Kat Millar

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7 Reasons Why Coaches Struggle To Sign Up Clients

The restrictions might be starting to lift, however, the financial crisis could keep going for some time.

I believe that in this time in history, it is more crucial than ever to be able to sell our services.

Selling is the #1 way that we keep our businesses afloat.

Selling helps people to improve their lives. It enables people to get more of what they want.

It’s an incredible feeling if you are offering something to someone who is going to benefit and get a result that transforms their life.

Yet so many business owners avoid learning sales skills.

I believe that more than ever, it’s a time for us to serve people and make offers to people who need help.

Selling is not about convincing someone or changing someone’s mind. It’s about having good conversations and seeing if you’re the right match to work together.

Sales is the #1 way to increase the numbers in your bank account, which is going to give you more freedom and more choice in your life.

And the best part is that we get to do it while doing what we love and helping people!

Here are seven reasons most coaches struggle to sell their services…

Number 1 – Asking too few questions

Effective sales conversations come from asking effective questions. Unfortunately people have negative associations with sales. Effective selling is about asking effective questions. I call them power questions.

These questions open up your potential clients’ minds ways to overcome their limiting beliefs about themselves, about you and about what you’re offering.

Effective questions, help the person to come to the realisation themselves that they actually need, what it is that you’re offering.

We need to spend at least 70% of the conversation asking questions. This is not interrogating, but asking elegant questions.

Some examples of effective sale questions are:

  • Tell me what your life would be like if you solved this problem?
  • Tell me what it’s costing you to not have this problem solved?
  • How is it affecting you?
  • Why is it important to you to solve this?
  • How is this affecting your family, relationships and health?
  • If you could change, what would be your ultimate result?
  • What have you tried in the past, and what has worked for you?
  • What hasn’t worked for you?

By asking these questions, you’re really digging in and getting to know the person to find out if they’re a match for you and to see if that person really wants to buy what you have to offer.

Number 2 – Talking Too Much or Too Little

If people who are selling to me talk too much, it makes me want to get out of the conversation. Talking too much can kill a sale for you.

No matter how good your product and offer is, talking too much doesn’t give the person you are talking to time to evaluate their own needs.

I understand that we often talk too much because we are nervous and to fill the air. There is value in allowing breathing space for people to contemplate their needs.

Now talking too little can also kill a sale. If a salesperson is not talking much, it makes me question what they are not telling me and why!

Both talking too much and too little lead back to the base of using a sales call as an opportunity to build a relationship with a potential client.

Remember that relationships go two ways. Asking the right questions and listening to needs helps you both work out if you are a match to work together.

Number 3 – Coming Across Too Strong

There’s a concept that I teach called strength and warmth. Strength and warmth is the spectrum of how we need both sides to be compelling and influential.

There’s a great book called Compelling People. In this book, they studied influential people and found they had a really good balance between strength and warmth.

There’s a sweet spot in the middle of being both strong and warm. By strong I mean you are quite direct and confident. You’re telling the person that you can absolutely help them, you’re giving them lots of assurance. People respect it and feel safe.

You tip over too much to one end of the spectrum and it can come across very forceful and almost rude. Most of us are actually scared of coming across like that. And so, for most of you, I imagine that you’re not strong enough.

Number 4 – Coming Across Too Soft

The fourth reason that coaches don’t sign up clients is coming across too soft. If you go too much on the warm end of the spectrum you can come across quite fluffy and apologetic. As soon as there’s any sign that a person might throw an objection out at you, you accept it, because you’re scared of rejection.

So instead of having an open authentic conversation, you end up just being really fluffy and avoiding it. We need to be strong and we need to kind to help people through their limiting beliefs and rejections.

Building good rapport with the person is crucial. You can say something like, ‘I can feel that this really seems like a problem for you.’ ‘What other options do you have if you don’t go here?’ Help people solve their problem rather than just running as soon as there’s any sign of any doubt.

So don’t be too strong, and forceful and blunt and direct and don’t be too soft. Find that nice sweet spot in the middle where you’re having a genuine human conversation with another person to see if you’re a match.

Number 5 – You’re Too Expensive

Many people try and go quite high in their charging before actually testing the market. They put their price too high before they’ve actually got the experience.

