a video, you pour your heart into it. People will feel that you are authentic or vulnerable. In fact, sometimes you may have seen me do this on videos or at one of my live events. Sometimes I allow myself to well up in tears. It’s just because I am this way. I am this way in my real life.
4. Be yourself. If you’re funny at home, be funny in your marketing. If you are loving at home, be loving in your marketing. If you are generous at home, be generous in your marketing. If you love pets at home, include your pets in your marketing. If you love kids at home, include kids in your marketing. You’ll recognize that I do that a lot in my work and in my marketing. Be yourself.
5. Act with integrity. If you want to be authentic and you want people to see you as that, you must be sincere and you must act with integrity. That means that you only do the right thing even when no one’s watching. If you mess something up, make it right. If you want to sell something, tell the truth. Always act as if somebody is watching you. People will see that. They may not know whether it’s true or not, but they will feel it energetically and they will see you as being a person of authenticity. When you are a person of authenticity, people trust you and when people trust you they buy from you, they hire you, they recommend you, they give you great testimonials. They keep coming back.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Start weaving more of this into your business and you will get more clients and you will make more money and you will multiply your business because you’re going to rise to the top. Everybody else will be very slick, but you will be slick with a little bit of grit and people will love you for it.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/thW4MiUEPtA?hd=1[/youtube]
A question that I get all the time is, “Fabienne, what numbers should I track in my business?” My answer? Track all the numbers you want to grow—and expenses, which of course you don’t want to grow. I’m always shocked that when I ask someone how much they’ve made so far in their business this year or this month, a lot of times they don’t have an answer to that question. For many years, before I had a full-time financial person for my business, I always knew, to the day, how much I had made that month as opposed to what my goal was.
At Client Attraction, we track everything in the business, but here’s where I want you to start. Number one, start tracking the number of clients that you have. Some people just don’t know this number. You need to know how many clients are in each program versus what is your goal of number of clients in each program. (Click here to tweet this.)
I also want you to track your income because what you track, grows. You’ll track on a marketing level so you can measure where you are compared to your goal in any given month and you’ll also track from a metaphysical, “manifesty-y” kind of way so that you know what how much money you want to attract into your business.
Obviously, track your actual income versus your goal income, not just per year, but each month and for half of the year. One of the things that I do midway through the year is I say, “Is my first six months of the year on track or will I reach my goal by the end of the year?”
If you ask yourself this question, “Am I on track?” and it’s November and you’ve got a month left in the year, it’s hard to really ramp up and make the extra money. But if you’re tracking every single month and at the mid-year you can say, “Okay, how am I doing?” You have another six months to really get creative and strategize, so I recommend that you do that.
Track the number of sales that you get. For the Client Attraction Home Study System, I track how many we sell per week because I have a specific goal to meet. It’s a goal that we came up with based on the past and what it would take to stretch that just a little bit. Look at how we are doing with that goal, daily, weekly, and monthly.
You can track sales conversions. If you’re speaking in front of a room of people, are you closing 20% of the room? Are you closing 20% of the people who are eligible to buy? Are you at 50%? 70%?
Get really good at figuring out the percentages because when it comes to having that solid number, you can project it onto other opportunities. If I can close let’s say 50% of the room, then that’s a good opportunity for me.
We track our list size. Right now at this point we are at over 50,000 people on our email list. It’s really important for you to track so you know how many people you have. Track open rates. Track conversions.
Track the number of people who are coming to an event after determining your goal. If you’re not there yet, then you know that you could be doing a little bit more marketing to get the word out.
Track your expenses. One of the things that is not so much fun to do is track expenses, but sometimes when you track expenses you can say, “Hey, this is too much. I don’t want to be spending this much because it eats into the profit of the business.” Sometimes this is a good surprise. You can say, “You know what, expenses are not that high. I can afford to pay just a little bit more for my marketing or client acquisition.” Perhaps you can send another mailer. Perhaps you can invest in your business a little bit more and then it will multiply your business.
The idea is that you want to track everything that you want to grow. And yes, you want to track your expenses too even though you don’t necessarily want to grow those. When you have the numbers, you can sit down and it tells a story about your business. It helps you project your income. It helps you make your decisions in your business.
