There’s a question I always feel compelled to ask when I hear people say they are looking for new clients.

My question is: how, specifically, do you want to get your clients?

That might sound like an odd question, especially if you feel you’ve tried everything and it doesn’t work, but there are so many options that can work.

A few weeks ago I heard an amazing story. It was amazing because I had a belief that what this lady had done was not possible – yes, I occasionally have limited thinking too!

Let me explain a bit more…

The Marketing Roads to Rome

There are many ways to market yourself: Networking, social media, flyers and leaflets, advertising, web sites, talks, joint ventures, article writing, news media etc.

And with so many different ways to choose from, it can be confusing to know where to start.

The idea is, of course, that you have many different routes to your market, but sometimes you just need one that works well – for example,  a networking strategy where you cultivate a number of advocates who then bring you clients on a consistent basis.

Encouraging Statistics

Recently one of the members of the mastermind group I attend recently told me how her leaflet selling NLP converted into £15000 of business.

A client was recently telling me how they have a nice stream of business coming in from articles they place in the media.

At a business group one of our members was telling me how they’d gained almost 20 referrals directly from our group.

The results don’t always come overnight. The results come from making small, consistent, habitual steps that take you on a journey to making your difference and earning the profits you deserve.

SO, if you want more clients, don’t try to do it all. Start with one marketing strategy that will bring you clients, make tweaks until you get results and then when that works for you, move on to the next.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. Register for his free newsletter at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

A lot of marketing is about push. Some of it is about “pull” or attraction. But what I love is marketing that creates safety.

I know from what people tell me through emails that many people are still challenged by marketing.

Last summer 76% of people registering for one of my tele-seminars told me they were looking for new clients.

Before we look at new customers, though, let’s think about about customers you might have lost, because every customer has a lifetime value. So, let me expand on this.

The profits are not where you might think they are

When you find a new customer, that customer has a value. There is a cost to you of finding that customer and you rarely recoup that with the client’s first purchase.

That’s why one of the things I teach is how to build a system so clients return to you on an ongoing basis.

If through your marketing you create safety, the first purchase becomes easy. If you continue to build that safety, the second and ongoing purchases become easier.

The way you create safety is through a process and a system. And this is what really creates your profits – not finding new clients.

The reason a client doesn’t stay

It’s important to notice that a client rarely leaves because of price or service. They tend to leave because someone else entices them or they forget the value you offer them.

So this is where what I call the Client Multiplying Machine works. This builds lifetime customer value that repays you the marketing costs of finding the clients. So while we like new clients, they’re not the holy grail.

However, having a machine that multiplies clients so they have the potential to become loyal buyers is the answer, especially if that machine promotes your natural warmth and authentic, humane voice.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. Find out more at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

A challenge I come across often is that people running a business fail to leave room for miracles.

This might be because you’re creating change through your business and when we are creating change it can feel like there is no time… And this is where I want to talk about clearing the decks for making a bigger difference and making bigger profits.

Alan’s story…

So, maybe you’re planning to make a bigger difference and bigger profits, but it’s hard for you because of the time pressure.

So, I have a story to share with you about this. It’s about a guy named Alan.  Alan had passion but no time. He was busy, earning 15k, had some great ideas, and was planning to get started on bigger ideas tomorrow. He said  these would give him and his partner the financial stability to start a family and live comfortably.

Mounting debts were crippling him…

Alan had some debt on his credit cards and a loan for a car, and a small overdraft, but he was sure his ideas would come off, when he got around to them. Alan knew everything too. He admits that. He said he’d studied enough and there was no need for a mentor or a programme that helped him with fresh ideas. He simple knew what he needed to know.

Alan’s Ultimatum

I spoke to Alan periodically and 6 months after I first spoke to him nothing much had changed. Oh… except his overdraft had grown by a grand and his credit card’s outstanding balance had grown by a few hundred. But he had his ideas and was going to get around to his bigger ideas when he had more time.

A year went by and Alan’s income hadn’t increased. In fact it fell by 3K. When he finally called me, about 11 months after we’d first spoken, he’d maxed out on one credit card and had taken on a second. His overdraft had been extended and he was close to the new limit. But that wasn’t it.

You see Alan had been kidding himself and things were far worse than he cared to admit. He’d actually maxed out on 2 cards, borrowed 40k from his sister and 10k from his mum.

