How To Get Clients For Your Consulting Business
how to get clients for a consulting business that's what you're searching for and we've got it for you today in this video join me for this edition of the inside bs show my name is dave lorenzo this is the inside bs revenue growth and sales tips show that's right we do sales tips every day and today we're talking about how to get clients for a consulting business you probably were searching for that exact topic and that's what brought you here and i'm glad you're here i've built three consulting businesses over the last 30 years this one the one that i'm in right now is my own personal consulting business i'm a sole practitioner and i do over a million dollars a year in annual revenue i work with a number of contractors but i don't have any employees and i truly make a great living and live a great life my business enables my lifestyle so i'm here today to help you get clients for your consulting business whether you're an independent consultant and you're starting from zero you might be a professional speaker and you're looking to add a consulting practice to enhance your speaking i mean with the covid pandemic you probably discovered that speaking as a business method wasn't a good idea if you didn't have something like consulting to diversify your revenue stream so i can help you with that or if you're a consultant currently and you want to go from six figures to seven that's my specialty that's what i do so today's show is all about how to get clients for your consulting business i'm going to give you the six steps to do that that's what we're doing in this video today six steps to help you get clients for your consulting business and i'm going to share with you an extra bonus step and that's the secret to making all of this work that'll be the seventh step it's right at the end of the show don't miss it i also have for you a free gift i'll give that to you right at the middle of the video so stick with me through this video i'm happy that you're here let's dive into the content with step number one for how to get clients for your consulting business and that step is identifying your ideal client this is essential now most people hang their shingle when they're starting their consulting business and they think okay i'm really good at what i do i'm smart i can solve problems in a specific area better than anyone so you know i'm i'm ready people are going to find me and that's just not the case what you need to do is you need to look through your client portfolios and decide who the ideal client is for you now if you're just starting out you should focus on number one who will provide you with the highest transaction value so where can you provide the most value to the client and they in return will invest in you our focus in consulting is to always provide a return on investment and a really good return on investment is about five or six times what they invest our business my consulting business provides a 10 times return or greater on the investment that people make in us so you have to figure out who your ideal client is how you can provide the best return on investment to them there are two ways to go about this you can look at industries or you can look at specific needs that people have when it comes to an industry focus you're not going to align your consulting business just on one industry you're going to focus your marketing initially just on one industry when i started my solo practitioner consulting business i came from big ticket consulting i knew that i couldn't go after fortune 500 companies right away i hadn't established a relationship with any fortune 500 companies that i could use as references or that i could get testimonials from i didn't have a reputation in the community yet in the fortune 500 community the executive community so what i did was i focused on lawyers and law firms and i immediately was able to get speaking engagements at bar associations i was able to write articles and get them published in bar journals i was able to go to networking events and connect with people who were high profile lawyers in the local legal community and gain their endorsements and i was able to do this within six months and within six months everyone in the state of florida where i lived and the state of new york where i worked half of my time everyone in the legal community in those two states knew who i was within a year everyone in the united states knew who i was from a business development standpoint as a consultant to lawyers so for you you can pick an industry niche identify your ideal target your ideal clients industry niche focus on that and you can become famous in that industry niche in six months or a year but in the meantime you'll be attracting clients because you'll be speaking to people in that industry niche over and over again the other advantage this has is you learn their language you can speak their language you can connect with them at an emotional level so focusing on an industry is a great way to go now if you're in consulting and you do a special type of work and you're unable to focus on people in a specific industry what you can do is you can focus on people who have a problem a specific problem that you solve so let's say that you're a consultant who solves the problem of like me now how to get clients i've expanded beyond the industry that i initially focused in which was lawyers and now i work with all professionals including consultants and i answer the question how do i get clients as a consultant i also answer the question how do i get clients as a cpa or how do i get clients as a life coach how do i get clients for my digital marketing management business anybody who's a professional can work with me because i can solve that specific problem for them so focusing on an industry niche is what i highly recommend it's the best way to get started once you've started and you have testimonials from people in that industry niche then you can expand out and focus on solving a specific problem in other industries start with industries that are related but then expand out so step number one identify who your ideal client is and focus your marketing on that specific ideal client we're going to get into step number two right now please join me for that now we're up to step two in this process and step two is to go out and find those ideal clients in groups so that you can use leverage to connect with them in mass now this is critically important because i know because of your profession you could easily focus on networking or on one-on-one marketing activities that's not going to be as productive for you as going out and looking for groups of people who are your ideal clients now you're thinking to yourself okay dave that's great so use leverage target these folks in groups but how the hell am i going to find them here's the way that you can find these folks very easily go to your best client the person who fits that ideal client profile and say to him mr client let me ask you a couple of questions what groups or associations do