What To Do vs How to Say It

Have you been frantically or even systematically chasing one marketing strategy after another, hoping to find the magic answer to "what works" for getting more clients in your private counseling, coaching or NM practice -- with the only result being holes in your shoes and in your monthly income?

Perhaps it's time to consider that the problem isn't knowing what to do, or even having excellent follow up in doing it. Maybe the problem is knowing how to say it.

I'm finding with my clients that what seems like a direct, specific description to insight oriented counselors and coaches often isn't as concrete and clear as needed for marketing.

Writing for marketing tends to require all of us to learn the language of marketing. It's a hard switch to make. Marketing isn't one of the foreign languages taught in high school -- but it probably should be!

To help learn this foreign language called marketing, I've developed a 9 week curriculum for beginners and advanced "speakers." These videos outline what you will learn and complete by the end of either course.

Courses start in July. Registration at www.TheNoHypeMentor.com/id5.html

The Shy Counselor Client Solution

So many of my clients -- counselors, coaches, even naturopathic doctors -- are basically shy when it comes to self-promotion. Others might be better described as energetically introverted, and many could be said to have been trained into being inhibited when it comes to marketing their private practice.

I can relate.

It's hard to put ourselves in the spotlight intentionally. It's draining to follow the conventional advice that always pushes for high visibility with a persuasive patter of what feels like selling ourselves.

And we have our professional image to consider -- not to mention professional licensure to protect.

Most service businesses owned and operated by single individuals fail because of either not knowing how to market, doing the wrong type of marketing, or doing no marketing at all.

If you're not getting enough clients for your practice to survive, here's what I'd recommend doing THIS WEEK:

1. List all the marketing activities you are doing on a daily basis, or have in place.
2. Review how well they are working for you -- when was the last time you got a client from each effort?
3. Critique your website for client attractability -- what could be changed , removed, or added?
4. Choose ONE marketing activity and create a multi-step promotional campaign for it. Work at that campaign until it starts working for you by itself.

Not sure how to get started on some of these things? See my new website http://www.ShyCounselorClientSolution.com

Step 2 in Becoming a Client Magnet

Following on from the last post, the marketing question to ask today is this:
What makes you unique among your peers who do the very same work?

And let me encourage you to try to answer this from your prospective clients' point of view. Think about their decision making process. What's the intangible something that you have and others don't that will cause clients to select you for their counselor, coach or ND?

Hint: this isn't necessarily about your training, and usually it won't be about your clinical affect or coaching presence. We're all warm and supportive, each of us creates safety and an atmosphere of enthusiastic hope. Those aren't unique selling points in our business.

What is it in your own history and set of personal interests that give you your passion for wanting to do your work in the world?

Maybe you specialize in working with women with postpartum depression because you know what that's like, because your own life has been touched by it in some way -- be it in yourself, your sister, a friend, etc. This gives you empathy and insight that no one who has never had PPD can fully comprehend.

Perhaps the dream of your youth was to be a professional dancer -- until you blew out your knee or injured your back, and your entire self-concept was suddenly, traumatically altered. As a healer now you bring a depth of personal understanding into every encounter with clients whose life dreams have been shattered in a similar way.

Knowing that you have had your own challenges and have overcome them -- of that you have a personal connection to someone with such challenges -- is a compelling factor in the selection process when prospective clients are searching for a provider.

Clients expect us to have been trained and tested. They assume we follow the standards of practice for our particular field. Most aren't knowledgeable enough to know the difference between techniques or schools or approaches to our work. We don't need to over emphasize these factors in our marketing. What starts building rapport and trust is a glimpse into who we are as individuals.


Coaching questions:
What type of experience in your own life sets you apart? How much of that are you comfortable with disclosing in your marketing?

What qualities of personality contribute to your uniqueness, compared to your peers? Are you more direct than the norm, do you listen more, ask more powerful questions, go out of your way for clients more, etc? What unique personality features will stand out to prospective clients comparing you with your peers?

Set It and Forget It – Bad, Expensive Idea

Last week I was contacted by an out of state “firm” who had trawled Meetup groups for clinicians seeking marketing help and wanted me to recommend their services to “my constituents.”

In checking out their glitzy website, I discovered that their offer included an onsite assessment from “secret” patients (as if my practice were a clothing store or restaurant), a report replete with statistics on demographics, psychographics, and growth goals, and a strategic business plan – all for only $5000.