The turning point

As well as the loan at the bank he’d financed part of his business too, so he no longer even owned the business assets. He said he had this idea, but for almost a decade he’d never got around to it.  And to add to his misery, his partner of 10 years gave him an ultimatum…

Her body clock couldn’t wait for the promises of money from an idea he hadn’t even developed. He loved her and  she was now pregnant, they had the credit card debts and the loans and he owed family and he had all this debt and a child coming into the world and it was just eating him alive. That’s the pain having no time creates.

I was able to show Alan how to make instant cash in a matter of days. This was enough to give him breathing space. In the next 90 days – yes, just 90 days – based on his idea, which he’d carried in his head for 10 years, I helped him develop a system where he could earn higher streams of income.

The cash-flow he now has helps him budget his loan repayments and pay himself a modest wage, though he’s working on changing that.

Alan, may well have had all the knowledge, but he wasn’t applying it. He’d failed to create the space to develop his business. The world was left tapping its thumbs, while Alan worked like a busy poor man.

Alan always had customers who wanted to buy more often from him, but couldn’t, because he didn’t have the systems and processes and the product in place – and that’s what stopped him.

Change happened for Alan when he stopped gripping the branch and expanded his wings.

Neil Fellowes publishes his fortnightly CommunitySoul newsletter for businesses that take an ethical, sustainable or holistic approach to be strong thriving businesses and practices. If you want to make a big difference through your work and make a big profit, then get your free business pack now, at: www.communitysoulhbg.co.uk

Planning is the key to success. It’s like the old proverb, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”

So there are two types of plan I recommend, especially at this time of year, when most people are considering the next year.

First I’d recommend you get, a business plan, and then I recommend you write a marketing plan.

A business plan is going to show you how you’ll achieve your goals. And if you’re coming up short you’ll know where and you’ll no to fix that.

Now I know a lot of people don’t like business plans and find them tricky. I used to feel like that but I had to grow past it. One of the big hurdles was that business ideas changed so quickly and a plan that had taken a day to write might be out of date in 3 months.

What I found over time was that I began to write less plans and I also became more accurate at predicting what I would need and what results I might gain. So, ultimately it’s become a very useful tool.

Meanwhile, a marketing plan is your attraction strategy – the thing that brings business in and helps your dream unfold. If you have no marketing plan then  you must create one if you’re to attract clients.

A good marketing plan will help you know what you need to do, who you’re aiming to attract, through what means. It will help you budget and be a lot more accurate.

We all see lots of flyers, adverts and other marketing, but the ones that really stay with us, are the ones which have a sustained campaign and who have a message we may hear several times over.

I’d certainly say, without these two plans in place, you’re more likely to struggle. What these plans do is it help you to identify where you are (i.e are you on track or off track).

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit.  Visit his website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

I see so many people marketing themselves. They spent £500 upwards on a website and spend a lot of time fiddling to make sure they come up high in google. They get the business cards and brochure or flyer done. Advertise and network, all of which brings a trickle of enquiries. But what happens to those enquiries?

Usually  they go cold and you end up losing possible business.

So let’s take a brief look at the 6 typical issues people have gaining and keeping clients:

1. One of the issues is “prospects” who might buy but who are not sure. Most people will call them once, maybe twice and then give up.

2. The longer you’re in business the harder it become to stay in touch with everyone who shows and interest but who isn’t ready to buy.

3. The challenge you have is to keep the possible people interested and warm them up to you

4. Then when all your hard work pays off and someone becomes a client, how do you encourage them to hang around and see the value more and more often, so when they think of the problem they only think of you?

5. Then there’s the time it takes to implement the following up and this is where the busy people need to focus on the system that builds the  relationship for you

6. And finally there’s the cost to do all this

The Golden Rule…

A golden rule of enlightened entrepreneurship is to have more people coming back to you and increasing their spend with you, and  recommending you to friends and colleagues.

Imagine 77% of your customers returning, and then finding a steady increase of 23%, with this, your business grows. And if you’re happy customers recommend you and you make it easy for them to do that, you can spend less on your marketing.

Imagine that happening to your business!

So let’s look at what to do.

Well, you need a strategy that encourages new clients and you want a strategy that encourages repeat buying. Now that may sound like two different projects, but actually it’s not. It’s one.

