Applying Conscious Living and Learning to Your Business Growth

September 24, 2009

When it comes to growing your business, there are only four main areas to focus on (albeit, these are broad categories):

1. Leadership, Management, and Team
2. Operations.
3. Marketing and Sales
4. Deliverables

Leadership, Management, and Team is all about clarity of your focus, direction, strategies, tactics, intentions, and where you place your attention. This category is also about addressing your limiting beliefs and allocating limited resources efficiently.

Operations, otherwise known as "Logistics and Administration" relates to the critical processes and procedures that make your business successful. For optimal efficiency in the longer-run, these processes and procedures should be documented and turned into turnkey systems.

Marketing and Sales should be more accurately described as Education  and Matching Value, respectively. You must first education a prospective buyer about how your offering solves their problem or need. Then, it's your job to help them recognize the value of your offering, in terms of specific results, improvements, outcomes, and experiences that they would get from working with you and match that up with what they recognize as their pressing needs, problems, and challenges.

Deliverables refers to the services, programs, and products that help your buyers get what they need and what.

For any business of any size to succeed, all four of the above areas need to be working harmoniously together.

Now, these are tidy little categories and descriptions and it all sounds great in theory, but...

...what about turning theory into real-life results and progress?

In my experience and observation, this is where a lot of us get stuck, or at least snagged temporarily: Turning intellectual theory into action, that then produces desirable results.

So what's the solution to getting unstuck or un-snagged? Here are some quick suggestions:

1. Clarify and simplify your next immediate action step. Whatever it is, break it down into manageable, actionable bite-size pieces.
2. Find ways to make even the most mundane of tasks fun. Make a game of it.
3. Think of creative ways to make these tasks easier to take on and complete.
4. Find ways to collaborate with others so you can tap into the collective wisdom and energy of working synergistically.

While this takes mindfulness and discipline to apply to one's everyday life, the return-on-investment of consciously applying your strengths and talents to the tasks at hand are exponential, enduring, and many times, beyond one's wildest dreams.

On today's Conscious Leaderpreneurship call, we discussed these concepts as they applied to the participants real-world situations. Listen to the 30-min replay here.

How to Get Paid While Using Introductory Sessions to Attract More and Better Clients

September 9, 2009

A Paradigm Shift for Coaches, Consultants, Therapists, Counselors, Healthcare Providers, and Other Independent Professionals

Now more than ever, when I ask service professionals what they need in their business, the answer is almost always the same: more clients!

If you're like most independent service professionals, you know you're good at what you do and you're committed to changing people's lives and the condition of our planet. But that alone doesn't bring in clients who are well-suited for you and are willing to pay for the value you offer!

With mixed success, you may have tried networking, speaking, blogging, Twittering, sending emails, writing articles or joining referral groups, and still...

...you're looking for more clients, customers, and patients.

Have you started to wonder if this will ever change, or if this is just part of being in business?

At some point, all of your marketing and promotional efforts may have led you to offering "free introductory sessions" or "complimentary consultations" to build your business. While you may have gained clients this way, there's a good chance that this process has left you frustrated, drained, and discouraged.

You see, while free sessions and complimentary consultations can and do produce results, there's one big problem: you can attract a lot of "tire-kickers" -- people who book a session with you because it's free, with no interest in going any further.

Let's face it - unless you have a way to weed out the tire-kickers, you'll burn up time and energy and have no new clients (or customers or patients) to show for it in the end.

But what if you had a way to:

• Eliminate the "tire-kickers"?
• Select only the best clients to work with?
• Markedly increase your conversion rates?
• Get PAID while you qualify prospective clients, customers, and patients!?!

Would that make a difference in your business?

Of course it would!

So consider this: What if you could attract and work with only the clients who are a good fit for you, avoid wasting time with "window shoppers," dramatically increase your conversion rates to longer-term and better paying clients, and, get appropriately compensated for it all at the same time?"

Does this challenge your beliefs about what's possible?

At this very moment, you may thinking to yourself: "Sounds great, but that won't work for my business?"

If you're willing to put all that aside for a moment, just accept the possibility that it's possible.

And, simply put, the way to do it is to: "SIMPLY CHARGE A FEE FOR YOUR INITIAL SESSION."

You see, when you charge a fee for your initial "introductory" session, you screen out the people who are interested in doing a session with you only because it's free.

Moreover, since they are expecting to or have already paid for their initial session, they've identified themselves as someone who is motivated and interested in changing something in their lives.

And people show up for your session with a higher level of expectation of what they're going to get, so you'll be working with a higher-calibre of clientele who are more satisfying to work with and who are value-conscious (as opposed to price-sensitive).

All of this leads to better conversion rates and people you'd love working with. A double bonus!

But if it's so easy, why aren't more people doing this?

Admittedly, it's not always as straightforward as tacking on a fee to your existing "free" or "introductory" session. (Though, it could be as simple as that. In fact, recently, I coached one of my private clients to revisit an introductory process that she had "mothballed" and feature it as her paid introductory session. Within a couple of weeks, she was getting paid to begin exploring possibilities with new clients, some of whom turned into longer-term clients. And, on top of that, new approach led to a referral to a lucrative client engagement and increased her cashflow significantly. All of this increased her confidence and boosted her optimism for the future.)

Realistically, it takes a shift in one's perceptions and beliefs about what is possible. It takes overcoming one's fears and concerns, quieting the "little voice" that says: "this doesn't apply to my business," or "you can't do that."

Beyond that, whether you use free or paid introductory sessions (or a mixture of both), the key to more and better clients lies in understanding how to provide tremendous stand-alone value during your initial session with them... value that the client knows is well-worth paying for because they've just experienced it.

So, challenging economy or not, strongly consider developing and honing your approach for having potential clients pay for their initial session. Compared to what you're doing now, there a good chance that you'll turn a higher percentage of them into better paying and more appreciative clients, customers, and patients.