Kat Millar

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5 Marketing Mistakes That Could Be Costing You

There are five costly marketing mistakes that you could be making, that could be costing you in your business right now.

These are all mistakes that I’ve guilty of making so I know them intimately, and I’ve learned how to overcome them, so now I want to help you avoid them.

Many business owners are making at least one of these mistakes at the moment.

1 – Being Too Timid

The first mistake that I see people making is being timid about what they offer. A lot of people say to me they don’t want to be pushy and they don’t want to come across as always talking business on Facebook.

What people fail to realise is there’s a clear difference between being pushy, and being bold as you share what you offer.

It’s so important that we are courageous and show up offering value, so that people will like you, trust you, build a connection with you, and want to take that next step towards you.

A number of people that I’ve spoken to this week have shared that they are afraid to step up and position themselves as an expert.

They’ve said things like:

“There’s so much info on Google, why would people listen to me?”

“I don’t feel I know enough”

“I’m worried I won’t come across as professional enough”

This is totally normal. Fear of criticism and judgment is a very real fear. I struggled with it for many years and succumbed to the imposter syndrome.

To be honest, fear very rarely goes away completely if you’re continually pushing outside your comfort zone.

We just need to act despite the fear.

When you push outside your comfort zone you can feel vulnerable and exposed. When you go on Facebook Live for the first time or hold a Zoom event, you are putting yourself out there for people to see.

Any creator, when they’re showing their work for the first time before it’s fully finished, can feel they’re putting their soul and heart on the line.

Your business is a form of your expression to the world and a form of creativity. When I started out in business, my brain was always sending me thoughts like “I’m not good enough”, or “no one will listen to me” or “someone might criticise me”.

But these are just stories we make up in our head. We’re not here on this planet to play small and have no voice.

We’re here to make a difference.

I heard a great quote the other day:

You don’t get criticised by people doing more than you, you only get criticised by people doing less than you.

I’ve found this to be so true in my journey. The millionaire mentors that I have, never criticise someone that’s further back on the journey from them.

If you want to have more influence and inspire people to take action, you need to be bold and brave with your offer and not hide away from sharing with people.

Share with boldness and don’t assume that people know what you do. When you start sharing with boldness and passion, it’s contagious.

 2 – Being Too Inconsistent

Inconsistency in marketing is a big mistake. A lot of people are very ad-hoc with their marketing and wonder why they’re not getting clients. They only really properly market when they’ve got an offer or event coming up, or when they are inspired, but then they won’t post any content for weeks at a time.

Remember, marketing is not about you. It’s about showing up to your tribe and your community. It’s about being there for people and showing value, even if that person never buys from you.

When you’re consistent, people can rely on you. They learn to trust you, and they get to know you more.

The people who come into my free discovery sessions are usually people are ready to take action, because they’ve consumed my content and because I’m consistent with it.

They’ve either gotten an email, read my blog, or seen a video in my Facebook group. They may have done one of my workshops or webinars.

When people connect with me in strategy sessions, it’s usually because they’ve had some prior interaction with me through my content.

You’ll really fast track your sales process when you show up consistently.

3 – Being Too Passive

The third mistake I see people make is being too passive, rather than proactive.

A lot of people wait for people to come to them. They think that if they put up a website or a few social posts, that clients will come to them.

Business doesn’t work like that. It takes hard work to build something of value. It takes time to craft webinars and events and videos and blogs that are helpful.

They don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be valuable.

You need to share value – share with people about your business and put your name out there as someone to speak at events, on a podcast or on someone else’s social media platform.

How much time do you spend creating great marketing content, landing pages or crafting emails and videos every week?

What is the amount of time in comparison with how much time you spend consuming Facebook, Netflix or YouTube?

The goal is to create more than you consume.

Get your name out there by contributing and sharing your gifts with the world in a bigger way.

Marketing not working? Try a different approach.

Everything is figure-out-able. Be teachable and willing to keep going UNTIL it works.

Make a choice today to start being more proactive with your business and seeking out more opportunities.

4 – Selling on Social Media

The next mistake I see is people trying to use social media to sell. Social media is not about selling, it’s about relationship building.

A lot of people use social media to jump into someone else’s Facebook group and promote themselves or an event or put up an offer.

Remember that people that are following you are not just a number or someone to give you likes.

You want to give value on social media.  Lead with generosity. Leading with generosity means being genuinely curious and helpful for those who comment and engage with you.

Be generous with your engagement with your followers.  You always want to give free and helpful advice before making an offer.

People need to understand what you offer and the benefits and reasons why they should buy your offer. You need to be clear on the pain points of those you are talking to. You can use social media to help people understand your expertise.

To grow your business, you need to take people from social media to your landing page – such as offering them a valuable freebie, which then captures their email address.

From there you can continue to give value through your ongoing emails and build trust and connection.

5 – Thinking Social Media Will Get You Clients

Social media very rarely gives you enough clients to build a profitable, sustainable business.

Social media is best when it’s combined as a strategy with landing pages and some type of offer – like a lead magnet/freebie or presentation, such as a zoom event.

Getting people onto your email list and capturing people’s details is crucial for growing your business. When people are on your email list, they are on your real estate.

Social media is not your real estate. Our real estate is our landing pages, emails and websites.

Landing pages convert 4 to 10 times higher than websites. So my website is full of links to landing pages because landing pages, which are stand-alone web pages.

On a landing page, people take one action. There are no distractions.

Landing pages have an opt-in action where they enter their name and email, and they go on to your email list.

Your email list is one of the biggest assets that you have as a business owner. You own it.

All of my clients that are doing well are doing so because they’ve got marketing funnels in place with landing pages. They are not doing well from social media alone.

