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Today we’re chatting about 5 effective ways to get more dream clients quickly. Now, there are a bunch of keywords in there like effective, quickly and another one I should say is dream. I'm not just saying let's make more money. Let's get more clients. I'm saying find the people that you LOVE working with where it doesn't even feel like work! You're excited to see them. You know that everything you give them they're just so appreciative and they're always telling you how grateful they are for you. Let's get more of those clients!
We've been working on creating a new free download for you guys and this is kind of a little taste of what that download looks like. I'll give you the link to get you the entire thing because there's actually 10 effective ways, but today we're going to cover 5 of them!
#1: Find Your Dream Clients
Who are the people you're currently working with? Let's talk about them because you might have clients, but that doesn't mean you have your dream clients. Now, sometimes we send out surveys to our current customers and we’re hearing what they like and what they didn't. The problem is when you survey everybody, the results we’re getting, those answers were getting are a little skewed because, no offense, but I don't really care about what my least favorite client who is underpaying us and expecting way more than they really should be getting, I'm not looking at what their opinion is of what I should be doing more of. I'm not trying to get more of those types of clients. I'm trying to get more of my dream clients that value and appreciate me.
So, how do I get more by finding out who they currently are and what they currently love? Surveys are a great way to find out what your customers love, what they want to see a little bit more of and what they don't love. I want you to use this data to really uncover your sweet spot and then shine a light on all of what they said in your marketing. We recently did this with a branding strategist that we hired and I was blown away by the #1 thing people kept saying about me and now that I know that…wow, it's completely changed our marketing, our messaging and we're getting more of those dream clients that we truly love to work with!
First, you have to find out who they are. Even if it's just one person or three people, reach back out and even if it's a past client that was a dream client, ask if you can survey them. If you left on a great note, they will absolutely want to help you and get you this information.
#2: Track and Follow-Up
I mean E V E R Y T H I NG!! Let me give you an example. Your phone rings, you get a direct message on Instagram or an email comes through from a potential customer, so not somebody you currently have but somebody who's looking for your services asking about your services. What do you do? You either reply back with the information and give them what they need, you may pitch them on a possible solution, right? Then you go along with your day because you feel like you finished what you needed to do. They asked, you answered. But that's where you have to hold up!
The ball is never in your potential customers court…never, ever, ever. You’re keeping an eye on that ball the entire time so they may think it's in their court, but it's up to you to follow up. I say track because if somebody reaches out once and you've answered, they may forget about you six months from now so it's up to you to reach back out and say ‘hey, I know you talked to me about this six months ago, I just want to see where you're at. Are you interested? How can I best serve you?’ etc. The best salespeople are the ones that follow up. The ones you haven't thought about them in forever but they keep reaching back out to you because you never know when somebody's going to say I was just thinking about you, I was just in the market for this and I completely forgot about your business.
So it's really, really important to track and follow up. Now a couple things that I'm doing just to give you really tangible stuff is if somebody messages me in my direct messages or shoots me an email asking about a specific program, product, service, etc. I will take note of that. So when I know that we have a new launch coming up or a new group starting or something happening, I've got an entire database that I can go back to and reach out to those specific people. Again, I'm not thinking how many people have said to me already in this last few months ‘I’m saving up, I’m going to be in Powerhouse 2020’ like it’s on their vision board. They have publicly declared that in a year from now, they're going to be in that program.
How many people would just go…they're all going to call me next year? Probably not. When somebody says that I'm always like I hope so, but I don't know if you will write if you'll remember if I'll still be around in a year, who knows what that will look like, right? And I want you to understand that the ball is not in their court to reach back out to me in December. The ball is in my court and I will be following up with those people who said I want to do this or I want to work with you. It’s in our court to follow back up and when you follow up you'll be so surprised how many new people you convert just by reaching out.
Sometimes we get busy! We're too busy to send that email. We've been meaning to reach out. We've been meaning to do this. But when a good salesman reaches back out, it's like oh, yeah, I did want to buy that. You may not be doing a good enough job of tracking and follow-up and I honestly bet 90% of people reading are not doing a good enough job, right? I know you, you're like me…we're busy!! There's a lot to do and if you don't have somebody to manage this it can feel like a lot.
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#3: Create Add-Ons or Up-Sell Some People
So how do you get more dream clients? That might be what you're looking for but are you really just looking for more income or more revenue this year? That might be what you really need. You might not need more clients. You might be thinking I need more revenue to sustain my business model, right? Here's the thing. You already have clients you love working with now how can we create an add-on or complimentary service and up-sell of some sort to propose to our already amazing dream clients.
Understand that your best chance of ever making money is with your current buyers. The statistics on how much more likely someone is going to buy from you that’s already a customer then somebody who just found out about you doesn't know you yet is insanely high. If we can figure out what’s something that we’re not offering them yet, how can we create this experience for them and add this package on to then increase the amount of time we're spending with this dream client.