Make sure that if you’re not signing up any paid clients, you might need to drop your price to get some results and some great runs on the board. If you’ve not got testimonials to back your service, then you’re going to struggle to sell yourself at a higher price.

Build up your client base and build your testimonials. Testimonials of your clients’ transformations are essential for your business. This may mean doing some free coaching sessions in return for a testimonial and to build up your experience.

Number 6 – You’re Too Cheap

You’ve got to be in the middle- not too expensive and not too cheap. If you haven’t had any paid clients yet, you might give a discount for the first three clients in return for a testimonial.

If you’ve been coaching for ages and you’ve got clients already, then this is different, but when you’re starting out, it’s really important that you get results and transformations.  Then you can do things like webinars because you can only to webinars if you’ve had results for people.

If you feel that you’re a bit resentful when you tell people your price and if you feel like you’ve dropped the price because you are desperate for sales, then you may well need to increase your price.

People won’t value you if you’ve priced your service too cheaply.  The biggest investment I’ve made into my business was a $17,000 business course.  Because I had invested, I turned up and did the work.

If you are too cheap, people will just think that you’re not good, so please don’t undersell yourself!

Number 7 – Having Too Little Confidence

When we gain confidence to charge what we’re worth, we can have great conversations with people and we can confidently communicate our value.

When we truly know that we’re providing great value to someone and getting them results, it helps build our confidence. I’m working with clients, every single day. Last week I had 18 clients and this week I’ve worked with 27 clients and I’m getting them results.

I’m giving people value and helping them and this gives me a lot of confidence. So you’ve got to be good at what you do and you’ve got to be able to communicate what you do well and with confidence.

To gain confidence you need to do lots of practice sessions. I’ve literally given hundreds of free coaching sessions to people and it built up my practice and it also built my confidence in selling and making offers.

The next thing with confidence is making sure that you’re speaking to the right person. It’s very hard to sell to someone who genuinely doesn’t need what you’ve got. I try and prequalify people beforehand through a questionnaire.

Only work with committed people because your reputation is valuable. Your reputation and brand is more important than money.

Make sure that you’re only having sales conversations with people who you know you can definitely get a transformation and results for. That is going to build your confidence.

If you want to know the best way to sell during these current times, I recently ran a FREE 90-minute masterclass called ‘Selling Equals Service’

It was a powerful session and I received lots of great feedback afterwards.

I talked through 5 keys to effective selling and shared a 6-step VALUES based selling framework that I personally use and share with my clients.

In case you missed it, I’ve created a replay which is now available for the next 48 hours. ?

? Grab Your Free Access Here

P.S. The content is a game-changer if you want to sign up your ideal paying clients, so don’t procrastinate – take action and watch it today before it comes down!

Enjoy!

Kat

 

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Handling Chaos Well

In the midst of the current world chaos, there is no better time than to talk about strategies for how to handle chaos well.

This week I’m taking a break from the normal business topics, to talk about mindset and how to manage your mind throughout the season that we’re in.

Not everyone knows this but I do a lot of mindset work with people and I’ve been studying the mind for the past two decades and I’m fascinated with the mind, our thoughts, psychology and the brain.

I spend a lot of time researching and contemplating the mind, this is an area that I’m passionate about. The reason I chose business is that I love working with entrepreneurs like yourself, who want to grow their business.

Mindset is key when developing our businesses. Often people bump up against a roadblock, a limiting belief, a negative emotion of fear that holds them back.

It’s not until we work on this area of mindset that we get unstuck, and start flowing and taking action again in our businesses.

So I want to share with you some ways to manage your mind throughout this chaotic time that we’re living through. All of us are feeling the effects of the Coronavirus. A lot of people are feeling fearful, anxious and worried.

If that’s you, I want to give you some ways to think that might be helpful for you, and some mindset tips that you can take away and implement immediately.

These are keys that you can also share with those you influence; your family, your employees, your neighbours and your community.

Understand What You Can Control – The TEAR Model

Firstly, we need to understand the realities of what we can control and what we can’t control.  I teach a model called the TEAR Model to a lot of my coaching clients.

