Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 34 - 3 Ways To Attract Better Clients
Synopsis:
Tired of working with clients who drain your energy instead of fueling your success?
In this episode, Mike Shreeve of Peaceful Profits shares three proven strategies to attract better clients—ones who respect your boundaries, value your expertise, and help you grow a thriving, profitable business.
With insights from 15+ years of experience, Mike breaks down how to identify your dream clients, refine your offers, and create the freedom to choose who you really want to work with.
Transcript:
3 Ways To Attract Better Clients
[00:00:00] Hello, my dear friends. Hope you're doing well. Mike Shreeve here. Thank you very much for listening to today's episode. We're going to be talking about three ways to attract better clients. These are some hard won lessons from 15 years of working with other people. And I have made all the mistakes. Trust me.
I am living proof that if I can do it, anyone can do it. You can make all the mistakes and you'll be fine. A couple of things I want to share with you here. If you're in a client facing business, group coaching, consulting, freelancing, whatever it is that you do, the reality is, and I've been saying this for years and I'm not the only one who says it, You will only ever be as good as your [00:00:30] client allows you to be.
Let me say that one more time. You will only ever be as good as your client allows you to be. What do we mean by that? Let's say, for example, that you have a very needy client that is constantly bugging you, pinging you, and just completely blowing out boundaries. Now, that's really annoying, and it's really inconvenient, and it can be wildly frustrating, and feel disrespectful, and etc.
But what's, what a lot of people fail to realize is that it's [00:01:00] also impossible to be good under those circumstances. from very, from a very basic mechanical look. So for example, if you are constantly having to reassure a client, that is time that you are spending talking to the client rather than executing on what the client wants you to execute on.
For example, if someone keeps coming into an oven, opening the oven to check to see if the oven's doing its job and baking that cake, what happens to all the heat inside the oven? It dissipates and the cake takes twice as long. [00:01:30] Same exact kind of situation. Another example, this is very common in the coaching space.
People buy coaching programs with no intention of ever actually doing anything with them and then they turn around and they say, Hey, the coaching program didn't work. Yeah, you didn't do your part of it. This idea of having a system a procedure a policy a set of guidelines ideas on how to make sure that you are attracting the right clients for a lot of people that I know and a lot of the businesses that we work with just changing who they're working with drastically [00:02:00] improves the Not just the day to day operations of their business, but the actual financial picture of their business because time is freed up for them to do other things.
They don't underestimate momentum. I'll give you an example. There's a, when you're working with a client that you love versus a client you can't stand, you are more productive. You can be a machine and tell yourself that, no, you're able to grind through everyone. But I think, if you're being honest with yourself, when you're working with people you enjoy working with, it is easy to be amazing.
It really is. And it's very difficult to be even functioning [00:02:30] when you're working with people that you just can't, you just can't vibe with. It's just not working. Okay, so here's a couple of ways to make sure that you're attracting better clients. The first, and perhaps the most important, is to understand who you actually want to work with.
And when you first start out in business, the answer is anybody with money. I get it. But as you progress in business, and look, you don't have to wait until you progress in business. If you're just starting, this advice is even more powerful in the early stages. But when you very first start out, it's whoever gives me money is who I want to work with.
I'll do whatever it takes. And great, wonderful [00:03:00] attitude, love it. Very difficult to run a business like that. What I always, when I'm working with my clients, one of the first things we do is we really sit down and we ask a very simple question. What does your dream client have to have?
In order for you to be able to guarantee the best results in your industry. I'll give you a very quick example. If you're selling Facebook ads and someone wants to buy your services, what assets, not just personality, right? Everyone always wants to focus on personality and that's great, but you can't skip over, for [00:03:30] example, what assets do they have?
For you as the seller of Facebook ads to be able to look that client in the eye and say, I can guarantee a three X return on your ad spend. Now I'm not saying that you go around making those promises. This is just a mental exercise to find out what actual assets or what actual qualities or what actually behaviors or what actual experience or what actual money do my dream clients have so that I can make bigger and better promises because I need to make bigger and better promises in today's saturated market.
I can't be making the same small promises from 2010 so I need to be more clear about what I'm doing. What can I go out to the market and say [00:04:00] and actually be true based off of what my client can bring to the table? So Facebook ads, do they need to already have a proven funnel? Does that funnel need to have done at least a million dollars?
Or do they need to already have a high ticket offer that's been proven and sold X number of times and they have 15 amazing testimonials and et cetera, et cetera. I'll give you an example. I don't take on private clients unless they meet a very long, It's a very specific list of criteria. Now, from the outside, you may say, Oh, you're being a diva.
No, for me, it's because what [00:04:30] I guarantee in my private consulting offer is double revenue, double margin, three months of cash reserve, plus you're working 15 hours less than you normally do, and your business is twice as big. I can't do that for everyone. I cannot do that for everyone. For people who have a list of qualities, a list of assets, a list of things that they are bringing to the table, I can do it for everyone that has that grouping of characteristics, assets, etc.
