Upgrade Your Client Engine For Today’s Economy

Hey there, CEOs, Rachel Cook here, founder of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. I wanted to come on today and talk about a recent conversation that I had with one of my clients specifically, but I think this really applies to so many small businesses and a lot of the.
Bigger conversations I've been having with small business owners over the last few months. So recently I'd, one of my longtime clients return and she had initially worked with me, I believe in 2012 again in 20 18, 20 19, and came back for round three, which. I always love, this is one of my favorite things about owning a small business and working behind the scenes to support small business owners is I get to build these relationships and continue to support people at every stage of their growth journey.
But this client came to me because last time we had worked together. She had really set up a lot of amazing infrastructure in her business that allowed her to go through the following years without a whole lot of marketing in her business. In fact, she told me that from about 2020 until today, she had pretty much gone off of social media.
She had stopped really posting there, still had her actual social media profiles, but where she was able to grow in the 2010s on social media after 2020. Things had shifted for her and she no longer wanted to spend a lot of time and energy on social. But a lot of the things that she had put in place all of those years ago continued to grow her business.
She was having a really, really great, you know, year over year growth. She was seeing revenue coming in the door. Without a whole lot of effort, that's the power of a client growth engine is once you get that thing figured out, once you get the right marketing systems, sales systems, delivery systems in place, your business can really go for long stretches of time, rinse and repeat without a whole lot of effort.
This is my whole philosophy of building businesses. You wanna do the hard work once, do 80% of the work upfront, and then it only takes about 20% of the effort to maintain that client growth engine. Well over time, what tends to happen is your client growth engine stops working as effectively. And it needs an update beyond just basic maintenance.
The systems you had put in place, the marketing you had put in place, the sales infrastructure you had put in place, the delivery infrastructure, something just is no longer getting the results that you previously had experienced. And this is what I wanna talk about today because we've seen this a lot with small businesses in today's current economy.
What worked five years ago, even a couple years ago, just isn't working as well. And they're starting to see their revenue decline even though they're doing the exact same strategies they had in the past. This is where we need to shift our client growth engine from maintenance mode into doing a full infrastructure upgrade.
So what do you need to do if your client growth engine is no longer? As effectively bringing in the number of clients that you need in order to achieve your revenue goals. There's a few things I wanna go through. Remember, your client growth engine is your marketing system. Your sales system and your delivery system.
So we want to look at each piece of the puzzle because where things are going awry really, you know, depends on what is going on for your specific business. So let's start with the marketing system first. Your marketing system includes what we call attract, engage, nurture. Attract is the very first step where you're getting in front of brand new audiences.
This is where people have never heard about you or your business before. And if you're not consistently doing enough attract, then chances are. As people go through your client growth engine, as they go through that client experience and journey, at some point, if you're not bringing in enough people in the attract stage, it will show up in the number of sales that you experience.
And this is one big thing that we're seeing right now for a lot of people, the things that used to bring new people in the door suddenly aren't working as well. So what's happening here? What do we need to do? The first thing is we need to look at where our paying clients are actually coming from. How are they hearing about us?
You've probably heard me ask this question previously, but where did your last 10 paying clients come from? I actually want you to go and figure that out because that will tell you where you need to put your time, energy, and attention when it comes to attract marketing. If your last 10 clients are mostly coming from referrals, then that tells me we need to be more proactive.
Around bringing in more referrals. If your last 10 clients, most of them came from a ton of interviews that you did, or getting in front of other people's audiences, that tells me we need to continue getting in front of other people's audiences. If your last 10 people came from advertising or search engine.
Any way that they found out about you the very first time, we need to figure out that data. If you are not tracking this, then you need to go look it up and start tracking this because this is one area where I often hear people say, I don't actually know where my clients are coming from. And when you don't know, then you don't know what to fix.
When you don't know where they're coming from, then you don't know what's working and you're not sure where you need to put effort. So go through your last 10 paying clients and figure out exactly where they came from. Then I want you to double down on what works for you and your business. So here's the thing.