The TEAR Model is a four-step model that shows that circumstances are not the thing that actually drives our feelings, our actions or our results.

T – Thoughts

E – Emotions

A – Actions

R – Results

Circumstances are neutral. The facts about the Coronavirus, the facts about what’s happening are neutral. They are a circumstance. They are the only things we can’t control. We can control the other 4 aspects which is our thoughts, emotions, actions, and results.

If you’re a coach, I recommend it’s so important at the moment to be coaching your clients in managing their thoughts, because we cannot necessarily control the circumstances and the events that are happening. Nor can we control the facts.

We’ve got to be careful with what we view as facts. Make sure that what we are believing is fact and not an assumption of someone around you.

Remember, we cannot control the circumstances, but we can control our thoughts, our emotions, our actions and our results.

It always starts with our thoughts. Our thoughts about a circumstance is going to lead to our emotions. Our emotions that come from those thoughts are going to lead to our actions. Our actions are going to lead to the results we produce.

An example of this is the circumstance with the supermarkets. People’s thoughts are leading them to the emotions of fear, panic, worry and stress. They think they are going to run out of food for their families.

Their thoughts are driving their emotions to overtake common sense and their actions are to panic buy. The result of this is no food or toilet paper left on the shelves.

Another person may walk into the same supermarket but have completely different thoughts, emotions, actions and ultimately results. They may see the empty shelves and think the shops will get restocked, they don’t worry because they know they are cared for.

These people walk in peace and joy, as they know everything will work out for them. You’ve got to separate the facts from the circumstance.

Watch what you put into your soul through your eyes. I call it the eyes gate. And watch what you listen to through your ears (your ears gate).

The media feed us a cocktail of fear. They show what’s happening and the panic and fear grow.  It’s important what you ‘feed’ your eyes and ears at the time. Be protective over them and that of your children (if you have them).

Our social media feeds are called a ‘feed’ for a reason. We’re getting fed constant fear and panic, and that part of our brain is actually getting addicted to it.

The more we are consuming the fear in our feeds, the less that we’re looking at all the beauty in the world. We are overlooking all the love, all the communities rallying together, all the support and all the wonderful things in the world.

3 Don’ts for Managing Chaotic Times

1) Don’t Look to Others to Decide How to Feel

It’s so important that you don’t look to others to decide how you should be feeling.

We need to step up and take leadership, and be great role models.

A lot of people are looking around at people’s eyes and looking at the news and looking at their social feeds to decide how to feel. If someone is panicking, it’s easy to feel like you’ve got to adjust how you feel.

You can almost feel a little bit bad that you’re feeling calm and happy. I feel very calm, and I almost feel tempted to go into guilt for feeling calm and happy!

Use your thoughts to decide how you want to feel.

What feelings do you WANT to feel and what thoughts

Step back and look at this – we are living in a unique moment in history. We are on this journey together as the humans. This is our journey right now and we get to choose how we decide to view it.

How do you want to be known as to how you handled 2020 and what’s going on in the world right now?

We get decide how this time will be remembered in our lives and in the lives of our children.

I choose thoughts that help me stay calm and created and resourceful.

I know that the calmer and happier I am, the more that I can help other people.

It’s important for me to stay calm and to do that, I have to choose the right thoughts.

I have to choose to trust, I have to choose to believe that whatever happens, we will handle it.

2) Don’t Feel Bad for Feeling any Feeling

Please don’t feel bad, guilty or shame for feeling whatever you’re feeling. Whether that’s feeling like you should probably be sad right now, because people are dying, but you don’t feel sad.

If you’re feeling happy and you’re getting on with your life, don’t feel guilt! If you are staying on purpose, and feeling that for you it’s important not getting distracted, that’s the best thing that you can do for the world right now.

Don’t feel bad if you feel scared or if you’ve had to cancel an event. If you’ve got elderly parents and you feel concerned for them. That’s okay.

It’s ok to allow yourself to feel the disappointment, feel concern or feel the hurt. Don’t try to buffer or numb feelings. It’s healthy to sit with your feelings for a while. But you don’t need to stay there.

Be conscious of how others are being impacted by these events and don’t minimise the experience of others. It’s so important though, that we don’t get sucked into depression, anxiety or fear in the midst of this situation.

