Ready to get clients? Avoid these 3 mistakes!

Ready to get clients for your business? In this four-part Get More Clients series, I’m sharing my best tips to help you fill your client docket. If you’re just tuning in, then you might have missed the first post in this series. I recommend reading that first:

Why Working 1×1 Is The Fastest Path To Cash

And today… we’re doing some troubleshooting to ensure that you’re not making these big mistakes as you get clients!

Solopreneurs often themselves in this position where we’re doing everything we can think of to grow our business- we’re checking all of the marketing items off the list – but it’s just not delivering enough paying clients.

So when I get an email list this…

Hello Racheal,

I started my life coaching business a year ago, and I feel like no matter what I try, I’m just not getting clients. It’s really, REALLY frustrating. I’m blogging, sending emails to my subscribers, and posting on social media, but nothing changes.

At this point, I’m not sure what else to do, or where the gap is. I don’t want to scare off my list with email after email pitching to hire me, but revenue is inconsistent and I’m struggling to keep my calendar full. Help!

… I know that 99% of the time, there is likely a missing piece of the profit-generating puzzle. There’s a disconnect between you and your potential clients that’s preventing them from taking that next step towards working with you.

The 3 Biggest Reasons You’re Not Getting Clients

1: No One Knows Who You Are.

The first one is the simplest to diagnose, and probably one you’ve worried about every day since you started your business: not enough people know your business even exists.

First, we have to acknowledge that the belief “If you build it, they will come” is a myth. Simply putting up a website does not mean that people will actually come to that website. Consider this – there are some 140,000 new websites launching every. single. day. It takes a lot of work to break through all that noise!

[clickToTweet tweet=”‘If you build it, they will come’ is a myth in online business!” quote=”‘If you build it, they will come’ is a myth in online business!”]

When I hear from entrepreneurs like the one above, it’s clear that they are doing their best to promote their business by blogging, sending newsletters, and posting on social media.

But here’s the catch – these are all NURTURE marketing activities. The only people who see these are people who already know who you are!

Now you might get a pretty good start with just the people who you already know. I’ve seen several people launch their business and quickly get a few clients from their existing network. But at some point, you’ll work through all the prospects in your existing network and you need to reach new potential clients to keep this business moving forward.

If you want to ATTRACT new people to your website and your business, you’ve got to add a new layer on top of your marketing strategy. It’s time to spend some time on higher-impact activities that get you in front of new audiences. Attract marketing activities could include:

  • Interviews
  • Contributing to Blogs, Newspapers, or Magazines
  • Public Speaking
  • Paid Advertising
  • Co-Hosting Events/Workshops/Seminars

These types of activities have one key thing in common – they get you in front of new audiences which you can leverage to build your own. If you’ve been struggling to get more clients and your audience isn’t growing (or worse, is declining), it’s time to get out from behind your website and start meeting new people.

What ATTRACT marketing strategies are you committing to every single month to grow your audience?

2: They Don’t Understand What You Can DO FOR THEM.

Have you ever shopped for an appliance… like a blender?

You walk into the store and you see an Oster Blender for $39, Magic Bullet for $99, and a Vitamix for $499. Unsure of why there is such a big range in prices for something that does pretty much the same thing, you start reading all the features of the blenders. You see that a big difference is the power of the motor.

But here’s the thing – unless you know what that bigger, better motor is actually going to DO for you, you’ll likely default into price shopping and go with the less expensive option.

That’s why a company like Vitamix spends a lot of time educating on what that bigger, better motor can do for you {not only online – we see them giving demonstrations in our local Costco too!}. If you’re wanting to make green smoothies a big part of your daily meal plan, a Vitamix motor blends the greens so smoothly that there are no leafy chunks. Anything you want to add to your smoothie, from frozen fruit to kale, a Vitamix can blend up effortlessly. Then you learn that this is the same blender used in every smoothie shop in the country, with an amazing 7-year warranty.

Suddenly, you can see the value in having this $499 blender in your kitchen. You imagine yourself having amazing green smoothies every single morning. You’d be the best possible version of yourself. You’d be investing in your health!

That’s the difference between leading with BENEFITS and RESULTS instead of FEATURES.

Once you realize the difference, you see this mistake everywhere {and usually from the same entrepreneurs who frustrated when people say they are too expensive}.

I’ve experienced this first hand when I was actively recovering from a back injury a few years ago. I’d wake up in the morning with excruciating neck and back pain, sometimes unable to turn my head side to side. It was horrible.