Further checking showed their minimum recommended level of budgeting for marketing was $5000 a year, and included items such as promotional incentives and gifts to get new clients – common practices in some industries. This firm could apparently accomplish everything for me short of driving new clients to their appointments.

Hmmm. When you’re a one person show, it’s very tempting to want to outsource all the thinking and planning and implementing of business operations and client attraction work. An offer like this appeals to our desire for set it and forget it marketing.

I can remember the time when I too wished I could hire a promoter to get clients lined up at my door. It would have been a great solution to the anxiety and insecurity I felt about having to talk about the benefits of counseling in a way that would convince people they needed it, and that would persuade them that they should hire me.

What this approach to marketing your private practice fails to consider is that tactics that work in retail, or for large impersonal clinics with multiple clinicians and admin staff don’t work for counselors and coaches with a solo practice.

Our distinguishing feature is in the quality of relationship we build and sustain with prospective, current and former clients. That takes constant personal attention. It can’t be wholly outsourced.

No slick advertising or website / brochure produced by an out of state consulting firm can successfully capture your unique personality and healing presence.

Phew – you’ve just saved yourself several thousand dollars.

Coaching questions:
When you feel resistant to marketing your solo practice, what anxieties and insecurities are under that resistance?

What do you need when feeling those anxieties and insecurities?

How can you feel them, and not let them stop you from extending your warmth and humor and genuine personality when connecting with potential clients?

3 Things You Want Your Blog to Do

Do you think of your blog as a staff member of the marketing department of your business? It really is.

Here are three things you want that employee to do for you on a daily basis.


1. Provide useful information and tips to prospective ideal clients

If your blogs are random rambling musings, you are missing the marketing potential of doing a blog. And you're wasting your time in blogging as a marketing tactic. Instead, imagine a specific individual has asked you a question, and let your blog post provide a direct, immediately applicable solution to that question.


2. Develop rapport and likability between you and your niche market

A blog works best when it is a little online slice of your personality. Write like you speak. Be irreverent, if that's you. Exaggerate the absurd, if you do so in person. This is how your breathe your life-force energy into a flat, "impersonal" piece of writing. Being who you are AND speaking to your audience about their problems and easily applied solutions to their problems increases the sense of trustworthiness that blog readers need to become clients.


3. Establish you as a generous, helpful, knowledgeable, solution expert for your target market's problem

Blogs function best when they are endless sources of quick bits of education and help. Few people have time or patience to take courses or read books anymore, but we all need simple answers to our complex problems. As clinicians we know that real healing and lasting change is more complex than this. But the blog is not the clinician -- it's not supposed to provide enduring transformation, just enough help at the hungriest moment to make you the go-to solution expert for your target market niche.


Coaching question ---

To start thinking of your blog as a valued employee in your business's marketing department, what specific job description will it have? What measurable goals will you hold it accountable to achieving for you?

Just for Coaches!! A Special Quick Start Guide

Today I have something a little different for my coach colleagues -- a hot-off-the-desktop-press Web-Based Marketing Resource Pack with tons of tips and links to make your early days getting your practice going a whole lot easier.

Included in the Resource Pack are:

• marketing must-haves and must-do's
• building a website: where to start
• online locator directories to join -- specific for coaches
• useful cheap online marketing tools
• other services you'll need -- conference call services & small business helps
• the 12 marketing mistakes new coaches make
• FAQs my clients frequently ask
  
• extroverted marketing activities for the first year in practice
• 5 crucial rules of thumb
• tagline examples and a fill in the blank format
• example and fill in the blank format for your compelling elevator speech

For a limited time this Resource Pack for coaches is available at no charge. Scroll down to the form where you can email for the Resource Pack.

Your Name
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4 More Tip Sheets from The No Hype Mentor

Lots of my clients start out as do-it-yourselfers, but quickly get overwhelmed with how much there is to learn about having an effective web-presence.

To help get to the gold fast, I've developed a number of quick guides and tip sheets. I have four more for you today.

Suggestions for 1st 5 Web Pages
Clear, quick advice on what content your first website needs to have to attract more clients to your practice.

17 Sticky Ideas
Especially for coaches, counselors and naturopathic doctors, these suggestions will help make your website more client attracting, and help to increase conversion rates from visitors to people calling for appointments.