I use Click Funnels and have a lot of different landing pages within it.

The reason I love Click Funnels is that it looks super professional. You can use it for up to 20 different funnels. You can use it for webinars and use it to host online courses. I host my webinar replays in there, you can do up-sells, cross-sells, down-sells – the works.

You can take payments easily through Click Funnels by integrating it with your merchant account like Stripe, so it’s beautiful and seamless. It has completely changed my business. I use templates so I don’t have to start from scratch.

Want to try it out?

You can access a free 14-day trial of Clickfunnels and access all my funnel templates, to save you starting from scratch.

Here’s the link

For the template links, drop me an email and I’ll hook you up.

So to recap the 5 marketing mistakes, they are:

1 – Being Too Timid

2 – Being Too Inconsistent

3 – Being Too Passive

4 – Selling on Social Media

5 – Thinking Social Media Will Get You Clients

Need some help?

For a limited time, you can apply for a FREE 45 minute 1:1 client attraction strategy session.

Here’s what you’ll get out of our time together:

  • A clear understanding of the challenges preventing you from signing up clients and how to solve them.
  • A personalised roadmap customised to your business to apply straight away
  • An easy-to-implement strategy to find your ideal clients & turn them into paying clients.

Apply here

All the best!

Kat

 

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5 Non-Sleazy Sales Secrets 

Sales… I know a lot of us don’t particularly love that word. It can conjure up images of people pushing their product on you that you don’t want…

…or some sleazy car salesman saying “Just for you, just today”…

Yechhh…

Because of all the conditioning we’ve received around sales people (i.e. people doing it in such a yucky way)…

… so many of us have resisted learning about sales because we thought selling meant being pushy.

When I left my corporate job in 2003 and became a personal trainer, I did NOT want to think of myself as being a sales person.

I just wanted to help people transform their bodies and their lives.

I remember going to a seminar once where the guy said, ‘Raise your hand if you’re in sales’. There was about 50 of us personal trainers sitting there in the room.

No one raised their hand! The guy said, “Well, good luck ever trying to grow your business and get more clients, if you don’t think of yourself as a sales person.”

I remember resisting what he was saying, even though he explained all the benefits of thinking of yourself as a sales person.The thought of being in ‘sales’ felt so disgusting and gross to me, I hated it. I thought if people wanted to work with me, they’d come to me. I didn’t want to have to convince anyone of anything or feel like I was being pushy.

As I went through my business journey,  I finally learned that there is a right and a wrong way to sell. Selling the right way is not being pushy, manipulative or trying to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do.

Selling correctly is what helps someone to change their life by investing in themselves. It’s what leads to their breakthrough.

So many business owners avoid the skill of sales because they don’t want to be spending time thinking about it – and it costs them greatly.

If you struggle to think of yourself as a sales person, start thinking about selling as influence. There is an art to influencing and inspiring someone to make a decision that can help them get out of pain and improve their lives.

And you can do it elegantly and authentically.

If you don’t believe that your product or service will help people improve the quality of their life, you shouldn’t be selling it.

If you are afraid of making someone an offer to buy something that could help them, you don’t have a conviction around what you’re offering.

It’s super important that you have an offer that you really want to share with people, and that you’re not afraid to share.

You can be great at marketing, presenting, making content and helping people get breakthroughs, but if you can’t sell your services, your business won’t last.

Sales is the lifeblood of your business. If you’re a business owner, it’s the only one way to increase the numbers in your bank account.

Sales equals freedom. Your ability to sell is in direct relation to how free you’re going to be in your business and life.

If you can master this skill, it will be a game-changer for your business.

I heard a statistic recently that I found interesting…

86% of people will pay more for a good experience.

People are wanting a good experience when it comes to buying from you and they’re willing to pay for it.

Here are 5 effective non-sleazy sales skills that will help you to sign up more clients…

1- Preparation

A lot of people aren’t prepared when they get on a sales call, and they flounder about, mumble and ask random questions that aren’t helpful. They do a lot of talking about their product.

We need to flip it so the person you’re talking to, is doing at least 70 to 80% of the talking.

Business people talk about their features and all the different things about the coaching program, but they don’t ask the right questions and they haven’t prepared well for the conversation.

You want to research your client’s situation, so you’re super clear on their pain points and their problems, their dreams and their desires. These are the four things that I’m always thinking about what am I am talking to a potential client.

I’m thinking about the client’s pain, problems, dreams and desires. You need to know these things, so you can help people to get a breakthrough, have a paradigm shift and realise they need to invest in themselves to get a good result.

You also need to research and understand the market. What’s happening in the trends and the marketplace. What’s current right now in your industry?

I recommend having a really good toolkit of awesome questions that you can ask. For example, when I jump into a discovery session or some type of clarity call with people, I’m always thinking about all the powerful questions to help them describe where they are currently at, and where they want to be.

The powerful questions I ask, help them articulate to me where they want to be in their best future self, their vision, their challenges and the consequences if they do and do not invest in themselves.

I use an ABC process:

Where ARE  you now?

Where do you want to BE?

What CHALLENGES are in your way?

I also go into what consequences they will have if they DO change and if they DON’T change.

You can say things like, “Hey by the way, if you don’t change, what will your life be like in 12 months’ time?  How about in 3 years’ time? And what will life be like if you do invest in yourself and make a change in this area?”

I used to work at Les Mills, which was a big chain in New Zealand, who had some of the best systems in the world. Their sales systems were immaculate! One of their sales questions was, ‘If you don’t change, what will your life be like?’ We were told to sit with people in this pain.

I didn’t want to do this, until I realised that I’m actually doing people a disservice if I’m not willing to sit in the pain with them. I needed to get in the hole with them and say, ‘I understand! Let’s climb out of this hole together.’