The leaders that are successful are those that will stay calm. When you’re stressed, you don’t think clearly, you’re not intelligent or smart decisions. As emotion increases, intelligence often decreases.

In this time of uncertainty, it’s good to give your brain certainty.

So stick with routines that keep a level of certainty about your life, like going to the gym or doing workouts and making healthy food. Routines help keep certainty.

3) Don’t Give in to Urges That Don’t Serve You

Resist urges that make you want to drink alcohol, give up your healthy routine or make you want to just stay in bed and not focus on building your business because the world is at a standstill.

Choose things that will benefit you and your business. If it means not looking at the news, then choose not to read or listen to the news. If it’s not helping you, it’s not serving you.

I’m putting my energy into my business into coaching people, focussing around mindset and helping people with their emotions.

3 Do’s for Managing Chaotic Times

1) Focus on Thoughts That Make You Feel Better

Think about what’s going to make you feel better and feel calm. For me, I trust that whatever comes my way I can handle it. I trust that the authorities are doing the best that they can and I trust that I will be provided for.

I know that I have a great community. I know that I can learn from this. I take this as an opportunity to grow.

There’s no point suffering for no reason. There’s no point sitting in anxiety, when you have tools and resources, and people that can help you get out of it.

Sometimes I’ll just stop and sit on my chair and I’ll just write out positive, helpful happy thoughts. It’s not denying the facts. It’s not putting your head in the sand.

You’re looking at the facts and deciding what you want to think and feel about them.

2) Increase Positive Input and Decrease Exposure

How much time, are you spending on your Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn feed? How much negativity are you allowing into your eye and ear gates?

Double down on your positive input. Listen to positive podcasts, positive addresses on Facebook and spend positive time with your friends. Match the amount of negativity you are seeing and hearing, with the equivalent of positive input.

Coaching is one of the best things you can do at the moment, because coaching helps people let out their concerns. It’s like cleaning your house; you can clean out all the mess inside. Clean up your mind and have a listening ear.

Don’t be scared. You’re not going to run out of work. You have so many people that you can help at this time. Please don’t sit back and wait for people to come to you. Reach out and ask people how you can help.

Offer free coaching sessions and help people with managing their minds. As coaches, we help people manage their minds and focus on what they want.

3) Use This Time to Grow Stronger, Be Creative and Innovate

Put on a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset welcome challenges. They think, ‘How am I going to grow? How am I going to learn?’ They believe the world is going to get better.

We need a filter change. If we filter to see only the bad, we will only see the bad. We need to take precautions and we need to be safe.

We need to choose a positivity filter to view life at this time. Choosing a positive filter means you will see this time as an opportunity to grow. You may have to pivot and run those live events as webinars, but look for the opportunities within this time.

This is an opportunity to get stronger, to look at how you can innovate. Be creative. Join together and form stronger communities. Do your best to be part of the solution.

If you’re a business owner and you’re struggling during this time, I’d love to offer you a free coaching session*

‪If you need help or support for yourself personally or in business, you can book a free 30-minute coaching session here

*First-time sessions

Don’t suffer alone. We’re all in this together.

We the humans are amazing, resilient and resourceful.

We will get through this.

Take strong and take care,

Kat

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How to Identify Your Next Level of Entrepreneurial Courage

Courage is an important ingredient we need to have if we want to succeed and excel in business.

Courage is not about not feeling fear. Courage is facing our fears head-on and charging ahead despite the fear.

Being in business requires courage. We get pushed out of our comfort zone. We’ve no doubt already taken bold action and have been courageous. But we can sometimes settle and become complacent once we’ve overcome some hardships.

Today I want to challenge you to take a look at the next level of entrepreneurial courage that you need to take, in order to get to your next level in business.

Sometimes we avoid taking action because we think something is scary and looks almost impossible. But if we break things down into sizeable chunks, we can achieve whatever we want!

During my time working with entrepreneurs, I have identified seven stages of courage that entrepreneurs go through on their business-building journey.

This will help you determine where you are along your journey and what your next courage step is.

Stage Number 1 – Courage to Commit to your Goals

Stage Number One is having the courage to commit to your goals. When you set out a business plan, you need to set goals and have a vision. You need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing and exactly what you want to achieve by your actions.

