Recently I shared that I am committing to the niche of Coaches, but for 12 years, I didn’t have a niche and brought my business to multiple 6-figures anyway!
So if you’re stressing out because marketing gurus are insisting you niche or perish, take a breath. Let me share when NOT to pick a niche, why this is so important to the growth of your business, and what to do instead in order to get clients faster.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could cut your marketing activities in half, and get twice as many clients or more? What if marketing could be simple and fun?
Impossible? Well no, not really.
As it is, for most business owners marketing is frustrating. Plus every day you find a gazillion new strategies to follow. The worst thing is when you try to do it all – Facebook ads, speaking, blogging, networking, webinars, podcasting, etc. – and none of them produce the results you want.
The post below is really awesome, but also really long. If you don’t have time to read it, I’ve put together a quick Action Guide that shows you how to use this strategy. It’s free and you can get it when you click this link.
I totally get this… I’ve been there too. I’ve found a solution that I’m going to share it with you. You should know though, I paid a steep price for it – the price of my health.
I have a solid business today, on target to earn multiple six figures, but it wasn’t always like this. In fact, the first two years totally sucked.
I was working to the point of exhaustion, always wondering where my next client would come from. And… I got sick. I no longer had a choice – I had to stop working all those hours. But I also had to feed myself. Getting sick forced me to figure out how to stop being so scattered. This is when I discovered a system to market less and attract more clients.
Let’s dig into it.
Let’s think about this… in a medical emergency, one of the first things the doctor will do is get control of the bleeding. Until the bleeding is under control, other treatments won’t do much good.
Similarly, to stop overwhelm in business, we have to get control of the bleeding: the bleeding of your time and energy.
If you were to discover the most brilliant strategy today, but you’re totally exhausted and overwhelmed, it’s not going to do you any good.
One big marketing trap: trying to do it all. Facebook ads, blogging, networking, speaking… and on. We may feel worse when we observe others who seem like they’re doing everything without any problem. It makes us think that we that we have to try to do it all. And even worse, we try to do it all ourselves.
You see an expert promoting a marketing strategy that promises a compelling result – something you really want. Then once you get into the strategy, you realize there is a huge learning curve to mastering this new skill, and frustration sets in.
It happens, and you don’t even notice it while it’s happening. It starts with one opt-in, then another, and another. And before you know it, you’re getting 20+ emails a day, each one pulling you in a different direction. Each one sucking your time, talking you into a new marketing tactic and taking you down another rabbit hole. Not to mention that if you try to implement all these things, they take an enormous amount of time, effort and energy.
And before you’ve finished implementing any of them… BING! Another 15 emails have arrived, with strategies that look way more attractive than the frustrating learning curve you’re currently in, so you jump ship and move on to something new.
You consider unsubscribing… but how do you know which strategies to abandon, and which to keep? By the end of Step 2, you’ll know exactly what to unsubscribe from and I’ll give you a tool that will help you do it in 2 minutes or less.
Remember, like in a medical emergency, we’re going to start by controlling the bleeding first.
Here’s what you do. Create two columns on a piece of paper and in the first column write down:
Here is how this list generally looks:
For most people that list is at least 10 items long. And the problem is that if you are a solo professional or a very small company, and if you are focusing on more than 4 of those activities, chances are you’re not doing them well. If you’re focusing on more than 6, you’re probably totally overwhelmed. If you’re focusing on 6, and trying to learn 6 more… you’ll just go completely nuts.
So now, take a deep breath.
Getting this list out of your head and onto paper is the first step to taking your energy back from being so scattered and worried. At least we’ve found out what’s going on and what overwhelms you.
Now let’s fix it.
Now you’re going to further focus in the marketing activities that will bring you clients. Great clients.
In the second column, write down the names of your top 10 clients. Only write down the names of clients who are great examples of your ideal client. They are the ones who are easy to work with, appreciate your expertise, and pay you on time without haggling.