you belong to let me ask you another question what websites do you go to to keep up with industry trends to read the latest news for what's happening in your industry and you know if i asked you hey where would you go to find out what the latest best practices are in your profession what website would you go to to look all that stuff up third question what trade journals do you subscribe to are there any publications that get mailed to you at the office or at your home are there any annual awards that are given out or are there any gatherings conferences or conventions that are the must attend conventions for people who do what you do where do you go what do you read who else do you work with what other service providers do you work with to help you be effective and efficient in your business mr client when you ask your ideal client these questions you're going to get clues for how to target these clients these ideal clients the people you want to work with the exact folks who are perfect for you when you ask these questions of your best client they're going to give you a path to connecting with other people who are just like them your goal is to find out what conventions they attend what associations they join what websites they visit to stay up on industry trends and what publications they subscribe to the reason you want to know all this is because you want to speak in those places you want to write articles and get them published in those publications you want to connect with people who sell things to your ideal client to do joint ventures this is the research you need to do in order to target your ideal client in mass let me be very direct with you right now if you're focused on attracting new clients new prospects if you're focused on getting leads one at a time you're going to fail you can't do that i don't care what business what industry you're in focusing on attracting prospects one at a time is a recipe for disaster you need to attract dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of new prospects at a time this is the way you start that's step two now it's time for you to join me for step three let's go and now it's time to talk about step three step three is to make a free offer to the audience that you've gotten in front of in mass now you can make this free offer either in an article that you've written or from the stage if you're speaking or in an email if you're doing direct email solicitation or even in direct mail in a direct mail letter this offer should be a free report or a course or even you can even make it a free consultation if you'd like when you make this offer to your audience you're basically saying to them here's more of the information that i shared with you when we first met if you'd like more information you can get it from me now and if you get the free offer from me i will follow up with you and that's the key you need to make your free offer your offer of free information so compelling that people cannot resist and anyone who's seen you give a speech or watch one of your videos or listen to you on a radio interview those people want to hear more from you so they opt into your free offer in fact i'm going to demonstrate that concept for you right now i have a free offer for you for watching this if you'd like my entire process outlined in a way that you can immediately implement in your business go to revenueroadmapguide.com revenueroadmapguy.com you can find a link to that site down in the description and then simply enter your name your contact information and you will receive my free offer and that's a 27 page white paper it's a fill in the blank paper that you can use as a marketing plan to grow your business this is the entire strategy that i'm sharing with you in this video plus additional information that you can use immediately to grow your business so step three is make a free offer to your audience i'm demonstrating that to you right now go to revenuerroadmapguide.com opt in to receive the revenue roadmap guide and you'll be getting a free offer from me and then you can create your own free offer either just like that or in an educational video that people opt in to receive or a free consultation there are dozens of different ways to do this but this is such a critical step because people who get the free offer they convert from people who are suspects people you suspect would be good clients for you they convert into prospects people who you know would be good clients for you if they have the urgency to work with you so step three make a free offer take me up on my free offer right now go to revenuerroadmapguy.com opt in for your free offer i'm gonna see you right now in step number four join me in step number four right now so who's qualified to get in there who's qualified to come into your office and work with you what do i mean by qualified well that's the next step in our process you see before we bring people into the fold as clients we want to make sure that they're going to be exactly like our best clients and we must qualify them after they opt in to receive our free report and before we nurture them so the qualifying step takes place before we even put these people into our system to follow up with them we have to check in with them to see if they have the four things four things that are necessary for them to get in here to do business with us what are those four things well first we have to make sure that the person that we're dealing with is actually a decision maker what does that mean we have to make sure the person has the financial authority to sign a contract the person has the ability to commit their business to commit their organization or to commit themselves or their families to working with us the second thing we need to make sure of is the person that we're talking to has to have a problem that we can solve if they don't have a problem we can solve this whole thing is for naught the whole thing is useless the third thing we need to make sure of is that they are willing and able to take action right now they have to have urgency they have to be ready willing and able to take action right now and then the fourth thing of course they have to have the money they have to be able to pay us if they can't afford to pay us then we'd be doing charity work and if you want to do charity work you should do it but you should do it for an organization that helps out in your community or that helps a cause you believe in you work to make money to enable your lifestyle you don't work to contribute to the betterment of people who should otherwise be paying you so those four things are critically important now oftentimes people will have three of the four they'll be a decision maker they'll have a problem we can solve and they'll have the ability to make a decision they just don't have the urgency to get going with us right now and what do we do with those people well the people who are ready to get going right now the people who can afford us the people who have a problem we can solve and the people who are the decision makers those people are