What you need is a scalable strategy that does both jobs. When I say scalable this is what I mean: What’s needed is a system that takes a short period of time each week or month – and a system that works, whether you have 100 or 100,000 customers.

So, every successful business venture, no matter how big or small, must have this strategy.

So you need this strategy to welcome in new customers and to encourage repeat buying; and the way you do this is through finding a method of how to stay in touch.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. If you need help developing a system, read about our Insiders Secrets programme and Mastermind group: http://www.communitysoulhbg.co.uk/insiderssecrets.htm

We all want marketing strategies that work. When we find them, we want to use them over and over again. In this article I want to share with you, one that has paid dividends for me.

Putting in the time

First you have to put in the hours. In the example I’m giving you, what I did was, I called on prospective clients 2 hours a day, 4 days a week.

Insulating yourself against rejection

Did I have rejections? Yes. I got 7 rejections every fifteen minutes! But I also had a “yes” every 8 calls – on average, one every 15 minutes. And that meant I just had to get through 7 rejections.

Understanding the value of each rejection

“No” can be a hard word to hear, so it’s important to re-frame its value. Every product or service will be rejected by a percentage of people. You just need to know what percentage.

When you know that 1 out of 8 say yes and when you know that yes is worth say £60, and when you multiply that by 2 hours of marketing, say £240, the exercise of marketing and the feeling of overcoming the rejection can become more positive.

Getting to “No” faster

For me, after a time, I became resilient enough to hearing no, to wanting to hear it faster, because when I heard it faster, I got more yeses quicker.

Crafting your words

Whether you communicate your offer to people through the spoken or written word, you will have to  craft and possibly recraft what you say. You need to say enough to arouse interest and curiosity without saying too much that you put people off. This is as true in paper-based marketing as it is in sales presentations.

Trying it out

It’s always best to try it alone to start with. Sometimes we try too hard, and when we read our words out, we can often start to feel an unnatural and sometimes even an inauthentic sense. Keep working on your material until it’s 100% natural and authentic.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit.  If you liked this article, then you’ll LOVE his blog at http://www.communitysoulblog.com
Visit our website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

What’s going on you might ask… I seem to be telling lots of people about what I do and how I can help them, but still they’re not buying?

Marketing methods that fail

We can go to a networking meeting, not feel comfortable and not pick up any business. When this happens it’s easy to say, I went…I met 20 business owners…and not one of them bought, then you conclude that networking doesn’t work.

You might also try advertising, may not be 100% clear on the offer, but still spend a few hundred (or thousand), get little or no interest, and say that doesn’t work either.

You might not like writing, try half-hearted to write one, have no interest and give up saying that doesn’t work either.

We could claim the same issues with direct mail, websites, flyers, phone calls or a hundred other marketing methods.

Marketing Methods that work

Not so long ago I was chatting with a guy who makes a good six-figure income and his only marketing method is networking. One of my peers tells me one advert she runs generates a 38% response. I can tell you our newsletter builds confidence and awareness in what we offer and that over time it generates lots of good will that eventually turns into confidence and awareness in what we offer.

And these marketing activities are no different from the ones people may claim don’t work. So what makes the difference?

Using the strategy of Olympic Medallists

Olympic medallists are not just born. They dedicate untold hours to making minor adjustments that give them an edge, a fraction of an inch that might just make them a champion, rather than an also-ran.

It’s about small improvements made over time, and sometimes you need outside expertise on these things.

At CommunitySoul, we made a change on one of our web pages recently that changed the take up by just 3%. That doesn’t sound like much, but when 1000 people hit that web page and the product is £1200, it’s a very worthwhile adjustment.

So, generally, when people are not buying what you offer, it’s not that the strategy doesn’t work, it’s that the way you’re using the strategy hasn’t worked.

With marketing you have to keep refining things until you get results you want.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit.  If you liked this article, then you’ll LOVE his blog at http://www.communitysoulblog.com
Visit our website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

One method of attracting new clients is through making true and bold statements.

But in Britain we’re often loathed to do this, as we feel we’re blowing our own trumpet. But if we fail t o make bold statements that tell others wh at they can gain, we fail to communicate the benefits we can deliver.

