The More Clients Blog

Avoiding Bad Clients

Everyone wants to attract the ideal clients. But very few of us know how to identify them. And what's even more of an issue is that we don't know how to identify bad potential clients.

As a result, we waste a huge amount of time and energy in the marketing process. We spend too much time speaking to and meeting with prospects who either will never buy our services or, if they do, the experience and results will be disappointing.

So how do you quickly size-up prospective clients?

You divide them into eight types that distinguish their dominant approach to doing business. When you clearly see these types, you'll know how to proceed.

I learned the system of types outlined below from Jerry Vieira, of The QMP Group, at his very stimulating presentation today at the IMC (Institute of Management Consultants) Confab in Reno Nevada. I know you'll find it very useful.

Here's Jerry's "Approach to Business (ATB) Scale"

1. Stumps, or Stuck-in-the-Mud-People.
These are people with very limited points of view. They know what they know, and there they sit. They aren't interested in new ideas or changing the way they're doing things. (Problems? What problems?) As a result, they are very unlikely to buy professional services.

You will waste your time if you try to convince these people and educate them about your services. They may show some interest, but ultimately they really don't care. If they never ask a meaningful question or keep giving reasons why your ideas won't work, move on and don't bother following up.

2. Takers
These prospects are experts at stealing concepts and ideas. It's hard for them to admit others have a better idea than they do. So, with little compunction, they'll lift your ideas, pass them off as their own and never give you credit.

If you're meeting with a taker, they'll tend to grill you and take very god notes. They'll ask you to send articles, models and other materials. Beware if they ask you for a proposal too early in the process. Don't do it. They'll take your methodologies and get their cousin, Fred, to do the project using your approach.

3. BMMDI - "Boss-Made-Me-Do-It"
This is someone who has absolutely no stake in the business. They are talking with you to fulfill an obligation. If they end up buying, they won't really care if your services deliver or not. They'll never read your reports or give you useful feedback.

This is the third type to scope out early and avoid investing too much time and energy in the sales process. BMMDI's can be found in company's large or small. And if you offer coaching services, beware of prospects who were sent to you by a spouse!

4. Opportunists
They are just one step above the takers. They do not part with their money easily. They want the lowest price, the bare bones package, the minimum they can buy. And then they expect first-class service when they pay economy fares.

An opportunist may buy some services, but they will be high maintenance and take up big chunks of your time. If you decide to work with them, you need a very explicit written agreement with clear boundaries which you stick to unfailingly.

5. Don Quixotes
These prospects are dreamers. They imagine themselves as white knight saviors. If you're selling into a company, they are going to have trouble getting buy-in and support. If they are individuals, they will talk and meet forever to "blue sky it" but rarely get down to practical action steps.

Look out for prospects who have grandiose visions way beyond their level of experience and capacity. They want it all but can't get a simple project done on time and on budget. Fun to talk with perhaps, but not a lot of fun as clients.

OK, that's five types of prospects whom you want to avoid. If you connect with these types and recognize them, you'll save huge amounts of time and effort by moving on quickly. An initial meeting by phone and a few well-chosen questions will let you know if they fit into any of the above five types.

Next, Jerry went on to identify three desirable prospect types. When you recognize them, give yourself a green light to spend more time exploring how you might work together. They can all be good clients.

6. Terribly Troubled
These are prospects who really need your assistance. They have a problem, predicament or pain and are motivated to get it fixed. They are desperately seeking alternatives and will often make a quick decision.

They may be willing to spend a lot, but are often in a rush to get going; as a result they may not carefully evaluate the options. Work to slow down these prospects a bit. Assure them you can help fix the problem, but also spend some time exploring ideal outcomes that will take more time and care to implement.

7. Frustrated Drivers
These prospects are very interested in optimal results and will study alternatives intensively. They will commit quickly and spend what it takes, but will expect visible results sooner rather than later.

When speaking with these prospects, communicate about tangible results and clear courses of action. Offer well-documented case studies and proof that your approaches work. When they engage you, set well-defined benchmarks and measure progress regularly.

8. Sincerely Growth-Oriented
You might consider this your ideal kind of client. They are already doing things quite well but want to do things better. They have issues and challenges that are not seen as debilitating, but as areas to improve. They are motivated by excellence and growth.