Chasing another new trend is not gonna get you the results that you are looking for. Chasing another new trend is going to veer you off course. You want to double down on what you know works for you and your business. Okay? So if you know really important here, if you know that most of your clients are coming from referrals, then you need to double down on bringing in more referrals.
That is very different from I'm going to. Go do a bunch of interviews, or I'm gonna start doing ads, or I'm gonna invest in an SEO company to help me optimize my SEO. You need to be very, very clear about what drives results for your specific business. And this is so crucially important because I talk to so many people who, again, something stops working, they're not getting in front of enough people, and instead of doubling down on what works, they try a whole new strategy.
Chances are. You need to increase the volume of what you were doing there. Especially in times, like right now, if you previously had been getting like one or two referrals a month, like coming in like a little trickle, but you didn't really have a plan to bring in more. Then you need to create a strategy to bring in more referrals.
You need to create referral opportunities for your, your clients, your colleagues, your community to send people your way. This is something we talk about a lot inside of the CEO collective because so many of my clients do run referral based businesses, and the vast majority of their clients are coming from other clients, other colleagues, or from other people in their community.
So we wanna get really, really clear about. What is working, and then how do we double down on that? If we know referrals are what's working, how do we double down on that? Will we stop waiting for them to come to us? And we get proactive about how we're going to bring those referrals in if we know that.
Getting in front of other people's audiences was what really worked for you in the past. Then we don't stop doing that. We probably need to increase how much we are doing that, and I know no one wants to hear that. This is a time where you might have to put in more effort, but that's the reality. When things slow down in an economy.
When people feel more hesitant, they're slower to spend money, they are taking longer to make buying decisions, then you have to get out in front of even more people to get the same result. So this is usually the first place, the client growth engine that I'm looking at. When I'm talking to my clients, I'm wanting to know like how many eyeballs are actually seeing your business.
Chances are. It has either plateaued or slowed, and that means we have to like ramp that piece up again. We need to get in front of even more people. It doesn't mean forever. It doesn't mean you're gonna have to stay at that pace forever, but it does mean like you need an influx of new folks in order to keep this client growth engine going.
You need to double down on it and you need to make it more proactive. The next piece that I'm looking at is your engage strategy. So when we're looking at engage, this is the step between somebody finding you for the first time and then actually taking an action. This is the action of that potential client.
They're either requesting a consultation. Requesting more information, requesting a proposal, or they're requesting some content so that they can learn more about you or both. But a lot of my clients, this is an area that could use a little upgrade. Okay. Because they've put too much friction in the way they've made it actually kind of hard for people to essentially say, Hey, I'm interested in what you're doing.
I wanna learn more about that. So if we're looking at your request for consultation, I'm always looking at, okay, where is that? Is it easy to find? Is it easy to follow through or is it like a contact form buried somewhere on your website? That's not easy. If it's not really, really easy, like ask somebody who does not know your business or hasn't looked at your website.
Ask 'em to go on your website and figure out how they could book a consult. How they could get more information about you. If they can't figure that out, then neither can your potential clients. This is such an obvious thing, but also I understand like sometimes we just don't think about what our potential clients are seeing in the journey they're going on.
So I want you to actually sit down and make sure that it's easy peasy lemon squeezy. For people to either request a consult or request more information. Okay? If it's too hard, they will not do it. If they have to click more than a couple times, they are not going to do it. Ideally, the minute they land on your website for the first time, they are able to very quickly, very easily, without any friction, request a consult or request more information, request content from you.
Then we move into the nurture section. Okay. Nurture is what most of us think of when we're thinking of our marketing. This is when we look at our newsletter, our blog, our podcasts, our social media. The difference between nurture marketing and attract marketing is nurture. Marketing is going out to people who already know who you are.
They already know your name. They already know a bit about what you do, and now they are starting to evaluate, is this somebody I know, like, and trust and I wanna work with? I wanna pay them. I wanna join their program, or I wanna hire them to do this service. When you are looking at your nurture marketing, I want you to ask yourself, have I been showing up one and have I been showing up consistently?
