by Les Price | Mar 21, 2018 | Business Empowerment |
Like to attract and engage more clients with greater ease?
Recently, I was engaged by a national career development organisation to help mentor and coach their business clients and help them launch their ventures and increase the success of their businesses.
What I noticed working with these aspiring owners and entrepreneurs was that at the core of their business they all seemed to face one common problem and challenge:
‘How to promote, attract and market themselves more effectively’
Marketing and self-promotion is the at the heart of any successful business, but the rules of engagement have changed as more and more businesses go online and as customers are inundated with offers and competition.
- So how do we stand out from the crowd?
- How can we learn to dominate our market niche?
- How do we become better at attracting and engaging more clients?
Well, maybe we might gain some insight from management and marketing guru Peter Drucker who once said:
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well
the product or service fits him/her and sells itself.”
The Reality as We Know It
The reality is that when many of us start our businesses we are great at being the practitioner. We often have years of refining our skills and talents in providing the service or product whether that be offering massage treatments, doing therapy with patients or cutting hair and offering beauty treatments. But many of us were never taught how to promote, share and engage people to buy and take up our offering.
While passion for our idea, product or concept will get us so far, how we actively engage
our clients and customers in the buying process is fundamental to success
whether we are doing an online or traditional marketing campaign.
So, in today’s blog I simply wanted to share 5 dynamic and transformational insights to help you engage and win more clients.
Embracing and applying these inner-shifts in your approach to marketing, promotion and sales can be one of the most rewarding decisions you will ever make.
The 5 Master Insights
Master Insight #1: Be of Greater Service
It may sound simple, but at the core of all conscious and authentic sales, marketing and promotion is a deep desire to serve our customers. When we are focused on serving and adding value to clients, we unconsciously take the focus of ourselves, our fears and limitations and instead activate a deeper level of consciousness that allows us to influence and engage our customers more effectively.
Therefore, one of the greatest questions that you can ask yourself before a client meeting, or before entering into a pre-sales conversation or consultation is:
“How can I be of service? How can I help?”
The greater the value you deliver, the more people will pay you for your service/solution. As a rule of thumb, we should be focusing on delivering 10x more value to the customer than what they pay.
Master Insight #2: Learn to Sell Yourself First
Have you ever walked into a retail shop to find a sales person who didn’t know their product?
Have you ever had someone try to sell your something that they didn’t believe in themselves?
At it’s essence all selling and promotion is an exchange of energy. When you believe in yourself and your product or service fully and completely, then your clients and prospects pick up on that energy unconsciously and are therefore more willing and open to buy for you. It goes without saying then that …
“You can’t expect others to buy from you until you have fully sold yourself”
As an example of this, many years ago, when I first started coaching business owners I would often make appointments with businesses that were not in my area of expertise. Whether it was a restaurant or a Chinese medicine practitioner or Naturopath, I would often arrive at the appointment 10 minutes earlier. As I sat in the car meditating and focusing on a positive outcome for both the business and the owners I would brainstorm and write a list of at least 10-20 ways that I knew without a shadow of doubt that I could help them.
Taking 10 minutes to create that list was one of the most powerful exercises I could do as it gave me the confidence and reinforced my belief that ‘I could help them’ and that ‘what I had to offer was of great value’.
Master Insight #3: Value Yourself
It still surprises me the number of business owners who just don’t seem to value the service or product that they provide. While other less competent and less professional businesses offer a sub-standard product or service and seem to thrive financially.
Value is a perception and is held in the eye of the beholder. But as business owners we are the ones that need to identify our gifts, strengths, talents and uniqueness and then message and promote that in the world with appropriate reward and value. This means shifting our perception and understanding:
“That the more people pay, the more attention they pay”
So, if you have been having challenges with troublesome customers who don’t value you, don’t pay on time or never seem to have the funds to pay for your service or product, it could be time to sack them and put your energy into those that will. To do so means reframing your inner-value and beliefs by:
- Not giving away your service or product for free
- Not discounting – but finding ways to add more value or include bonuses
- Being willing to group your services or sessions in programs or packages and selling them at a higher price-point (rather than settling for one-on-one sessions)
- Introducing up-front payment or automatic payment plans that make it easy to buy from you and that take the head ache out of cancellations and changes
Master Insight #4: Help Them Solve Their Pain
At the end of the day, every business is in the business of helping customers and clients solve their problems. The greater the problem and the greater the pain, the more people are willing to pay.
Take for example the moment that you have a sever tooth ache and need to get a root canal treatment. How quickly would you want your pain to end? How much would you be willing to pay a dentist to remove the pain immediately?
To engage and attract more clients and customers we need to become experts in their problems. We need to arm ourselves with the insights, tools and marketing collateral that helps us connect with them and share our values in a way that encourages them to say ‘Yes, I need that now’.
If you don’t know your client’s problems, go out and interview them, survey them, run a focus group and get feedback or scope the numerous forums and review sites on the internet. You’ll soon get an idea of what people most want and need.
Making a list of your customers top 10 problems and then writing about how you solve those is one of the most effective tools you can create to reinforce your value in any marketing, social media or sales strategy.