These clients will engage in long-term work, look carefully at the best alternatives, and commit to achieving ultimate goals. Bring your absolute best to working with these clients, as they will reward you financially, emotionally and intellectually.

If you focus on identifying these final three types of prospects, you will start to find more of them. Put even more attention on attracting Type 8's by being a Type 8 yourself. Like attracts like.

Thanks to Jerry Vieira for letting me use his model (apologies for any distortions). I found the types in this model to be very true to my experience and a very useful guide to more effective marketing. Jerry can be found on the web at http://www.qmpassociates.com

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Much wheel-spinning can be avoided in the marketing and prospecting process if you are aware of the warning signs of prospects who will squander your time and energy. Put your attention and focus on better prospects who are motivated to take real advantage of your expertise.

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How do you identify your ideal prospects (and avoid the less-than-ideal)? Please share on the More Clients Blog.

Pre-Selling Meetings

I've been talking a lot about my program "Free Sessions that Sell" where you can master the art of offering complimentary sessions that ultimately turn prospects into clients.

Today I'm going to talk about how to set up the ideal conditions to conduct those free sessions. To do that I'm going to give you a brief overview of the game of marketing, "Marketing Ball."

In playing Marketing Ball, the first objective is to gain the attention and interest of a prospect by effectively communicating your marketing message. If the prospect shows interest, you are now on First Base; and the prospect is interested in learning more.

At this point they are usually not ready for a free session. They need to travel the distance between First and Second Bases where they become more familiar with you and your business, get more information about your business and get an actual experience of who you are and what you do.

When a prospect is at the stage of experience, then it's much easier to set up complimentary sessions with them as they are now eager to know how you can help them.

A question I often get is, "I have prospects who are familiar with me; they have visited my web site and understand the value of my services, but how do I give them an experience of me?"

The best way to give an experience is with a live interaction of some sort, a more in-depth connection that gives people a deeper sense of what you do and the results you produce. One way to do this is with a talk or presentation. The other, more common, way is what I call a "Pre-Selling Meeting."

A Pre-Selling Meeting is an opportunity to give the prospect an experience of you; but is not a sales appointment or a complimentary session. These are not hard to set up or difficult to conduct. Let me give you an outline of the steps.

Five Steps from Pre-Selling Meetings to Free Sessions

1. You meet someone, perhaps a prospect or someone who could refer you to prospects. Maybe it's at a networking function or at a social gathering. After talking, you say, "It was nice meeting you and learning about your business. I'd like to get together with you over coffee and find out more about your business and tell you more about mine and see if we could help each other."

You may be surprised how readily people will set up these pre-selling meetings. There's something in it for them.

2. Meet for exactly that purpose. Keep it to an hour or so. Find out about them first. Ask question about their business and make it your aim to understand what they do, the kind of results they produce and who an ideal client is for them.

Make sure to listen with very close attention. Don't just "get through" this part; be engaged.

3. Then you go next. Follow my system of Marketing Syntax where you cover ideas in a certain order: Ideal clients, problems or issues these clients face, results you produce for these clients, and a client success story or two.

You're not selling at this point. You are having a conversation that educates and inspires them about your business.

4. At the end of the conversation several things may have happened: a) you now know something about them and will feel more comfortable referring people to them, b) they now know something about you and will be more comfortable referring people to you, and c) they may show some interest in knowing more about how your services could help them.

If c) happens, you're being invited to take them to second base. Make sure to take advantage of that invitation.

5. The complimentary session is easy to offer at this point: "Something I offer to people who are interested in my services is a complimentary "Marketing Strategy Session" (create a name for your free session) where we explore your goals in more depth, what challenges you are facing, and how you can create a marketing strategy that will bring you more clients. Why don't we look at a time we could set up a session?"

Answer any questions they might have and then set up the session as an in-person or phone meeting.

Since you have played Marketing Ball flawlessly and moved them around the bases effortlessly, they are very likely to accept your invitation to this complimentary session.

One of the biggest mistakes people make in Marketing Ball is to jump to the free session or the selling conversation too quickly. Instead, slow down, develop the relationship and get to know your prospect first, and then setting up free sessions will be a natural next step, done without any pressure or manipulation.

About the worst that can come from these pre-selling conversations is you'll get to know each other better and will send each other business. And that's not a bad outcome either!