It takes courage to share your goals with others because then you are really putting yourself out there to potentially be judged! This is a scary thought! Sharing your goals with others requires courage.

Stage Number 2 – Courage to Specify a Niche

Stage Number Two is having the courage to develop a niche. It takes courage to say, ‘I’m going to work with this group of people’ and potentially leave another sector of people out.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is important when singling out your niche or micro-niche and sticking to it!

Marketing to your niche doesn’t mean you leave all people out, it means you are targeting primarily your ideal client. You are speaking directly to your niche targeted client. Take the courage to be a subject matter expert for your niche market.

Marketing is about attracting and repelling. Don’t be scared to repel people, as those you repel will not be your ideal client. Your ideal client will be attracted to you. Take the risk to micro-niche!

Stage Number 3 – Courage to Write Your Truth

Writing your truth is a big step in the courage stages. Writing your truth includes putting out a website, finding your buyers or clients on social media, writing your social media posts and writing blogs.

It takes courage to become visible. People will see you. People might judge you. And it’s a risk we all need to take. People procrastinate and create excuses like, ‘I’m not good at technology’ or ‘I’m not a good writer.’

It takes emotion to write. It takes courage to write your truth. Be courageous! The payoff is worth it!

Stage Number 4 – Courage to Go to Your Next Level

So you’ve done your website and blogs, but now it’s time to step up further. If you have become comfortable with writing your truth, now you need to go to the next level and speak your truth on a wider scale.

If you’ve not gotten in front of a camera, then you need to take the next step and get in front of a camera!

If you’re already comfortable in front of a camera, then your next stage of courage is to host a webinar or get out and do a live event, like running a free workshop. There is always a next level of courage awaiting you that you can attain. 

Stage Number 5 – Courage to Include a Call To Action

Believe it or not, including a call to action within your material takes courage. Inviting people to opt-in to a freebie requires courage. Adding a call to action on your video or a link to opt-in takes great courage!

Adding a call to action is like putting your hand out to help someone. It is your offer to nurture and provide value for your future clients. There is a possibility that someone won’t take your offer, but you have at least taken the courage to offer!

Stage Number 6 – Courage to Ask for Payment

Believing you are worth your time and believing someone should pay you for your time takes big courage! It means truly believing you and your time are valuable enough to have someone pay you for them. 

You may have been posting live videos or providing free downloads for potential clients. You’ve been giving your future clients value. It’s now time to bring your client further on the journey with you by asking them to pay you for your time and insight.

Remember people are not just paying you for your one-hour of time, they are also paying for your years of experience, education and training, that have led you to where you are now.

It has cost you to gain your knowledge. It is fair and right for you to ask people to invest in what you have already invested in – your education, experience and knowledge!

Stage Number 7 – Courage to Be Consistent

You’ve achieved all the above stages and you now have a fantastic client base. You’re booked well into the future and you have excellent cash flow. This is fantastic and you deserve your hard work to be rewarded.

This is the time where complacency can kick in. Summoning your courage to be consistent is vital in this season. It takes courage to keep being consistent, courage to continually show up and provide value for your clients. It’s about honouring your client and also honouring yourself.

 

Kat

P.S. Want an effective content creation game plan, so you can start attracting more paid clients FAST?

? Check out our new upcoming workshop…

CREATE CONTENT THAT CONNECTS

A 2-day live ‘get it done’ workshop in Sydney

Get Your Entire Client-Attracting Content 6 Month Game Plan DONE… in one weekend!

Learn More About The ‘Create Content That Connects’ Workshop

 

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5 Essentials of Influential Social Media Content

Creating consistent content is so important in growing your business.

But to attract your ideal clients, it’s not about just posting any content; it’s about posting influential content.

It’s SO important that your content on social media is influential. You can spend so much time in your content, and if it’s not influential, that time can be wasted.

You could have been investing and doing something more important in your business that was actually going to get you a result.

If you post influential content, you’ll be way more likely to help people to move along with the journey towards you, and have them take that step closer to becoming a paying client.

You want to think about what the purpose of your content is, (rather than just posting for posting sake).

