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7 Mindset Hacks That Will Help You Get More Clients

Posted byuserIan Brodie on October 18th, 2011.

One of the biggest barriers many consultants, coaches and other professionals have that stands between them and achieving their business goals is their own mindset and attitude towards marketing and selling.

I can't tell you the number of people I meet who absolutely know they need to be more effective at marketing and sales – yet who feel incredibly uncomfortable doing it.

And I have to admit, I used to feel that way too.

In fact, I'm still not a “hardcore” sales person ruthlessly focused on getting the sale. My primary concern is getting the best outcome for my clients. And I'm happy that way.

But what I've found is a way of thinking about marketing and sales – mindset “hacks” – that allow me to remain fully congruent with my primary goal of helping clients, while still being effective at marketing and selling.

I'm not saying you have to share all my beliefs and ways of thinking about marketing and sales. But I have found that the more of these you internalise and believe in, the more successful you're likely to be at sales.

Mindset 1: Taking Control
A lot of consultants and coaches have a very passive mindset about marketing and selling. “If I do good work, people will hear about me”, “Word of mouth is the best marketing”, “Something will turn up, it always does”, “Once the recovery kicks in…”.

These may all be true – but if you let them dominate your thinking, it causes you to be passive. To sit back and wait for things to happen. If you want to be successful in marketing and sales you must decide to take things into your own hands: to choose Action over Hope.

Mindset 2: Focus
We’re so overwhelmed with opportunities and information these days it's very easy to lose focus. Every day I read reports of others “crushing it” with webinars, events, product launches, direct mail…

It’s so tempting to become distracted – to try to do everything. To try out every shiny new method you hear about in the hope it will magically bring you in clients without a lot of work.

But the truth is that if we split our focus and keep trying new things, we'll never get good at any of them. We'll never develop the skills or the reputation for any of them to pay off. The path to success is to pick two or three proven approaches and stick with them.

Mindset 3: The SACI Principle
This builds on the principle of focus – and it's something I've written about in detail here.

The SACI principle is that success comes not from silver bullets or one big amazing event – but from Simple Actions Consistently Implemented.

We all know we should keep in touch with our contacts and nurture our relationships. A simple action. But how many of us do it consistently? The same applies across all our marketing and sales. It's consistency that counts.

Mindset 4: Systematize
This was quite a tough principle for me to get to grips with. I love to try new things, to innovate and play around with my marketing. But once you've found something that works, you need to set it on “autopilot”. You need it to be working day in, day out without having to think about it all the time.

That doesn't mean it has to be automated – much of it can't be. But it does mean that – for example – if you've chosen to write articles or blog posts to attract clients, then you need to have a plan for what you're going to write and you need to dedicate a morning a week to doing it. Rather than just aiming to grab some time when you can and make it up as you go along.

Mindset 5: Client Focus
We all talk about being client focused. But in this context, what I mean is that when you have a sales meeting with a client, you're overriding thought should be “how can I help?” – not “how can I sell?”.

What I mean by that is if you go into the meeting (or if you're on a call with a potential client) thinking that your goal is to sell them your services, that a succesful result from that meeting is to emerge with a paying client. Then the chances are you're not going to sell.

You see, more often than not your potential client will pick up on your motivation. If they think that your goal is to sell them, then they won't trust your advice to be independent and in their best interests. They'll second guess what you're saying and resist your recommendations – unsure whether you're making them because you think it's right, or whether you're making them in your own self interest.

However, if you go into the meeting thinking your goal is to help your potential client – and to discover if working together would be the right option – then things change.

When your potential client picks up that your overriding goal is to act in their best interests – and they will pick up on it – then they'll trust your advice and recommendations. If at some point you suggest that working together would benefit them, they're an awful lot likelier to accept that suggestion as being genuine advice rather than a self interested sales pitch than they would be if they felt your goal was to get the sale.

Mindset 6: Belief in Your Value and Expertise
Hand in hand with your focus on helping clients needs to be your belief in the value of what you do and in the strength of your expertise.

The risk with client focus is that you can become subservient – just doing whatever they ask. That's not in their best interests. You need to have a strong belief in your own knowledge and capabilities – and in the value you bring them.

If you don't believe in the tremendous results your potential clients will get if they work with you, then you'll be unable to convincingly communicate that to them. You'll be tentative. You'll feel uncomfortable quoting the high fees you deserve.