It’s important to NOT include any client who makes you cringe or gives you a sinking feeling in your stomach. This personalized plan is going to help you multiply your results many times over, so make sure you’re multiplying the right clients!
When you complete your list, it should look like this:
Now, consider where each client came from. Draw a line from each client to the marketing effort that brought them to you.
This will quickly reveal the top marketing strategies you should focus on. Based on my example image, where do you think I should be putting 50-80% of my time?
So, speaking is my most effective strategy. Referrals also brought in several clients, so that will get attention as well. Both of those strategies are working, so it makes sense to focus on doing more of them, right?
List which activities you identified that work best for you.
Now some of you may not have enough clients (or any clients) to do this exercise and come up with results you feel confident with. Here’s what you can do. Take your results from Step 1 and consider the following:
The marketing activities that meet all 3 criteria above are the ones that will go on your marketing plan.
One last thing… remember in step one, all those emails that are coming in and pulling you off track? The list you just created of your top marketing strategies will also show you which lists to stay subscribed to and which ones to ditch. Stay on the lists that support and align with your top strategies, and unsubscribe from the rest.
A great free tool to do this is www.unroll.me. You go to one site, enter your email address and password and it detects all of your subscriptions. In about 2 minutes you can unsubscribe from everything that is pulling you off course!
Now you’re going take the top-performing marketing strategies that you identified in the previous step, and get crystal clear about the exact actions you need to take.
Your personalized marketing plan will consist of just 2-4 marketing activities, and how many of them you are going to do each day, week or month.
First, list your most effective marketing strategies and translate them into actions that are 100% under your control. Let me show you what I mean…
Strategy: Speaking engagements
Action: Make inquiries to groups and conferences about speaking
Strategy: Referrals
Action: Ask for a referral
This is an absolutely critical step that can massively change your results. I’ll give you a real-life example of the difference this makes.
I struggled for years to get speaking gigs. Every month I put on my plan, “Book speaking gigs.” And every month, I booked exactly zero.
It was because I put a strategy on my list, NOT an activity. Once I realized this, I changed my plan to “Make 15 speaking inquiries per month”. And immediately started booking gigs.
When you list strategies or results instead of actions, you are setting yourself up to fail, because they are dependent on some outside force (like a group’s organizer saying “yes” to book me). Your plan must outline exactly what you need to do in terms of what you have 100% control over.
Next, decide how many of the actions you are going to take on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Your basic plan should look something like this:
How do you decide on the number of actions you should take? Consider a few things:
Let’s say you currently do 5 speaking inquiries per month, and you book 1 speaking gig each month. Your goal is to increase your results to booking 4 speaking gigs per month. You would want to do 20 speaking inquiries each month.
If you don’t have the exact numbers of how much marketing activity you’ve done in the past, then take your best guess. Go on to the next step and you’ll see how to quickly turn your best guesses into great results.
At this point you have a customized plan that is really tight, clear, and ready to implement.
The implementation phase is where things start to really happen in your business… but only if you make implementation a priority. And the truth is, with so many demands on a business owner’s time, it’s easy to let it slip through the cracks. Take this as an example –
A client said recently, “I need more clients.”
I said, “Great. Tell me about the marketing activities you’ve been doing lately.”
Her reply was, “I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been able to squeeze in marketing.”
From an outside perspective, it’s easy to see the error in the thinking here, but the reality is that this happens all the time in the life of an entrepreneur.
Here are two suggestions to make sure you get your marketing done…
First, set appointments on your calendar to do your marketing, and have a “no matter what” attitude about using this time get your marketing done. Turn off your email during this time, and your phone if at all possible, and don’t reschedule the time!
Good to note: To get a jump start on my marketing plan, I always book more time in my calendar for business building activities on the first week of the month. The calendar image is an example of how I block my time on the first week of the month only. The rest of the month I only need to do about 1 hour of activity per week.