Niche Viability Checklist
Sometimes you have a great idea for a very narrow or specialized niche that you know needs your help. This checklist will help you determine if enough of these folks will want your services in great enough numbers for you to make a living.

Crafting Your Ideal Client Niche
Those of you who are generalist in recovery may like some help in figuring out exactly who your ideal client is. Helps develop the demographic and psychographic details that you need for an effective marketing message.

Request any or all of these 4 No Hype Mentor Tip Sheets ~~ Note: Submitting this form will not trigger an instant download. I'll be sending you the materials you request personally. Sorry for the wait if your daytime is my sleep time.

Your Name
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City & Country
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Poor Mr Sleaze -- Everybody Hates You

Sleaze is one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder. Often what it looks like is a set of tactics aimed at convincing us we need something that we can well do without, and persuading us to hurry up and get it when we can't really afford it.

In marketing a private healing arts practice, high pressure sales tactics that work in some retail advertising are generally considered sleazy, such as:

• creating false urgency that stimulates the greed factor -- i.e.: the buy now or lose tactic

• purporting a false limited availability -- i.e., the this fee good for the first 5 people today only tactic

• emotional manipulation of Maslow needs -- i.e.: the become more sexy, have money raining on you tactic

• over promised results --i.e., cousin to the above, the you too can become an Olympic star tactic

• celebrity association -- i.e., the trained by Tony Robbins, interviewed by Oprah, worked with Andrew Weil tactic

• bait and switch -- i.e., the freebies that amount to more sales pitch / less info of value tactic

Most clinicians and coaches are opposed to using sleaze to attract clients -- as well you should be. But, on the other hand, there is a psychology to marketing a service practice. Understanding that psychology and using it to your advantage is smart for business, without being sleazy.

Let's start with some reasonable assumptions about our ideal clients (regardless of who those are for you). They have a pain or a problem that is adversely impacting their daily life, they don't like that impact, their attempts to resolve it have failed, it's getting worse or spreading into other areas of life and relationships, and they want are ready to do anything to stop it.

(If your picture of your ideal client doesn't address their pain or problem in this way, it's time to go back to square one.)

These clients don't need to be convinced they have a problem. They are all too aware of it. They don't have to be persuaded to pay for the help that will end the problem. They are already willing and ready to do so.

So, what do these clients need to hear from our marketing? They need:

• to feel that you see and understand their pain -- show that by talking about it
• to feel warmth and caring from you -- don't say you're warm and caring, demonstrate that by your language
• to feel a connection with you -- talking to them about them creates this
• to start to trust you -- talking about what in your own life gives you empathy with them shows this
• to believe there is hope for change -- provide reassurance that you will do your best to help

Is Mr Sleaze involved in any of that? I don't think so.

20 Thoughts to Juggle in Naming Your Business

Selecting a good business name is always a challenge. There are lots of considerations to keep in mind.

• What will the name mean to people who are seeking the type of services you are offering?

• Will the name have a degree of energetic resonance for these people, such that it conveys exactly what they are seeking and they recognize that the first moment they see the name?

• Is the name a clear descriptor for your service, conveying what your business actually does or is?

• Will it create conversation or confusion?

• Is it inspiring for you as well as for your clients?

• Is it short enough and powerful enough to be memorable, and easy for others to spell correctly?

• Does the name evoke a visual image and felt-emotional connection?

• Is there an inherent positive connotation to the name?

• How many ways can it be misunderstood or misspelled in a Google search?

• How much time and effort are you prepared to put into promoting / explaining your business name?

• How much competition is there for a similar name?

• Does the name convey expertise in a niche market?

• Will clients be able to spell and pronounce it when referring you to others?

• In an international marketplace (if your clients will come from across the world), can your business name possibly be a bad word or have inappropriate or detrimental associations in another language?

• Does the name suggest any particular color or color combination and will that match or clash with your branding scheme?(fascinating article on color meanings here: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/color/a/symbolism.htm)

• Is your favorite name, or one very close to it, already registered with the appropriate business licensing authority?

• Does the name convey a serious business, or is it suggestive of an amateur hobbyist?

• Did you test several names with people likely to be in your ideal client target market?

• Did you test several names with 8-10 year olds and could they tell you what your business does?

• Can you fall in love with your business name, and wear it proudly on a sticky networking badge?

Well, you get my drift. Lots to think about.