Which is why I can guarantee that particular service. [00:05:00] Now because I can guarantee that particular service, guess what I get to do? I get to charge So that is not a cheap service. It's very expensive. And it's a slight change from when you're very first starting out. I'll take anybody's money, which means you can't really make any promises really, because you're talking to a broad range of people who have a varying level of this and that, or, they don't even have an offer and they want you to run Facebook ads, and you're like, what am I running Facebook ads to, I don't know, just give me some money and we'll figure it out together.
So that's the first thing. [00:05:30] Understand who you can actually help the most. And that, in and of itself, will probably drastically change the day to day operations, what you're able to charge, your own peace of mind, et cetera. Number two, this is the second thing, and this is, this will this is one of those things where I'm going to tell it to you, but until you actually live it it probably won't make too much sense, but then once you live it, it'll be one of those big epiphanies that you take with you for the rest of your career.
And it is, ask yourself, if the, Help that you offer is actually the help [00:06:00] you want to give. Now let me see if I can explain this well. Let's say for example that you help people who are struggling to stay committed to a diet, right? You have these beautiful offers, maybe you have books, you have courses, you have services, whatever.
And you're out there and you're in LinkedIn or Facebook or you're using ads or however you're getting your name and your stuff out there and you're saying, I'm the person who helps people Who struggle to stay committed to diets. What kind of person is going to come to your business based off the [00:06:30] need that you said you help people with?
People who struggle to stay committed to diets. Now, you have to ask yourself, people who struggle to stay committed to diets, what other kinds of behaviors do they typically show? There's a whole list of reasons. I'm not an expert on that. I'm not passing any judgment, I'm just saying, you probably will find a higher number of people who struggle to stay committed to a diet, probably struggle to stay committed to a program of any kind.
So now you are trying to help them eat more healthy, But you need them to [00:07:00] stay committed to your coaching program in order to get a result. But you're telling people who have a hard time committing to stuff that, so do you see how there's problems, there's difficulty. Just even in the conversation, right?
Hey, do you struggle with commitment? Okay, would you like to buy this now? You're talking to people who struggle with commitment. And I'll give you another example. You go out into the market and you say, I help small business owners. And then you also say, Oh, and by the way, I'd like to charge you an arm and a leg.
By definition, small business owners are what? Small. What do they not have a lot of? [00:07:30] Cash. So you have to ask yourself in your offer, the need that you are trying to solve, is it actually the need you want to solve? For most people who are running their business right now, I would bet that the answer is no.
Because oftentimes, we don't know. We hear the advice and I give it as well as even just this week, there's a podcast episode about moving more towards need, but sometimes we overcorrect or we chase need for the sake of chasing need, not taking into account the actual [00:08:00] business that we want to run.
So one thing you can do if you feel like you don't enjoy the client quality that you're attracting, if you don't like the clients that you're working with, is to ask, am I working with clients who I said I could help exactly how I said I could help them? And then to say, do I still want to keep working with these people?
Cause the answer may be no. And it's no judgment on the client. It's no judgment on you either. Some people like vanilla [00:08:30] ice cream. Some people like chocolate ice cream. Some people like strawberries in their ice cream. That's about as much as you should care about your own preferences versus other people's preferences.
There is plenty of opportunity in the world, in the marketplace for you to work with the people that you want to work with. Because here's the secret. When you're working with people you want to work with and you're helping them overcome or achieve or to, one of the needs that they have, you're more likely to be successful.
And when you're successful, you have case studies, you have proof, you have the confidence, you can raise your prices. And [00:09:00] it's just this cycle of how to be successful in the help industry is to get really great results for your clients. Tell people about the results that you got for your clients, raise your prices as demand increases and supply declines.
And that's how you can be really successful in the help industry. So it's really worth taking a look at and experimenting with. And you can make a very simple experiment with this. Just run a different offer for a second. And you'll find that just slightly changing the promise of the outcome, et cetera will attract a very different type of person.
Very different type of person. And then from there you can figure out if that's what you want to keep doing. [00:09:30] Okay. And the third way, which is a really powerful and really easy to do. It's just a mechanical issue. It's just math. The third way to attract better clients is to not need any single sale. To never need a single sale.
So what do we mean by that? In my experience for my own business and then in the businesses that I've worked with over the years, I'm sure you can see this pattern in your own life. Every time you have taken a client because you needed the money, because you [00:10:00] needed the money. And there's probably been lots of times where the little red flags were popping up all over and you knew this was going to be a bad situation and I should not have let that person every time you need the money.
You are tempted to lower your standards, ignore red flags, take people who shouldn't have been taken on in the first place, et cetera, and et cetera. It happens to the best of us. It happens to me. It happens to everybody in the industry. So what do you do? How do you fix it? It's actually really quite simple.
The reason you [00:10:30] need to take on clients can vary, right? It could be you having cashflow issues, you have poor financial habits and financial policies and strategies in your business. It could be, et cetera, et cetera. But even all of those reasons can be fixed. by simply understanding the supply and demand curve.
So if you need clients, it means that your supply and demand curve is not giving you the sufficient pressure to not care whether [00:11:00] someone closes or not. That's a very fancy and not really that fancy, a very convoluted way of saying When you have more leads than you can handle, you never have to take on anybody.
