So last week we talked about how your best clients are committed clients: the ones who really believe in you and your approach for doing things.

They're the ones who'll keep coming back for more, and who'll stick through temporary ups and downs and roadblocks.

And I promised that this week we'd talk about how to turn potential clients into true believers.

My experience of it anyway.

So the first thing is that you need to start with people who are predisposed to your way of thinking.

What I mean is that if you're a leadership trainer who teaches people how to be better leaders in a kind of democratic, listen-to-the-team sort of way then it's best to start with potential clients who like and believe in that kind of approach. Best not to start with people who believe in individualistic or charismatic leadership.

I know that sounds kind of obvious, but it has implications that go back to what we talked about last week.

If your marketing follows the traditional path of focusing exclusively on the end results you help people get (improved leadership, more sales etc.) and not how you help them get those results, then you'll attract a broad church of people.

Some will be predisposed to liking your particular approach. Others won't.

So in the long run, it really does pay to be clear in your marketing exactly who your stuff is for and who it's not for. And to be open about the principles behind how you do what you do.

And if you teach those principles as part of your marketing, so much the better.

The people who buy in will stay and feel they're getting tons of value. The people who don't buy in will leave.

But just starting with predisposed people isn't enough. You have to strengthen their beliefs and direct them towards your particular approach.

In other words, it's not enough that they believe that democratic leadership is best. They have to believe that your particular brand of democratic leadership is the best of the best.

(Or whatever it is you do, of course).  

That means you need to give your approach a name. Something they can grab on to and talk about. Like Value-Based Marketing for example. Or the Growth-Share Matrix, or Principle Centred Leadership.

And you need to show them why your particular approach is the very best way to get the results they want in the way they want to get them.

So with Value-Based Marketing, I show how giving value in advance gets the attention of your ideal clients (who normally filter out marketing messages) and builds the credibility and trust needed for someone to be ready to buy.

And that means you don't have to be pushy and aggressive – something few of my folks want.

Your approach has got to “make sense” to your audience. There has to be a clear chain of logic they can see where if they do A, B will happen. If B happens, C will happen. And if C happens, they'll get the end result they're looking for.

There can't be any fuzziness. It can't be a generic “do this because it's good”.

It needs to be crystal clear how following your particular approach leads inevitably to the results they're looking for in a way they couldn't get doing it any other way.

Now I know that sounds like a tough ask.

But if you think about it, surely the reason why you have an approach you use with clients is because you believe it's the best?

So really, it's just a matter of surfacing the reasons why you do things the way you do and making them clear to potential clients.

Illustrating them with examples. Opening up the black box to show how they work.

Perhaps even backing them up with studies and research that shows how and why they work.

A bit of work. But worth it.

Because that real belief leads to committed clients.