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You don’t need to do any of this

Posted byIan Brodie on December 7th, 2017.

If you're looking to win more clients then you're probably on a few email lists in addition to mine :)

And so the chances are you've had more than a few experts telling you about their “one best way” to win clients that you must use if you want to succeed.

I first became a consultant in 1994 and a few years after that I started being asked to win clients as part of my role. And I've been helping other professionals to win clients since I set up my own business in 2007.

So I can fairly confidently say that in my experience, there is no “one best way” to win clients that you must use.

No matter what the experts say, you don't need to use Facebook Ads to send people to an automated webinar and a sales, ahem, strategy call to win clients.

Nor do you need a fancy elevator pitch that somehow compels clients to hire you the instant they hear it.

And you don't need to send an email every day filled with manufactured controversy to try to create the impression you have a personality and that it's “you and them against the world”.

You don't need to badger people with Linkedin messages “adding value” they didn't ask for or pestering them to get on a call with you or join the group you set up to market to them with.

And you don't need to find the one thing you're the best in the world at, hoping that somehow clients will flock to your door to get it.

I'm exaggerating for effect of course. All of these things work for some people. The point is that you don't need to do any of them. There's no “one best way” you must use. Only what works for you.

The reason so many people tell you there is one best way is twofold.

Partly it's self-interest. The “one best way” is what they want to sell you.

And partly it's lack of experience. That “one way” worked for them.

Or it's the only way they were taught (it frightens me how many people there are out there offering to teach consultants and coaches how to win more clients using facebook ads, automated webinars and group programs whose only experience of doing so is a course they took from someone else teaching how to win more clients using facebook ads, automated webinars and group programs).

If you've got any real life experience you'll know that there's always more than one way to do things.

And when it comes to winning clients, the key is to find a way that works for you and matches your skills and preferences.

Of course, there are some things you must do. Some principles you must adhere to.

You must figure out what you're great at that clients value.

You must find a way to connect with those clients that allows you to add value to them.

And you must show up on a regular basis in their lives to add more value, build credibility and establish trust.

But there are lots of different ways you can do each of these steps.

If you enjoy speaking on stage and you're good at it, that could be your way of connecting with potential clients. It's going to work an awful lot better than trying to teach yourself facebook ads if the technical stuff just isn't your thing.

Or maybe you're good at writing: try blog posts and regular emails.

Maybe you're a great networker: connecting with influencers in your field and interviewing them for a podcast might work for you.

All of the “one best way” methods work for someone. The trick is to find the ones that work for you and that you'll actually do.

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My simple solution to “selling”

Posted byIan Brodie on November 29th, 2017.

I've found there are two types of people in this world when it comes to sales.

There's a minority of people who enjoy selling. Who get a buzz from sales meetings and love doing them.

If you're in that category, this email isn't for you.

This email is for the majority of us who see selling as a necessary evil. Something we know we need to do to get clients, but we wish we didn’t have to. Or that it wasn’t so painful.

Back when I worked for Gemini Consulting in the 90s we had some excellent sales training. They took people like me who were uncomfortable selling and taught us techniques we could use to help clients get more clarity on their problems, see the full impact, and motivate them to do something about it.

Armed with those techniques and targets for $1m, $2m and eventually $5m+ of consulting to sell, I got pretty good at it.

But I never enjoyed it.

When the pressure was off, I reverted to type and avoided sales meetings. That rarely resulted in good things happening.

So over time, I discovered two “solutions” to selling.

One is attitude adjustment. Try to become more like the people who enjoy selling. Tell yourself that if you can do things to help people then it's your duty to sell them those things. Remind yourself that timid salespeople have skinny kids and other such clichés.

That never worked for me. but it might work for you. It's the underlying theme behind pretty much all the “sell without selling” training you see so much of these days. It simply relabels selling as helping and teaches you the same techniques salespeople use under different names.

I found a different path worked best for me.

Instead of trying to make myself enjoy and get good at the type of sales meetings I had, I found that I could change the type of meetings I had so that I enjoyed them. 

What I mean by that is that if you only ever have “sales meetings” with people who are already 90% ready to buy and just have a few remaining questions, those meetings are radically different to when you meet with a colder prospect and have to sell them.

