How To Get More Clients Online: Part 1 – The Power of a Content Rich Website

by Ian · 0 comments

Analytics Snapshot

This is the first in a series of posts on how to get more clients via online approaches for your professional business. It’s written specifically with small and independent consultants and coaches in mind – but the lessons are applicable to other professional businesses.

If you’d like to learn more about how to get clients online I’m running a FREE webinar on Tuesday September 7th covering:

  • How to get top rankings in the search engines for the right keywords for your business
  • How to get high quality, targeted visitors to your site
  • How to engage with visitors, and nurture relationships with them
  • How to convert visitors to subscribers – and then to paying clients

For more details and to sign up for free – click here.

The Power of Content: My Story

About three years ago I first started out trying to do more online with my consulting and coaching business. Back then, few consultants or coaches were getting any sort of business online – but I was convinced from my experience wih other service sectors that it could work.

And I knew that if I could make it work for me it would pay huge dividends. It would free me up from having to invest a ton of my time into going out, networking, having meetings, making presentations, schmoozing and other time consuming business development activities.

And I also believed strongly that if I could attract leads for my business via the web, they could be more qualified. Rather than me having to knock on doors to persuade people I was the right person to work with, I wanted people coming to me already predisposed to hire me.

But my early attempts weren’t a huge success.

I paid big bucks for a fancy website. It wasn’t bad either – it followed what was considered best practice at the time. It talked about who my clients were, the problems I helped them solve and the results they got from working with me. It described my services in benefit oriented terms and showcased testimonials and case studies.

It had pretty much everything.

Well, everything except clients.

Almost no one came to my site (despite paying for some search engine optimisation work). And those that did come didn’t hang around for long.

Now being a bit of a geek at heart, this annoyed me.

I wanted to know why not. I wanted to know why some websites could get thousands of visitors and could convert many of those visitors into paying clients when mine couldn’t.

My first clue came when I created this blog.

I started it for fun really, and as a creative outlet for my ideas on business development. But within a few months it was getting more traffic than my official “corporate” website.

And people were emailing me. Leaving comments on the blog telling me how helpful the articles were. I emailed them back and we began to build relationships. That had never happened with my “corporate” site.

Soon, other bloggers were linking to my blog and recommending it.

As more and more sites linked to my articles and blog posts, my blog rose up the search engine rankings. It got more and more traffic – both directly, and via searches. Visitors kept engaging. When I started a newsletter they engaged even more.

And then I started getting emails from people asking me about how I could help them in their business. In other words, clients were coming to me. Not because of my fancy corporate website. But because of my simple, content-rich blog.

And that’s the lesson here: the most important factor in the success of a website for a consultant, coach or other professional is the quality and depth of the content on that website.

Now most professionals’ websites are simply “brochure sites”. They describe what the professional does, who they work for, the benefits they bring to clients, etc. And that’s fine – if the potential client is coming to your website explicitly to check you out and see whether you’re a good fit for them.

But the truth is that the vast majority of people aren’t out on the web looking for us specifically. They’re out looking for ideas, solutions and resources. In other words: content.

High quality content helps us get clients in three key ways.

Content drives traffic. Other sites are more than happy to link to high quality content on your site as it adds value to their readers. Whereas they have no motivation to link to your site if all it has is descriptions of you and your services – no matter how well written.

Content drives engagement. Visitors to your site stick around and explore if they find useful content. If all there is is a sales pitch for your services they click away pretty quickly.

And content drives credibility. As a professional, clients need to know you have the expertise and experience to help them before they’ll consider hiring you. Sharing valuable content which gives them insight and helps them improve their business proves your capabilities infinitely more than any claims you make or even any testimonials you might have.

In short, having the passion and energy to consistently create valuable content for your website is THE biggest driver of online success for professionals.

In the next posts in this series I’ll be showing you the other key drivers of online success for professionals – and sharing a practical action plan to set you on the road to success in your business.

And if you’d like to go through this with me live – my free webinar for the Online Client Blueprint is on Tuesday September 7th. You can sign up by putting your name and email address in the form below.