Second, track your progress. Tracking is a motivator, because it shows you what you’ve accomplished. Plus, it shows you what is still left to do, so you can schedule accordingly. And from your tracking, you can develop a very accurate formula for how to get all of the clients and income you want.
So what should you track? At the most basic level, you want to track activities and results.
When in doubt, track a little more than you think is necessary. It’s better to have the option to dismiss some data as irrelevant than it is to wish you had more data.
For those of you who did the first steps and got a clear direction for your marketing based on past successes, tracking keeps you on track with actually implementing your marketing plan and growing your results.
For those of you who had to make your “best guess” for your marketing plan, tracking is just as important. Over time, tracking will give you a crystal clear path to follow because it shows you exactly what works and what doesn’t.
It’s easy to confuse being busy with being profitable. Or being well-known with being profitable.
But that’s the great thing about tracking and numbers: they are unemotional. They tell you the truth. They will clearly tell you if you’re on the right track, or need to change something.
After just a few months, you’ll have a formula that will let you know exactly how to plug a certain number of activities into your calendar, and have a predictable number of clients each month.
For instance, let’s take the plan I developed earlier in this blog where the marketing plan is to simply do 15 speaking inquiries and 30 referral asks per month. Let’s say I implement the plan for 3 months and (because I’m tracking my results) I know I’m booking 3 gigs per month, receiving 2 referrals per month and earning on average $8,000 per month.
If I want to double my results, I can simply double my activity levels. Triple my results? Triple the activity.
Creating a formula to accurately predict and control your results is pretty great, but I bet you looked at the suggestion to double or triple your activity and realized that, at some point, you’re going to run out of time.
You’re right. That’s why there is one more step to further multiply your results with less effort.
To multiply your results, every activity you do needs to be systematized and connected with your other marketing activities. And when this is in place, the results from your efforts will skyrocket.
Here’s how the multipliers of leverage and systems my top marketing strategy – speaking:
Multiplier #1: Systematize the booking process.
Booking speaking gigs can be very time consuming, so I implemented a powerful 3-step process to quickly identify and book gigs. This saves a ton of time, and results are fantastic. (by the way, in my upcoming webinar, I’m going to share this 3-step process for getting all the local speaking gigs you want … it’ll knock your socks off so keep your eyes peeled for it!)
Multiplier #2: Leverage speaking events to create multiple business-building outcomes.
The presentation is a structured system that leverages the speaking opportunity to get the following results:
Book more speaking gigs. The presentation include an opportunity for the participants to give referrals to other groups who need guest speakers.
Build list. The presentation structure also ensures I get every contact in the room, every time. After the gig, I have systemized follow up so no contacts ever fall through the cracks.
Generate leads. Even in groups where they don’t allow an overt sales offer, the presentation structure I follow generates leads from every audience. And again, the follow up system is in place so no leads are lost.
Multiplier #3: Leverage other marketing channels to generate future clients.
The contacts generated from speaking gigs aren’t always ready to buy right away, so I nurture them by including them in my e-newsletter list where they receive sales offers and valuable content. The content comes from my blog, so now the blog content is doing two jobs – 1. It keeps my website alive and gets some organic search engine love and attention, and 2. Serves to build long-term relationships with the contacts I get from speaking.
This system takes very little time to implement, and smoothly integrates and leverages several marketing strategies.
To multiply the results of your personalized marketing plan, for each activity ask yourself:
Now that you’ve got this great new tool, it may feel a little strange and unfamiliar, and it will probably take a little bit of practice. If right now you are in massive overwhelm and following a gazillion different strategies, it may take you anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to untangle yourself from some of those activities. But don’t worry. At least now you have a plan to follow. This gives you a way to laser focus on just the 2-4 marketing activities that actually work.
Making these changes may be uncomfortable, but you have a choice: you can either continue with your overwhelm by chasing after whatever strategy your email spits out today, or you can do what successful entrepreneurs do… they focus, identify what’s working, and then follow it religiously.