All that clever questioning technique to draw out the client's problems or goals isn't needed if they've already done that themselves. All that exploration of the impact of their problems so they realise the importance of making a change isn't needed if they've already done that for themselves. All that positioning of your solution and why you're better than your competitors isn't needed if they've already done that for themselves.

A lot of sales techniques you learn talk about how sales is about making sure there's a good fit between what your clients need and what you have to offer. The truth, however, is that if you examine those techniques, they're not really about genuinely finding out whether there's a fit. They're really all about trying to convince the client there is.

But if the client is already pre-sold and already wants to work with you but just has a few outstanding questions, then your conversation with them takes on a different tone. It really does become about making sure there's a good fit that works for both of you – since you don't need to convince them of anything at that point.

Is that type of meeting pie-in-the-sky?

It is for most people because they don't have enough high-quality leads. And they don't do enough to educate their potential clients before they speak to them, so at their first meeting or call the client is still relatively cold and there's still a lot of convincing to do. So a traditional sales meeting is needed.

But if you have a marketing system that produces a surplus of leads: people who genuinely need what you have and see that you're the best person to help them. And if that system nurtures your relationship with them so that they trust you and believe you'll be able to help them. Then there's no convincing needed in your “sales meetings”. It becomes a genuine discussion about whether working together would be a good idea.

For me, that's the best solution to selling.

Sure, some people you speak to will be warmer than others.

But the better your marketing system works, the less hard you have to work at selling.

For people like me who find selling uncomfortable, it's a much better solution than trying to fix our mindset and become masters at something we don't really want to become masters at.

So if you find selling uncomfortable, I'm going to suggest that the solution for you probably isn't a training course on how to sell better (even if it's being pitched as “sell without selling”).

The solution for you is probably to learn how to generate more high-quality leads and nurture them so that you don't need to sell (so much).

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The day my sales conversions improved

Posted byIan Brodie on November 26th, 2017.

I've never been someone who enjoys sales meetings or calls.

They're vital, of course, so I learned how to do them pretty well. And my results were decent.

Like most people, I used a variation of asking my potential clients questions about their main challenges and exploring what the impact of those challenges was. Then I would lay out a roadmap for them which largely consisted of the problems they just told me converted into steps in a plan to solve them.

That's pretty standard in the world of coaching. Sometimes it's labelled as a strategy session. Sometimes a free initial consultation. But the essence remains the same: ask them about their problems and turn those problems into a roadmap to solve them.

And it worked. Or at least it sort of did.

I found that it was rarely all that effective with more sophisticated clients. Ones who, I assume, could pretty easily list their problems and flip them into a roadmap themselves.

And over time, it seemed to get less and less effective with most people. I suppose it was a reflection of the technique being more commonplace and often overused. Once you've had 2 or 3 coaches ask you about your problems and flip them into a roadmap you tend to be less impressed the next time someone does it.

And, of course, one of the golden rules of this type of approach is that you mustn't try to solve the client's problems in the session itself. Solving the problem is part of what they pay for to implement the roadmap.

Eventually, I started breaking that golden rule.

I couldn't help myself. I had a bunch of ideas that I thought could help, so I shared them.

Gently, of course. I didn't claim I knew the answer. I just shared a few things that had worked with other clients in similar situations I'd seen.

And you know what? It worked.

Despite the dire warnings about “giving away the store” in a sales meeting, what I found was that it gave my potential client confidence that I had new ideas they'd not tried before and that I knew how to get results for them.

I reckon the reason it worked is simply due to increasing market sophistication.

The first time you tell a coach your problems and they tell you confidently that they can help you and give you a simple plan for how they're going to do it; you believe them.

After you've been through that process a few times and not got results, you need to see a little more proof.

You need the person in front of you to show genuine insight into your issue. You need them to show you a few new ideas you've not seen and tried before.

So when I did so, I converted more meetings into clients as a result.

Perhaps more importantly, even when they didn't become clients, I genuinely helped them.

For me, being able to help people in sales meetings means I feel good about them. And that means I'm less likely to put them off or avoid them, and more likely to bring my best into each meeting.

