Get more clients for your coaching or consulting business

Many working in the consulting or coaching services world feel that there is nothing more elusive than a paying client. For every customer wanting to do business, there are 50 more who just want free advice.

The hunt for the paying customer can be exhausting and at time make you consider whether it is worth doing something else, even taking a part-time job until things 'pick up'.

If you are working like the clappers trying to drum up business, getting frustrated that this isn't quite working and then getting angry at the two-bit competitors who don't do it as well as you, but somehow seem to be busy, I'm here to give you a meaningful revelation!

Whether you are a financial adviser, life coach, business coach or a consultant to corporates there are key elements of the sales and marketing process which you have to get right if you want to succeed.

Imagine for a moment you have been falsely accused of a crime. A crime, which if you are found guilty, you'll serve a life sentence, do you hire the cheapest lawyer or the best lawyer your money can buy?

Nobody gets the cheap lawyer, right?

Why? We want to win our case. We want to be found not-guilty!

Great lawyers who want to charge top rates go to great lengths to make sure they are known for their success. Their marketing and their sales process is designed to make sure you value their time and you follow their process or they won't represent you.

Why is coaching or consulting services any different?

Why don't you have a process that new clients can slot into? I'm not just meaning a programme, but a consulting or coaching product you can promote which solves a problem or achieves and outcome.

Create outcome-based consultancy products which you can promote and people can buy into. In essence, productise your services.

Lawyers charge by the hour, but you buy them for the outcome you want them to deliver.

Their clients don't care about how its done, as long as it is done within the fees agreed.

For lawyers, they want to make sure their prospective customers know they are to go-to people if they need a particular outcome or result.

You should be leveraging the outcomes you can deliver for your clients, not the services you can offer, sell the problems you solve.

Your brand is the problem you solve and the outcome you deliver.

Think about that for a moment, if you are known for an outcome, how does that bear on your pricing?

I've long advocated that the secret to building a successful consulting or coaching business is based on establishing your position based on results.

Would people pay more for your service if you were known for getting people results in a specific area?

But more than that, in establishing that position, very few consultant and coaches build their sales and marketing process, so they end up hunting for business, which again can damage their position in the market.

There are two objectives in sales and marketing:

Short-term: How do we get sales now

Long-term: How do we get sales coming to us.

These two are not incompatible, but many coaching and consulting businesses put all their effort into their short term goals (often out of necessity) at the expense of the long-term. This means they never escape the rat race of feast or famine.

The sad part is, the long-term needs a bit of work upfront and then tweaks and adjustments, but because no time or resource is ever set aside, the long-term is always filed for another day.

There is massive statistical evidence for this problem, which is not unique to coaches and consultants it is rampant across all industries. Short term results are prioritised over long-term growth. So, the business never escapes short-termism.