Recently I attended a presentation and decided I’d like to speak with the presenter about possibly hiring her.
I said, “I’ve been thinking about hiring someone like you, can I get your information?”
She said, “Why don’t we just get together to brainstorm over coffee?”
I accepted her offer, but it’s important to note that if she had told me that the next step was to have a conversation about options for working together, I would have said yes. Or if she’d said that the initial consultation is $500, I would have given her my credit card.
She missed an easy close.
Running a business is hard enough some days, so make sure you’re prepared to take the easy wins when they come your way!
Here are a few do’s and don’ts to help you when these excellent opportunities come your way:
DO be prepared for a prospect who is ready to hire you now. Have an abbreviated sales process ready to go for this opportunity!
DON’T skip the process altogether. Ready buyers become the best clients when you take a little time to clarify their goals and expectations.
DO move quickly. If someone says, “I want to hire you,” let them! Find out their timeline and then get terms sorted out – yes, that includes payment – ASAP.
DON’T bog down the process by worrying that before they hire you, a prospect needs to know more about how you do what you do. Or they need to know all the program options and pricing. Or they need the history of your company and how it’s different from other companies. They have a need, so simply recommend the best option, and get hired.
DO have an easy way for them to pay you immediately. Once someone has made the financial investment, their commitment is solid. Delaying this is one of the top reasons a hot prospect fizzles out.
DON’T be afraid that you’re rushing a prospect who wants to hire you quickly. You’re only rushing if you’re trying to push your agenda over theirs. Trust yourself. Moving fast to serve a prospect’s immediate need is not rushing them; it is serving them at the highest level.
And you want to know the best part? Now that you’re aware this can happen, and you are clear about how to successfully navigate them, you’re going to start noticing these opportunities popping up more often.
You’re welcome!
This is a question I get asked a lot, and the simple answer is to raise them whenever you want (it’s your business, after all!).
You don’t need a new certification. You don’t need 2 more years of experience. You don’t need to build a new website.
And you certainly don’t need approval from anyone.
As Nike says, “Just do it.”
But in case you’re like 100% of my clients 😉 … know that it’s completely normal to feel resistance to raising your prices.
Let’s go through some guidelines and strategies together to help you get clear about when, why and how to raise your prices. (Be sure to read to the end for a tip to make the whole process easier!)
• You are at or close to capacity with client appointments in your calendar.
• Prospects tell you they would have paid more.
• You’re starting to resent the time you’re spending with clients.
• You realize your pricing model won’t allow you to make the income you want.
Before I go into the why and how of changing your pricing, I want to be clear about something. Adjusting your pricing doesn’t mean charging a sky-high price for your services. One great way to get more income out of your time is to look at different delivery models, like creating knowledge products or group programs to supplement or replace one-on-one work.
With that being said, don’t be afraid to charge a premium for your time.
Why raise your prices?
• Reduce your stress level around money so you can take care of yourself and continue making a difference through your work
• To model a healthy relationship with money for your clients and customers (everyone has money issues!)
• Your clients will engage more fully and see better results when they are more invested financially
That last one always struck me as strange, but I’ve seen it prove out time and time again. Think about it. If you paid $5 for a personal trainer to meet you at the gym twice a week, how motivated would you be to show up? Now what if you paid $2400 for 3 months for the same personal trainer? At which price point are you more likely to show up and, consequently, get better results?
Same goes for your clients.
How do you raise your prices?
1. Adopt a philosophy of generosity. Instead of approaching pricing from the mindset of “how much can I get from people,” I highly recommend a different question: “What pricing will make me feel 100% free to generously give to my clients without resentment or feeling like I have to charge extra if I invest a little extra time with them?”
2. Ignore what people think. Or rather, what you THINK other people think. The truth is, people do not wonder about how you came up with your pricing. They don’t. Really. I mean it.
