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SUMMARY
- What does it take to get great clients? In this video, Mike Shreeve discusses a three-part formula to help you do just that without feeling overwhelmed. This framework breaks down the complex client-getting process into three specific categories that you can tweak individually to get the results you want, i.e., change the quality of who you’re attracting. Follow this formula to have better control of who is approaching you for your services!
- The First C: Collect
How is your business doing in collection? This isn’t about collecting money; it’s about collecting attention, which is even more precious than money. Attention and time are the most precious commodities in the world right now. When you’re asking for someone’s attention, you’re ultimately asking for their time, and people are becoming a lot less likely to want to give their attention away. At the same time, competition for attention is very intense nowadays, as everybody’s trying to sell everybody something. - Your ability to collect attention is directly tied to your ability to control quality (whose attention you’re getting) and quantity (how much attention you’re getting). And how much attention you’re getting equals how much money you’re making.
- Collecting attention is different from getting attention. Collecting attention is about increasing the size of your subscribers, followers, and email list. Regardless of the platform you use, you’re not looking for views, comments, likes, or shares; you’re looking for who’s asking for you to get their attention again.
- Focus on growing your subscriber/follower/email count so that every time you produce new content, you have a list of individuals who are ready to give you their attention.
- The Second C: Communicate
Once you have people’s attention, communicate what they need to know in order to buy from you. This doesn’t mean just giving them the information about what you’re selling, though. What they need to know is, are you someone who can be trusted? Do you know what you’re doing? How are you going to help them? What will it be like when you help them? What do they need to believe to feel safe and secure in order to buy from you? - If you want people to believe that you can help them, the trick is to help them. Communicating isn’t about writing the trickiest sales email or manipulating someone.
- For more information on creating trust-building content, watch What To Say That Turns Strangers Into Clients.
- The Third C: Conversion
Conversion refers to the process of getting someone who now trusts you to pay you money. However, most people are too focused on conversion and they forget about collection and communication. - Ultimately, it all boils down to showing up as often as you can on some platform, which allows you to communicate as often as possible. A high frequency of communication equals a high frequency of attention. Showing up consistently accounts for 95 percent of attracting good clients and growing a business. Don’t worry about not having the best-looking video or best-sounding podcast. Every video, podcast, blog post, or email you put out there is making the sale for you automagically.
- Webinars, phone calls, and emails are great for automating the conversion process.
- Break down the client-getting process by looking at the three C’s individually and working on one area at a time.
HOT NEWS & DEALS
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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT: How To Get Great Clients
Hey everybody. Welcome to this lesson. We are going to be talking about how to get great clients.
Specifically, we’re going to be talking about a three part “formula, framework, structure.”
It’s a way of thinking about the client getting process that allows you to sit back and say, okay, instead of being frantic and oh my gosh, I’ve got to go over here, and oh my gosh, I’ve got to go over here and I got to do this and I got to do that.
It takes the entire complex process, chunks it into three specific little categories, and then it allows you to look at your business and say, okay, am I doing this category?
If not, I need to push the little lever, make this better. Push this little lever, make it better. Maybe this part I can pull back a little bit.
It’s basically a control system for your business. Now, by having this control system, if you’re a freelancer or a service provider, what this allows you to do is change the quality of who you are attracting by understanding the mechanisms of attraction. In other words, follow this and you can control or be at least better at controlling who it is that is approaching you for your services.
It’s three Cs, and let’s jump into it right now.
1. The First C: Collect
The first C of this formula is to collect. The first thing we need to do is when you look at our business and we need to ask ourselves, how are we doing in collection? Now, what do we mean by collection? No, this isn’t about collecting money, this is about collecting what’s even more precious than money in today’s world, which is attention.
Attention is, right now in 2019, the most precious commodity in the world, period, full Stop.
Why?
Because attention is also connected to that other most precious commodity in the world, which is time.
In other words, the more attention you are getting, or when you’re asking for someone’s attention, what you’re ultimately asking for is their time.
People are becoming a lot more aware, conscious, and less likely to want to give their attention away. At the same time, competition for attention right now is brutally intense. Everybody’s trying to sell everybody something. Your ability to collect attention.
Notice how I didn’t say get, I said collect attention, and we’ll talk about that in a second.
Your ability to collect attention is directly tied to your ability to control quality, because whose attention are you getting?
And then quantity.
How much attention are you getting equals how much money you’re making essentially.
When we talk about attention and we’re not just talking about getting attention, because getting attention is easy.
Just go on Facebook, you say something controversial, you say something silly or you go on LinkedIn, you propose some stuff and people see it and they say, “Oh that’s nice.” They hit the like button, they maybe comment, but you’re like, why isn’t this turning into money?
Well, the reason it’s not turning into money is because you haven’t collected that attention.