In many ways, the first marketing battle is to sell your value to yourself.

Mindset 7: Make “No” An OK Answer
In other words – take the pressure off.

A lot of sales techniques involve putting subtle (or not so subtle) pressure on your potential clients. Deadlines, scarcity, the risk of others getting this deal if they hesitate.

All designed to put a little pressure on your potential client to overcome procrastination and get them to make a decision.

And they work – in their place.

But with complex, costly, intangible services, there's a lot of risk and uncertainty for your potential clients. they need to see a lot of evidence that this will pay off and that you're the right person before they'll be ready to buy.

If you pressure them before they're ready, it'll backfire. They'll feel manipulated and uncomfortable – and they won't buy.

One of the best ways to overcome this – and to build trust – is to make it clear early on that them saying “no” – choosing not to do this – is an absolutely OK option and not one you're going to fight. Going back to our Client Focus mindset – your goal is to figure out whether working together is the right thing for both sides – not to try to force them to say yes.

Take the pressure off by saying up front that it's absolutely fine if you come to the end of the meeting and either of you decides it's not the best option.

Without that pressure, your potential clients will open up much more, you'll be able to build a more trusting relationship, and you're more likely to get the sale.

Next Steps

Review some of your own beliefs about marketing and selling.

  • Are they helpful or counterproductive?
  • Would it be possible to change them?
  • What should you change them to?

Drop me a note in the comments to say what mindsets – either helpful or unhelpful – you have towards marketing and selling.

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More Clients Memorandum

Value in Advance

Posted byuserIan Brodie on October 9th, 2011.

We finished on a bit of a cliffhanger last week :)

I talked about how allowing clients to sample what you do in advance can reduce their risk – and so increase their chances of buying.

It also works to identify the highest potential clients too. Someone who makes the commitment to test you out in advance is much more likely to become a client that someone who doesn't.

So you can focus your follow-up marketing on them.

Value in Advance

There are lots of ways of doing this “Value in Advance” strategy.

The traditional approach for many consultants and coaches is the good old “free initial consultation”.

Unfortunately, because this is 1-1, it doesn't leverage your time well.

Yes, it goes “deep” and can do a lot to demonstrate your credibility and build a relationship.

But if you offer this to people “cold” as your first interaction with them, you run the risk of doing a lot of free sessions with people who aren't ideal clients or simply can't afford your services.

And in fact, many potential clients don't see this free initial consultation as the high-value session that you do. If they don't know much about you they're just as likely to worry it'll be a waste of their time or worse: you'll try to hard sell them for an hour.

My advice is to reserve your free sessions for more qualified prospects who you already know are ideally suited to be clients and have been pre-qualified in some way.

A better method is to run seminars or do presentations to small to medium sized groups. This gives you more leverage while still being able to make a strong impression on multiple people.

But, of course, it still relies on your time and physical presence.

Lead Magnets

Personally, my favourite strategy is the use of a “lead magnet”.

A lead magnet is a short report, audio CD, video, ready-reckoner, anything that helps your clients with an initial problem in an area they may later hire you in.

It's something that demonstrates your expertise and begins to build your relationship with them.

And it doesn't require you to invest your time every time a potential cllient requests one.

They can download reports, or you can get CDs easily copied and distributed for a few dollars or pounds.

Although you're not giving as much “Value in Advance” as you would be with a 1-1 session, in some ways it's a better first step for many potential clients – not quite so scary as a meeting.

And, of course, it's much more scaleable. You can reach hundreds or thousands of people without buring up all your time.

You can use lead magnets in all sorts of situations.

The obvious method is on your website as an inducement to sign up to your regular communications.

But you can also use them at networking events, for example. Instead of talking about what you do – let people sample it by giving them an audio CD of you being interviewed on a topic that would be useful to them.

All it requires is a little creative thought and any marketing method – from cold calling to doing presentations to advertising – can be enhanced by using a lead magnet.

What Do You Use?

Now, I bet this isn't the first time you've heard the lead magnet concept or something similar.

Yet few consultants and coaches use it to anywhere near it's potential.

if you're not already using a lead magnet, think about what you could produce quickly to use as one. You probably already have loads of materials you use as part of your client work that you could tweak and turn into a lead magnet.

