Like to attract and engage more clients with greater ease?
Recently, I was engaged by a national career development organisation to help mentor and coach their business clients and help them launch their ventures and increase the success of their businesses.
What I noticed working with these aspiring owners and entrepreneurs was that at the core of their business they all seemed to face one common problem and challenge:
‘How to promote, attract and market themselves more effectively’
Marketing and self-promotion is the at the heart of any successful business, but the rules of engagement have changed as more and more businesses go online and as customers are inundated with offers and competition.
So how do we stand out from the crowd?
How can we learn to dominate our market niche?
How do we become better at attracting and engaging more clients?
Well, maybe we might gain some insight from management and marketing guru Peter Drucker who once said:
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him/her and sells itself.”
The Reality as We Know It
The reality is that when many of us start our businesses we are great at being the practitioner. We often have years of refining our skills and talents in providing the service or product whether that be offering massage treatments, doing therapy with patients or cutting hair and offering beauty treatments. But many of us were never taught how to promote, share and engage people to buy and take up our offering.
While passion for our idea, product or concept will get us so far, how we actively engage our clients and customers in the buying process is fundamental to success whether we are doing an online or traditional marketing campaign.
So, in today’s blog I simply wanted to share 5 dynamic and transformational insights to help you engage and win more clients.
Embracing and applying these inner-shifts in your approach to marketing, promotion and sales can be one of the most rewarding decisions you will ever make.
The 5 Master Insights
Master Insight #1: Be of Greater Service
It may sound simple, but at the core of all conscious and authentic sales, marketing and promotion is a deep desire to serve our customers. When we are focused on serving and adding value to clients, we unconsciously take the focus of ourselves, our fears and limitations and instead activate a deeper level of consciousness that allows us to influence and engage our customers more effectively.
Therefore, one of the greatest questions that you can ask yourself before a client meeting, or before entering into a pre-sales conversation or consultation is:
“How can I be of service? How can I help?”
The greater the value you deliver, the more people will pay you for your service/solution. As a rule of thumb, we should be focusing on delivering 10x more value to the customer than what they pay.
Master Insight #2: Learn to Sell Yourself First
Have you ever walked into a retail shop to find a sales person who didn’t know their product? Have you ever had someone try to sell your something that they didn’t believe in themselves?
At it’s essence all selling and promotion is an exchange of energy. When you believe in yourself and your product or service fully and completely, then your clients and prospects pick up on that energy unconsciously and are therefore more willing and open to buy for you. It goes without saying then that …
“You can’t expect others to buy from you until you have fully sold yourself”
As an example of this, many years ago, when I first started coaching business owners I would often make appointments with businesses that were not in my area of expertise. Whether it was a restaurant or a Chinese medicine practitioner or Naturopath, I would often arrive at the appointment 10 minutes earlier. As I sat in the car meditating and focusing on a positive outcome for both the business and the owners I would brainstorm and write a list of at least 10-20 ways that I knew without a shadow of doubt that I could help them.
Taking 10 minutes to create that list was one of the most powerful exercises I could do as it gave me the confidence and reinforced my belief that ‘I could help them’ and that ‘what I had to offer was of great value’.
Master Insight #3: Value Yourself
It still surprises me the number of business owners who just don’t seem to value the service or product that they provide. While other less competent and less professional businesses offer a sub-standard product or service and seem to thrive financially.
Value is a perception and is held in the eye of the beholder. But as business owners we are the ones that need to identify our gifts, strengths, talents and uniqueness and then message and promote that in the world with appropriate reward and value. This means shifting our perception and understanding:
“That the more people pay, the more attention they pay”
So, if you have been having challenges with troublesome customers who don’t value you, don’t pay on time or never seem to have the funds to pay for your service or product, it could be time to sack them and put your energy into those that will. To do so means reframing your inner-value and beliefs by:
Not giving away your service or product for free
Not discounting – but finding ways to add more value or include bonuses
Being willing to group your services or sessions in programs or packages and selling them at a higher price-point (rather than settling for one-on-one sessions)
Introducing up-front payment or automatic payment plans that make it easy to buy from you and that take the head ache out of cancellations and changes
Master Insight #4: Help Them Solve Their Pain
At the end of the day, every business is in the business of helping customers and clients solve their problems. The greater the problem and the greater the pain, the more people are willing to pay.
Take for example the moment that you have a sever tooth ache and need to get a root canal treatment. How quickly would you want your pain to end? How much would you be willing to pay a dentist to remove the pain immediately?
To engage and attract more clients and customers we need to become experts in their problems. We need to arm ourselves with the insights, tools and marketing collateral that helps us connect with them and share our values in a way that encourages them to say ‘Yes, I need that now’.
If you don’t know your client’s problems, go out and interview them, survey them, run a focus group and get feedback or scope the numerous forums and review sites on the internet. You’ll soon get an idea of what people most want and need.
Making a list of your customers top 10 problems and then writing about how you solve those is one of the most effective tools you can create to reinforce your value in any marketing, social media or sales strategy.
Master Insight #5: Everyone is Not Your Customer
I had a young lady, an artist, come into a coaching session recently who was launching a new range of creative hand-made and hand-painted clutch bags and purses. When I asked her who her market was – the answer was EVERYONE!
While we may believe our market is everyone, the reality is that for most small and medium size businesses, when we focus on EVERYONE – we end up with NO ONE. Unless you have large pockets and unlimited marketing budget, trying to sell and promote to everyone is a recipe for failure.
The more clearly you define your target audience or tribe, the more successful you will be. Clarity has great power and enables us to refine an define our marketing strategy for optimum success. Best of all, in this day of the Internet, finding, attracting and working with a specific niche is easier than ever.
Many business owner are afraid that when they market, promote or sell themselves that they will be rejected.
That’s why how you look at rejection needs to change. In fact the most successful businesses in the world are not afraid of ‘rejecting the people who are NOT their ideal customer.’
Fashion label Abercrombie and Fitch for example know that their apparel is for the young university student who believes that they are good looking and rich. They are not afraid to promote that, even at the expense of ‘rejecting’ the millions of other students who don’t fall in that category.
So what do you and your business stand for?
Who is your ideal target customer and audience? How can you deliver exceptional value to them?
These questions and the five principles above could be the key for helping you awaken and engage more clients and business this year.
Just remember, that we are all in the business of taking our clients and customers on a journey. The more value we can add and the clearer we can communicate our value to our customers, the more our business will grow and prosper.
Les Price is a transformational business coach, author, speaker and intuitive. If you’re looking to grow your business, attract more clients and create a visionary business that thrives, but don’t know where to start, or need guidance and insight to help improve your results, make sure to contact our office and book your coaching discovery session. Les will work with you to craft a plan for realising your business goals and help you move beyond the limitations and challenges that may be keeping you stuck and held back. Contact our office to organise your Coaching Discover session.
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