I personally like names that hold some special meaning to the business owner, that have some special "zing" to them, while also being memorable and descriptive of the actual work being sold.

Ultimately the marketplace will tell all of us whether we've got a great magnetic business name, or one that gets us lost, forgotten, or is off-putting.

Fear, Flow, and Focus

Are your client attraction efforts propelled by fear? How many of these fears can you relate to:

• Fear of not being visible enough to prospective clients?
• Fear of being too visible and drawing people who are wrong for your practice?
• Fear of not doing enough marketing, so you do a little of everything?
• Fear of not doing the right marketing, so you feel paralyzed or overwhelmed?
• Fear of losing traction, so you get caught up in frantically searching for more ways to promote your business?
• Fear of marketing taking over your life, so resistance comes up and prevents doing any at all?
• Fear of looking or sounding unprofessional, silly, stupid, or sleazy?

Having to combat such fears makes it all the more difficult to produce an effective, compelling, client attracting marketing message. A confident mindset with a good amount of belief in yourself is absolutely essential to the success of any self-promotion strategy.

I highly recommend having some strong techniques for feeling the fear and promoting your business anyway. That should include confident self-talk, an accountability partner, and a step by step system to persistently follow.

Many of us by nature or training value being in a "flow" state of mind, where we've heard that high creativity exists. There's nothing wrong with that when we need to generate new ideas or produce a specific product. How that often plays out for marketing a private practice, though, can look like this:

• dabbling at many marketing actions, mastering and following through on few
• interacting with your business as if it were a hobby
• scattering your energies with disconnected approaches to spreading the word about your services
• starting the business day waiting for inspiration, energy, or motivation to strike
• flitting from one strategy to the next without giving each enough time to produce results
• constantly reinventing the wheel, or being terminally "unique" in promoting your practice
  

Approaching marketing with this kind of scatteredness is exhausting and expensive for us, and confusing for potential clients. Worse, it sends a subtle message that we don't quite know what we're doing if we aren't consistent with how we market to prospective clients.

I recommend making the best use of the flow state when needing to brainstorm, when wanting to immerse yourself in a creative process, and in visualizing success everyday.

If I could make just one point about client attraction it would be that FOCUS is the big secret. What focus looks like is:

• making the health of your business a priority on your schedule everyday
  
• a well defined understanding of your ideal client
• an emotionally compelling marketing message
  
• a limited number of effective ways to fill your pipeline, get referrals, present yourself and get hired
  
• a small set of easy, fun, productive action steps taken every day
  

Focus includes defining, detailing, planning, following through, evaluating, and adjusting. It often sounds like a lot of work, but getting systematic about it makes it very easy, efficient, and really produces client attraction results.

I recommend setting aside time everyday to tend your business in a focused way with clear, measurable action steps that lead to achievable goals.

Ezine, Blog, or Social Media? Wrong Question

For non-writers, all this talk of having a website, then doing an ezine, and writing a blog, and sending bursts of info out on social media can feel overwhelming and confusing.

Anyone out there feeling that? Yep, thought so.

The question is not which one should you do, but why and when will you want to do one or more of these forms of writing.

From my perspective as a web-presence marketing mentor-coach, I always say that a website is your home-base. It anchors all the rest of your marketing. This is the most important more or less permanent piece of writing you'll have to do.

The purpose of your website is to tell your potential clients what they are waiting to hear in order for them to know you are the right provider for them.

Blogs seem to work better these days than ezines for getting people interested in you and your services, and getting a little taste of what it would be like to work with you. So when you are starting out and needing to generate enough clients to fill your practice, a blog is a good addition to a website.

Ezines seem to work best to keep in touch with current and former clients, generating repeat business, providing targeted help on topics your clients have expressed an interest in, and reminding people you haven't seen for a while that you are still in business. This is a different purpose than a blog, so the writing should be different as well.

Social media work best to spark interest in something specific in the moment. They can be good for sending the curious and the prospective client to your blog or website for more extensive information, or to make an appointment. But for solopreneurs in the healing arts, they don't really directly generate a lot of new clients.

So, website, ezine, blog, and social media -- which will you work on today?

Are You Time Rich and Cash Stingy? Perfect!

For some reason -- whether it's because of hefty student loan repayments, poverty consciousness, self-sabotaging distaste for marketing, fear of doing the wrong thing and wasting money, etc -- counselors are notoriously risk averse when it comes to investing in their business.

