When it really comes down to it, is there any thing more important in your business than helping your clients produce outstanding results?
Producing Great Clients Results Builds Your Business
When you ask the average Independent Professional where most of their clients come from, the most common answer is "from word of mouth."
But what generates word-of-mouth? Client Results.
If you can master the art of supporting your clients in consistently accelerating their results, marketing won't be a struggle for you.
Over his 15-year career as a coach and consultant, Patrick Summar has put his primary focus on this question: "How do I produce such outstanding results for my clients that they'll tell everyone they know about me?"
The answers he's discovered to that question has resulted in a coaching practice full of highly satisfied clients, who now pay up to $5,000 per month to work with him.
This past week I recorded an audio interview with Patrick on this topic and I'll summarize his seven main points in today's ezine.
1. Focusing on Client Results
It's not unusual in working with a client to jump right in to solve problems and outline action steps. When a client hires you, they are often eager to get moving and see results fast.
But Patrick points out that this is actually detrimental to producing sustainable results. What's more important is spending as much time as it takes to determine where the client wants to go and why.
"I point out to them that they have to be very clear about WHERE they want to go before we go into any conversation about HOW they will get there," says Patrick. This can take some time but it builds a more solid foundation for bigger gains later on.
2. The Client Is Responsible for Producing Results
You need to communicate this clearly to the client early in the process. It's not unusual that a client wants to be "saved" but Patrick points out that "the coach can't play."
"While I may have ideas, tools or strategies, I might offer or may teach them an idea or concept, they have to use it to play and produce results. I can't do it for them," asserts Patrick.
"It’s going to take multiple baby steps on their part and massive action with a lot of mistakes and learning from those mistakes and false starts. Significant change takes time. It won’t happen if they don’t make it happen. They have to stick with it."
3. Make Sure Your Clients Are Passionate About What They are Working On.
It's easy to focus on goals such as increasing income or producing a particular result. But if there's no passion behind those goals, no underlying motivation to achieve them, they are going to struggle and not know why.
If you want to create breakthrough results for your clients, the more you support them on focusing on what they really want to do, the easier it’s going to be to produce results.
Sometimes it takes several conversations with a client to become clear about what is most important to them. When that clarity comes, they way opens up and barriers to success seem to disappear.
4. Create a Plan and Work the Plan
Patrick says. "I find that you can come up with a more elegant shortcut to get where you want to go when you really get clear about specifically what you want, then brainstorm multiple action plans for getting there.
"It’s back to creating the plan. Help them think long term in terms of Phase 1 and Phase 2. Help them brainstorm multiple action plans. Help them focus. That’s the whole thing. You can have anything you want, just not everything.
"Help them prioritize. Break it down into baby steps. And then by checking in week to week, finding out what's working and what's stopping them, you can help them brainstorm solutions and keep moving."
5. Working with Limiting Beliefs and Fears
You can have the best plan in the world and even be working on your passion and still get tripped up. Limitations and fears stop even the most successful people.
As a coach or consultant you need to address those issues. You can't sweep them under the rug. You want to encourage clients to focus their awareness on what they are telling themselves, what their stories are when they get stuck and to inquire into the validity of those stories.
When you realize a story you're telling doesn't hold up under scrutiny, you are free to construct new stories that support your progress. "I have to do it by myself," can turn into, "When I give away certain tasks, I'm freed up to focus on my priorities."
6. Track and Measure Progress
This is one of the things many coaches and consultants give lip service to. But it can be the key to client success. If you don't measure the progress from where you were to where you are, it's easy to lose motivation and momentum.
Patrick requires clients to rate where they are on a scale of one to ten at the beginning of the engagement and then tracks progress on the scale as they work together. As a result, clients see their movement and stick with the process.
Another tool Patrick uses is a weekly "pre-call checklist." That adds so much to the coaching process," says Patrick, "It gets them into a weekly process of defining and orienting where they are on the map by asking, “Where do I want to go? What’s next?” each week at least, if not every day."