I know this sounds uncomfortable to get in a hole with someone, but if you had a loved one who was smoking and they had lung cancer and were going to die. Would you try to help them? You don’t want to be pushy. You want them to make a good, healthy decision.

Often people don’t think about the trajectory that they’re on. So it’s really important you do your preparation and you get some powerful questions, that bring things to the surface for people.

You’re not causing pain to the person, you’re highlighting the pain they will feel if they don’t change.

2 –  Positioning

When you’re having a sales conversation, there are two main positions that I recommend that you have. The first one is a position of credibility. Make sure you highlight your credibility.

The second position is humility. Credibility and humility go hand in hand and there is a sweet spot in the middle. You don’t want to be blowing your own trumpet too much, but you also want to help people understand that you can help them. You can say, ‘I’ve been blessed to work with some amazing people that I’ve learned a lot from in my career.’

There are 3 C’s that you need to have when you’re in a sales conversation:

  • Conviction
  • Confidence
  • Certainty

Conviction
You need to have 100% conviction, certainty and confidence when you are talking in a sales conversation. You need the conviction that what you’re offering is valuable, that it’s going to help people to get the result that they want.

Confidence
You want to have strong confidence. Can you imagine buying from someone who’s not confident? No, I can’t either!

Certainty
You need to have certainty about what you’re saying. This goes to your credibility. You highlight your strengths, your experience, your credentials, your expertise, qualifications, skills and your knowledge. And you need to do it with a certainty in your voice and tone.

Having humility when you’re presenting your credibility is important. Humility is all about gratitude and being grateful. It’s acknowledging your mentors and admitting you are standing on the shoulders of giants.

This is key. You don’t want to put yourself on a pedestal. You can share how you’ve learned so much from your business mentor and that through them you have been able to build your signature system.

So positioning, credibility and humility all go together. It’s really important in your sales call, that you’re the leader that you’re leading the conversation. You want them to feel that they’re in safe hands and that you are taking them on a pathway.

3 –  Presence

There are two things with presence. Firstly, you need to be really present in the moment with the person you are talking to. Notice what they are saying, what their body is saying if you’re on a video call.

If I’m on a video call with someone that I’m helping or it’s a strategy call, I’m not just listening for the words, I’m listening to the tonality. I’m watching their body language and taking note of what they are not saying.

I’m looking for every little sign to see if they can grow, if we are aligned and they are committed to really bring change into their lives. If someone’s tonality is out of alignment with their body language, I would take that into account in my manner of talking to them.

You can tell if someone is not present if they’re looking or sounding distracted. If you hold the moment and listen intently, you can pick up so much about what people are saying.

Deep listening speaks a lot to people. It feels terrible when people don’t listen to you. But if you’re responding and reacting to what the person is saying and then repeating back their power words and their emotional words, it feels amazing. And we can only do this when we are being truly present.

The second thing is your presence. Your actual presence is crucial. You want to make sure you’re coming from a place of genuine curiosity and caring. Have conviction and also come from a place of caring and love.

My thought is always, how can I help this person get what they want? How can I help them achieve what they need? This person has all the resources that they need. They have the power and everything they need to succeed within them.

4 – Prizing

Prizing is all about remembering that you are the prize. 

This is all about you valuing yourself.

This doesn’t mean that you are better than other people, but you’ve got to remember that they have a problem and you have the solution.

A lot of people go into sales calls thinking, “I’ve got a problem and I need to pay my bills. I need to sell to this person and they are going to pay my bills.”

This is not the energy that you want to come across with in a sales call.

You want to be totally detached from the outcome. You want to be committed and caring to them, but you need to detach from whether they buy from you or not. And that’s knowing that you’re the prize.

You don’t have to convince them of anything.

I’ve heard it described as like cats and dogs. Dogs are really excited and they come running up to you. But cats are completely different. They sit and groom themselves, and they know you will come up and pat them, because they know they are the prize.

If you think of the contrast, you have some really excited person, saying please, please, please pay attention to me, come and buy from me. Whereas, someone that knows they are the prize will think that they are the solution to a person’s problem.

As a coach you don’t want hundreds of people. You only want 10-20 people, so it’s important to fill your calendar with the people that are exactly the right match for you.

5 – Playfulness

When you’re doing sales, you need to be relaxed and have a little fun. It’s okay to be cheeky and fun. People will relate with you and want to be around you if you know how to have a little bit of fun. Don’t be so rigid and take it too seriously.

Of course, you still need to remain professional and helpful. It’s a balance.

But most people are more likely to buy from someone who is having fun and enjoying themselves.

Many people get so attached to making a sale, that they forget to let go and have fun in the process.

If you ever watched “The Apprentice” you’d see that the people who were friendly and playful would be the ones who made the most sales and had the most enjoyable conversations.

 

 

Are you struggling to sign up clients and would like to know how to better influence and inspire people to take action?

If you haven’t already had a free session with me, I offer a free 45 minute strategy session where I give you a strategy for your best next steps to grow your business.

Apply Here For Your Free Strategy Session 

 

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3 Powerful Influencing Methods To Inspire People To Change

Would you like to be able to better influence people?

If you are in business, it is likely that you have already come across the value of being able to influence people.

Being able to influence people for good is one of the most powerful forces on the planet.

Some people wonder whether influence is about being manipulative or pushy, or trying to convince someone to do something that they don’t want to do.

True influence – when it comes with a pure, genuine desire to be of service – is about being able to help people to get MORE of what they want.

Influencing for good is about INSPIRING people to take action to ultimately improve the quality of their life.

People experience remarkable magic when they’re inspired and feel the energy of their vision.

