The Process of Getting New Clients…
I wrote this while I was sitting in the President’s Club in Cleveland, on Sunday, waiting for my plane back home to New Jersey. I was going over all my notes I took from Dan Kennedy & AWAI’s Business of Copywriting Workshop. As I was looking over my many pages, it struck me that this might make for a good blog this week.
The focus of his workshop was on the BUSINESS of Copywriting. I was at this conference because Dan had asked me to speak. He thought my story of how I’ve used his principles to grow a really nice direct response marketing, coaching, and consulting business might help many people at the workshop. He was right. My story resonated with many of the people there, and my story also helped reinforce his principles about how to grow a coaching and consulting business.
So…. I thought it might be fun to share some of these principles, focusing mainly on the process of getting new clients. If you have a coaching and/or consulting business, there are 3 main things you ought to focus on to create a more successful business: (Even if you have a bricks and mortar business these will apply, just more creatively. )
- Client Attraction & Management
- Strategy + your skill (whether it’s copy writing, product launches, etc.)
- Compensation
These 3 things ought to be the focus and the core of building and growing your business. The whole workshop was based around these three things. Obviously I don’t have enough time or space to write about all of these things, he went over these 3 things in great detail over 2 days.
However, I wanted to focus on one aspect that I felt was really important that’s helped me and one that I could probably do better at. And that’s the process of getting new clients. What do you do when a new prospect comes to you by way of email, website, phone, fax, or maybe even knocking on your door, or coming into your store?
Dan has a very meticulous process of when a client comes to him, which is intricate, and incredibly well thought out. First, do you have a process for when a prospect comes to you? Second, what is that process? Is it the same for everyone? Or do you do something different for each person that walks through the door?
The real takeaway here is that you have a system and/or a process for when a new prospective client comes knocking or calling. This is hugely important and will affect your relationship with them, plus it will help you select better clients. By tweaking your marketing BEFORE they get to you, it’s what’s called prequalifying prospects, you weed out the tire kickers ahead of time. So the people that do eventually get to you will be more of your ideal client.
So the takeaway here is the process of how you deal with new prospects… and how you apply it to your business is hugely important. So I’d encourage you to take a look at it and tweak it to better suit your business!
2 Comments
Christopher
It amazes me how many of us are operating by the seat of our pants… never really thinking the process out. YES, a specific, thought out procedure will do WONDERS in any part of your business.
Shannon
I’m with you Chris, systems and processes are best… if you leave your business up to chance, than those are the results you’ll get…