Just as you don’t quiz the clerk at Starbuck’s about their exorbitant latte prices, prospects are wrapped up in their own lives and trust you know how to run your business and set your prices.
3. Create a communication plan for existing and new clients. This is both the most difficult and most important step. But once you have the timeline for rollout and the words to express your value, then everything else flows.
How do you make raising your prices MUCH easier?
Have a clear marketing plan, compelling messaging and a simple sales process. What people will pay for your services depends significantly on the value you establish up front. With a clear marketing plan to establish credibility with prospects, compelling messaging to make them say “I need YOU” and an sales process that consistently closes the sale, by the time you’re discussing pricing with a prospect, the investment isn’t much of an issue. This happens for my clients and me all the time.
One last thought… give yourself raises on a consistent basis. In the corporate world, we could depend on cost-of-living increases and promotions. It was structured and determined by the corporate machine.
When you run your own business, you only have yourself to depend on for increasing your income. Don’t be afraid to get paid well for your gifts and talents. You’re worth it!
Thanks for reading! If you’d like individual mentorship on how to raise your prices and communicate your value, please get on the calendar for a time to talk! http://marycravets.com/breakthroughwithmary
Believe it or not (in some ways) it’s already 2017.
2016? That is SO last year.
Because in most businesses, there’s a time gap between doing work and getting results from that work. Usually a 60-120 day delay.
The activity you’re doing now? Expect to see results around January.
This delay holds true all year long, but becomes most apparent in January. When the only sound in your office is crickets, because you decided to wind down your year when things started getting hectic in October.
So…it’s decision time.
Are you going to get focused and serious during this crucial time, and have 2017 roll in on a wave of results? Or are you going to wind down, and in January essentially have to start over from a dead stop?
Now is the time to get serious about what kind of year 2017 will be. Here are 5 tips to keep your momentum going and make 2017 a success:
The truth is achieving your goals takes discipline. It takes planning and saying no and making hard trade-offs.
But keep in mind: achieving your goals is exhilarating and positively impacts lives far beyond your own.
In other words… it’s worth it. Put in the work. You won’t regret it.
After giving a prospective client a proposal for my services, and she said “If I look at your pricing, and the actual hours of your time I get, well, it seems like you get paid an awful lot per hour!”
Without missing a beat, we dove into her concerns and she agreed on the spot to sign on as a client. My biggest client to date.
As I hung up the phone, I thought, “WOW. A few years ago, her comment about my pricing would have totally freaked me out.”
What did I say to close the deal? Well, first of all, let’s travel back in time to how I would have responded earlier in my career. I would have started to justify or stammer or lower my prices (or all three) and it would have sounded something like this:
“Well uh, you see you have to understand that I, uh, work from home and, um have to pay for my own insurance and computer and taxes and I, you know, live in California where the cost of living is really high and, you know, I charge less than my competition, so you’re really getting a deal actually but well, I guess, if you want me to give you my best deal, why don’t we take another $1,500 off…”
Groan…
Now, compare that hot mess to how I responded this time:
“It’s so interesting that you bring that up and there are two things going on here that are opportunities for us. The first has to do with us working together and the second has to do directly with your business.
First, I’m glad you brought this up so I can clarify everything you’re getting in this program, and it goes way beyond the hours we spend directly working together. You will also get email access to review any documents or promotional materials you’d like feedback on. Your staff can also have access to me and be included in any of our coaching calls. In between formal calls, if you need support through a specific challenge, you have access. What you get is a dedicated coach so you can meet your goals faster, because you don’t have to figure it all out yourself.
Which brings us to the second opportunity. Why aren’t you charging more? If my prices seem high, I’m betting there is an opportunity in our work together to increase what you’re charging. You’re a 25-year expert running a million-dollar company – why aren’t you charging more? That’s one of the first things we should work on.”
Feel free to use this as a model the next time a prospective client hints that you’re charging too much for your expertise!