You want to ensure your content is really helpful, relevant and influential, meaning you’re helping people to actually take action to change their life, not just to entertain them.

Recently one of my clients said to me; “Kat, I’m thinking I need to post more funny stuff on my Facebook business page, because the funny stuff gets the most likes.”

I’m not sure if you’ve fallen into that trap before, but likes are not the goal. Getting people to take the next step towards you is the goal – the step towards becoming a paid client.

Be careful not to just chase engagement – in terms of likes, but actually encourage a relationship with that person, inspire that person to become someone to change, and to take action for themselves.

Really the test is: Are people coming through your funnel? Are you getting people off social media and onto your website, onto your landing page and onto your online domain?

Ask yourself; ‘What is going to get people over the line?’ ‘What is actually going to make people want to sign up for you?’

People will sign up with you because you inspired them to want to take action. It’s because you educated them on the importance of taking action, of the cost if they don’t take action and why you’re different. Entertaining them is important. I’m not saying don’t post funny stuff. Use funny stuff as a break from your day, but it doesn’t lead to paid clients.

Paid clients purchase premium products that inform, inspire and educate. The purpose of social media is for potential clients to get to know, like and trust you, so they want to take the journey with you.

We need to make influential social media content that brings our clients across the line.

Here are 5 Essentials of Influential Social Media Content:

1) Design the Purpose of Your Post First

Decide prior to commencing your post what the purpose of your post is. Use strategy and intentionality when developing your social media posts. Think through what will lead to bringing money into your bank account.

Remember as a business owner if money is not going into your bank account consistently to cover your lifestyle and bills, you will always be stuck in a job, working for someone else.

If you really want to be an entrepreneur and get money into your bank account from working with people, you’ve got to think about the journey your potential clients will take to get there.

Usually, a future client’s journey starts with interacting with your social media post. That post leads them along the journey to become a paid client.

Be helpful, relevant and have a purpose and reason for your post. Building rapport, connection and trust with your future client is the beginning of their journey with you. A piece of content might be made to overcome a specific objection a client had. It might be to show a little bit more about your story, so they relate to you a little bit more.

It might be to showcase how you can help them by telling an example of a great story that you’ve had with a client, a case study or something that happened to you that week that was an excellent lesson. The lesson should help them to take more action towards you. Be strategic and ensure your posts all have a purpose.

2) Speak Directly to Your Ideal Clients’ Desires and Challenges

A lot of people don’t have goals, but they know what they want. A lot of people have dreams, but they might not even think that they can achieve their dreams. Many people may have goals, but how many are actually realising them?

If you were to ask a person, ‘What do you want?’,  most people know what they want. Ask a person, ‘What are you struggling with?’ and they will be able to articulate their struggles to you.

Speak directly to your ideal client, not broadly as thought talking to friends or family. Speak directly to the person that you want to work with, to your target market or avatar. Speak to their desires. Speak to their challenges. The deeper you go, the better for your potential future client.

It’s not all about demographics. It’s about psychographics. What are their thoughts, their feelings and beliefs? What are they thinking about themselves? What are they thinking about you?

Go deeper. WHY do they need to change? WHY do they want that goal? WHY do they need help with it? Start talking about that. Be really specific about their desires and their challenges.

3) Help Them Overcome Barriers to Action

‘How To’ videos are abounding on the internet. It’s the most searched term on Google. But we’ve got to remember, that it’s not just about people learning, it’s about people doing. It’s about people taking action on what you’re teaching them.

When you’re thinking about your content for your social media, ask yourself; ‘How can I help them overcome their resistance to changing?’ ‘How can I have them overcome their biggest objections to investing in themselves?’

You can address these questions through your social media content. So when you’re thinking about money in your bank account and your potential client becoming your paid client, you must work your way back to this regarding content. What is going to stop them from getting to this point?

And it’s not just about getting a paid client. It’s about transforming someone’s life. It’s about helping them become who they want to be. It’s about helping them out of their pain and helping them get relief.

You’re helping them to avoid, become or create something in their life and to be the person they want to be.

4) Show Them How Else You Can Help Them

Build into your pre-planned strategy, a way to incorporate further development for your future client. Show them how else you can help them. It might look like: Giving them one thing that they could go away and do. One small result so that you’re showing them that you actually have seven. ‘This is one part of my ‘7-step strategy’.