Two, a lot of times when I am evaluating a client's. One of my clients client growth engines, I see that this is where it's kind of like a start, stop, start, stop. Like I can go backwards in the feeds that they're posting on social media or I, I'll go in and look at all of their last newsletters. I'll go look at whatever they were sending out, and I will see huge gaps in their nurture marketing.
And this leads to people really not remembering. You're there. So when it comes to nurture marketing, the first piece of the puzzle is you've got to be top of mind. And being top of mind does mean you need to show up pretty consistently. Okay? So that's one piece of the nurture marketing consistency, right?
The next part is frequency. Are you showing up enough? And this is where a lot of people are actually starting to back off their nurture marketing because of whatever reason. They don't know what to post. They don't know how to make their content relevant. They don't know what to say. You need to continue showing up in order for people to remember that you exist, right?
If the last time you sent a newsletter was more than a month ago, you have fallen off of your potential client's radar. They could probably be great clients in, you know, the immediate future, but you're not engaging in that relationship with them. So this is where again, just like attract, you might have to ramp this up a little bit, especially if you need to bring in new clients.
You might need to infuse a little bit of energy behind your nurture marketing, increase your frequency. Show up more frequently for them. It doesn't matter to me if it's sending out instead of a newsletter once a month, now bringing it to twice a month. If you have been sending out a twice a month newsletter, send it out every week.
Try something for a month and see if it makes an impact, and people increasing their inquiries to work with you or increasing their likelihood of buying from you. This is something I know a lot of people hesitate to do because. It feels like work. And this is one of those times where if we've gotta ramp our client growth engine up again, it means we've gotta put more inputs, right?
We've gotta do more activity until we get to the volume we need to achieve the goals that we have. And if you've been seeing like a steady decline, then you're going to have to not only replace, but you're gonna have to go above that in order to achieve your goals. And that's what I think a lot of people forget is if you have been at a pace where you're.
Let's say you're sending out a weekly newsletter, but in your promotion of your recent product, program, or service, you're only sending out once a week and you're not seeing the results, then you probably need to do a little bit more there in order to break through the noise in order to get in front of those people.
So that's the first three parts of your client growth engine, your marketing system, attract, engage, nurture, right? Then we're gonna look at your invite system. Your invite system is all about how easy is it for people to pay you? That's what it boils down to. How easy is it for people to pay you? Could I go to your website right now and buy something?
Could I easily find out about your product, program, or service and either buy it or learn how I can buy it? Or are you putting barriers in the way. This is unfortunately something I'm seeing a lot of small business owners doing. It is really hard to find the offers that they are selling if you are selling only on one channel.
This is also important. If you're only telling people on one channel about your offers and you're not telling everyone about your offers, you're kind of hiding it, and I don't, I don't want you to do that. I want you to make sure everything is incredibly easy. Find, make it easy for people to pay you. Make it easy for people to hire you.
So look at your website again. Can people hire me? Can people book a session with me? Can people buy my product, program, or service? And if they can't buy it right now, when I'm actively promoting it, maybe you have things that are in like a launch cycle, so you're only opening them and closing them during certain times.
Do you have a wait list? Do you have a way that people can indicate they want to be in the next enrollment cycle, they want to join the next cohort, or are you hoping that they're still gonna be paying attention when you open it? Again, this is very, very simple, but again, I think especially the online business space has made this so weird and complicated.
You need to start thinking about am I removing all the friction so that people can easily. Buy from me. Am I making it as easy as possible, or am I adding layers of complication? Am I adding layers of complexity that don't need to be there? The other thing I want you to think about when it comes to this applies to both your marketing and your sales system.
Your invite system is how can you add in some high touch? How can you. Really lean into more relationship marketing, more relationship sales. This is, again, something that maybe a lot of people didn't have to do the last few years because everything was very much. You know, selling via email, selling on your website, you didn't have to personally reach out or have real conversations with potential clients before they became clients.