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by Ian on 29 August 2010 · 0 comments

The Secret of Writing a Bestseller…

by Ian · 0 comments

Mastering the World of Selling…get some friends to help.

And if those friends are the very, very best in the field, it really, really helps.

What on earth am I talking about?

I recently contributed a chapter (Selling for the Independent Professional) to the newly released book Mastering the World of Selling by Eric Taylor and David Riklan, published by John Wiley. I heard a few minutes ago that it’s just hit #1 in Amazon’s list of Business Management books.

I got my copy today, coincidentally on release day. I feel really quite humbled by the company I’m in: Linda Richardson who literally invented Consultative Selling. Neil Rackham whose methodical studies of the field revolutionised sales techniques. And Charlie Green (author of the Trusted Advisor) and Ford Harding (author of Rainmaking) – two men who I’m proud to know and who have helped me immensely over the years. The list of experts is huge.

So here’s the key point: how on earth did I get in there?

There’s a famous cartoon by Peter Steiner published in the New Yorker that says “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. That’s kind of how I feel.

10 years ago, even 5 maybe, the chances of a “new kid on the block” like me being included in such a publication were practically nil. It didn’t matter how much you knew, how much of an expert you were or what great new insights you had: the chances were that you simply wouldn’t be found. And even if you were found, you wouldn’t have enough of a following to justify inclusion in a major book.

But things are different now. You don’t need HBR articles, academic papers or a published book. Get your ideas and thoughts out on a blog (and put a little bit of work into getting that blog rated on the search engines) and if they’re good, your ideas will be found. You will be found.

And you just might end up part of a great project like Mastering the World of Selling. Something I can actually show my Mum and feel proud of.

So if you’re a consultant, a coach, and independent profesional: what are you doing on the web to get known? Get yourself a blog and get writing!

And if you want to buy a copy of Mastering the World of Selling – head over here. You’ll be able to get free downloads of books, training courses and videos from the authors and a whole load of other contributors. My contribution is a video on how to generate leads for your business online.

But most importantly: if I can do it, you can do it.

Update: I’ve just heard I’ve also been listed as one of the Top 20 Sales Professionals on the Web over at the Lead411 Blog. It’s the same story essentially – thanks to regular blogging and sharing my ideas freely, I get noticed. And it can work the same for you.

by Ian on 24 August 2010 · 0 comments

How to Nurture Business Development Capabilities

by Ian · 1 comment

I’m currently on vacation in France, sipping on Stella Artois and musing on why the French always seem so much more sophisticated than we Brits.

For holiday reading I’m skimming through Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book – “What the Dog Saw” – a collection of some of his New Yorker essays.

I like Gladwell. Sometimes his research is a little sloppy, but he’s always thought provoking, challenging and often very insightful. Great for holiday reading: not too heavy.

On of his essays is on the challenge of hiring people for jobs that are different from what they’re currently doing now. He uses the example of trying to select quarterbacks for the NFL.

Apparently, quarterback performance in college football is a notoriously poor predictor of success in the NFL. Because the opposition is shorter, smaller and slower than you’d find in the NFL, quarterbacks have much more time and options. They can just stand and pick out passes to any of their receivers.

In the NFL they have far less time. Huge linebacks descend on them, they have to move before throwing, anticipate where the defence is going, and have fewer open options.

As a result, quarterbacks that excel at college level aren’t necessarily equipped to do well in the NFL. The same isn’t true for other positions where the skills are similar – just at a higher level.

Similarly, it turns out that qualifiactions and courses are incredibly poor predictors of how good teachers will be in practice. Being able to engage with children, to “command” their attention and spark their interest in learning has very little to do with the academic qualifictions teachers pursue in college.

So what does all this have with business development in professional service firms?

Well, the challenge many firms have in trying to find and grow effective business developers is that the early careers of most professionals don’t involve much business development, or the practice of the skills needed to win work.

In fact, in many professional firms, because of the obsession with billable hourse, all activity other than fee earning client delivery gets crowded out. “High performers” have often sacrificed all non-billable activities like building fledgeling client relationships on the altar of billing more time. So when they’re eventually called upon to win work for the firm, those “high performers” often stumble.