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Don't jump to second base to set up free sessions or selling conversations. Instead, put your focus on the intermediate goal of having pre-selling meetings where you set the groundwork for a free session.

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Do you have a story about where you jumped in too quickly to have a free session or selling conversation and ended up blowing it? Please share on the More Clients Blog.

The Christmas Tree Marketing Plan

Ever notice that you set marketing and sales goals and then you either take forever to accomplish them or they don't get accomplished at all?

I'd like to share a simple system to get you from goal to final result in the shortest amount of time possible.

First of all, planning is great; without a plan you have no purpose or direction. And then you're drifting. But the only thing worse than having no plan is over-planning. This is where we get in our own way and delay our progress.

I want you to imagine a Christmas tree with no branches.

At the bottom, the trunk is sitting in a Christmas tree stand. At the top of the tree, there is a star. The stand is the foundation or the goal and the star is the realization of that goal.

But you need a few branches to help you climb to the top.

Imagine that your goal is to turn some prospects into clients by setting up complimentary sessions. That's the goal, and to get to the top of the tree and to the star you'll need to climb up a few branches. So what are the minimal number of branches you'll need to do that? Let's look:

1. A list of people you could contact to invite them to take advantage of the free session.

2. An invitation in the form of an email and perhaps a basic script to use to follow up by phone to invite them.

3. An outline of the complimentary session.

4. A little time to practice the complimentary session.

And that's it - four branches. That's how simple it is. You get your list together, you put together the invitation, you send it out, do a few follow-up calls, and you'll likely set up some free sessions. Then you practice and follow the outline for your free sessions and take it to the end until they either say "yes" or "no."

Repeat until your practice is full.

Wow, that sounds easy. It really is. So why do people take so long to get from their goal to the result? Good question. And the answer is that they start to add too many branches.

Four branches seems too skimpy. So this is how you plan and how branches get added to your plan:

"OK, so I have a list of people. Are they qualified? Hmmm, I'm not sure. Let's do some research. Also, I only have six names right now. I really need to have at least 50 to start don't I? So let me work on some networking first to get more names. When I have 50 I'll start to send the invites.

"Now let's see, I have a lot more names now and I'm about to send the invites, but I don't have a web site yet. I doubt they'll meet with me unless I have that completed. OK, let me work on that project first. That will take a few months.

"OK, now I have a bigger list and the web site is done; now I need to do the outline for the free session itself. I can follow the Free Sessions That Sell outline (more info here) but I'll have to do some tweaking. So I don't want to send out my invite until that's done. That will take a couple weeks. OK, let me work on that.

"OK, here it is six month's later. Now I'm totally ready. I have the names, the invite, the web site and the free session outline. But you know, I'm feeling pretty nervous about this. Maybe I should work with a coach for a month or two to get me past my nervousness. Yeah, that's a good idea. Then I'll really get out there!"

Getting the picture? Of course, you've never done this, right?

So am I saying you should just create your simple Christmas Tree plan and start right away? Well, yes, I am. But you can still work on those other branches. Here's the difference: Work on several small Christmas Tree Plans at the same time instead of one big Christmas Tree Plan.

First, you create your Free Sessions Plan. You don't need to have everything in place to make it perfect; you can get started quickly. You can get going in a week or two at the most.

The next Christmas Tree Plan is to expand your list. You can get out there and network and build your list while you're starting your Free Sessions Plan. You do them concurrently. By the time you've run out of names for your Free Sessions Plan, you'll have generated more names with your Networking Plan.

And then you have your Web Site Plan. Do that concurrently as well. It will take a few months, but that doesn't mean you can't get started on the other two plans at the same time. And by the time your web site is done, you'll have a few new clients and have built your list and now you can integrate your site into the other things you're doing.

My suggestion is to build three or four Christmas Tree Plans. Each tree just has a few branches that lead you from the goal to the result in only a few well-chosen steps. Before long, you'll get used to creating these simple and fast plans and be able to put them into action almost immediately.

What Christmas Tree Plan will you implement first that will get you in front of qualified prospects as soon as possible? Decide and take action now. You could have a few new clients sooner than you think.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: One you have a workable marketing strategy, jump in and make it happen. You'll be able to improve it and fine tune it as you go. Beware of over-planning and perfectionism; these are just delay tactics that won't really get you better results in the long run.

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Got a story of either delaying a strategy or jumping right in and the impact it made? Please share on the More Clients Blog.