If you already have a lead magnet – think about how you could use it more. Maybe different formats (turn a report into a video, for example). Maybe use it more ways.

But make sure you're using one.

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Marketing

A Surefire Marketing Strategy that Almost No One Ever Does

Posted byuserIan Brodie on October 5th, 2011.

Painful though a recession is, it does have its upsides.

One of those is change.

In a period of stability, established firms have the advantage. Stability means that what worked yesterday will work today. And so potential clients primarily look to firms with long track records and client references.

When turbulence hits, everything changes. What worked yesterday no longer works today. The long track records, testimonials and references count for less.

Clients want to know “what's working now?”, “what works in a recession?”. Yesterday's answers no longer seem so relevant or valuable.

In this environment a new firm with fresh ideas can thrive.

But they can't be unproven ideas.

When clients ask “what's working now?” they don't want to hear untested concepts or thoughts on what might work. They want someone to tell them what's working right now for other businesses (or individuals).

How can you tell them that?

You have to do some work. Some research. Find out what really is working right now. Analyse or interview successful businesses in your niche. Figure out what they've done that made the difference. Extract the common themes and package them into recommendations.

Seems like hard work? Good.

Because it's hard work, almost no one does it.

You can get a tremendous edge by being the one advisor in your niche who does that hard work. Who has the facts and the data to share.

If I was a local business coach, for example, what I'd do is identify 10 local businesses who were growing fast despite the recession. I'd interview the 10 business owners for 30-60 minutes – maybe face to face, maybe over the phone. I'd develop a little model of what works for these local “recession busters” and a presentation about it.

Then I'd market the hell out of it.

I'd run seminars on it. Write a report and use that as a lead magnet for the web, direct mail and telemarketing.

I'd record an audio and give it away at networking events. I'd get myself on the radio and in the local press talking about it.

I'd position myself as an authority on recession busting strategies for small businesses locally. I'd overtake the established firms.

And I'd stand out on my own.

Because almost no one does this.

No one goes that extra mile to create this kind of intellectual capital.

Everyone says they'll do anything to get more clients. But few stretch to doing the hard intellectual work of creating something valuable like this.

Are you going to do it?

You can download my free guide to doing a research project here.

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Marketing

Shock and Awe Marketing

Posted byuserIan Brodie on October 2nd, 2011.

Picture these two different scenarios:

Scenario 1:
You've done some great work for a client. They sing your praises to one of their peers – an ideal potential client for you – then give you a call to say they've done so and suggest you get in touch with them.

So what do you do?

Perhaps you call that potential client to set up a meeting? Maybe email them?

What does that do to the dynamic?

All of a sudden you've gone from someone they've had recommended to someone who's pushing. Someone trying to get a meeting with them. Someone trying to sell to them.

It's only a subtle shift. It's not like they now see you as some awful agressive salesperson.

But it is a shift. You've had to “draw down” on the favour bank established when your client recommended you.

And what are you going to do when you meet them? You have to figure out whether they need you, what they need, when, and you have to demonstrate to them that you know your stuff and they can trust you.

Feels a lot like a sales meeting to me. Probably does to the potential client too.

So bang, you're a vendor.

Scenario 2:
Exactly the same as above.

Except instead of calling them to set up a meeting you send them something instead.

Perhaps a CD or a video. Not a “showcase video”. Lord no, please not a “showcase video”.

But something useful. Something that would be really valuable to them. Something they would want to listen to or watch because of the intrinsic value it brings – not because you happen to be in it and you've asked them to look at it.

You know the sort of thing. You being interviewed on audio with 20 minutes of your best ideas on leadership. A video showing you creating a successful adwords campaign and describing the key elements. Your top tips on reducing overheads.

If you've written a book then, of course, that would work brilliantly. But if you haven't, then a CD or video is pretty easy to create. And can actually work just as well.

What's the dynamic like now?

Now you've deposited more into the favour bank rather than withdrawn. Now they've had something valuable from you that they feel grateful for – especially if it gives them something they can immediately do and get results from.

Now they've seen you're an expert. You know your stuff.

Now they want to call you.

Completely different ball game.

Isn't scenario 2 so much better than scenario 1?

And so much less painful when it comes to meeting them. No push. No feeling salesy.

But here's the catch. It takes work.

You've got to make that CD or video.