I can tell you right now, the clients I have who are personally reaching out to those that are interested are the ones who are seeing more sales come in the door. So what could this look like? How can you add in some high touch to your sales process? One thing you could do is if you are actively promoting something.
Pay attention to the people who are paying attention to you. So last, um, month when we enrolled for the most recent round cohort of the CEO collective, I made sure to tag everyone who clicked through to the sales page. I wanted to know every single person who is clicking through the sales page. And then I followed up with a message saying, Hey, I, I saw that you checked out the CEO collective.
I'd love to chat with you. Here's a link to my calendar. Let's get on a call. Now, not everybody is going to get on a call, but just paying attention to the people who are paying attention to you will go so far. So you could send them a message, say, Hey, let's get on a calendar. You could record a quick video use, boom, boom, BombBomb, whatever it's called, or loom.
I think that's what it was. Uh, I'm blending together BombBomb and Loom. Um, but use one of those video tools to record small individual personalized videos. Send 'em a voice message. Um, look at how can you add some high touch in there. Often people will just check out your product, program, or service, but there are.
Waiting for something to break through to them that like, oh, this is actually somebody who's gonna really help me. And it's just that little bit of high touch that can make all the difference. The personal message, the personal email, the personal video, getting on a call with them, um, responding to their questions.
Those are the things that will increase your sales if you start. Proactively putting them out there. I also would encourage people to actually start looking at all of your community. As a leads list you can actively reach out to. You don't have to wait until you send a newsletter to touch base with people.
You can go through and look at who are your most active subscribers on your email list, and send them a personal message. You can go through who are the people who are engaging the most with your social media, and send them a personal message and invite them. To work with you, invite them to take that next step.
It doesn't have to be weird. I'm not talking about those gross DM pitches that are, you know, come outta nowhere. I'm talking about having real conversations with people and then encouraging them to check out what you have available coming up. I also want you to pay attention to people who were paying attention to a previous enrollment of your product, program, or service.
This is where a lot of people leave opportunity. Out to dry. They don't follow up. There are people who were interested in your product, program or service, but didn't buy at that particular point in time. Maybe the timing was off. Maybe they didn't have the money right then. Maybe they had other things going on.
They had previously invested into something else, and now could be a better time. Are you keeping track of all the people you've had sales conversations with? Are you going back to them with a little note saying, Hey, a few months ago we talked about X, Y, or Z. Are you still needing help with that? Hey, a few months ago we talked about, you know, you need this type of support.
Are you still looking for that? I have time available. I have spaces available I wanted to check in before I publicly open up the door for more people. You get first dibs 'cause we've already had a conversation. We've already talked. Those are the easiest people to reach out to. 'cause you've already built.
A relationship with them. You've already had some sort of conversation with them. But again, this is something where I, I find a lot of people are like, well, if you don't buy the first time you heard about it, I'm gonna stop. People need to hear about your offer multiple times, so stop pretending like they should only hear about it once, and then you're never gonna follow up with them.
Go back again and again and again. Give them multiple opportunities to join you. Make sure you're following up with those people. If you had sales conversations a few months ago, those should be some of the first people that you're following up with on a quarterly basis to see how you could offer them support.
Now, the final thing I wanna talk about today is really leaning in to lifetime customer value. Lifetime customer value. I have to say this is really the name of the game when it comes to having a sustainable, small business. And I talked to so many people who are frustrated because they feel like they're doing a lot of these launch strategies, these big promotions to bring new folks in the door all the time.
And that is really time and energy intensive. Doing a big launch is incredibly time and energy intensive, but what they don't have conversations about. Is what's happening behind the scenes to the clients who've already worked with you in some way, shape, or form? Okay? So if all of your invitation strategies are around what I call front of house, so these are all brand new people who have not spent a dollar with you yet, and you're not looking at back of house, you're not looking at people who've already spent money with you, you are leaving so much on the table.
You wanna think about lifetime. Customer value. You wanna think about how can I offer my existing clients or my former clients ways to continue working with me? Can I invite them back if they've left? This is a huge thing. It doesn't take a ton of marketing bandwidth. It just takes a little bit of time to follow up with those people, to send out the personal me messages, to get in touch, to see how they are, to see if they could use your support.