Being able to influence people is an honour – it means that they have your respect and your trust. I

If you want to help people have powerful breakthroughs and transform their lives, you’ve got to be able to influence them.

Influence is an incredibly powerful skill to learn and master.

Since 2003, I’ve been so blessed to work with thousands of people and helped influence them to make positive changes in their lives.

Some people wonder whether influence is being manipulating or pushy, or trying to convince someone to do something that they don’t want to do.

Influence – when it comes from the right place of wanting to genuinely HELP people – is not about trying to change someone’s mind. It’s about INSPIRING them to take action on what THEY want.

True influence, married with a pure desire to help, is about being able to help people to get MORE of what they want, and ultimately improve the quality of their life.

There are many different ways we can use influence in business and marketing, whether that’s on your Facebook or in an email that you send out. Maybe it’s on video or your landing pages on your website.

Influence through marketing can be used in a sales conversation or inviting someone to make a decision to buy your product or service – it’s helping someone to make a decision to take new action.

We Want to Influence People to Help Them Get Clear on What They Want

If you’re a coach or consultant or a healer or practitioner, you work with people to help them improve their lives.

To be able to influence, you need to help people to identify what’s in the way of getting what they want.  If they’re in one place, and they want to be in another, help them identify what is actually in the way and what is stopping them getting what they want.

Identify what the block is specifically. They may have a vague idea. Help them to actually overcome that block. It may be a limiting belief or a block of some type of emotion, like fear or doubt. Part of influence is actually helping them to overcome the block and have a breakthrough.

People have breakthroughs when they’re fully aligned with their values and they feel the energy of it and they can imagine and see the breakthrough.

Think about the last time that you had a breakthrough. It could be a little breakthrough like a penny dropping, or it could be a complete epiphany moment and be absolutely transformational. The breakthrough comes in a range on the spectrum.

If you want to help people have more breakthroughs and transform,  you’ve got to be able to influence them.

Authentic Influence as a Tool

Influence in itself is a tool. And like any tool you can use it for bad or for good. Any method or technique or strategy can be used for good or bad, so techniques and methods in and of themselves are neutral, it’s how you use them that makes them positive or negative.

Being able to influence effectively helps people:

? Get clear on their future vision

? Identify what’s in the way of they want

? Overcome their blocks

? Have a breakthrough

? Improve the quality of their lives

1 – Uncover Their BFS: Best Future Self 

The first way to influence someone to actually change is to help them to uncover their best future self. Last week I spoke about our future self and how you can really tap into that vision that you have of yourself.

We want to discover who their best future self is.

To do that, encourage them to think into the future and put themselves there. Who are they and what are they doing when they envisage the best version of their future self?

Thinking of your best future-self inspires you, lifts up your energy level and you have amazing feelings when you think about it.

Remember that people don’t want your product or your service. They don’t want a coaching session. They want to feel like they can become their best future version of themselves.

We don’t want to just focus on the method of how we help people transform, we want to focus on the version of themselves that they would like to become.

Keep their best future self at the top of their minds.  You want to ask people to remember that vision of themselves, of being the best and why it’s important to them.

So many people when they’re having sales conversations and trying to influence, they don’t understand this.   They like to rush it and wonder why people aren’t signing up with them.

I’ve done this myself! I was in fitness for 15 years. I always just wanted to rush people to the transformation and jump into a 12-week challenge so they could start losing the weight, instead of taking the time to really find out why it was so important to them to lose the weight.

I needed to ask why it was so important for them to lose the 10 kilos. Was it because they wanted to attract a dream partner or another reason?

Asking people their ‘why’ is a really powerful question to use.

An example you would say is; “I just want to go a little bit deeper now. Could you tell me, why is it really important to you right now?”

Often they may give you a surface reason at first, so asking if you can go a bit deeper to get the real reason is important.

When I’m in a conversation with someone and helping them to be inspired to change, I like to really take notice of the things they say, the things that come out with extra power and extra life.

I was recently having a chat with a lady who said she really wanted to do a TED talk. I asked her to tell me what her life looked like in her future vision. She said it was very important to her because she wants to feel as though she’s achieved something.

She said a lot of other things, but when she talked about doing a TED talk and her reason for it, there was extra emotion, energy and power in her voice. This is what had power in it, and it’s here that she is really connected to this vision.

When you are talking to people, you need to take note of the power words that people are connected to. It’s when they are talking about these passionate topics, that they feel a shift in their body. That is real influence.

2 – Listen Intently

Listen deeply and intently to people’s feelings anytime they talk emotional words. Listen for any type of feeling when they speak in images. If they share that they can imagine it, see it and feel it, then feedback to them what you are hearing.

It’s so powerful when you deeply, intently listening to someone, and for someone to repeat their keywords back to them. Their pathways are being painted back to them and the person you are listening to will say, ‘They get me’.

It’s just such a beautiful feeling when someone acknowledges the things that are important to you.  If you’re really listening to someone and they’re talking a lot, you don’t want to interrupt them, but take notes. Once they have finished talking you can feedback to them how you understood, using their keywords.

You want to be listening so deeply it’s like having a bubble around you. When I’m having a conversation on zoom it’s quite easy. It’s just the two of you, but if you’re in a live event, I just imagine a bubble around me and I focus and listen only to that person.

You can notice when there is a notable shift in a person. It shows in the tonality of their voice and in their body language if you’re on a video call.

If you’re on the phone, you can hear emotion in the voice and you can hear the tonality shifting, so you want to really be  present and listening deeply.

When you notice the energy and emotions in their feelings and in the imagery you are hearing, then feed that back to them.