#4: Outside Of Your Box Marketing
So normally it's out of the box, right? Let's think out of the box, but what I have found being an entrepreneur for the last 15+ years is we have our own box. We have our comfort zone. We have the areas that we think we should be marketing. We get really, really comfortable and we start to do the same old, same old every year and we're wondering why are the results going down? Why is this not working? I'm not saying stop doing something that is working but my question is have you tried adding a new marketing strategy every once in a while? Even if you think well, this is working really well.
I'm all about testing test. Test, test, test, test! You cannot test enough when it comes to marketing. If you’re always doing the traditional marketing, so let's say you're always doing mailers like postcard mailers, local meet-ups or events…maybe test out the waters online and reach more people outside of your existing community. That alone might feel really scary, like what do you mean go online?! I do everything locally, right? Well, I'm trying to get you outside of your box right now.
And if you’re exclusively online, have you ever thought about going to the opposite, having local meet-ups going in person or creating a group locally. I cannot tell you how many groups in Milwaukee I’m finding right now for female entrepreneurs. It kind of blows my mind because I was under the impression that I could not stay here forever. There was nobody here that gets me and it's very hard and how am I going to have these big dreams when no one's doing what I'm doing here?
All of a sudden it's like they're popping up like crazy. So stop thinking they don't exist! And if they really don't exist then maybe it's time to create it. We're entrepreneurs. We’re starters, we can do this! So I want you to get out of your box and think of the opposite. If you're typically an online marketer, how can you do something local and in person. I was in one of my Propel group coaching retreats and somebody said to one of my clients, ‘I know you do a lot online but have you ever thought about doing this in your town or area?’ And she said I kind of feel like I don't need to anymore, I'm past that. Here's the thing. It might feel like the local market is a stepping stone to something bigger online, but sometimes the local market can be a stepping stone to something even bigger online. When you have face-to-face connections, you can truly grow that relationship so much faster.
I have a client who started all local and she was getting such a higher show up rate at her events because it was face-to-face. More people were showing up and then more people were buying right then and there because again, the relationship with meeting face to face was just blowing up her business. My question for you is, are you thinking well, I'm already above the local things, I don't need to do it? Well, if that's the case and you're above that, then you should be getting major followings when you pop up all over.
I have a friend, Lori harder who was on the podcast recently, (listen to that episode here!) and she's been doing book tours all across the United States and Canada. I had the privilege of attending one in LA and one in Chicago and I think she had 400 people in LA and probably 250 in Chicago. That's somebody who has a major online following but if you truly have that following you can pop up in other cities and bring together a group of people who she calls him her tribe and let me tell you they are definitely her tribe! I want you to be looking at how can I create the opposite of what I'm doing?
I'm not saying let go of what you're currently doing but there's other things you could be adding on. How do we get you outside of your comfort zone especially as we are heading into 2019. You want something different, you want something bigger and better than last year then now is the time to start doing something different! You can't expect to do exactly what you just did and get a different outcome at the end of the year. Not possible.
#5: Put a Referral Program In Place
What’s crazy to me is that I’ve had a very successful referral program in my dance studios for years and years and years. It works so well and the amount of people that refer us because of our referral program is amazing. No one's going to refer you just for the referral program if they don't love what you're doing because they're not going to stay and they're not going to tell their friends to come to you. You definitely have to be referable in order to get referrals.
So one of the things that we did at our studio back in the day was when you referred somebody we gave you, let's say a $25 gift card. But the one thing that always kind of felt a little icky was when somebody would come in and they would find out that we would do this incentive program and you could tell they were wondering, is that why my friend referred me? Because she's racking up these gift cards?? It feels a little funny when they don't know and they find out after they've been referred.
Now one thing I will tell you that we have put into place that has worked so much better for us and you know at first it costs more money and we were like is this a good idea? In fact, we make more money from it! Here’s what we do now…
Right now if you come in to one of our studios to refer somebody, not only do we give you a $50 gift card, we give your friend a $50 gift card. What’s cool about that is now we're talking $100 versus before was $25. The people in our studio are constantly telling their friends and they're saying hey, make sure to mention me because we're both going to get something! So no one is surprised when they come in and if they are surprised and had no idea there was this incentive they’re excited because they just found out they got a $50 gift card, right?! No one's upset.
I love, love, love doing it this way and it's funny because I know all of these things in my brick-and-mortar business and I'm doing this really successfully and it's been a 7-figure business for many, many years and I'm building my online business and I realize I'm not doing some of these things. For me it was going outside of my box because I had been so used to this is what an online marketer does and I had to realize that I've got some amazing brick-and-mortar strategies that are working really well, that I could be taking and using them in the online space.