I knew massage could not only help alleviate the pain immediately but help keep me pain-free. I was the dreamiest of dream clients… just WAITING for them to tell me they had a special program that could help keep me out of pain. Instead, I was offered a package which provided a discounted hourly rate when you pre-paid for 5 or 10 sessions. There was no education on the benefits of continuing massage, how often I should get a massage, or how it could speed up healing. In fact, it almost seemed like they were uncomfortable and apologetic with the entire conversation, which was only about the features – how many sessions were in a package and the encouragement to buy the bigger package to get a bigger discount.

At the same time, I booked an appointment with a chiropractor. From the moment I showed up to that appointment, he was assessing what I was experiencing and making a clear plan to get {and keep} me out of pain. When we wrapped our first appointment, he laid out a full treatment plan with three stages to get me out of pain, start healing, and then transition into preventative care. Throughout the entire conversation, I was educated on the benefits of each part of this program, including why it was important to complete the entire program to experience the best results. I left that appointment committed to a $1500 treatment plan, with appointments booked out for the next month.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Tired of hearing ‘You’re Too Expensive?’ Stop focusing on the features and start talking about the benefits!” quote=”Tired of hearing ‘You’re Too Expensive?’ Stop focusing on the features and start talking about the benefits!”]

If the primary message describing your offering is focused on the features {number of sessions, number of videos, extra add-ons, etc}, you’re likely missing a huge opportunity to showcase the value of what you actually do for people. And when they don’t understand the true value – aka the BENEFITS and RESULTS – you provide, it’s very easy for the consumer to default to thinking ‘This is too expensive!’ and make decisions based on price and discounts alone.

When you read the descriptions of your products, programs, or services – are you clearly highlighting the benefits and results over the features?

3: The Lack of a Clear Customer Journey.

What is a Customer Journey? It’s the process we take people through to help them move from simply being aware we exist to building trust and relationships to inviting them to work with us. Based on the consumer psychology of buyer readiness, this process helps ensure that your marketing system is continuously moving people through the journey, step by step.

Customer Journey

The core stages of the Customer Journey include:

  1. Attract. This is the marketing activities we discussed above, that help you bring awareness of you, your brand, and your message to new audiences.
  2. Engage. This stage is where those new audiences essentially raise their hand and let you know they are interested in learning more {this permission is given when they visit your website and join your email list, or follow a social media channel}.
  3. Nurture. The majority of the relationship building is done in this stage of the Customer Journey. This is where you give, give, give lots of relevant, helpful, entertaining content, which should be warming your audience up for the next stage…
  4. Invite. You have to actually INVITE people to work with you to get clients. This is the missing link for many many heart-centered entrepreneurs! They spend all their time on marketing and hesitate to ask someone to make the next step.
  5. Delight. This is possibly my favorite stage – because this is all about surprising and delighting your clients by providing an amazing customer experience. And when you understand that it’s 7x easier to keep an existing client than to find a new one, it can open up an entirely NEW revenue stream simply working with the same clients again and again.

These stages are not optional.

You can attempt to skip over first three stages and start with a sales pitch… but you’ll have to sell and sell hard to make that work long term in your business. In fact, even those who focus on driving people straight to a sales page often start that sales page with educational content in an attempt to accelerate through the first three stages of the customer journey {or in the case of the VitaMix rep at Costco… they deliver value upfront with their demo and taste test before making the sales pitch}.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Not getting enough clients? Make sure you are offering a clear next step to working with you!” quote=”Not getting enough clients? Make sure you are offering a clear next step to working with you!”]

But more often, I see entrepreneurs who spend more of their time in the give give give zone. They keep providing amazing education and information… but no clear next steps toward working with them. They may attempt to extend an invitation to take the next step, but often it’s such a passive ask that it’s overlooked. And even worse – they often become so frustrated with the lack of results, they give up after the first attempt and stop following up.

Is there a clear invitation for your audience to take the next step towards working with you?

Talk to me! Share in the comments below, and stick around for the next installment of this series where we fill your calendar!

1: Why Working 1×1 Is The Fastest Path To Cash

2: Ready to get clients? Avoid these 3 mistakes!

And if you’re ready to CONSISTENTLY Get More Clients, you’ll love The CEO Collective! The CEO Collective is an online mastermind and mentorship experience designed to help you create more sustainable success. Get on the waitlist now!

Keep learning! >>> Check out the next post in this series: How to Get More Clients & Fill Your Calendar, STAT!