I've noticed that many life coaches and some NDs are similarly reluctant to spend money to make money.

So here's the good news: it's possible to spend very little to get maximum impact. Here are my top 5 recommendations:

1. Get a do-it-yourself website -- it's THE best time and money saving strategy you can take.
Costs: from about $8-$16 annually for your own domain name, and from about $5-$30 per month for hosting
(online website builder programs are usually free with a hosting package)

2. Start a blog -- it's THE best fresh connection to your client niche you can continually & easily produce.
Costs: Nothing if using sites like Blogger or WordPress

3. Host tele-groups / workshops --it's so much easier than you think to reach many people at once.
Costs: Nothing if you have an unlimited long distance phone plan.

4. Do signature talks -- it's THE better, more comfortable way to do personal networking.
Costs: ranges from nothing if you are invited into a group or find a free location, up to $300+ to pay for a room.

5. Build your mailing list with free give-aways -- it's THE best way to get email addresses.
Costs: Nothing but your time.

Something here sound do-able to you? Not sure where to start? Check out the tips on my website.

Essentials of Your Marketing Message

One reason marketing is so overwhelming for solopreneurs just starting out in business is that not only do we need to know WHAT to do and HOW to do it, we also have to know what to SAY and how to say it.

What you say is your message.

You message needs to be crystal clear on 5 main points:

• who you're talking to (your ideal client)
• who you're not talking to (the prospects you intend to screen out)
• the experience they have that they don't want (their pain or problem)
  
• the outcome they want that they are willing to pay you to get (their need, goal, desire)
  
• your claim regarding what you can help them get (benefits and value of hiring you)

This may sound like a lot to think about. Ironically, sometimes the best way to crystalize all this is by thinking of your tagline, or one breath introduction.

A trick I learned years ago when I was a journalist writing headlines is useful here -- you don't have to say everything in detail. Readers naturally fill in the blanks. Less can be much better than more.

For example, look at the tagline for this blog: Getting More Clients to Your Door with Grace and Ease for Solopreneurs in the Healing Arts. It tells my ideal client -- solopreneurs in the healing arts -- and by specifying that it implies who I intend to screen out -- retail businesses with employees, executive coaches, etc. It suggests the problem -- you need more clients -- which also is your outcome goal and desire -- actually getting more clients. Finally it makes the claim that I provide easy solutions that will feel and be graceful to implement.

How you relay your message is key.

There's an old adage in the retail business that the 3 most important factors of success are location, location, location. For professionals like coaches and counselors, and even the solo-practice ND, who market primarily on the internet, the 3 most important factors of marketing success are emotion, connection, and delivery.

The most important lesson from this post is: describe, don't explain.

Describe your client. Describe what they want. Describe the problems they have in getting it. Describe how that impacts their life. Describe what they want instead.

Describe using emotional words. Name the pain. Actually say: you're feeling this (it implies: and I know it). Why? Because that begins to create an emotional bond. It begins to feel to them like they are connected to you. Feeling connected naturally leads to calling for appointments.

Delivery is about style. Be yourself in writing your message. Speak with the warmest, most authentic and empathetic aspects of your personality. Don't explain that you are warm and caring. BE warm in caring in your delivery.

There ya go -- the quick Friday lesson in the essentials of your marketing message. Work on that this weekend, and let me know what you come up with, eh?

Do You Soak in Self-Fulfilling Messages?

Remember when mother used to say: watch what you say? She was wrong.

It's much more powerful to watch what you think.

Most of us bombard ourselves with conscious and/or unconscious mental messages everyday that guide our beliefs about what's possible. Then we take the actions that live up to those beliefs.

This is true in every area of life, and it's no less true with regard to being in business for yourself. What are the messages you give yourself about what it will take to succeed?

Here's a list of some of the more destructive self-fulfilling messages that have lead to a lot of counselors and coaches I know going out of business this year:

• I don't have time to market
• I can't narrow down my interests to one ideal client group
• I don't want to limit myself
  
• It doesn't feel professional
• I don't want to have to sell myself to get clients
  
• I can't possibly spend money on marketing when I don't have clients
• It's not my style to set goals and track progress
• I'm not comfortable being an aggressive networker

You may have these messages in your head, or others that are keeping you unfocused, scared, unproductive, and stuck. If you aren't working on changing these mental mantras, they will drive you out of business.