Getting attention is very difficult to do and you need to collect that attention so that you can, for the people whose attention you have, repeatedly return to that well of attention.
Let me explain this here a little bit better than that.
What do we mean by collecting attention?
We mean increasing your subscribers, increasing your followers, increasing the number of emails on your email list, or if you’re like a lot of people that I teach, increasing the number of emails that you find to do cold outreach.
The higher these numbers are, think about what those numbers mean. It means that every time I produce something, put a piece of content out there, send an email, make a video, whatever it is, they have signed up because they want me to get their attention. They want, for example, to get a notification every time a video comes out.
The mechanism for truly gaining momentum in the world of attention is to look at your email list size, your follower count, your subscribers size.
Now, you may say, oh my gosh, Mike, does that mean I need to do a YouTube channel and a podcast and this and that? No.
What I’m saying though is whatever you decide to do. You want to double down on LinkedIn, double down on LinkedIn. You want to do a YouTube channel, do a YouTube channel. Want to do both? Do both.
It doesn’t really matter as long as you can manage and be consistent because consistency is the secret. As long as you can be consistent.
What your ultimately we’re looking for is not views, not comments, not likes, not shares, you’re looking for who is asking for me to get their attention again?
The metric here is subscribers, followers, emails. That’s the first place to look in your business.
How are my subscriber count?
How’s my follower account?
How’s my email account?
Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it staying stagnant? Is it nothing at all?
Well, that’s a lever you can pull. That’s where you start to say, “Well, maybe I need a better content strategy. Maybe I need to think about in my videos or in my podcast or in my whatever. Maybe I should tell people to subscribe, ask them, hit the subscribe button.” Things like that so that I can increase that number. Because once I have it, then every time I produce new content or need to say something more or to attract more people, I have this whole entire list of individuals who are there ready to basically give me some of their attention.
Now, we’ve got their attention. We’ve collected their attention, that’s working, what do we do with that attention?
2. The Second C: Communicate
Well, we communicate. What exactly are we communicating?
Well, specifically, it’s really this simple. We are communicating with those people whose attention we have, what they need to know in order to buy.
We have all these people’s attention and we need to communicate to those people. We got their attention.
They’re listening, they want to know what’s going on. What we need to tell them is simply what they need to know in order to buy.
Now, that doesn’t mean just here’s the information about what it is I’m selling. What they need to know is, are you someone who can be trusted?
Do you know what you’re doing? How are you going to help them? What will it be like when you help them? What are the end results of whatever it is you do for someone? What does their life look like? What does it feel like? What do they need to believe?
Some people don’t believe in internet marketing.
They don’t believe in digital marketing.
They don’t believe that you can grow a business online.
They don’t believe that an email list will help them.
They don’t believe that high subscriber counts equals more money.
They don’t believe these things.
One of the things that you have to do is once you have their attention, you have to figure out what do they need to believe, what do they need to know to feel safe and secure in order to buy from me?
I’ve done other videos of the podcast, other contents throughout the No Pants World talking about this. But I’ll tell you a little quick version of what you need to know to shape all content. Because you’re like, okay, well what do I say then? What specifically do I say? If you want people to believe that you can help them, the trick is to help them.
The answer is in order for you to know what to communicate to someone, it’s not about how can I write the trickiest sales email, it’s not about how can I manipulate somebody.
It’s simply about what can I say to them that will help them. Because if I help them, they’ll believe that I can help them in the future.
3. The Third C: Conversion
Then what happens after that is now you’re into this world of conversion.
Most people are too focused on conversion and they forget about collection, communication and everything that goes into this.
Now, let me be clear. It’s very simple to collect and communicate. We have programs in the No Pants Project, which we’ll teach you how to do this, but ultimately it really boils down to show up as often as you can.
I recommend daily, on some platform doing something which allows you to communicate your message as often as possible.
Because a high frequency of communication equals a high frequency of attention. Just simple math.
The more messages you have out there, the more people are going to see it.
You don’t have to get into this over complicated stuff. It’s the process of attracting people, the process of attracting good clients, the process of getting yourself …
You’re growing a brand and growing a business and getting people to know, like and trust you, it’s 95% just about showing up consistently and showing up frequently.
It’s not about who has the best looking video, who has the best sounding podcast, who has the best … It’s, oh my gosh, that person is fairly consistent.
I can’t tell you how many people come to us in the No Pants Project for example, and they say, I’ve been listening to your podcast and I literally watched or listened to seven hours of your podcast and I was like, this is the guy who can help me.
That’s the buyer experience that you’re looking for.
Because I make this video, I make a podcast, I make a blog post, I make an email.
Once I make it and I set it free, I never have to do anything. It’s out there making the sale for me automatically while I’m sleeping, all that Internet hype stuff. That’s actually what happens when you do this.
Now, last piece here about conversion, very, very simple, there’s lots of different mechanisms for conversion.