A win for me and a win for the people I'm meeting with.

Maybe trying to give more value in sales meetings will make them work better for you too.

More Clients Memorandum

Stop marketing for a minute

Posted byIan Brodie on November 19th, 2017.

Sometimes, I find, the best way to win business is to forget about marketing for a minute.

Think instead of better ways you can serve your existing clients.

How you can add more value to them.

Additional things you can do for them that will make their lives or business better.

Then after you've drawn out the very best ways you can be more valuable, put your marketing hat back on.

Can some of these things be packaged up into additional services you could offer to existing or ex-clients?

Will adding some of these things allow you to charge more for your services? Or could they help you charge in a better way (a regular retainer instead of one-off projects for example)?

Or could the increased value simply get clients to stay for longer and recommend you more?

All these are likely to be a faster route to winning more business than most of the things we call marketing.

Try them.

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A simple 6-figure lesson learned

Posted byIan Brodie on November 19th, 2017.

I had an interesting chat on Skype a while back with an ex-client who I keep in touch with.

He's come a long way since we worked together to help him establish a focus for his business and his value proposition, and to identify the marketing strategies that would position him as a leader in his field.

On our chat, he told me about something he'd done recently that really helped him make the big shift to turning over six figures in his business every month.

In many ways, it was laughably simple. Something I'm sure you'll know about. But I wonder whether you're making the same mistake yourself.

Simply put, he was taking on too many marketing projects at once.

He was developing too many new products and trying to market too many in parallel in different markets.

The switch he made was simply to focus on doing one thing at a time.

Now I'm sure that sounds overly simplistic. But it made a huge difference for him.

Previously he was making a little progress every week with each project. Which meant that he wasn't seeing the results from any of them. And he was beginning to get depressed about his ability to get things done since progress seemed so glacial.

Not to mention that his brain was constantly flip-flopping between each different project, market or client.

By simply focusing on one project at a time he was able to finish the project he focused on quicker. Meaning he saw results quicker.

And seeing results motivated him for the next project. And the next. With no having to constantly reset, remember and juggle all the different ideas from each project.

Sounds simple but it made a huge difference for him. Could it do the same for you?

More Clients Memorandum

The secret source of leads hidden in plain sight

Posted byIan Brodie on November 15th, 2017.

Last week I talked about how most people struggle when it comes to generating leads for their business.

But there's a “secret” source of new leads that almost everyone overlooks.

Perhaps the best source of new leads is old leads.

Many years ago Brian Carroll made the important observation that something like 95% of visitors to your website aren't ready to buy when they visit. But up to 70% of them will buy at some time in the next couple of years. It's just that they might well not buy from you.

That's what I mean by your best new leads being old leads.

Unfortunately, what most of us do when our leads turn out not to be ready to buy (as most of them aren't) is we move on to other “hot leads” and we stop communicating with those “tire kickers” who weren't ready right away.

Of course, 99% of those people not ready to buy aren't tire kickers. They're just not ready to buy yet, or you haven't done enough to convince them you're the right person to work with them.

In 3 months, 9 months, a year, maybe two years they will be ready to buy.

And who will they buy from?

The person who's basically ignored them for 2 years? Or has sent the odd nagging email to check if they're ready to do something yet?

Or the person who's nurtured a relationship with them over that period?

Someone who's sent them valuable information. Who's asked and answered questions. Who's kept in touch in a friendly and useful way.

Those old leads can be your very best new leads – if you treat them right

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It’s not the tools, it’s you

Posted byIan Brodie on November 12th, 2017.

I was involved in a bit of a debate recently about whether you should invest heavily in things like websites, showcase videos, even a fancy wardrobe. Whether you need to “look the part” from day 1 or whether you can start small.

My own opinion is that you can bootstrap and build over time.

But actually, that's not important. What struck me after a while was that the focus of the discussion was all wrong.

Everything was about the tools. Should you pay a fortune for a website? Should you buy this, that or the other?

But in my experience, it's not really the tools that make the difference. It's you and what you do.