3- Share Your CPR
C = Credibility
P = Process
R = Results
C – Credibility

When you want to influence someone to work with you, or listen to what you have to say or to your presentation, or if you’re just going to educate them on Facebook Live,  you want to share your credibility.

Share what kind of experience, knowledge and skills you have. Why should someone work with you? Why should someone listen to you?

I remember when I was a personal trainer and worked at a gym, there was once a guy doing a cooldown and leaning back and jerking his neck. They gym instructor went flying up to him and instead of saying asking if he could share a way that could be more effective, he literally shouted out ‘Stop’, and the whole gym looked around as if he was doing something wrong.

You need to frame your advice with your credibility. So you might say to the person, that you’ve worked as a gym trainer for the last 10 years, and you can ask them if they would mind if you shared an effective cool down that will also help protect their back.

Because you’ve shared your credibility, suddenly that person will be open to listen and hear what you are going to offer them and they will be more influenced to change.

Always start with your credibility. And that’s why a lot of times when I talk on videos I talk about how long I’ve been in business, or how many people I’ve coached, because some of those people watching me, may not know my background, so telling my experience builds credibility.

P – Process

You want to share the process that you recommend people go through. So rather than just dumping a whole lot of information at them, and giving them advice, explain a process.

For example you could say to someone, “You told me that you want to do a TED talk and it’s really important to you, because you want to prove to yourself that you can do it. You also want that sense of achievement right?”

I would continue, “For the last 10 years, I’ve been helping people to improve their presentation skills. This is the process that I take people through to get that.  The first step you need to identify your audience…” Then I’ll go through and explain the steps.

People love step-by-step and they love organised knowledge. There’s so much information around on YouTube, Google and blogs and webinars, but people want organised knowledge and a clear process of what they can do straight away.

They want to know what they do first, what they do second and they want to receive your expertise in a process.

Tell them the process that they need to go through in order for them to achieve results.

R – Results

The third thing is to share what results people will be able to create, if they follow your process.

So for example, I would say, ‘Over the last 17 years, I have been running successful businesses and I’ve been really blessed to have helped hundreds of people to achieve results.’

I would then continue, ‘I’ve discovered there’s a clear process that successful people go through to get their results. The first step is to identify your ideal client and locate them. The second step is packaging your unique brilliance and organising your content in a way that’s digestible for people…’ etc.

I describe my process and the results that my future client will get from going through this process.

I then describe what the results ultimately mean for my future client, and how it will help them to create a profitable business, with time flexibility and freedom.

So to recap the 3 Powerful Influencing Methods To Inspire People To Change
1 – Discover Their BFS: Best Future Self 
2 – Listen Intently
3- Share Your CPR

It’s my mission to help people increase their influence and make a positive, meaningful impact in the world.

Leaders helping leaders to influence → helping leaders to influence. What a massive ripple effect! 

What to make a bigger impact?

Come join my free Facebook group ‘Amplify Your Influence’ for passionate, service-based entrepreneurs.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Kat

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3 Essential Skills For Getting Fully Booked With Clients

If you are a coach or service-based business owner, or you want to be, and if you want to get fully booked with paid clients that are going to pay you what you’re worth, you’re in the right place.

Over the years I’ve been so blessed to work with hundreds of business owners, and I’ve noticed there are 3 main problems entrepreneurs face when it comes to getting more clients.

The first problem is a lack of strategy.

When you don’t have a clear, effective strategy with actionable steps, that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis, it’s very hard to grow your business.

In my last blog, I shared how to create the right strategy. If you missed it, you can check it out here…

The second problem is a lack of skills, and that’s what I’m going to be sharing with you today.

The third problem I see is a lack of support.

Many entrepreneurs don’t realise the power of having a supportive community and a mentor. When they come up against roadblocks (which we always do in business, right!), they get stuck, discouraged and many businesses fail.

In this three-part series, I’m unpacking each of these three problems and how you can overcome them.

There are 3 essential skills that you need to have to attract the right clients – and not just any clients, but the right people for you who are going to pay you what you’re worth, and that you’re going to be able to help create breakthroughs and a brilliant transformation in their life.

I noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs, coaches, service-based business owners are really good at what they do.

For example, if you are a mindset coach you’re probably skilled at helping someone to release limiting beliefs, overcome fixed mindsets, and barriers.

If you’re a relationship coach, you’re probably skilled at helping someone overcome conflict and create a deeper connection.

If you’re a career coach, you’re probably skilled at helping someone find the right job for the.

But it doesn’t matter how good you are at these industry skills or at your craft, if you don’t have the right business skills, it’s like having half a business. And without these skills, you’re not going to make it in business.

There are 3 main skills you need to get more clients.

1 – Client Attraction Skills

The first skill is client attraction. There are a number of parts when it comes to marketing and being able to attract the right clients for you. Client attraction skills is about marketing specifically to get clients.

There is a difference between the way you market a service, compared to how you market a product.

So if you’re a coach or have a service and you’re selling time with you, or you’re selling your expertise as a subject matter expert, you’ve got to get good at marketing specifically for client attraction.

Content Creation 

Getting really good at creating content is key. You’ve got to create valuable written and video content, and consistently provide value to your target market.

Are you consistently showing up and giving valuable, helpful, relevant content to your clients, at least once a week?

Are you regularly sharing valuable content on social media, on your website and on email?

There’s a saying in marketing “Don’t build on someone else’s land”.

What that means is don’t just try and build your business on social media. Social media is an amazing way to connect with people, to build rapport, to get people to know, like you and trust you.

Social media is about building relationships. It’s relationship marketing.

But you also need to be able to have your own land, which is your own website and your own email service provider.

You need to be sending out regular emails at least weekly, because email open rates are so much higher than you’ll ever get on social media unless you’ve got a massive budget to spend on Facebook ads.