Now, chances are if someone worked with you a few years ago. They would come back if they had a great experience. And I have to tell you, this is what is keeping my business going more than anything. I've had clients who continuously come back. It doesn't matter if we worked together a couple years ago or we worked together.
I mean, like I said, even more than 10 years ago. I have clients who come back on a regular basis. I become one of their trusted advisors that they return to again and again because. They had a great experience. They trust me. I know them. I know their business. I know what they're great at, and they feel like I'm a great person to return to.
Are there gaps in working together? Sure, that's gonna happen. I don't ever expect that somebody's only going to exclusively work with me. This is not a cult. I expect that as they're growing their business. If they're going to seek out people who have different areas of expertise, they're gonna seek out people who have different perspectives.
But I'm always going to follow up and try to stay connected with people because I know that they will circle back. Okay. They, they often do. I often have people who circle back years later. I often have clients who maybe they finished their first year in the CEO collective and decided to take a break.
Then they're like, you know what? No, I need to get back in that 90 day rhythm. I need to come to a retreat. I need to get my planners again. I need to get back into this system. That worked really well for me, so I want you to be thinking about that. What else can you offer to your current or past clients?
Is there another level of service you can offer those of service providers out there if you're not evaluating your client docket on a regular basis and providing them with. Strategic insights about what else you can offer to them because it will help them achieve their goals faster, better, smoother, whatever.
If you're not regularly evaluating the business that you're doing for them and where else you could offer support and letting them know, again, you're leaving so much on the table, chances are they just don't know you can do that. One of my clients recently, I just had her go through her entire book of business and I had her evaluate every single client's current level of service and go through and say, okay, where else could I provide value?
Looking at their goals, where else can I support them even more? And when she reached out, it was like, yeah, I need you to do that. Perfect. And they had no problem saying yes to a higher level of service and increasing what they were paying. So I want you to be thinking of that. Where else can I add value to my current existing clients?
And how can I bring past clients back into the fold? How can I bring them back and get them to work with us again? How can I bring them back and offer the next level product, program, or service? How can I just be in the loop with them and make sure that they know when I have availability to support them again?
So I hope this conversation was really helpful for you. You know, building a client growth engine, it is a lot of effort when you put it together and you have to go into it knowing that it takes maintenance. It's not set it and forget it, it's rinse and repeat, right? You get on a rhythm with it. But it takes that maintenance and sometimes you have to just upgrade the infrastructure a little bit.
You have to evaluate, is everything working as well as it possibly could? Is there something that could work better? Is there something I need to double down on? Is there something I kind of ignored for a while and now I need to really ramp it up to bring everything back up to replacement level? I need to actually ramp it up even more so that I can get to the growth level.
I want you to be thinking about these things because it doesn't take very long of your client growth engine bringing in declining results. For it to massively impact your business and honestly jeopardize the long term sustainability of your business. So I want you to evaluate using everything we talked about today.
And if you need more support, I want you to know I just put Client Growth Engine, the official training available for sale on the CEO collective.com. This is my proprietary training to help you map out. Your client growth engine, your marketing system, your sales system, your delivery system, and I've also included two special bonuses, marketing without social Media and referral growth engine.
These are two additional trainings that layer on top of our client growth engine framework to really help you dial in. What works best for you and your business. If you wanna get more details about that, head over to the CEO collective.com/client growth engine. Would love to support you. This is the first time I'm putting it available on demand, but I wanted to make sure it was out there for small business owners right now who are realizing that what used to work just isn't working anymore and they need to reevaluate what's going on in their business.
Okay. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, make sure you are subscribed to the podcast either on iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube. And also make sure you head over to my Instagram and chat with me about it. Let me know any ahas, any insights, any questions you have about evaluating if your client growth engine is really working for you right now.
I would love to hear from you as I prepare for the next few episodes. All right. I hope you have a great one. I'll talk to you soon.