A brilliant website and showcase video aren't going to win you clients if you don't get out, meet people, build relationships or demonstrate your expertise. Conversely, I think if you get out, meet people, build relationships and demonstrate your expertise you could well win clients without needing a brilliant website or showreel or any of the other trappings.

Or maybe your thing could be creating great content for your site, doing webinars, writing emails, engaging online. Same principle: it's what you do, not what you buy.

So if you find yourself worrying about the things you should buy to win you more clients, you might well be on the wrong track. Focus instead on what you should do.

More Clients Memorandum

One is the magic number

Posted byIan Brodie on November 9th, 2017.

The part of marketing that probably the most people struggle with is “first contact”. That magical moment where you make your very first connection with an ideal client, or ideally, they make a connection with you.

That could be them visiting your website. It could be you sending them a Linkedin connection request. It could be them hearing you on someone else's podcast. A whole myriad of things.

Which one will work best for you?

That's the wrong question really. 

You don't need the best method. You just need something that will work and that you can do.

And if you have a great lead magnet, the method you use to get it in front of people becomes less important.

You can use a lead magnet to get more referrals. You can use a lead magnet to attract web visitors via paid advertising. People will share a great lead magnet they get value from. You can offer a great lead magnet at the end of a live talk.

Great lead magnets make lead generation much, much easier.

How many lead magnets and methods of generating leads do you need?

For an established business it's best to have a few. But when you're getting going, one is the magic number.

I can't tell you the number of people I've seen going round in circles trying to build all sorts of fancy funnels with multiple lead magnets for different market segments. Add in flip-flopping between different ways of getting website visitors and trying a few offline methods too and you have a recipe for confusion and heartache.

Start with one method. Get it working well enough that you don't have to focus on it all the time. Then add another.

And don't get distracted by “experts” telling you that you need the next big tool or technique they're selling. If you can't get clients using the same core marketing methods that have worked for years then a fancy new method isn't going to save you: your problem is that your offer simply isn't attractive enough.

How many different ways of generating leads are you using right now?

How many would you say you've truly mastered?

If the answer to the latter question is zero, you need to cut down on the quantity and focus on quality.

More Clients Memorandum

This simplifies everything

Posted byIan Brodie on November 7th, 2017.

This is my third email on the vital topic of keeping your marketing and your business simple, manageable and effective.

If you've read anything about marketing over the last decade or so, you'll no doubt have heard about “lead magnets”.  Reports, videos, audios, software or other tools that you offer for free to attract potential clients.

You might have a lead magnet already. Or you might not have quite got round to making one.

The trouble is, most lead magnets aren't all that effective.

There's been a tendency in recent years to focus on “easy to consume” lead magnets. Checklists, summaries or very brief reports.

And while it's useful for your audience to be able to consume your content easily, that's far from the most important criteria.

If you want to build credibility and trust, your lead magnet has to be hugely valuable to your ideal clients.

A few years ago Pardot did a study that revealed that 63% of people had been disappointed by content they'd received. And of those, 97% said it damaged their trust with the brand, 23% said they'd never read content from that brand again and 46% said they were only slightly likely to do so.

A lead magnet isn't just there to get an email address to allow you to start follow-up marketing. It's got to create huge value for your potential clients in a way that's not readily available anywhere else.

If your lead magnet is just a list of 5 tips they could get from anyone else then it simply isn't good enough.

A powerful lead magnet can work wonders for your business. Not only does it attract email subscribers, but you can use it as follow-up from presentations. You can offer it via direct mail. You can use it with a referral strategy to multiply the number of people who enthusiastically refer you.

Most important of all, if your lead magnet is genuinely valuable, it gives you confidence in your marketing. Rather than feeling like you're being pushy or self-centred when you market, you'll know that your lead magnet focused marketing is inherently valuable for your clients.

That will give you the confidence to do more of it rather than shy away from it.

It makes all of the rest of your marketing so much simpler when you've already proven you can add value and you've already built credibility and trust.

But for that to happen you need to invest time in creating a great lead magnet. Just hacking together a few tips or republishing an old article won't cut it.

It has to be the kind of thing that blows the socks off your ideal clients.

Do that, and you're halfway to having a paying client.