7. Celebrate Successes
Patrick makes the analogy of taking a trip across the desert: "If the journey is 40 days and 40 nights, you wouldn't wait to drink water until the end of the journey. You'd drink water many times a day as you made progress across the desert. I find that people often wait until the ultimate goal is reached before they think they can celebrate."
Patrick continued: "With every point between Point A and Point B, Point B being the goal, you’re losing the opportunity to appreciate the process, journey or experience of your life because you’re waiting for Point B before stopping to appreciate it.
"I find that to the degree that we as coaches can really teach our clients to focus on what progress they’ve made, celebrate it, appreciate it and recognize it, it helps to build momentum, confidence, optimism and positive expectations.
"All of those things help them produce even more results and step up to do more, take on more and stretch more."
7.5 - Successful Clients Equals a Growing Business
Each of these points by themselves are not groundbreaking. But combined, they are extraordinarily powerful. Patrick centers his work around these principles. His clients consistently get exceptional results, stay with him for a long time and pay him substantial fees.
For more on the Audio Program with Patrick on "Accelerating Client Results, see the write-up below.
The More Clients Bottom Line: You have one job as a coach or consultant, to support your clients in achieving breakthrough results. The good news is that there are practices you can implement in your business that will help your clients get those results more consistently.
How do you help your clients create breakthrough results? Please share on the More Clients Blog.
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Posted by: career resources | February 17, 2008 at 09:28 PM
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Posted by: Career resources | February 11, 2008 at 09:12 PM
Questioning the beliefs that hold me back has been key to all of the successes in my life, not just in my business. Increased clientele and cash flow is just one aspect of success, and by far not the most important one. There was a time when I was earning big bucks and felt like a failure. I would think thoughts like, "I'm not doing enough," "I should be further along than I am," "The future isn't secure," and "The work I do is dishonest." (I was a freelance copywriter for many years.)
In the end we have to wake up in the morning excited about what lies ahead, knowing we're in our integrity and progressing at exactly the right pace.
With The Work of Byron Katie, the transformative process of inquiry that I have facilitated for seven years, we don't worry about dissolving self-limiting beliefs; instead we identify and meet those beliefs with understanding. We enter the process, not to change anything (although change may indeed occur, swiftly), but to discover what's true for us. As it turns out, self-limiting beliefs are lies. Stressful thoughts "quit" us when the mind calls its own bluffs.
When we apply the simple process of inquiry to thoughts around marketing and business, breakthrough results occur naturally because a clear mind is always more creative, more efficient, and has no limits.
I invite you to discover The Work through some free materials at my website, http://www.clearlifesolutions.com.
Carol L. Skolnick,
Certified Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie.
Posted by: Carol L. Skolnick, Clear Life Solutions | February 05, 2008 at 10:24 AM
Yet again, this is a powerful blog post relating marketing performance to mindset. I followed up by getting hold of the Accelerating Client Results audio program and have already implemented the methods with success. Many thanks!
I help motor sport athletes perform better by improving their mindset (www.sun1400.com). There are so many strong 'mindset' links between marketing and driving race cars though. Performance is determined by mindset, no matter what the domain.
Keep up the great work.
Posted by: mikegarth | January 29, 2008 at 04:27 AM
Hi Robert -- I always appreciate your thoughtful e-mails.
Having been a psychotherapist for many years, I now find that the fastest way to dissolve limiting beliefs is through a method called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). It was discovered by accident that by simply tapping on a few acupressure points while the mind is in contact with a disturbing stimulus we can resolve the negative beliefs and emotions that block us. The tapping part is easy. The real skill is in getting to the underlying belief structures. For example, one of my clients discovered that he was procrastinating finishing his commercial Web site because he didn't want to outdo his father economically. You can download the EFT manual for free via www.emofree.com.
Andrew Gaines EFT-ADV
Posted by: Andrew Gaines | January 22, 2008 at 01:01 AM