It has been said that great Designers get great Clients, but it is actually the other way around. Great Clients get great Designers.
This can be applied to Professional and Financial services. Various great people that you know wouldn’t be known within their field if they hadn’t worked with great clients that enabled them to demonstrate their talent and skills.
(The initial idea for this article was inspired from a talk by Seth Godin).
So the question to ask ourselves is how much time are we spending acquiring new great clients? Or are we spending that time trying to keep our existing clients happy?
And while we are thinking about that, then “What is a great client?”
Is it a company that pays us more? But is that at the expense of selling out to who we are and working with people with completely different ethical values than ourselves?
Depending on your business and what it delivers then the method of acquiring great clients may vary. Despite the massive increase in social media marketing, high end services are still actually purchased through face to face contact.
So my next question to consider is “what are we doing to get in front of great clients?”
Here are three tactics to help you:
1. Speaking Strategy
I have personally found a speaking strategy to be the most effective method. I understand the majority of people either get very nervous when speaking publicly or they are not really that interesting or provocative enough.
My typical definition for success after a “talk” is that the person who asked me to speak is happy and that at least two “buyers” come and approach me at the end and are open to receiving a relevant follow-up article or a 20 minute coffee and chat.
I have had a queue of people asking for follow-up material after my sessions, which is nice for my ego and that my message resonated with the attendees. The important part for growing a profitable business is knowing whether they have budgetary responsibility. If they have, they can buy my value offering.
Too often we spend a lot of our precious time building relationships with people that haven’t got a budget. They may be lovely people, but unless we’re speaking with those that can actually “buy”, then our businesses will financially struggle.
It is obviously important to meet introducers. Once we establish that they are not a buyer, but a potential introducer, then we need to get “the introduction to the buyer” as soon as possible.
Despite a speaking strategy having the highest level of leverage, few companies decide to do it properly. Usually because it is the hardest method and most companies don’t know how to do it well.
2. Referrals
The cheapest method is referrals and asking existing satisfied clients to pass on your details to their contacts that would find your services valuable.
Three of my highest earning recent projects came about through referrals from people that had attended one of my skill sessions and then kindly spoke about me to a buyer they knew.
3. Business Networking
The third method that is very effective and relatively inexpensive is business Networking. There are a plethora of things to do to improve this area. I have written and taught on this subject extensively so I do not want to duplicate it here. Therefore if you want some tips on increasing your ROI for your next Networking event then the best way is to download my 36 page P.R.O.U.D. PDF and read the “Relationship” section first.
So there you go, three tactics on how to get in front of great clients. The easiest suggestion from me would be to pick one and work on that. However, if you are a regular reader of my blog or LinkedIn posts then you will be someone who does want to make their organisation P.R.O.U.D. and wants to be the best they can. So to do that, we really have to decide to develop ALL three methods.
Once you are consistently doing all three, then you will be ready for the next stage which is this…
As has been asked by wiser men than me…
The real question is not, “Are we going to succeed?“, but “Is the work we do going to matter?”
Matthew Broomhead
“Raising the level of Business Skills in Britain”
Creator of Broomhead Business Channel