How To Sell The Invisible - The simple ways to impact more lives

Are you are wondering where the next client is going to come from? 

Are you joining new groups, hiring online experts, building online programs, starting podcasts, writing blogs, going live on social platforms, writing books and “niching down”?

Basically, buying or trying anything that promises more clients?  

Only to find yourself at the beginning of a new month wondering where  the next client is going to come from.  

This question gets to the heart of how anyone selling services has to compete to win business.

Here's some healthy advice. 

Hi, my name is Amy Harrill and I'm a business growth consultant who, currently, has a sustainable professional service-based business that acquires 5-7 clients, predictably, month after month. 

Every day I speak to owners, who want to end the roller coaster of client acquisition and one question is repeated– who do I employ to help me, a coach or a consultant?

Common  perception is that there’s a fine line between the role of a coach  and a consultant, but in fact the gap between them is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

Coaching is for owners who have sustained their cash flow and have systems that will attract and convert their ideal client predictably, but their habits are holding them back.   

The coach is best utilized to help this client find their own answers that lie within and help them utilize their own power for change. 

A consultant holds the answers to a specific area of expertise.  

The owner who is missing a proven system to sustain cash flow,  scale value and want to experience the fulfillment of their vision is the best candidate for consulting.

Knowing whether you need a coach or consultant is the first step.

The second step is decide which one to hire – a coach or consultant.  This decision can be crucial to your business.  One will help you further develop yourself and the other will solve a problem head on for you. 

As a consultant who works exclusively with service-based owners, I know what is suffocating your efforts to impact more lives.   

You’ll find three of six obstacles I have seen repeated in business for eighteen years below:

1. Buyer personas are not identified. 

Profiles of your ideal buyers—are particularly important in service selling because they provide insights into the demographics, priorities, concerns, and decision factors common to your potential customers.

Because you are selling value—not a product they can touch or immediately experience—you need to know what your potential buyers find most important when seeking the types of services, you provide. These are the outcomes produced by your services and can take different forms.

For example, what problems does your service solve for people who want to write a book?  Does your service help authors sell their books?  Does your service help connect them to publishers?  

Knowing your buyers’ common problems and desired outcomes helps you ask the right questions during the early stages of conversation to quickly identify what is important to them and what is not. 

Sometimes value is less tangible and knowing what feelings your service evokes in the minds of the prospect will help you focus your offers and service to deliver the highest value.  

When a service is defined in “general” terms it looks like this, a negotiation for any rate for any “service” we think we can perform. 

When we do not know the persona of our buyer then our service is not well defined, and it is not proven.  

Casting a wide net and seeking any type of work in exchange for some money is not sustainable. 

If you want to declutter the path to liquid cash, you must know your client inside and out.

2). No reliable way to generate appointments on demand.

There is a strategy that I see being played out called "hope and try” marketing. 

It goes like this: 9 AM open my computer and “hope” that today the phone rings and somebody will call asking about services. 

“Trying” a new strategy and “hoping” that it will work.

This strategy is as dependable as walking a tight rope for the first time with no safety net to catch you.  

The net, as I refer to it in the previous sentence, is the knowledge that comes from knowing what metrics determine you are generating enough appointments with people that find the most value in your service.  

To be successful you must have a reliable and proven method that’s predictable and will produce conversations with your ideal client.

3). No predictable way to convert appointments into clients. 

Writing a new proposal for every new appointment with a potential client is impossible to measure, grow and sustain.

Do you ever feel like every single appointment you are operating "off the cuff" and say something new?  Not really knowing what worked before.

Do you know how many appointments you need to generate a client?

Are you willing to take these kinds of risks every time you are in front of a prospect?

If you want to make decent money you must have a proven repeatable process to conduct appointments and convert people into paying clients. 

Are you making any of these three mistakes? 

The truth is that if you are making just one of these mistakes your business has less than 12 months left before it faces the real chance of closing down.

The world is changing and unfortunately, we must stop doing so much for very little return.

A new generation of owner has emerged and is powering through and could be the reason you are getting less and less clients every year. 

Change is the only thing we can count on and we must evolve, or we will be left behind.