It’s very unlikely you can build a really profitable, successful business just through social media. I don’t know a way to do it. And if you do figure out a way then let me know! But I’ve never seen it happen. Every successful business owner I know has a great email list.

Your email list doesn’t need to be massive,  but you need people who you can market to, nurture, look after, and give value to through email. You also need to be consistently posting on your website.

Copywriting

Copywriting is the words you use to attract clients. You need to develop the skill of copywriting, because copywriting is usually what is letting you down if your marketing is not working.

If you try to launch an online course, a webinar, or a freebie and it didn’t gain you clients, more than likely it’s because of the copy you used.

Your video skills don’t have to be perfect, but your copywriting has to speak to your ideal client. You need to hone your skill of copywriting and it’s so important that you know the language that your ideal client resonates with so that you connect with them.

You want people to read your writing and think, ‘It’s like they have been overhearing my conversations!’ You want to have so many conversations with people so that you understand how you can best help them.

Ask people what they’re struggling with, what roadblock they are encountering, and ask people how you can help them overcome their problems.

I coached hundreds and hundreds of people with so many free discovery sessions. I would pour my heart into people, even if they weren’t going to sign up with me, because of all that I learned.

The coaching experience was such a valuable experience. Doing these sessions helped me understand what people needed help with, and where I could come in and help them. These sessions helped me understand my target market’s language.

The best way to get good at copywriting is to do it and to follow other people who are great at writing copy.

I consume a lot of copywriting. I love reading Facebook ads, because someone is investing money into making sure the copywriting on those Facebook ads is good. If you scroll past Facebook ads and you just use Facebook for fun, it’s not going to help you grow your business.

You might want to create a file of Facebook ads. I do this on Evernote, an organisation system. I have created a file called ‘Facebook ads’ and I put a whole heap of Facebook ad wording in there, to get ideas to get better as a copywriter.

Communicating your value

You also need to get really good at communicating your value and influencing people to take action – through your written and video content.

It’s so important that you know how to effectively speak to your ideal clients’ frustrations, fears, dreams and desires and clearly articulate how you can help people.

2 – Sales Skills

The second skill is selling. Many people cringe when they hear the word sales and selling.

I used to as well – I thought sales people were pushy and I would avoid it. I thought of sales as having to try to convince someone to buy from me. I didn’t realise that there’s a way of selling that feels enjoyable for both people.

If what you offer people improves the quality of someone’s life, you are doing them a disservice not to share it with them.

After doing a sales course, something clicked in my head that I was thinking too much about myself and what others might think of me, rather than actually helping them.

I had to totally reframe what I understood sales to be.

I now see selling as service. Selling is helping. Selling is caring.

If you’re ethically and authentically helping someone improve their life, why would you not want to tell people about how you can help them?

Every time I’ve bought from a mentor or an expert, or I bought a course or some form of education, my life has improved. In fact, the return on investment that I’ve had in investing in education and coaching is unbelievable.

I love buying education. I love buying from coaches and mentors. That is what accelerates your growth and gives you rapid results. When I started investing lots of money, I got incredible results.

By buying education, I now don’t ever have to work for anyone ever again! That is a BEAUTIFUL thing.

I can work for myself at home. I can make a six-figure income, because I’ve invested in coaching and education. I could never repay those people for how much they’ve helped me.

When you think of sales like that, when you think of the things that you’re so grateful that you purchased, it makes you want to inspire people to buy.

The word sales can have connotations of an 80’s car salesman. If you have that feeling, it may help to reframe it and think of sales as inspiring people to buy.

Think of it as sharing your message so someone can breakthrough into a new place in their life.

Developing the skill of sales is extremely important if you want to make it in business. You’ve got to learn how to do it correctly and authentically and then practice it.

When you have the skill of being able to sell, you can make money anytime, anywhere and that’s priceless.

3 – Presenting Skills

The third skill I recommend that you develop in order to attract your ideal clients is the skill of presenting. The world has changed and people are realising how easy it is to build a business through being at home.

But to make it as a coach or service-provider, you’ve got to get good on video. You cannot hide behind words anymore. People want to connect with you.

It’s different if you’ve got a product you’re selling. People don’t necessarily need to connect with you as a person.

But if people are buying time with you, they want to see you and hear you.

How willing are you to put aside your self-consciousness and show up on video?

A lot of people aren’t willing to do this. They hide behind written words. They don’t jump on video. Or, they jump on video but they haven’t practiced. They haven’t organised their knowledge and they haven’t put their knowledge into clear, actionable steps.

And when it comes to video, people are watching to see how consistent you are at showing up.

The skill of presenting is learnable. You don’t have to be an extrovert. I’m not. You don’t have to be super confident either. You just have to believe in what you’re sharing. You have to know it’s true. You have to have done it yourself, so you share with authenticity and integrity.

You’ve got to be willing to present yourself, show up with confidence, and give value.

If you take the time to hone these skills, learn from an expert, keep growing, improving and showing up, there’s no reason why you can’t get fully booked with clients, make an incredible income and help so many people.

You’re building an asset and a legacy that will keep going and going, once you know how to attract clients, know how to inspire them to buy and know how to present.

The sky will be your limit and your income will have no ceiling.

Then you don’t have to rely on someone else paying you every single week. You can make your own money.

If you can stop being distracted by everything that you could be doing in business and start honing these three skills, you can make money fast.

Something I LOVE about entrepreneurship is that the playing field is equal for everyone. You don’t have to have a formal education. You don’t have to have been born in a certain generation that understands tech. You don’t have to be a ‘natural’ marketer, sales person or presenter. All of these skills are learnable for everyone.