At CommunitySoul we know our advancedconnections membership can deliver a return on investment of at least 25 to 1. We know the Insiders Secrets series can deliver a reduction in  your working hours of up to 11 hours a week and a create a leap in income of up to 128%. As we have seen this happen, we can make that statement.

Creating a bold statement

What I’m encouraging you to do is believe in what you do 100%. Know you make a difference and tell other people about that difference. In order to do this you’re going to need to know what your clients and customers are experiencing.

Last year we asked some of our members about their results as a result of spending time with us. The answers they gave in some cases was jaw-dropping.

I say jaw-dropping because they told us things we never knew. They told us about results they’d achieved. They told us about techniques they’d been using that they’d picked up from one of our speakers, or one of our education slots.

What this told us is what people were really getting instead of what we thought or hoped they were getting.

The additional pay-off…

So feeling good about what people told us increased our confidence in what we were delivering. As a result we told people about the results more boldly, and in turn this made us wonder, what’s even better than those results – so we upped our game and began thinking bigger.

And if you believe more in what you do, I suspect you can succeed in making your difference even more – I mean getting it out there and earning your living from it.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit.  If you liked this article, then you’ll LOVE his blog at http://www.communitysoulblog.com
Visit our website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

Not everyone enjoys selling. In fact this year I asked several audiences at CommunitySoul Business Development Groups, who liked selling. 8% said they did.

I suspect that the 92% who said they don’t like selling also don’t like being sold to. And they probably think that sales is about something you do to someone. But actually it’s not…

Selling, if done well, is an opportunity to offer what you do that may help  someone. This person at all times has full freedom of choice. And you’re not a pushy person so all you’re doing is opening them up to the possibility of what you offer.

Sharing the Good that you Bring

What if someone, somewhere is sitting at home or in their office, struggling and in need of what you’re offering. If you’re not letting people know: “Hi I’m here, this is what I do!” then the danger is the idea sits on the shelf and no one ever finds out about the help you offer.

Facing the issues that stop you sharing your contribution to the world

I’ve often said that by being in business you enter a hero’s adventure. Working for yourself will bring up personal issues. For some it might be overcoming shyness or developing self-confidence, and in terms of selling this can be about feeling good enough or overcoming the fear of rejection.

Something I went through was understanding that if I failed to overcome what stopped me from sharing what I did, I would be denying lots of people the things they needed. So what worked for me was tapping into my will to contribute knowledge for the betterment of other people. For you it may be something different.

Finding the courage, makes a difference

An example I can give you is: earlier in the year I was giving a talk on personal development. The day after, a lady sent me an email and thanked me for my talk. She said it had given her hope. She said that after years of suffering from domestic violence she now felt she could turn things around.

So I encourage you to discover ways to overcome whatever stops you from selling the difference you make.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit.  If you liked this article, then you’ll LOVE his blog at http://www.communitysoulblog.com

If every day you want things to be a bit different, yet everyday you’re faced with the same issues, (i.e. want more clients, more money, or want to be making a bigger contribution to the world), try this…

Breaking the cycle of not having what you want

First take some time out. Take your challenge with you and go somewhere to mull it over.

Jo and I have been doing this monthly for about a year. During these sessions we’ve noticed lots of detail, considered what we’ll do about it and then implemented things very quickly, because we knew what needed to happen and who would do it.

Having your vision for your future materialise faster, can actually mean doing less and planning more. Planning is like cutting wood with a sharp saw rather than a blunt one. You just cut through the wood quicker if you take the time to sharpen the saw.

Creating the Space for better business ideas

When we create this space to think, what we end up doing is asking great questions rather than dwelling on what doesn’t work.

Planning, earlier in the year, resulted in some tweaks to our web pages which resulted in a 50% jump in on-line sales on one product in a month.

As a result of this, more people found the help they needed and our income rose.

So, the pauses where we plan are actually more effective than actually doing.

It all sounds simple, but I bet the biggest challenge for most people is the attachment to being at their desk or work place, because they have been socially conditioned to believe that they have to be at their work place to make money.

The best ideas come when you’re open to them

Down the years I’ve always found my best ideas come when I’m relaxed, away from my desk, dozing off or chatting with a coach. So be prepared to take some time away from your desk.

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. If you’d value time with someone who can help you reflect on your ideas, coaching is available at CommunitySoul and you will be connected with lots of good people who can help you.