Or it’s one recipe that you’ve got, out of your 50 recipes. Or it’s one technique to overcome a limiting belief, out of all the 50 interventions that you do with people.

You’re not just giving them enough that they feel satisfied. You’re giving them a little taste, so they go, ‘Oh it tastes good’ and they want more. You’re showing them how else you can help them.

You’re not just giving them this false illusion that their problem is solved. We know that no one is going to change their life from one piece of social media content. It’s a layered journey. So build that layering within your strategy document.

People often know what to do but they don’t know how to apply it to them and that’s where you can come in and help. It’s about planting seeds in their mind so they think, ‘Ah, when I need to work on that, I will go to the go-to person’. Planning your strategy is key.

5) Have a Call To Action or Engagement

Your call to action is your next connection and interaction with a future client. It could be, ‘Jump onto the call with me’ or ‘Come to my free webinar’ or ‘Join my five-day challenge’. It could be, ‘Download my freebie’, or ‘Drop a comment or put a yes in the comment box’.

Your call to action is asking your potential client to do something with you and it also works to build engagement. The reason that asking for ‘comments’, ‘likes’ or ‘shares’ works on Facebook, is that Facebook sees these actions, and then pushes your content out to more people in the community.

To recap my 5 tips;
  1. Decide the purpose of your post first
  2. Speak directly to your ideal clients’ desires and challenges
  3. Help them to overcome barriers to action
  4. Show them how else you can help them
  5. Have a call to action or engagement

Applying these 5 tips will help you lead your potential client on a journey towards being a paid client.

P.S. Want an effective content creation game plan, so you can start attracting more paid clients FAST?

? Check out our new exciting upcoming workshop…

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7 Reasons You May Be Struggling To Get New Clients

Would you like to build a profitable business doing what you love?

I believe it's currently the best time in history for you to create a lifestyle business. There are opportunities everywhere for you to connect with your ideal clients and help them solve their problems.

There are more entrepreneurs than ever out there absolutely smashing it and earning a huge income helping people, and of course there are a huge amount of entrepreneurs who are broke.

I know you're probably reading this because you want to share your message in a meaningful way. You want to make a difference doing what you love and help more people. And you want to work with your ideal clients and build a business that aligns with your ideal lifestyle.

If so, this is for you. I want to show you 7 potential roadblocks that are currently tripping you up or could trip you up in the future if you're not aware of them.

Here are 7 reasons you may be struggling to get new clients:

1. Not enough focus on D.P.A - Dollar-producing activities

This was by far my biggest problem when I first started my business.

In my recent blog 'How to Avoid the Perfectionism Trap' I shared a story about when I moved to London and started working at a new gym. I had no clients and no money and it was in the recession.

I'll always remember that lesson about how getting clients is about focusing on the dollar producing activities, like making offers, not the fun stuff like creating a logo, business cards, brochures or hanging out on social media.

The single defining factor in your success is how you spend or invest your time.

Sometimes we can feel that we're doing things that matter, but really we're just doing 'busy' work. Productivity means you actually produced something. Dollar producing activities directly lead to you making dollars.

2. No clear goals with deadlines

One of the main reasons I see people not producing the results they want is that they don't have clear, specific goals with deadlines attached.

We all know that when our brain is left to its own devices without clear commands and instruction, it takes the path of least resistance.

I had 'Write a blog' on my to-do list for years (still do) and barely managed to get it done consistently.

The single thing that got me to take action to produce regular content for my ideal clients was booking workshops. I'd book the venue, pay a deposit and then I HAD to run the workshop.

Or I'd decide on a date for a webinar, make it public, and that would give me the incentive to produce the content. I'll easily let myself down but I don't like to let others down.

Once you create contents for things like workshops and webinars you can leverage it everywhere.

If you struggle with inspiration for your organic content, create an event, book a date, set some deadlines and you’ll create more amazing content than you ever have before.

You need to fail fast, get things out the door as fast as possible and refine as fast as possible. A lot of people won't do this because they're scared of looking bad. But you can't be afraid of failure. It's the only way to truly learn and grow fast.