If you want to develop these three skills, then I highly recommend that you join me next week on Facebook Live in my Amplify Your Influence group.

We will be talking about the third problem that most entrepreneurs make, which is not having the right support that is what accelerates your growth.

I will be unpacking how you can develop these skills in a free workshop that I’m holding on August 8th, 2020.

This is a new full-day online workshop. I will be showing you how to develop these skills, how to attract clients and I’ll also be giving you feedback on your own business, and helping you with where your gaps and your weaknesses are.

You’ll walk away with a clear marketing roadmap and you’ll also get my 5-step client attraction formula, with all the slides, the workbook, and resources.

Learn more about the ‘Attract New Clients With Ease Workshop

Looking forward to seeing you!

Kat

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3 Essential Keys For Getting Fully Booked With Clients

Wondering how to get more clients?

In this training I share with you how to get fully booked with ideal clients who are reliable, consistent and pay you what you are worth.

Over the years I’ve been so blessed to work with hundreds of business owners, and I’ve noticed there are 3 main problems that many business owners face, when it comes to getting fully booked with clients.

1 – Lack of Strategy 

The first problem is a lack of strategy.

Many business owners don’t have a clear, effective roadmap to put all the pieces together and join the dots. They find themselves busy, but not productive.

When you have an effective strategy with clear action steps, you can create a consistent pipeline of clients and a reliable income stream.

2 – Lack of Skills 

The second problem is not having the skills. If you’re not regularly attracting paid clients, it’s probably because you haven’t developed the right business skills.

These skills include packaging, offer creation, marketing, content creation, funnels, selling, presenting, and technology.

If you’re willing to learn these skills, you will fast-track your results, so you can have a profitable business doing what you love.

3 – Lack of Support 

The third problem is a lack of support. Without support from the right community and mentor, many people struggle to make it in business.

There’s nothing more valuable in accelerating your business growth than receiving clarity and guidance from an expert who has achieved what you want to achieve and believes in you.

This includes having a community, coaching (getting feedback on your business from an expert) and clarity.

Today I’m sharing about the first main problem, which is a lack of strategy.

Lack of Strategy

Having the right strategy is key for your business.

Do you ever find yourself sitting at your desk and staring at a blank screen, struggling to create content?

Do you try a little bit of one person’s ideas, then a little bit of another, and feel like you’re busy, but you still don’t have enough paid clients?

Maybe you’ve put out some free content like videos, but you’re not getting the results that you want?

Without an over-arching business strategy, you can find yourself busy, but not productive.

There are 3 areas that need to be addressed when building your business strategy.

1 – Predictable Pathway

You need a predictable pathway that’s going to give you a pipeline of clients, that’s going to give you a reliable source of income and a steady stream of clients.

Having a predictable pathway is having specific things that you do step-by-step, every day, week, month and quarter.

This way you can guarantee that if you do these specific tasks, and you follow this path every single week, then you are guaranteed to get clients.

If you’d like a free checklist of things that I suggest that you do every day, every week, every month and every quarter to actually build your business to get more clients, you can download it here.

Part of your predictable pathway may be you are going to get a certain amount of discovery calls booked in every single week. Or it could be that you are doing a certain amount of webinars or workshops every week, month or quarter.

With this you know that if you do this output each week, month, quarter and you know that you have a 50% conversion rate, you know that from 10 discovery calls, you will get 5 new clients.

Your strategy might be to run a webinar once a month, and a free workshop once a quarter. Based on your conversion rates and sending out a certain amount of emails and posting a certain amount of social posts or social ads, then from this you can work out your predictable client signups.

When you follow a predictable pathway, you can get consistent income within your business.

2 – Personalised Plan

What a lot of people get wrong is that they try and follow all sorts of mixed information and they are doing what I call ‘pick and mix’. They’ll use a little of one person’s method and then they’ll try another person’s method.

You need to think, ‘What is the best plan for me and my business?’ Don’t do a podcast because someone else is, and don’t write a book because someone else is.

You want to make sure that your plan is personalised for three different things…

1 – Personalise Your Plan According to Your Unique Personal Preferences

It is really important that you enjoy your business and there is a really big difference between people who are doing what they love in their business and people that are not. This is where identifying your unique personal preferences is important.

What are your unique personal preferences? You might not like showing up on video, but you might be a great writer.  Instead of forcing yourself to be on video initially, determine to write a blog once a week.

I personally feel we all need to show up on video, so if you are struggling with that, I recommend working on that area. But in the meantime, you might have be a really good writer, so determine to show up every single week and write a blog.

If you love doing Facebook Lives, but don’t like writing, pay someone to transcribe your video into a blog for you. Choose what you love to do in your business that you are good at and outsource the rest.

I do recommend if you’ve been doing one-on-one coaching, that you definitely consider overcoming whatever your block is, so you can start doing one-to-many.

Your personalised plan might start with one-on-ones and when you get to 10 clients, then you will start doing one-to-many. Or your plan could be that you are going to research for 3-6 months and then you will start to create an online course.

Your plan needs to be tailored to suit your preferences of what you enjoy, so your business does not become a burden around your neck.

I love creating content and videos for my online course. I love updating my content. I love running webinars, plus online and live workshops. I don’t love writing blogs, so I get my Facebook Lives transcribed for me into blogs.

2 – Personalise Your Plan According to Your Ideal Clients’ Needs

What do your ideal clients’ want? How do they want you to show up?  Do they want videos or do they want a podcast from you? Maybe they want to read your book or they might want to do a mini course or a six-week course?

What type of topics do they want to hear from you? The only way to get answers for these questions is to ask your ideal clients!

When I first started my Facebook group, I put up a poll asking people what they wanted. I talked to hundreds of people and asked them what they were struggling with and what their challenges were.