Use a Book to Attract More Business

In last week's eZine, you learned a system for publishing a book in as little as 90 days. You also learned that a book can be the ultimate marketing tool for Independent Professionals.

But you didn't learn how to use that book to get more clients or generate multiple streams of income.

Today I'd like to share some of John Eggen's simple, low-cost and no-cost marketing strategies and tactics you can use to win significant amounts of business with a book.

These strategies are based on John's 27 years of experience in publishing and marketing. They really work.

Strategy #1: Develop Your Book Properly

If you want more clients or multiple streams of income, you must design your book the right way. You must start with the end in mind.

Unfortunately, many authors don't know this. They don't structure their books in a way that will get the attention and credibility they need. So they have failed before they have even begun.

Not only won't they attract much new business, they will have completely wasted a lot of time and energy in writing and producing the book. This doesn't have to happen.

First, it's critical to identify your goals and a plan for the book before you begin writing it. You need to know your target audience and include the information they are seeking.

After deciding on your goals, the plan should include using time-tested formulas to develop your title, design the book cover correctly, and create your content so it tastefully promotes your services and can be repurposed into multiple information product profit-centers.

Jeanna Pool heard about John from me, and used his systems to do these things.

Within 30 days of starting her book, she won two new clients and a $25,000 contract. During the first 12 months following her book's publication, the book caused her business revenues to rocket up 186% (that's almost triple the year before).

In the second year, her revenues continue to climb. She now has multiple streams of income. And she is working fewer hours because her revenues are not totally dependent on providing services by the hour.

Yet none of this would have happened had she not started her book with the end in mind.

Strategy #2: Profit While Writing Your Book

Believe it or not, you don't have to wait until your book is finished to start attracting new clients. In fact, John teaches 14 no-cost tactics you can use starting the first week you begin your book. (Yes, you promote before you publish!)

One technique is to use a proven formula to create a working title. Then you place it in the signature line of your emails using these words: "Author of the forthcoming book ______." Then fill in the blank with your working title.

This often so impresses prospects that they will actually become clients. Here's proof:

This is the same technique Jeanna Pool used to win two new clients and a $25,000 contract--all within 30 days of starting her book.

Laura Cardone also used this technique and just two of the other no-cost tactics. As a result, she brought in $150,000 in new business while still writing the first draft of her book!

Strategy #3: Use Contrarian Marketing to Multiply Results

Most people have heard about the traditional ways to use a published book to generate business. But there are contrarian strategies publishing "insiders" use that can provide even more leverage.

In fact, John's system includes 27 simple low-cost and no-cost tactics to generate business. For many Independent Professionals, these tactics produce all the business they could possibly handle the first few years after publication.

Here's one disarmingly simple tactic that really works:

When you meet people who might be interested in your services, give them a complimentary autographed copy of your book.

History has made a book the ultimate symbol of expertise. If your book was developed with the right kind of title and cover, and with a content strategy that sells your services in a tasteful, low-key manner, then your book will provide you with instant credibility. It will automatically position you as an expert and serve as the ultimate marketing brochure for your services.

Instead of making a small royalty or a slightly larger retail profit on it, your book can turn the prospect into a client and make you thousands instead.

For example, Karilee Wirthlin said she merely used this tactic and a couple of others with her book. She generated $215,000 in new consulting business within the first 12 months after her book was published. Her revenues increased 300% within the first 26 months of publication.

These impressive results came from a small print run of only 600 copies of the book.

And, if you develop your book as John explained to me above, then you can also easily repurpose its content into multiple streams of income. (i.e., e-books, reports, CDs, etc.)

After Bill Jackman's book was printed, he said the credibility it gave him allowed him to increase his speaking fees 900%. He also leveraged the book's content into three niche publications and a software product. As a result, he said, his entire company's revenues doubled within the first 12 months of the book's publication.

By the way, all the book authors whose results I have reported in this article originally heard about John from me. If you are interested in becoming a success story like this, click for more information about John's fast-start publishing system and our free TeleClass tomorrow, Wed., 10/10.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: To attract more business from your book, you must develop it properly and market it effectively. You need to "think outside the book publishing box" and use strategies and tactics that are proven to attract more clients.

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Have you used these and other book marketing strategies to bring in new business? Please share on the More Clients Blog.