And you've got to nail your colours to the mast. No weasling around just saying what you think they want to hear when you meet them. No just reflecting back what they say. No BS.

You have to take a stand. You have to say what you think. You have to risk them disagreeing.

And you have to actually be good at what you do. You have to have some different ideas (for them). New insights (to them).

You don't have to be Michael Porter or Tom Peters or Seth Godin.

But you do have to say something they won't have heard time and time again before. You have to have something more than “don't work in the business, work on the business” or “work smarter not harder” or other overused crap. Clichés and obvious truisms aren't going to cut it.

It's going to take some courage. And some confidence.

But if you can take that step. Make that CD. Get it published properly (it'll be less than £100/$100 to get 50 of them done).

If you can have something that blows the socks off people before they even meet you. The full shock and awe treatment.

Well, you don't need me to tell you what a difference that's going to make to your results.

Are you going to do it?

Featured

Marketing

3 Critical Marketing Traps for new Coaches, Consultants and Freelancers

Posted byuserIan Brodie on September 28th, 2011.

I don't know about you, but when I went solo as a consultant/coach, my first few months were filled with excitement and terror in equal measure.

It was wonderful to know I could do anything I wanted and everything was dependent on me.

It was terrifying to know I could do anything I wanted and everything was dependent on me.

Your initial challenge as a solo professional is to land your first client. I was lucky: as a veteran consultant I knew enough people who sent work my way in the early days to buy me time to get fully established.

But I made mistakes too. Some big, some small. In particular, there were three things I wish someone had told me when I started.

Firstly, I wish someone had kicked my butt early on and told me if I wanted to succeed I needed to take action. It sounds obvious, and I wasn't filled with wishful thinking. But I was overly optimistic. Overly confident that something would turn up.

That overconfidence meant that I took the easy path. Concentrated on the interesting work I had rather than on the tougher task of getting out and winning new work.

Secondly, I wish someone had told me to swallow my pride. To reach out to more old contacts and tell them I was available. To hook up with as many people as I could – build my contact network quickly.

And finally, I wish someone had told me that when things started going right, when the clients and the money started flowing in, I should step up to the next level. Start working on longer term things that would make life easier. Get clients flowing in to me rather than me having to go out to get them.

Of course, things turned out very well in the end. But I could have got to where I am faster. I could have made things easier for myself.

If you want to get a headstart as a solo professional, avoid the mistakes many make in the early days, and set yourself on the fast track to success then head over and register for the free “Taking the Plunge” audio masterclass series.

There are 10 speakers (including me) giving their best advice and experience on the key areas you need to succeed as a solo or self employed professional. The topics covered include:

  • How to get your first paying clients (me)
  • How to get started as an independent consultant (Michael Zipursky, founder of Business Consulting Buzz – the leading website for business consultant)
  • How to “find your mojo” and turn it into a business proposition (Andrew Thorp, founder of Mojo Life)
  • Getting started as an independent coach (Gladeana McMahon, author and Chair of the Association for Coaching)
  • How to start building your business network (Heather Townsend, author of the FT Guide to Business Networking)
  • Getting started as a freelance trainer (Sharon Gaskin, founder of the Trainer's Training company)
  • Getting everything done when you're self-employed (Meg Edwards, senior coach with the David Allen company – of “Getting Things Done” fame)
  • How to keep on top of the admin needed to run a business (Helen Stothard, founder of HLS services, Virtual Assistants to coaches)
  • How to develop your business proposition (Mike Harris, author – and a guy who's built three billion dollar companies!)
  • How to manage the transition to self employment (Antoinette Oglethorpe, expert career coach for the self employed and organiser of the series).

I give it a huge recommendation for anyone either thinking of going solo, or in their first few years of working for themselves.

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Selling

Are Your Benefits Really Benefits?

Posted byuserIan Brodie on September 26th, 2011.

BenefitsI'm sure you've read many articles about the difference between Features and Benefits, and the importance of focusing on Benefits in discussions with your potential clients.

The trouble is, most of these articles are wrong.

Not completely wrong. It's just they don't go far enough.

It was brought home to me recently when I was preparing for my webinar on Tuesday with Craig Elias on Resistance Free Selling

Craig calls what I'm about to explain “setting the context” and “avoiding your clients having to do mental gymnastics”. Here's what we mean…

Normally when you learn about Features and Benefits, the explanation is that:

  • Features are the factual attributes of your product or service – what it does, how fast it goes, how many knobs it has, the steps in your process.
  • Benefits are what your clients get from those features. The results they achieve by using your services, what it means to them.

