Getting clients is at the forefront of every entrepreneur’s mind for obvious reasons. It is the one thing that makes or breaks a business.
But before we even get to the strategy or process of getting clients, we first need to address some pre-requisites.
Clarify your Niche.
The first pre-requisite is to have a clear niche that answers the following questions:
- Who is your ideal client in terms of demographics and characteristics?
- What problem are you solving for them?
- What is your solution?
- What is the tangible result of your solution?
Specify your Outcome.
The second pre-requisite is to have a clear outcome for getting clients. Why do you want clients and how many clients do you want? Setting a clear goal for what you desire gives you a measurable indication between where you are now and where you wish to be.
Have a Positive Mindset.
The third pre-requisite to getting clients is your mindset, referring to your beliefs about yourself, your capabilities and your beliefs about the value of your work to deliver on the promise you make to your client.
With the pre-requisites taken care of, you are ready to move into Creating a Strategy for Getting Clients.
Find your Potential Clients.
This is definitely the first question to be answered. Where do your clients seek for answers to their problems online and offline? On which social media platform do they hang out? If your clients spend time on Facebook or Linked-in, then you would want to look for the groups that they frequent. Even though Facebook, Linked-in and Twitter may look like the natural choices, it is in your best interest to explore other social media sites and find the most appropriate social media platforms to find your clients.
Offline refers to network meetings, meet-up groups, seminars and workshops that your clients would attend to solve their problems or achieve their dreams.
Engage with your Potential Clients.
Getting clients is all about relationships. Or rather, the only way to get clients is to build relationships with them. When you build relationships you build trust. And I am sure you know that people buy from you when they trust you. But first they have to like you.
It’s like dating. You put your best foot forward by being flexible, listening to understand, asking questions, etc. By creating rapport and showing interest in your clients, you are creating engaging conversations.
Increase your Visibility.
To engage with you clients requires you to be visible. It means that you show up consistently by posting on social media, connecting with your email list as well as connection calls with your potential clients.
Here your mindset shines through in the level of confidence with which you conduct conversations, especially sales conversations.
Your sales conversations bring forth all your beliefs about your self-worth, the value you offer and your beliefs about money. This is reflected in how successfully you convert potential clients to paying clients.
Drive Traffic to your Website.
Of course to be able to have conversations with people, you need people to connect with! Looking at the online business world, it is a numbers game, meaning that for every truckload of people you make contact with, only one or two will become paying clients.
There are tons of ways to drive traffic to your website. For example: blogging, vlogging, podcasting, social media, joint-ventures and speaking. However, it is to decide which of these ways are strategically the most appropriate. In other words will yield the best results. It is best to focus on 3 ways and give it your all, than to do a little bit utilizing 10 ways as this will only result in inconsistency and poor results.
Speaking to live audiences significantly increases conversion rates in terms of people signing up to join your list as well as buying from you.
Have a Compelling Lead-Magnet.
When you drive traffic to your website, you need to give your new contacts a reason to stay and want to know more. In order to do that, you need to have a compelling lead-magnet or freebie that they will give you their name and email address for.
For example: a free report, cheat sheet, checklist, video, audio, ebook, etc. What makes it compelling is that it has a hot title that reflects the top-of-mind problem or desire that your ideal client is looking for. For the freebie to be effective, it needs to solve a problem and provide a solution that has the tangible result that your client is looking for or giving them a first step towards that.
If you can do that, they will want to know more and they are ready to build a relationship with you and surely become a paying client.
Set up Systems and Processes.
Capturing the email addresses of your new contacts is only the first step in a system of converting the contact into a paying client. This system needs to be automated, because once the contacts are on your list, what happens to them?
The processes you wish to follow once a client signs up on your email list need to lead your contact along a journey of continuous small conversions until they are ready to buy from you.
Without systems that automate your processes, you are setting yourself up for failure.
- To learn more, visit my Website and get your Freebie.
- This article was first published on my Blog
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