We make a lot of decisions at Client Attraction based on the numbers. We can measure which campaigns worked really well, which Facebook ads are most effective, which Google AdWords are most effective, etc. We look at cost per lead, cost per order, etc.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Start tracking the basics, whatever you can handle. Don’t overwhelm yourself, but do what I do. We have a white board in the office that gets updated every single day so try tracking your numbers like that. Or you could have an Excel spreadsheet like I had many, many years ago when it was just me. The idea is do not be in the dark. Know your numbers because you can make decisions from them.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/Yxp-VAkgDKE?hd=1[/youtube]
Today I want to talk to you about how to manage your clients. Whether you are just starting out or you are at full practice right now looking to multiply, you must know how to manage your clients effectively.
You might be thinking, “What does this have to do with multiplying my business?” It has everything to do with it because when you have a practice full of clients who are all doing their own things, it creates a big stress and drain for you and it’s very, very time consuming. (Click here to tweet this.)
When you have each of your clients behaving properly, and I know that sounds funny, you create a problem-free zone. So managing your clients equals a problem-free zone. And when you have a problem-free zone, you have more time for more clients, more time to market, and more time to make more money in your business.
So how do you properly manage your clients? Again, it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or if you have a full practice. If you’re just starting out, you need to come from full practice mentality. Even if you have two clients, you’ve got to pretend that you have thirty-two clients and set up the right systems ahead of time.
My number one tip around that is to be very clear. Start by getting yourself really clear on what your standards are for your business. What are the rules that you want your clients to follow in your business? If you have a telephone-based business, then one of the rules could be that you want them to call on time, you want them to call a particular number and you want them to end on time. Why? Because if they don’t, they eat up into other people’s time, etc.
If you have an in-person business, maybe it’s even brick and mortar, then you need to get really clear on what you want them to do when they arrive. There needs to be rules for everything. You might think, “Oh no. Clients are not going to like rules.” I totally disagree. Clients like to know what the rules are.
In fact, I will share with you that about a year ago, I hired a practitioner for a healing session. I paid up front and waited for the appointment day to arrive. I never got an email that instructed whether I was to call or if she would call me. I didn’t get an email that instructing whether this was a Skype session or phone session. I didn’t even know how long our session was going to be. I didn’t know if I was expected to send something in beforehand and frankly, I was a little annoyed by it. I like to know what the rules are so I can follow them.
What I’ve realized over the years, and I’ve been doing this for a very long time, is the more specific you are about what you expect of your clients, the more they enthusiastically follow the rules. Then you have a practice full of yummy people who are behaving properly as opposed to saboteur clients who create havoc and messes in your business.
So to reiterate, the very first thing that you want to do is set up these policies and procedures and communicate your expectations and rules. I have a Policies and Procedures document that I share with my clients and the rules are stated with kindness and warmth but also some sternness so people know that I’m serious about these things.
The key is to communicate it at the beginning of your working relationship so it’s not something that you come back to a few months later when they’re already used to behaving in a certain way. Here’s the thing. If you get them to do this and understand these at the beginning of your working relationship, even before you get started, you’re likely to never have somebody behave improperly. You can even have them sign off on, “Yes, I understand these policies and procedures.” Then you have a copy of it, they have a copy of it. It’s all good.
But let’s say that in your working relationship with a client, somebody doesn’t show up for a pre-scheduled call or doesn’t pay on time or just goes against one of your policies and procedures, it’s important that you uphold your boundaries. Uphold your standards and your procedures and you remind them that this was something that they agreed to. Again, you have to do it kindly and warmly but the idea is that you must remind them so they get back in line.
I’m going to leave you with a final tip. You always want to play the ‘good cop’ role because if you start chasing clients for money or scolding them for not following your policies and procedures, it’s going to tinge your working relationship. Ideally, you hire an assistant, you have one of your existing team members or a virtual person do that for you so you always stay the ‘good cop’ and they become the ‘bad cop’.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Define what the rules for your business are when it comes to clients. Write them out and be sure to share them with your clients.