All well and good.

But here's the big question: benefits to whom?

You see, far too often we get the so-called benefits of our service by listing the features (what we do) and noting what our clients should get from them as a result.

What we fail to take into account is that these are just potential benefits. Things the client might get. Or might value.

Specific clients might not get those benefits. Let's say you're a consultant who improves the throughput and decreases the downtime of production plants. The benefit the client gets is more output from their factory.

Except that if the factory is currently running at well below capacity, increasing the capacity isn't going to give you more output.

And sometimes clients might just not value the benefit. I worked once at an airport where a fellow consultant showed them how to change their processes so they could get 1 or 2 extra flights in and out per landing bay every day. Unfortunately, as the airport was putting in planning permission to build a new terminal and citing lack of capacity as the reason why, that was certainly a benefit they didn't value at the time.

So while you can identify the potential benefits of your services in isolation, in order to know whether they're real benefits for your clients, you have to know their context. You have to know what's going on in their business.

As Craig says, you can't rely on them performing mental gymnastics to figure out whether your potential benefits will be of value to them. You have to do that thinking for or with them.

When you're marketing you need to focus in on a picture of your ideal target client, your narrow niche, to figure out what the potential benefits actually mean to them.

And when you're selling, you need to ask your potential clients questions about their situation, what problems they have, and what the impact of those issues is.Then you can see which of your potential benefits has real value in their specific situation and which to focus on discussing.

It's this transition from potential to real benefits that makes the difference between your clients seeing you as a salesperson pushing something he's not sure he wants to a trusted advisor helping him with his biggest issues.

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More Clients Memorandum

Justin Bieber’s marketing secrets

Posted byuserIan Brodie on September 25th, 2011.

OK, OK, I realise Justin Bieber's not everyone's musical cup of tea – but there's a lot we can learn from how he's risen to fame.

Now I'm not talking about the marketing machine surrounding him today. I'm talking about how he started out.

He recorded videos of himself performing and posted them on youtube. He built a fan base by giving his “target clients” a sample of what he could do. Eventually his manager spotted him and it took off from there.

It's what Amazon do too with the Kindle. Rather than making you buy a book sight unseen, you get to download a couple of free chapters first to see if you like it.

All the best selling iPhone apps do the same. The free version of Angry Birds has been downloaded over 2 billion times – triggering hundreds of millions of dollars of sales for the business.

But it's not just an internet age phenomenon. Retail stores like Costco have been giving free samples of their food away for decades to shoppers as they browse the store.

Using free samples works partly because of reciprocation – you got something for free so you feel obliged to give something back.

But it mainly works because it reduces risk. You get to experience what you're considering buying to see if it's any good – whether it works for you.

In the world of consulting and coaching there are far too many “best kept secrets”. Far too many brilliant coaches or genius consultants who scrabble around for work.

And one of the key reasons is that no one knows how good they are.

They don't allow people to sample their work before they buy. They don't want to “give away the store”.

But from a client's perspective, it means that hiring them is a big risk. They don't know exactly what they'll be getting. And they don't look any different to all the other coaches and consultants who say they're great too.

So how do you “do a Bieber”? How do you allow your potential fans to sample what you do before they buy?

You've got a week to think it over!

In next Sunday's email I'll be sharing some successful and less successful models for how consultants and coaches can do this.

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More Clients Memorandum

Revealed: my top 3 performing emails

Posted byuserIan Brodie on September 18th, 2011.

Being a bit geeky, one of the things I like to do is analyse data. And one analysis I often return to is effective email subject lines.

Now the ultimate measure of the performance of an email is how much new business I get as a result of my emails. But that can be tricky to track down to individual emails.

And in truth, the effect of the emails is culmulative rather than one email suddenly causing someone to pick up the phone and hire me or buy a product.

So what I often analyse is email open rates. What percentage of people who receive each email actually open it. So it's a measure of the performance of the email subject line rather than the email as a whole.

If I look at the emails you've been getting every Sunday from me there are some pretty interesting results that may help you when you're trying to write emails to get them opened by your potential clients.

Generally speaking, email open rates go down over time.