As we're putting these policies, new procedures and new systems in place, my business just continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger and different. We look very, very different than your typical online marketer because that's all they know. They don't have the other outside experience. So this has been working really well for us. We've recently put a referral program into place for Propel and Powerhouse and just having our current clients know that it exists and it's out there, it's going to be a lot easier for them to share, especially with Powerhouse. We get such a high return on the amount of people that came back from year 1 to year 2 and if that means they're happy, why not let them share it out with their friends and then get rewarded for that? Putting a referral program into place is absolutely a great way to get more happy clients!
I said I was going to give you 5 but I'm going to throw in a bonus one!! So…
#6: Get Personal
This one I’ve brought up before and it was a tough one for me. But here’s what I'll tell you…I have really tried to be an open book and share more, tell you more, show my kids more, my husband more and just put myself out there. What’s funny is I told you I was working with this branding strategist who interviewed my dream clients and she said the #1 thing that every single person we interviewed said, they asked what do you want to see more of from Stacy? Do you know what they said??
They said I would love to see her share more personal stuff and it's crazy because in my head I'm thinking I'll tell you everything!! There's nothing that I won't share. I'm really just that open book but it must not be in my nature as much as it is in somebody else's. A lot of people come on and they share everything and sometimes they're sharing a little too much right? I'm not going to judge, that's everybody's opinion. But I will say that for me. I have to get over the feeling of nobody cares. Why would I tell you that I have two sisters? That I'm the middle child? Why would I tell you that I'm gluten-free? Or that I'm on this mission just to becoming healthier and healthier and healthier? Why would I share that my husband and I have been married for 10+ years? Why do people care right?!
Here’s the reality… if people like you and they like your business, they want to know more. They feel like your friends and a friend would share all the details. They would share what's going on. I go to Italy for 10 days and I get back and I act like nothing happened and everybody's messaging me, how was Italy?! I forget that we're friends and if we're truly friends, then we're going to share. I'm telling you that if you think nobody cares, they do!!
I have a friend who told me this guy ran into them at Whole Foods and he was like, wow, I can't believe you shop at Whole Foods! This is crazy, we're in the same store and he was so excited! Never would I post that I'm at Whole Foods, but this guy would have seen it and been like, oh wow, you shop there too?? So I think we have to and I'm saying this because I need to hear it myself. We need to just understand that sharing your life, sharing even the stupid stuff, the stuff that you think why would anybody need to know this or the stuff that you think I can't share this because they don't want to hear my failures, they don't want to hear me breaking down or having the worst day ever because they want me to look successful and nobody wants to buy from you…but you have to just understand that, yes, you can’t be a hot mess every single day but people want to see that your real. People want to see that you're not always perfect. You're not.
Amazing things aren't always going your way because that feels like we're living a completely different life, right? So I’m going to promise to continue to do my best to break down those walls, show you the real me, everything you can possibly see and I think I'm doing a pretty good job of that on my Instagram stories! I've been getting so much better and showing you every little bit of my day. But I promise to get better!! And I hope that you'll promise to try to get better at this too and not just having your business be the business but showing that there’s a real person running the small business!
It’s funny the thing I always didn’t want to do…hurt me! I always said, oh, I don't have a family business. People would always say oh, your sisters work in your business and your mom's at the recital and your dad's helping deliver this and everybody's doing something. They had no idea it wasn’t a family business and I would be like, oh, no, it's not a family business….I'm the owner. I was very proud and I wanted people to know that I owned the place. It was not a family business.
But here’s the thing, people actually liked that it was a family business. They liked seeing my mom at recitals selling flowers and my sister working behind the desk. I thought that was this negative thing that I was trying to hide because it wouldn't look like a real business, but in fact it was a thing that people thought wow, maybe I could do this and maybe my mom would help me, my dad, my sister or whatever, right? A lot of the times I think I know what I need to do and I think I know what everybody wants and it's usually the opposite. The fact that I'm sitting here feeling somewhat successful is funny because I've made tons and tons and tons of errors along the way but you learn as you go.
So I hope you enjoyed theses 6 steps! I will tell you if you want to go grab the rest of the 10 effective ways to get more of your dream clients quickly you can click here. One of the things that I did not talk about in here is the automation side and I'm not going to get into it but I will tell you that if you don’t have a way to automatically onboard new people while you're sleeping, while you're on vacation, on Christmas. I once was very close to a one-woman show. I just had a few people helping a little here and there and I had no way to automatically enroll people, sign them up at any moment unless I was working. I was in this horrible situation where my life was just completely sucked into my business.
With that said, if you're looking for even more ways to help you get more dream clients, grow your email list, fill up your social media with tons of amazing real prospects that are interested in your product, build a system or processes to help you convert and close more clients, you may want to check out one of my programs that I have whether it's Propel or my Powerhouse Mastermind. This is something that we are doing every single day. Our goal is by the end of the program, these funnels are up and running and automated so that we can actually bring in that passive income without having to be working 24/7 in our businesses.
If that sounds like something you're interested in definitely book a call with one of my team members. I appreciate you all so much, I cannot say it enough! I hope I have the privilege to work with some of you in some capacity in 2019 and that you'll be my next dream client!
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