3. Lack of structure, systems, and support

Something I see a lot is incredibly well-educated people who have a lot of experience and knowledge in a range of modalities, but where they get stuck is joining all the dots together and making it work.

They don't have the structure or the systems in place behind the scenes.

If you lack structure, systems or support, you’ll struggle to be successful. Business is too hard to do without these things. They are crucial. All profitable business owners know this.

4. Being unwilling to invest enough time or money

I’ve had so many people over the years tell me that they’re not getting clients. I ask what their marketing strategies are and discover they haven’t spent a cent on Facebook ads, or they’ve put down $20 for one campaign, it didn’t work so they gave up.

A lot of people are brilliant at the modalities they teach, but not brilliant at business. Unless you want to work for someone else for the rest of your life, you must invest the time and money on learning business skills.

You need to know how to market yourself effectively, use social media profitably, write influential content, position yourself and your brand properly, know how to invest time and money and a range of other different skills.

The good thing is, everything is what I called overcomable. It's all workoutable!

Every skill you need to learn in business, you can learn. Business is a skill just like learning to cook or drive.

5. Not working with enough clients

There are two categories that most people fall into that are struggling to attract enough clients. Firstly, they haven't worked with enough people and they want to charge too much from the get-go without having enough experience or skills to charge that amount. So people don't end up signing up.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are severely under-valuing themselves.

They wonder "Who am I to charge for this? I love it! It comes easily and naturally to me!"

The main reason they do this is because they have unconscious competence around their genius zone. They assume everyone can do or knows what they do and so they don't value it enough.

Another reason people don't work with enough clients is that they are scared of rejection. So they offer cheap prices or don't charge at all, then people don't value them. Or they can't make enough profit to sustain their business so they end up stuck in a job they're not passionate about.

6. Having too broad a niche

Having a vague or broad niche is definitely one of the biggest reasons why people struggle to get clients. They try to be all things to all people. They don't understand that marketing is about attracting some people and repelling the rest.

You know the old saying - if you try to chase 2 rabbits you'll catch none.

If you want to get great results for people, it's better to be a specialist rather a generalist.

Here are some examples of the difference between a broad niche and a micro niche.

Broad Niche:

“I help people improve their mindset and motivation”

“I help people improve their health and fitness and create a happier life”

“I help people create a thriving business”

Micro Niche:

“I help busy women declutter their homes in 6 weeks or less”

“I help busy Mum’s to improve their energy and reduce their stress with simple-to-follow exercise programs they can do at home”

“I help Coaches and Trainers to build a 6-figure lifestyle business”

One word of caution - don't let choosing your micro niche be another trap that stops you staying in action.

It takes time to develop your micro niche. It took me years. But don't let that stop you from moving forward.

If in doubt, choose 'you' a few years ago, before you learned what you learned to overcome a problem you'd love to help people solve.

Just decide and get out there and help people.

7. Giving up too easily

Business can be simple, but it's not always easy.

I bumped into a friend recently who had done her coaching course at the same time as me back in 2014. I ask her how her coaching is going and she says “Oh, I have a lot going on at the moment” which we all know is really code for “I’ve given up for now”

The truth is, it's never really the right time. I procrastinated for years on creating a lead magnet and a funnel and kept buying into the story that I didn't have time. But that's not true.

The reality was that I did have the time, it’s just that I didn't think I did.

I've been running my own business since 2003 and I estimate literally thousands of challenges that I've had to overcome and hundreds and hundreds of little things I've had to learn. You simply have to make one decision - to not give up!

When you delay your decisions, you delay your dreams. Life is always going to be busy.

If you think it's going to get easier the longer you wait, it's not. Things get harder not easier when you delay them.

If you know that having a business you love helping people is part of your destiny, and you feel you have it in you to do it, do it now!

The world is waiting for you

Would you like help to overcome these client-attraction challenges?

I am running a NEW 1-day course in Sydney on Saturday, 16th March.

This event is a MUST for service-based small business owners who want to know the best client attraction strategies for 2019.
 
You''ll learn how to build a profitable service-based business you love, without sacrificing your lifestyle.
Spaces are filling fast, so don't miss out.
 
Details Here:
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