What can you do?

Get very clear about what your destructive self-fulfilling messages are. Make a list.

Then choose the one that has the most power for you, the one you're most afraid to change, and imagine what could be different in your business if it magically shifted. Do you like what you imagine?

If so, tackle this as a professional and personal improvement project. Determine what actions are needed to overcome this message -- what risks need to be taken, what resources need to be acquired, what timeline will you set for changing this false belief, and who will help you be accountable for making it happen?

Which of These 5 Fears Keep Your Practice from Success?

I hear a lot of counselors, coaches, and NDs voice a reluctance to engage in certain proven marketing strategies. When pressed, the reasons for not taking marketing risks come down to these 5 basic fears:

• fear of being too visible
  
• fear of sounding too ego-centric
  
• fear of getting more business than can be handled
  
• fear of looking sleazy
  
• fear of rejection (failure)

Which one stops you?

Fear of Being Too Visible

This one is most often voiced by women in solitary offices who work with high-risk populations where personal safety can be an issue. It's understandable to have a need to be cautious. Creative marketing can accomplish that while still attracting clients you can safely serve.

Fear of Sounding Too Ego-Centric

While it's good to not let an inflated sense of self rule our public persona, I more often hear this from clients who haven't fully claimed their own power, and may be suffering a bit of low self-esteem. Think of it this way - if you don't project confidence in yourself, why should potential clients have confidence that you can help them?

Fear of Getting More Business Than Can Be Handled

Hidden in this fear is self-doubt about your competence, along with an anticipatory sense of overwhelm. There are reasonable solutions to this particular "problem" of success -- hire a partner or an assistant, or refer out to colleagues who aren't as busy. You're in charge. You can actually turn down clients and the sky won't fall.

Fear of Looking Sleazy

Short of promising a free pony to the 10th caller in the next 5 minutes, or meeting clients in a Bedazzled semi-see through half t-shirt and hot pants with 6 inch spiked heels, you don't really have to worry about looking sleazy. In fact, I sometimes ask fearful clients to hold this as their anti-standard. You aren't sinking that low, you're doing fine.

Fear of Rejection

This is the opposite of the field of dreams syndrome -- what if you build it, and no one comes? Well, the key here is to not take it as a personal rejection, but rather an important piece of business feedback that you need to do something else, something more, something different. Let the disappointment of not getting instantly fabulous results teach and guide your next set of efforts.

Marketing is a game of trial and error. The only real risk to fear is the choice to do nothing, and to not pay attention to the response you get.

4 Good Customer Service Tips to Protect Professional Reputation

When you're in business for yourself -- and especially when your knowledge and training are your primary "product" -- your professional reputation is an extremely valuable asset. Many things go into building an excellent professional reputation including:

• abiding by professional ethics
• observing high personal integrity
• holding good boundaries
• providing service commensurate with the fee
  
• promptly resolving consumer complaints

With more customer review websites coming online, such as Yelp where anyone can post about you, and Angie's List that does include health care providers, it's a good idea to take some time to think about your customer service policies and practices.

To my mind, there are 4 practices counselors, coaches, and all doctors can follow that will help protect your professional reputation.

1. Listen without Defensiveness

When a client has a complaint, no matter how small, listen with openness to their point of view. Try to hear it as valuable business information rather than a personal attack or judgment about you.

Receiving their perspective without getting defensive -- even in the face of their anger or upset -- will go a long way toward regaining their respect and willingness to listen to you.

2. Tell Me What You Wanted and What You Got Instead

People sometimes aren't very direct or specific in how they articulate what their complaint is. Help them sort it out by asking what did you want and what do you feel you got instead. These simple questions tend to help people feel heard and taken seriously. Often, this is all they really want.

And knowing what they wanted and didn't get from you is excellent feedback that helps you examine your service practices and make useful changes that can improve your business.

3. Make good

Always offer to make up for the mistake, misunderstanding, or unintentional mistreatment in some way. In retail businesses, customers get replacement items. In advertising, the error in your ad is corrected and re-run at no extra cost.

As counselors, coaches or NDs, we can't give back time or take back words, but we can give a make good session at no charge. If you have products -- such as CDs, books, or a dispensary -- you can offer a free product in addition, as a good faith gesture.