I started creating content specifically for my ideal clients based on their needs, not what I felt they needed.

Your personalised plan needs to be designed precisely for the kind of clients that you want to work with.

3 – Personalise Your Plan Around Your Values and Vision

You want to make sure that your plan is designed around your values and your vision. What is your 5, 10 or 20-year plan for your business?

My vision for my business is to have a big company, that’s helping thousands of entrepreneurs every year. I aim to employ coaches and have offices in other countries, and I aim to do national and international tours and retreats.

When I’m setting my goals, I’m always thinking about that vision and how can I get closer to that vision all the time. I ask myself what skills I need to master in order to get to that big picture vision.

I ask myself; What systems do I need to put in place to get to my vision? What support do I need? Do I need different coaching?  Do I need an assistant? Do I need a virtual assistant? Do I need a marketer or a copywriter?

So you start with your values, then your vision and then you set your goals. I have my annual goals and then quarterly goals, so I’m always setting my strategy according to that quarterly plan.

My goals are always output focused and not always result focus. I do put results in terms of numbers and targets. I find it really motivating to say I’m going to write 50 blogs, so therefore I’m going to do 50 Facebook Lives in a year that will get transcribed into my blogs.

I encourage people not to always be focused on the results, but on the output you are doing. When I was a personal trainer, I would encourage people to focus on what they’re outputting over the results.

So if the goal is to run 100k’s a month, then aim for that and not the result of losing a certain amount of weight.

I recommend that you set goals for yourself and for your business, quarterly, and also weekly, where you have a set amount of output that you’re doing. With that output, you know if you are doing that, then you will get a great result.

Make your personalised plan that fits into your strategy, according to your skills. If you’re brilliant at coaching, then make sure that you focus on coaching as your core product. If you’re terrible at designing a funnel, then outsource it to someone.

If you think of it like a matrix, you’ve got the things you love and the things that you’re good at. These are the things that you should be spending your time on. This is strategic planning.

There will be things that you love and the things you’re good at. Then there will be things that you love, but you’re not so good at.

You need to decide if you should keep doing those things or if you should outsource them. And then you’ve also got things that you really don’t like but you’re good at them.

It’s important that you enjoy your business for sustainability. I just have to enjoy my business.

I have to have passion and I need to be smiling every day. I enjoy the people I’m working with. Because it’s your life and every hour you spend in your business is an hour of your life that you’re not going to get back.

It’s really important that you set your personalised plan according to your skills, the things that you are good at in your genius zone.

So many business owners spend their time faffing about on things that they either don’t like or they’re not good at, and it’s such a waste of time. We want to be putting out energy into things we love and things that we’re great at.

3 – Profitable Product

The third one that we need to think about when it comes to strategy is having a profitable product. Now by product, I don’t mean a physical product.

A product can be that you’ve pulled together your services into a program and offering that might have multiple pieces.

It’s like a fruit salad. You don’t just want to sell someone a banana. You want to cut up that banana, mix it with some cut up apple, melon and other fruit and sell it as a fruit salad.  You’ve got to package it as a product.

I got this concept from Dale Beaumont. He says if you try and sell an apple for three bucks, but someone thinks they can go and buy it for 80 cents from the supermarket. But if you cut it up with other fruit and you mix it into a fruit salad, you can sell it at a café for $15. People eating a fruit salad aren’t asking what the fruit cost the café.

If you’re a service-based business owner, you want to think of your service like a product business, as if you’re selling something that has multiple paths to it. It’s not just time exchanged for money.

Time exchanged for money means you’re always going to be stuck and it’s not scalable.

You want to make sure that you’re starting to systemise and automate things.  You package includes video trainings and you’ve got group coaching programs and you’ve got a community online – this is what I mean by having a fruit salad.

If I say to people, I’m $180 per hour, then people break that down and think $3 a minute is expensive. So you want to make sure that you’ve got this product that is a whole bunch of components that maybe includes one-on-one time with you, but then it also includes other things.

Maybe you have people join your private community, where they can network and get their support. Think about how to make a product and program that’s really appealing, irresistible and profitable.

When it comes to having a profitable product there are 3 things to think about:

1. Pain Points

Your product needs to address and solve people’s biggest pain points.

It’s not that your product improves people’s lives a little bit. Your product needs to actually solve the pain points your ideal client is dealing with.  That’s what will make it profitable.

2. Practicality

The second one is practicality. You can sell a course to help people with their mindset. But how practical is it when they do change their mindset? What will they do with a new mindset?

It’s like selling weight loss. You need to be talking to people about what kind of clothes they will be wearing and where they will be going once they lose the weight. Maybe they’ll be dating  or doing some rock climbing?

It’s not just about the scales and the losing weight, it’s what will people do once they’ve lost the weight. You have to explain the practical reality of what your product will bring into people’s lives.

3. Packaging

When it comes to having a profitable product, your packaging is so important. You need to package your product to be irresistible. There needs to be a clear price and a clear payment plan. I recommend you have a paid in full option and a payment plan option.

Your product needs to be branded well with nice design and show a step-by-step path so there is a clear start and end, with the result promised for the end. Then you’ll have a great profitable product.

What this means for you is that you will have a business which is an asset that will keep providing for you and is sustainably profitable. This gives you the flexibility, freedom and funds you deserve.

Want to more about know how to best attract new clients?

I’m running a free online live masterclass for service-based business owners who want to know exactly how to attract more clients and build their business. 

You’ll discover a proven client attraction formula, step-by-step and pick up the tools that you can use to grow your business.

Click here for more info and to register your place

Remember – the world is waiting for your unique brilliance!

Kat

 

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