When all of your clients follow your policies and procedures, rules and expectations, it’s smooth sailing. Is it smooth sailing 100 percent of the time? It never will be because you’re dealing with people and each have their own behaviors and quirks and intricacies. You can make it as smooth as possible though and a smoother ride allows you to have a smoother practice, with more room for more clients, more room for marketing and more room to multiply your business.
[youtube width=”600″ height=”352″]http://youtu.be/r4JQkmBGgbc?hd=1[/youtube]
Today I’d like to talk to you about how to be more decisive in your business. I speak to thousands of entrepreneurs each year and I have been for 12 years now. Every time I get together with a group of successful entrepreneurs, I see they’re people who take decisive action. Successful people take decisive action.
But I also meet entrepreneurs who like to over-think and they might make a decision but then they change their mind. There’s this waffling effect. I meet people who have a lot of self doubt. They tend to listen to that inner critic a lot.
I would like for you to be successful. This is why I do what I do. Part of that is to be more decisive in your business because the longer you take to make a decision, the longer you delay the results that you are looking for.
Here are my six steps that I’d like to share with you about how I am more decisive in my business each year.
1. Get all the facts. This sounds simple but when you have this mapped out as a formula, it really helps. Here’s what I often say to my clients, “So tell me, you have this decision that needs to be made. What’s going on? Tell me all the facts.”
A lot of times they don’t have all the facts. Without them, you are making a non-informed decision. Non-informed decisions are bad decisions. So get all the facts. (Click here to tweet this.)
2. Make a pros and cons list. You’ve heard this before but I actually find that some of the biggest decisions I’ve had to make in my life were made much more easily when I had a pros list and a cons list; pros of doing it, pros of not doing it. Cons of doing it, cons of not doing it.
Then I can actually see just by the number of things on the list, “Wow, there are so many pros to doing this and so very few cons to doing it.” Sometimes that will sway my decision very, very quickly. So do that.
If you’ll allow me to get a little spiritual on you for a second (because you know we can be spiritual in business too), often the pros of doing something come from you being pulled into your future. Your soul is being called to do something. That’s why your list may contain so many positive things.
If you look at the cons list, usually the cons are based on fears – fear of losing money, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of overwhelm, fear of criticism, and the list goes on.
You’re being pulled into future if spirit is asking you to do the next right thing. Fear is the opposite. It’s your ego pulling your back. I only make decisions based on faith, not fear.
3. Trust your intuition. You know that feeling inside that says, “Oh, I really should be doing that,” and then you try to talk yourself out of it? I always say to trust your intuition. I’m going to get spiritual on you again, but your intuition comes from Source. It comes from the Universe. It comes from God, or whatever you may call it. It’s like your red phone direct to the big guys upstairs.
When you listen to your intuition it’s like getting advice straight from Source. Your intuition is a softer, kinder voice and it’s usually quieter than the fear voice of the ego. So if there’s a faint voice that says, “Do it,” then that’s usually Source rather than, “Oh my God! Don’t do this! You might lose money. You might fail.” That is not your intuition. So, trust your intuition.
4. Ignore your fears. I have to be very careful when I talk about that. There are some good fears like, “Don’t jump off that bridge.” But there are also the fears that are stopping you from doing the next best thing for your business – whether they’ve come from your upbringing, or from other people’s irrational fears and a slew of other things that we talk about in my mindset workshops but the remember idea from the pros and cons list: Make decisions based on faith.
5. Look at your return on investment. If you know that this is something that’s going to get you the result that you want in your business, then be decisive and look at the return on investment. Whenever I am investing in my own business, I look at, “Am I going to get my money back on this?” “Yes.” “Am I going to get two times, four times, ten times my investment if I do everything that it says?” If the answer is yes, I say yes and I don’t turn back. I want the same thing for you.
6. Flip a coin. Finally, if you just cannot make a decision but you would be okay with either way, than just flip a coin. I know it sounds silly but you’ve got to be okay with what comes up. The key is to take decisive action and to do the things that you know are going to move you to the next level.
Your Client Attraction Assignment
Try my six steps when faced with any important decision. They will lead you toward becoming more decisive in your business because remember, successful people take decisive action.