And as we've talked about in other episodes, if you can positively cashflow the lead acquisition, then you have even less of a need to take on any one sale. So for example, When we, in back in 2016, in our own business, stopped doing [00:11:30] freebies, stopped doing freebie webinars, lead magnets, etc. And we changed to acquisition funnels where we do low ticket courses, books, etc.
And then from those low ticket courses, books, etc., we upgrade people into back end offers and the back end offers is where we make the majority of our money. And we what happened was we no longer had the outgoing expensive advertising to stress us out and force us into closing people we shouldn't have closed.
So that was in and of itself amazing. Secondly, the the volume of leads picked up because we could go out to the market more aggressively with advertising and bring in a higher [00:12:00] volume. This is why I'm constantly harping acquisition funnels to the point where I think everybody's getting sick of me saying it, but it fundamentally changes the pressures within your own business, which then have the ripple effect of being able to better having more control really, I think is the the end result.
You're having more control over the sales environment and ultimately your supply and demand curve, which is to say if the ply. of new leads is constant, 24 7, 365, acquisition funnel out in the world, put a dollar in, [00:12:30] get at least a dollar back, there's no net loss to advertising, and that's the supply of leads that you have in your business, then the demand for closing any one client is almost none.
You always get a new call tomorrow. Always get a new call the next day. And this shift in dynamics also, it's a beautiful shift. It's one of my favorite shifts. And anytime we do something which messes with this shift, I always regret it. But one of the best shifts in the help industry to make is to [00:13:00] create, not manipulatively, not overly aggressive, not doing it in a fake way, but to make the playing field level during the call, during the sales call, or whether you're doing it by chat or et cetera.
In other words, being able to show up to a call where the power dynamics are equal, where no one is really trying to convince the other party of anything, where the sales call can be much more of a I don't know, tell me a little bit about yourself. What kind of client are you [00:13:30] going to be? Let me ask you a couple more questions to see if we actually even can help you.
I don't know. Let me think about it. I'll get you, I'll get you back tomorrow to see whether or not we'll be able to work together. Now, when you do that in a fake way because you're trying to manipulate someone, it is so obvious it's embarrassing, but when you are able to comfortably speak that way and it be true, because you have six more sales calls lined up tomorrow and they were all free and the next day after that you got six more and the next day after that you got six more, then in my opinion, in my humble but accurate opinion, [00:14:00] it's better for the client too.
How many how many sales teams right now in the high ticket space are run on Transcribed basically pressure someone into the sale at all costs, no matter what happens. Who's that good for? It's not good for the company. They have massive refunds. People are, calling them out all the time.
They have tons of just problems. They have massive employee churn because nobody wants to work there under those kinds of conditions and etc. And then the client is, that's definitely not good for the client. So anyways, I'm rambling a little bit here because this starts to open up into a huge world of their day [00:14:30] to day operations, what it feels like to work in your business.
When you start changing who you are attracting, and the most important thing for you to take away from today's episode is the word attracting the clients. You have, please listen to this. This is so important. The clients you have, you attracted, you attract them. They didn't just pop out of the sky. You did something which brought them to you.
And then you took their money. [00:15:00] So one, if you don't like your clients, it's because of something you did. The good news is, you did it so you can do something else. You don't have to be stuck with the clients that you have. These are just three ideas. There's many more out there. It's a beautiful thing to work with clients that you enjoy.
It is. It is, it's amazing. It is amazing. I'll just leave it at that. It's incredible. Okay, here's my plug for today's episode. As you may know, we have slots open at the time of this recording, which I do record these fairly in advance, so this may not be true by the time it goes live, but we do [00:15:30] have openings for my private consulting, which is a year long consulting engagement, where you and I will work directly together and we will achieve four different things.
Thing number one, we will double your revenues, Thing number two, we will double your profit margin. Thing number three, we will help you to generate at least three months of emergency cash reserves. And thing number four, we will reduce your weekly workload by at least 15 hours per week. All of that is guaranteed.
It's a really fun thing that I've been doing for many years. We did not do it last year or the year [00:16:00] prior just because of how things were going in the world and all that kind of good stuff. We are reopening it for the first time in a very long time. I put out the call for clients one time during the year, and I only take 10 to 15.
Once those 10 to 15 slots are done, it's done. Won't see this for at least another year, if ever again, no promises. If there's anything we learned from the past couple of years no promises in that regard. If you're interested in finding out more information about that offer, please send us an email support at peacefulprofits.com and my team will give you the information. There's an application process to go through. And [00:16:30] then you and I will have a chat to see if we're a good fit. We want to work together for a whole year. And then if we do, and you like it, we'll get the paperwork process and we can start that exact same day.
So lots of fun. Love that offer. It's one of my favorite offers that we have in our company is private consulting. We're going to work directly. We're going to do big things in your business this year. And again, I can only take between 10 and 15 this year. I'm probably going to be more picky than I ever have this year.
So who knows how many will actually end up, but it certainly will not be more than 15. Okay, my friends, that's it. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and we'll see you in the next one.