clients we sign them up immediately if they don't have the urgency we follow up with them forever we nurture them and that's the next step in the process so join me as we walk through that door to go to the next step in our process which is the nurturing step that comes after the qualifying step and now we're up to step five in the process and step five is very simple you need to communicate with the people who've given you their information and you need to communicate with them frequently for every month that you don't communicate with these folks you lose 10 percent of your influence over them until eventually in 10 months they won't even remember who you are they've opted in to receive something from you they've opted in to receive something they perceive has a high value now it's your turn to connect with them on a regular basis my approach is to email the people who opt in weekly why well think about it this way how often do you communicate with your best friend how often do you communicate with the people who are most important to you in your life if you communicated with them less often would your relationship get stronger or would it get weaker the reality is frequency of communication builds trust and what we're trying to do here is we're trying to build a relationship because your business your practice your company is going to be built on the foundation of relationships even in a setting where people say oh i do business in the business to business space you're not doing business with a building you're doing business with another person and the essence of relationships is productive communication between the participants you need to communicate with everyone who's giving you their contact information as frequently as you can minimum monthly preferably weekly that is step five and that's the nurturing process that's step five for the nurturing process and that's the part of this entire sales process that holds everything together now i want you to join me whether or not these folks are ready willing and able to help us grow our business to invest in our services join me right now so now we're at the part of the process where it's time for you to invite people in and invite them to become a client you've been nurturing them faithfully for weeks week in and week out you've given them the opportunity to really learn from you you've educated them with some great new content you've shared with them some testimonials some stories of people who you've helped you've done everything you can to demonstrate to them that you not only have credibility but you can really help them and they believe that you can help them so now it's up to you to invite them in to do business with you and you do this through what's called a gateway engagement this is an offer to work with them in a non-threatening low barrier to entry way this is not your three hundred thousand dollar product offering it's not your 10 million dollar offering it's an offer that is really easy for them to comprehend they see the return on investment they see that it will solve an imminent problem they're facing and it is just very very friction free it's a simple way to do business let me give you a couple of examples one of the ways that i offer a gateway offering to my clients is i do events on a regular basis so you can come down to miami and do an in-person event with me for one day and it may cost you 550 600 which is really the cheapest way to get involved with me once you come to that event and experience the power of the community that i've created and you connect with me on a personal level it's hard for you to not do business with me after that because you see the return you're going to achieve so for you in your business you can do an in-person event you can offer a service that is non-threatening that people can invest a little bit of money in to understand your brilliance so that they can invest in bigger products or services down the road now one of the things you can do is you can offer a consultation that is discounted from your normal consultation fee so if you normally charge fifteen hundred dollars for a consultation you can offer a one-time discount to the people who are on your email list the people you've been nurturing for weeks now you can offer them a 750 dollar consultation and that includes a comprehensive assessment of their situation and you'll review their situation with them and give them some constructive tips as to what they can do to get better this is a great way to get some initial exposure to you and once people get that initial exposure they want to come back over and over and over again so this step the gateway offer is critical the gateway engagement it's the first time somebody's going to experience you it's the first time they're going to experience your services i highly recommend you engineer this into your process and you make offers of gateway services every five or six emails that go out to your weekly email newsletter list now you can offer the same gateway engagement over and over again or you can offer different offerings every five or six weeks you can come up with three different offerings that you rotate it's totally up to you it's dependent upon who's on your list and what it takes to engage them but each time you make an offer people will come off and they will do business with you that's the beginning of the relationship it's just a starting point and it's the key to long-term value because they have to get involved with you in order to realize how brilliant you truly are now it's time for step number seven this is the final step this is the thing i told you was going to tie everything together you don't want to miss this join me back inside as i share with you our final tip for today the one thing you don't want to miss coming up right now so we're at step 7 for how to get clients for your consulting business thank you for staying with me all the way to the end now it's time for the secret the secret that makes all the difference before we give you that please do me a favor hit the subscribe button we do these videos every day i don't want you to miss out also give me a thumbs up if you liked the video leave me a note in the comments about what you want to see more of okay this is the secret the one thing you got to remember always think long term when it comes to doing business when it comes to selling when it comes to building your business it's about relationships and not transactions always think about the long term whether you're at step one or step three think about the third or fourth opportunity you're going to have to do business with this client or think about when you onboard this client how they're going to be with you for years and years and years download your revenue roadmap guide the link is in the description watch the next video in this series you'll see a link to the next video right next to me i can't wait to see you in my next video until then here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life thanks for joining me we'll see you in our next video
2021-05-22 12:37