The first time I email someone after they sign up for my newsletter there's a high chance they'll open it and read it. Over time, people's interests and priorities change so the open rates go down.

What I looked for was email subject lines that “bucked the trend”. That got significantly higher opens that the email that preceded them.

Here are my three best performing subject lines using this criteria:

“5 crippling beliefs that keep consultants and coaches in the poor house”

“How to escape marketing overwhelm”

“Business Development romance in practice”

Why did they perform so well?

The first two are obvious, I think.

The first promises to reveal some information on “crippling beliefs” likely to “keep you in the poor house” if you hold them. The language is strong, and the benefit is clear: avoid these beliefs to avoid ending up poor.

The second promises to show you how to avoid a problem I believe a large number of professionals suffer from: being overwhelmed with their marketing. It's likely to hit a raw nerve with many people and again, the word “overwhelm” is a strong one.

The third one is a bit of a puzzle. It doesn't quite fit into the pattern of promising a strong benefit.

My belief is that the high open rate is driven by curiosity. People wondering what on earth “business development romance” actually is.

So three quite different types of subject line. One on avoiding potential pain people could be worried about. One on alleviating pain they could well be already feeling. And one arousing their curiosity.

When you come to write your own emails, see if you can work some of those themes into your subject lines.

And feel free to “steal” my subject lines too and tweak them for your own use. The “5 crippling beliefs” one was actually adapted from a headline on a Copyblogger blog post.

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More Clients Memorandum

Self promotion sucks!

Posted byuserIan Brodie on September 11th, 2011.

I was talking to my friend David Seaman a while back (that's business coach and lecturer David Seaman, not goalkeeper David Seaman) about how difficult it is for most people to promote themselves.

He highlighted how most people have no problem promoting the business they work for or its products.

But when they start working for themselves and selling their services, they feel incredibly uncomfortable about promoting themselves.

A bit of a problem when your business's only product is you and what you do.

Perhaps it's the way most of us were brought up – not to boast or show off. And personally, I've never really got on with people who insist on telling the world how great they are – so it's not something I want to do myself.

So when you are your business, how can you promote it without the discomfort of self promotion?

The answer for me is to create “stuff” and promote that.

Or more accurately, to offer people the value in my “stuff”.

For example, the my 21 Word Email report or the 5 Day Authority Challenge I run.

While I may feel uncomfortable telling people about all the things I could do for them, my track record and my client successes – I have no problem telling them about what's in the report or the challenge and how it can help them.

By focusing on the thing rather than on me, it doesn't feel boastful.

But the end result is the same. If they work through the report or do the challenge, then it's highly likely they'll find it valuable and it will raise my credibility.

In fact, the end result is better. I've proven my expertise, rather than just claimed it.

This is something you can do too if you feel uncomfortable promoting yourself.

Create something that's of incredible value to your potential clients and that proves how good you are and promote that instead.

Much easier. Much more effective.

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Strategy

Build Trust and Credibility Before You Ever Meet People

Posted byuserIan Brodie on September 9th, 2011.

I had a strange experience earlier this week.

A potential client dropped me an email and set up a time to talk. I followed my usual process and asked him to drop me a note with various details about his business and the key challenges he was facing.

When he called, the first thing he said was:

“It's funny, I've seen you so many times on video and heard you on webinars, it feels like I'm talking to an old friend”.

How great is that? We've never met or even spoken, yet the feeling he's getting as we start to speak is one of friendship.

Getting people to know, like and trust you has been a staple of business development for service businesses for as long as I care to remember.

The problem, of course, is that everyone does it.

In the competitive race, once the starter pistol goes, we all rush to build our credibility with potential clients and get them to like and trust us enough so that they're ready to buy. The one who inches over the finish line first wins.

But what if you began with a headstart? What if before the starter pistol fired, you were 50 yards down the track? Half way to your potential client knowing, liking and trusting you enough to hire you. So far ahead that your competitors will only have just got started by the time the client feels comfortable enough to buy from you.

That's the power of audio and visual media.

You can build credibility with the written word. But for that “know, like and trust” factor that we need if they're going to hire us for a complex and costly service – they need to see and hear us in action.

Podcasts, webinars, video on your website aren't going to get you all the way there – but they're going to give you a critical headstart vs your competitor.

If you use them, of course.

Do you?