Master Insight #5: Everyone is Not Your Customer
I had a young lady, an artist, come into a coaching session recently who was launching a new range of creative hand-made and hand-painted clutch bags and purses. When I asked her who her market was – the answer was EVERYONE!
While we may believe our market is everyone, the reality is that for most small and medium size businesses, when we focus on EVERYONE – we end up with NO ONE. Unless you have large pockets and unlimited marketing budget, trying to sell and promote to everyone is a recipe for failure.
The more clearly you define your target audience or tribe, the more successful you will be. Clarity has great power and enables us to refine an define our marketing strategy for optimum success. Best of all, in this day of the Internet, finding, attracting and working with a specific niche is easier than ever.
Many business owner are afraid that when they market, promote
or sell themselves that they will be rejected.
That’s why how you look at rejection needs to change. In fact the most successful businesses in the world are not afraid of ‘rejecting the people who are NOT their ideal customer.’
Fashion label Abercrombie and Fitch for example know that their apparel is for the young university student who believes that they are good looking and rich. They are not afraid to promote that, even at the expense of ‘rejecting’ the millions of other students who don’t fall in that category.
So what do you and your business stand for?
Who is your ideal target customer and audience? How can you deliver exceptional value to them?
These questions and the five principles above could be the key for helping you awaken and engage more clients and business this year.
Just remember, that we are all in the business of taking our clients and customers on a journey. The more value we can add and the clearer we can communicate our value to our customers, the more our business will grow and prosper.
Les Price is a transformational business coach, author, speaker and intuitive. If you’re looking to grow your business, attract more clients and create a visionary business that thrives, but don’t know where to start, or need guidance and insight to help improve your results, make sure to contact our office and book your coaching discovery session. Les will work with you to craft a plan for realising your business goals and help you move beyond the limitations and challenges that may be keeping you stuck and held back. Contact our office to organise your Coaching Discover session.
by Les Price | Feb 19, 2018 | Business Empowerment, Self Empowerment |
Ever found yourself travelling through fog on an early winter morning?
Having spent many years living in the United Kingdom and London, I can assure you that being caught in a fog can be one of the most disorientating and ungrounded of situations that we experience in our lives. Yet everyday people around the world find themselves being caught in their own mental, emotional and spiritual fog that can often keep them separate from really living, creating and enjoying the results and lives that they deserve.
After more than 20 years working as a transformational coach, intuitive and energy healer, what I have noticed from the experience of my clients and my own life is that the number one barrier that can keeps most people from realising greater levels of freedom and success is simply a lack of being clear.
The Power of Getting Clear
On an energetic and consciousness level we are now starting to understand that every thought, belief and intention we have has the power to create our reality. Our thoughts contain greater energy that can literally direct and shape the course of our lives. Yet for most people more than 90% of our daily thoughts are often taking place at the unconscious level, beyond our awareness. And it is here in the depths of our being that we can often create and experience blockages, limitations and struggle.
Clarity has immense power. When we choose to become clear both in our vision, our thoughts and our unconscious energy, it creates a powerful state of inner-alignment where our life energy can flow, unrestricted, with grace ease and lightness. In this state our ability to create, manifest and attract what we desire becomes easier. We no longer have to ‘force’ things to happen or exert undue amounts of ‘effort’. Instead we can allow the wind of divine grace and providence to help guide us and nurture us towards the goals, dreams, desires and intentions that we deem most important.
Your Intentions Activate Your Counter-Intentions
When we are living in our comfort zones without any desire for change everything seems safe, comfortable and secure. Yet, like sailing boats, we were not created to remain safe in a harbour. Our soul and spirit is always looking for ways for us to create, grow and expand. To realise our full and greatest potential for this lifetime.
And that’s where there is an interesting paradox that takes place.
In the moments that we choose to set a new and greater intention for something better or more in our lives, we simultaneously activate the limitations, beliefs and resistance to change that would have us stay where we are. How we navigate this conflict in energy, and our ability to learn to move beyond the patterns of our past and find the courage and self-confidence to expand into our highest reality is the key to success.
“People fail because they think, objectively, that they can do things, but do not know, subconsciously, that they can do them. It is more likely that your subconscious mind is even now impressed with doubts of your ability to succeed; and these must be removed, or it will hold its power over you when you need it most.”
Wallace D. Wattles, How to Get What You Want
That’s why if it any point in your life you are feeling resistance or struggle towards creating what you want, it’s a good sign. It’s actually a predominant sign that your soul and spirit is growing and calling upon you to become more than you have ever been before.
So Where Do We Need to Get Clear?
Through my work in clinical practice, the corporate world and through many individual coaching sessions, here is a short list of some of the key patterns that can often keep us from getting clear:
Fear and Doubt
As human beings we are born into the world with two main innate fears – the fear of falling and the fear or loud noises. All other fears are learnt during our childhood years. Conditioned fear and doubt that does not serve our highest good can be one of the most limiting factors to peak performance in our lives.
Our quest however is not to eliminate fear, as some level of fear will always be present when we are growing, changing and expanding. Our quest is to learn to let fear and doubt become the back-seat companions on our journey, as we let our higher, infinite, creative and courageous self, learn to do the driving.