1. Webinars
If you want to automate the conversion process, which is getting someone who now trusts you to pay you money, highly recommend webinars, that’s my favorite.
Webinars are very simple. It’s an online presentation that you teach someone a little bit of something. You tell them how you can help them. You say, here’s the offer. Here’s a buy button. Completely automated. 90% of the revenue in the No Pants Project is webinar driven and completely automated.
2. Phone calls and emails
The alternative is phone calls and emails. That’s pretty standard. Somebody starts a conversation with you and you get on the phone and you turn them into a client.
Somebody emails you, you email them back, you get them turned into a client. You can see now, these three areas, when you really sit down and look at your business, you start to ask yourself the questions, how am I doing in my collection efforts?
The other day, in one of our groups, somebody posted, I sent out 25 cold outreach emails and I got one warm lead. I feel like I’m failing the program. They’re like, “I don’t know why this isn’t working, how’s this …”
This particular person, if they sit and think about the math of their business, they know that for every 25 they get a warm lead.
So, what’s the answer? Is the answer to go try something else? Is the answer to give up? Is the answer to maybe feeling discouraged in the moment, to let it overcome them?
No, of course not.
The answer is if for every 25 you get a warm lead, send more of those emails. In other words, go find more emails and increase your collection efforts.
Now, let’s say that this person increases their collection efforts. Now, they’re doing 100 outreaches a day, because they’re hungry for it. They want to get results. They’re still not happy with one in 25.
Well, what could be wrong in that process? Well, if it’s one in 25 people are willing to get on a phone call with you, then what might be happening is what you are not succeeding at is telling them what they need to know in order for them to be interested in contacting you. In other words, the communication could be off.
So, let’s work on increasing the communication. Let’s send them to some blog posts.
Let’s send them to some content in this cold outreach process.
Let’s give them information. What can we tell them that they need to know in order to want to buy from us?
You see how when you’re in the middle of it and you’re trying to get clients and it seems like there’s 50 million different things going on, you actually just take it one step at a time.
Now, we get down here, maybe this person is having phone calls, but nobody’s really buying. Well, if our collection efforts, and we go back and we look, well, collection efforts are great. We’re getting 100 new a day. We can’t do any more than that.
Our communication is good, we’re getting the phone calls, they’re really interested in talking to us. Then what is left is that something’s wrong here in our conversion portion of our client getting process.
In other words, we need to look at maybe the phone calls. Are the phone calls good? Are they not good? Are we using good sales tactics?
By sales tactics, I mean are we actually listening and diagnosing and prescribing?
Same with any other methods.
3. Youtube Videos
Let’s say you’re doing YouTube, like we’re just starting to do and you’re pumping out these videos, you’re doing these views, you’re doing these videos and doing these videos and nothing is happening over here on the webinar. You’re not getting more sales.
Well, what you have to do is you have to stop, you have to break down a process and see what’s going on.
Are people subscribing to our videos? Can we increase the subscriber count? What can we do in each video to increase the subscriber count?
Because the more this goes up, the more everything else goes up.
Are we failing to communicate properly that we’re the people who can help them? If so, why? What do they need to know before they’ll buy from us, The No Pants Project?
Of course, lastly, if we’re getting people to sign up for things and getting them super interested, and they’re commenting and they’re loving what we’re doing, but we’re not making any sales. Well, what’s wrong with our webinar? What’s wrong with our email process? What’s wrong with …
You can see that you can take this 3C framework and really almost in any business, but especially if you’re selling sort of a service based type business, you take a look at these three Cs and as long as you’re just willing to move the levers and sit and think it through, you’ll find your path to fixing whatever the problem is.
Instead of trying to jump from technique to technique to technique and jumping from guru to guru to guru, you take a look at your own business, you take a look at what it is that you’re doing and you use your own diagnostic abilities now with this framework to make the adjustments and to make the tweaks and to make the fixes. This is how you build a six or seven figure service based business.
It’s not the next latest, greatest whatever trinket. It’s not a 97 step funnel, it’s this process of examining what it is you’re doing, making the tweaks, asking yourself the hard questions, and then doing the work to put this in play.
So, it’s collect, collecting attention, communicating what they need to know, and then going through with the conversion process.
Hope this video has been helpful to you. If you’re listening to this on the podcast or watching us on YouTube, we’d love a subscribe.
If you’re on iTunes, you can subscribe on iTunes.
If you’re on YouTube, you can just click that subscribe button below the video. Hope you’re having an awesome day.
Hopefully this was helpful. We’re going to be continuing to communicate and collect with you, my dear audience friends and members so that we can run you through our conversions and help you.
You can go to thenopantsproject.com and actually see some of the things that we have for sale to help you implement stuff like this.
Anyways, that’s it from me today. We’ll see you in the next one.