Other firms try to identify “selling skills” by looking for extroverts and people with the “gift of the gab”. They’re essentially using the stereotype many people have of a “typical salesperson” to try to identify those in their own team with potential to succeed at business development. In reality, however, there’s no evidence to suggest that extroverts are any better at selling than their more introverted colleagues.

So what’s the secret? How do you identify people who will make good business developers?

There’s only one way to find out: test.

Give all your associates the opportunity to practice selling skills. To go out and form relationships with potential clients. To actively nurture those relationships over time. To convert those relationships into sales.

Give them training and mentoring. Monitor their progress. Then select based on actual performance at business development – not on technical performance or what you think the characteristics of good business developers are. Select on actual performance.

Far too many firms select too early, based on the wriong criteria. They think they know who’s got “the right stuff”. But they don’t.

Casting the net much wider in your search for rainmakers seems like an expensive strategy. Wouldn’t it be better to focus training, mentoring and experience on the ones most likely to succeed?

Well, it would. But the truth is that you just can’t tell from a professionals early career just who is likely to succeed at business development. Very often it’s not the high flyers or superstars. Sometimes it’s the people you’d least expect. So you must cast the net wide.

But the returns from this approach can be huge. Excellent business developers can bring in an order of magnitude more business than the average: sales of 5x, 10x or more that of their peers isn’t unheard of. And that’s certainly worth expending a bit more early on to get.

by Ian on 13 August 2010 · 1 comment

How To Build Yourself As The Authority Figure In Your Industry

7 August 2010

Today’s article is a guest post from Travis Petelle of Breakthrough Business Solutions. Travis has picked up on my ideas on Authority Marketing and shares some excellent tips on how to build an authority position in your business. Building yourself as an authority figure in your niche could possibly be the best thing you could [...]

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How Not To Keep In Touch – IBM Style

4 August 2010

It’s important that you keep the contact details of your prospects and customers up to date. But here’s an example of the wrong way to do it… I got a phone call a couple of days ago from IBM – or rather from one of their offshore call centres. Is that Mr Brodie? Yeah, that’s [...]

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Reducing Switching Costs: A Key Strategy for Accounting and Other “Ongoing Service” Providers

28 July 2010

I exchanged a few emails last week with Direct marketing legend Drayton Bird (how’s that for a name drop!). I helped Drayton out with a little bit of advice when he wrote his huge book on Direct Marketing for Lawyers, and we were discussing the differences in business development for lawyers vs accountants. Apart from [...]

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Social Media vs the Lawyers: The Case of Chris Cardell

22 July 2010

There’s an interesting little storm brewing over here in the UK. There’s a fairly well known business guru here called Chris Cardell. He does seminars for small business owners and has online membership clubs etc.. I can’t comment on the quality of his work as I’ve never bought any of his stuff – however you [...]

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Authority Marketing: The Essentials

10 July 2010
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In recent posts I’ve been musing over the concept of Authority Marketing. After my last post where I talked about the benefits of establishing authority, one reader rightly posed the question: “what’s the difference between authority and expertise?” It’s a good question. We all feel intuitively that authority implies something more than expertise – but [...]

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Free Teleseminar on Selling Consulting Services

25 June 2010
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Many thanks to Mike for a great call. For those who signed up, you can listen to a recording of the call by clicking here Mike Schultz and John Doerr have re-opened the doors to their Selling Consulting Services online training program. I’m a member of the site as part of the first cohort of [...]

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How to Get More Clients Online – Survey for Free Training

18 June 2010
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Here’s a chance to bag some free training on how to get more clients using online approaches – your website, social media, etc. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a big fan of using the web to get clients for professional service firms and independent professionals. I currently get over two thirds of my clients via [...]

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Linkedin Profiles – My Shocking Findings

16 June 2010

Last night I was finalising a training course I ran today on Linkedin. I was having a quick look round at people’s profiles for good/bad examples – and what I saw shocked me. First a little bit of background: In my landmark post 10 Linkedin Tips for Professionals (still showing on page 1 of google [...]

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