Unworthiness
How we choose to see ourselves in life, determines the quality of what we are willing to receive. Patterns of unworthiness and undeserving can therefore keep us separate from receiving our highest good and allowing life to flow more easily.
If you’re finding yourself struggling to attract and allow good, prosperity and benevolence into your life, then it may be an unconscious pattern of unworthiness that is at play.
Limiting Choices and Decisions
Sometimes in our lives we may have made both conscious and unconscious decisions that have limited our lives. Why would we choose to do that??
Maybe because as a child we chose to believe and take on the limiting programming or conditioning of others. Maybe because by unconsciously limiting ourselves we can find safety, protection and reassurance. Maybe we simply have chosen to take on a belief, ideology or doctrine that is no longer consistent with who we really believe we are.
Its in the process of discovering our own path to greatness that we will be encouraged to let go of the shackles of the past, to release ourselves from the glass ceilings that have kept our energy and talents held back, so we can discover that at our essence we are infinite and unlimited beings.
Energetic Connections and Cords
Have you ever been in an intimate relationship with another human being? Whether that was a family member, a spouse, a lover or a child, every connection we make that infuses our soul and heart energy to another human being, event or situations creates an energetic cord or attachment.
Normally in the process of recovering from a major heart-break or loss of a loved one, we may find ourselves continuously thinking and feeling the others persons energy. While this may be functional for a period of time, its when these cords and attachments drain our life force energy and keep us from moving on in life that intervention and release is needed.
Ancestral Beliefs and Patterns
We are the essential by-product of our ancestors thinking, beliefs, actions and karma. While we have free will and independence as a soul in this lifetime to choose and navigate our own destiny, often the patterns of limitation, fear and restrictive mindsets that we carry can be a reflection of the unlearned lessons of our ancestors.
By learning to tap into the energetic imprints within the DNA and the human energy anatomy we can learn to identify these cords, lessons and restrictions, and then work with the energy of our ancestors to set ourselves (and themselves) free.
Energetic Debris
Have you ever returned home from work or a party to find yourself feeling energetically drained? Are there some people in your world that simply ‘suck the life’ out of you?
As human energetic beings we are always interacting with our environment. Our bodies like sponges can absorb and take on the mental, emotional and even spiritual clutter that resides energetically in our environments.
Receiving regular healing and clearing and learning how to protect and keep our energy centres and field clear is essential for optimal living in our over cluttered and energetically dense world.
Our bodies need to be experiencing and receiving high levels of ‘prana’ or life-force on a regular basis, whether that be from being in nature, walking by a stream or river, taking regular salt baths or having regular healing and clearing sessions.
Soul Contracts
Sometimes when we feel we are being held back or denied our best it can because we have created or experienced soul contracts with other people, organisations or institutions. These conscious and unconscious agreements, just like formal legal contracts can hold immense power over our soul energy, especially if they have been enforced or placed upon us by a higher power such as an authority figure, religious institution or the law.
In reclaiming our own sovereignty and power it is essential that we learn now to break free and reprogram or release these contracts so we can move forward in our lives with greater ease, grace and flow.
Anger, Sadness, Grief, Guilt and Shame
Finally, what I like to call the BIG 5. The five core limiting emotions that can often keep us from activating and living our highest and greatest lives.
In the process of doing our own life clearing it is likely that we will need to address the residual anger, sadness, shame, guilt and grief from both this lifetime, and sometimes our earlier lives.
While each of these emotions plays an important role in our ‘school of life’ on the earth plane, it is when these emotions become dysfunctional that chaos can reign.
Our role is to therefore address the underlying cause, discover the lessons that we were meant to learn that would free us to grow and evolve, and to then transcend and release these feelings to our source. Replacing them then with the real key to understanding, freedom and release that is present when we are willing to do the inner-work and set ourselves free to experience the antonym of each – Joy, Happiness, Connection, Empowered and Proud.
Your Path to Miracles
What is a miracle? Its nothing more than a transformational shift in consciousness that takes from a state of something we initially believed was impossible, to discover the possible.
The moment you begin to look at and clear the blockages, patterns and limitations that have held your life energy back, the more open we become to experiencing transformational shifts in our own energy and consciousness, and the more life flows.
“Getting clear is removing the counter-intentions. When you do, you can have, do, or be anything you can imagine. Getting clear is the missing secret to all self-help programs. It’s the key to attracting whatever you want.”
Joe Vitale, The Key
Remember: Struggle, resistance, doubt and fear are all signs that you are growing and being encouraged to step beyond what is known, to realise all that you really are.
When you consciously take time to identify, clear and release the patterns that have been holding you back at the conscious, unconscious and spiritual level, we embrace the greatest gift for our soul for this lifetime. We embrace the courage to allow ourselves to simply become all that we were uniquely and divinely create to be. We allow our magnificence and true light to shine.
Les Price is a transformational life and business coach, author, speaker, intuitive and healer. If you feel you have been holding onto limiting patterns, emotions, feeling and blockages from the past that no longer serve you, and are looking for a safe environment to allow greater freedom and liberation into your life – contact our office to organise a consultation with Les.
