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Posts Tagged ‘Bernadette Doyle’
Are You Making This Marketing Mistake?
A few years ago, I met one of the best known ‘sales experts’ in the UK. He had authored several books, and provided motivational training for blue-chip companies in a career spanning decades. If you’ve worked in the sales world for any time, you have almost certainly heard of him. Now in the ‘golden years’ of his career, he could sit back and let the opportunities come to him, couldn’t he? Actually no.
"We never kept a database, Bernadette" he privately confessed to me. So at great expense he had to hire and manage a sales team to set appointments for him. If he had cultivated a list over the years, he would have had prospective clients knocking on his door. "But my business is different!" Ok, so you’re a consultant – and you only work with 3-4 large clients each year. Surely you don’t need a list of 1,000 do you? Maybe not, but any list will give you huge leverage.
If you run a training course, you could offer ‘tips’ to attendees, which you mail, or email after the training. Make sure you keep in touch because even though they may not have buying authority right now, some of those attendees will get promoted, some will move to other departments, some of them will move to different companies, or even different industries.
Several business opportunities have come to me this way over the years. Or you’re a massage therapist – and you can only see 12 clients a week, so you think you don’t need to have a huge list either. No therapist who has been in business for more than 2 years should ever have an empty appointment book. Just this week I heard the sad tale of an experienced complementary therapist who had worked with over 1,000 clients. Business had mainly come her way via word of mouth and referral. But then, for a variety of reasons, she had to stop working with clients for a couple of months and had lost momentum.Now she was struggling to re-establish her client base to its previous levels.
"Well, why not send a mailer to your past clients," was the advice. "Ah", she replied, "I didn’t actually keep a list of addresses of my clients". So she was basically starting from scratch all over again. This sounds so obvious, but you would be surprised just how many people I have seen make this fundamental marketing mistake.
Keep a list of all your past clients, and if you come up to a lean period, you can simply send a mailer to them. It doesn’t have to be a hard sell, just a simple reminder that you’re available, and perhaps a special offer. I guarantee you will get a response from people who have been meaning to call you for weeks or months, but never got around to it – until you contacted them.
Action Steps
1. Commit to collecting names and contact details of every single person who expresses an interest in your business. Look at every current activity you do to market your business and make sure that there is a way of capturing details of people – even if they’re not ready to buy right away.
2. Follow up and stay in touch. Yes, I know you’re really busy and don’t have time to follow up with everyone, but there are ways of following up with people that don’t have to be a huge drain on your time or money. An email newsletter is a cost effective way to stay in touch with thousands of people. Even monthly or quarterly mailers or postcards would be better than nothing at all.
3. Stop trying to be perfect. Some sort of name capture and follow up is better than nothing at all, and you can always tweak and adjust your follow up messages as you go along (that’s what I do).
4. Start measuring success differently. Most people measure their business results in terms of sales and profits. I recommend that you also add ‘size of the list’ to your success measurement – as it can help you plan for future sales and profits too.
5. Commit to building and cultivating a prospect list. Put ‘growing your list’ to the top of your priorities and you’ll be surprised at the results you can achieve.
About the Author
Bernadette Doyle publishes her weekly Client Magnets newsletter for trainers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then get your free tips now at http://www.clientmagnets.com.
It’s not unusual for someone setting up a service business to be advised to give a free consultation as a way of winning business. In the coaching world in particular (and many other service businesses) this is recommended as the main way of winning clients. Many coaches are assured (often by the people selling them their coaching training) that all they will need to do to have a full practice is offer free taster sessions, and somehow those people will magically transform into paying clients.
This in my view is one of the Big Fat Myths Of Building A Coaching Practice, and it really annoys me to see would-be coaches being duped and misled in this way. The fact is, with any buying decision, the buyer has questions and concerns that need to be addressed, and not all of them will be handled in the free consultation.
Over the years I’ve encountered people who are frustrated and demoralized by their conversion of free consultations into paying business. So what’s the answer? Are we for or against free consultations? My take on this is that free consultations might work, but you need to use them in the right way, and that means asking the prospect to take the next step at the end of the session.
The Free Consultation Won’t Do The Selling For You!
The trouble is, many people use free consultations in the hope that the consultation will do the selling for them, and they won’t have to engage in the ‘dirty’ business of asking for the order. So the consultation comes to an end, the service provider says, "I hope you enjoyed that/found it useful", and then waits for the client to initiate the next step, because they don’t want to be ‘pushy’. Meanwhile the prospect is actually waiting for some direction from the service provider, yet when none is forthcoming, leaves, or ends the phone call, confused. So if you are going to offer free consultations, make sure that at the very least you invite the prospect to take the next step, and find out what questions and concerns they have about proceeding.
The free consultation should pave the way for a sales conversation to take place, not replace it. They Take Up Your Time The main objection I have to ‘free consultations’ as a selling tool is how much time they take. When you’re running your own business, time is the most valuable resource you have. You can always make more money, but none of us, not even Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey, can manufacture more time. Most people, especially when they are starting out, think that they are cash-poor, but time rich, and therefore happily offer free sessions in the hope that it will win them some business. The trouble is, if you’re even half way good at what you do, it won’t take long for word to get round, and your calendar will be full with free consultations, but no paying clients.
I suggest that instead of offering free consultations ‘one-to-one’ you offer group tele-coaching preview calls. That way you will leverage your time and can simultaneously reach a number of prospects.
What Type Of Prospects Do You Attract With Free Offers?
I hate to say it, but in my experience it’s true, when you offer anything for free, you will attract a percentage of people who will never, ever buy from you no matter what you do for them. I have had many successful coaches admit to me privately that it was only when they found the confidence to charge for an introductory session that they attracted a better caliber of client. I’m not saying don’t offer free stuff – but offer things that are low cost for you to deliver and high perceived value to the prospect e.g. special report, e-book, free teleseminar. Things that take your time on a one-to-one basis are a HIGH cost to deliver, because it’s time you can’t sell to anyone else, or time you could be spending on other projects.
Why People Say No To Free Consultations
Some people are mystified that even when they offer something free – people don’t want it. I’m reminded of the man in Hyde Park who, as an experiment, started offering £5 notes to passers by, only to be refused! There are a whole host of reasons why someone might be reluctant to take up your free consultation.
First, they might be worried about what they are getting into, secondly it’s wrong to assume that the financial risk is the only barrier preventing someone from doing business with you. They might be worried about being vulnerable or looking foolish. In these circumstances the prospect will take the safest option i.e. do nothing!
So should you offer free consultations? Well, at the risk of sounding like a politician, it depends. What I’ve done in this article is give you some things to take into consideration. At the end of the day, you have to consider all the options and make the decision that is best for your business right now. (You can always change your mind later).
About the Author
Bernadette Doyle publishes her weekly Client Magnets newsletter for trainers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, then get your free tips now at http://www.clientmagnets.com.