What is your ratio between attracting and chasing clients? Not surprisingly, many businesses tend to chase more than attract. Not because they don’t want to. It’s because they struggle to attract, so their time is primarily spent to go on the attack. Unfortunately, when you chase, clients run away. This is the hard truth. Think about this. How many times did you convert a lead to a client by chasing multiple times for an answer or feedback? Or, even worse, how many times did you feel that you weren’t really chasing, but you were nagging? What if someone does the same with you…will you listen and buy or run as far as you can from the threat? Here’s the good news. If you learn how to attract, you don’t need to do that at all. On the contrary, you will have leads knocking at your door while you are enjoying working with your existing clients. In this way, you feel more confident, less anxious, and more optimistic about the future because the pipeline of leads is never dry. Based on my 20 years of experience, there are really three key principles to follow: Know your clients better they know themselves It’s not enough to have either the perfect target market or the right solution. You need to step up your marketing game. In fact, your clients don’t have just a problem that needs to be solved. They have frustrations, fears, needs, and aspirations. This is not something they share often though. How much do you really know them? Many consultants don’t go so deep and this results in delivering a boring and “seen so many other times” marketing message. You are the prize. Not them If you are good at what you do (this is a given!), you solve your clients’ issues, you make their life better, you move them from frustrations to peace of mind, you help them make a career, make more money, you name it. Why then so many look needy and so persistent? This is the worst way to attract clients. If you are really a prize, they value you and your work, they show up in time, they don’t offer cheap deals, they return your calls or emails, they let you sit on their table. For me, this is not negotiable. And remember, if you are a prize, they must have you, otherwise they will fear missing out. Warm them. Kindly One of the big mistakes that many do is to jump on making the sale without even understanding that the leads are not ready to buy. In fact, you must always assume your leads are not ready to buy from you. So, what you have to do is to warm them up by offering lots of value in every touchpoint until they know you better, they feel they can open up with you and tell you what really frustrates them and what they want. In other words, until they start to trust you. However, the ‘how’ is less important. You can do it just on conversations or by offering templates, cheat sheets, quizzes, papers, webinars, and so forth. You decide the system. It’s the principle that works. As you can see now, attracting clients is much easier than many business owners and executives think. You don’t need to play offense, use hard tricks, or get stressed. Are you ready to change your ratio? Andrea Note: If you struggle to attract clients to you and your business, drop me a line so we can fix this: [email protected]