4. Give More than Expected

Even in customer service, an ounce of prevention is worth the proverbial pound of cure. You can build up such excellent good will with your clients by always providing more than is expected that they feel no urge to complain.

And when the occasional curmudgeon lights into you, you can still safeguard your professional reputation by going out of your way to take extra good care of them. Thank them for their complaint, let them know you value their feedback, demonstrate that you have made reasonable changes when you can, and follow up with a how am I doing now feedback card or email.

You can turn complainers into allies and good referral sources if you give their perspectives a fair hearing.

For more on this topic, read Diane Stein's Don't Be an Ostrich!

4 Tips for Managing Marketing Overwhelm

One of the most frequent things I hear from counselors, coaches and naturopathic doctors is how overwhelmed they feel with the sheer volume of marketing tasks they perceive it takes to build a successful practice.

And it's true -- there's a lot to do in the beginning and most of us were never trained for exactly how to do it. We quickly end up feeling like we're operating in the dark.

Here's the advice I give my clients:

1. Start with only the strategies that fit your personality.
That is, if you're an extrovert, capitalize on your outgoing networking skills.
If you're an introvert, develop a dynamic web-presence.

2. Get your basics in place as soon as possible so they can run on autopilot.
That is, do first all the things that need to be done just once (get your website up, list on locator directories, get give-aways loaded into an autoresponder feature or email link to you, design and order business cards, develop a brochure or promotional flier, etc).

3. Set aside dedicated time every day to keep yourself moving forward until all the basics are in place.
Optimal is 3-4 hours every day. Realistic for those with families, or another job, may be 3-4 hours a week.
Schedule it as an appointment with your business, as if your business were a client.
Perhaps put this on your schedule as an appointment with someone named Business Self.
Enlist others to help you keep this time commitment, because it's vital.

4. During your Business Self appointments tame overwhelm by:

• having a plan to guide your efforts each week
  
• being clear about your daily task goals
• getting instruction or examples to calm the uncertainty
  
• doing the easiest tasks first
• recognizing your signs of creeping overwhelm
• taking short breaks -- get away from your desk
• avoiding second guessing yourself
• letting go of perfectionism
  
• asking a knowledgeable friend or colleague to give you feedback
• working with a coach to avoid reinventing the wheel
  
• postponing the marketing tasks that require repetition* until the basics are done
• taking a week off once your basics are in place

*Examples of tasks that require repetition:

• blogging
• social media
• attending networking groups
• approaching referral sources and following up

Becoming systematic is the key building a successful private practice, and that includes having a method or system for your marketing as well.

You can do this.

One Deadly Personality Trait That Kills Business

For some mysterious reason, there seems to be a rash of solopreneurs from the healing arts who share a deadly, self-sabotaging personality trait. It's curious, because they are highly skilled counselors, coaches, and naturopathic doctors.

But there's just this one habit that is really holding them back from achieving success. The prime saboteur, I call it.

So what is it, already?

It's feeling like you need permission.

• Permission to invest time, money, and energy in your business.
• Permission to charge what you're worth.
• Permission to promote your practice by talking like a specialist.
• Permission to set policies and boundaries that make your work easier.
• Permission to believe in the value of your own experience and the level of your competence.

Maybe this comes from a misguided sense of politeness. Perhaps it's a delay in developing an internal locus of control. Or not enough chance to grow into your own personal power.

Whatever the reason, this sabotaging mindset comes across in client attraction marketing like you are asking for your prospective clients' permission or approval to offer or provide something. It makes you reluctant to voice firm details about how you work.

It's quite self destructive when it risks you being viewed as a naive professional who isn't seasoned enough to help others.

I know that sounds overly negative, and perhaps a bit harsh. But think about it from the perspective of a person who is ready for your services and is in process of sorting through the field of options to find the best provider for them.

How much direct, grounded, comfortableness with being in business you exude becomes how much confidence that person will have liking and trusting you enough to hire you.

So let me whisper in your ear:

• You already have all the permission you need.
• It's already deep down inside you -- it's the urge that's called self-authority.
• You can trust the self-authority instinct that tells you it's okay to be bold, clear, and direct.
• You can soften your style of directness and still be clear in your boundaries and statements of what you want, need, and expect.
  

Ugh -- Does Marketing Have to Be So Manipulative?

This morning I read a squeeze page* for a copywriting workshop. The longer it got, the more nauseated I felt.

No question this guy is a brilliant copywriter. He knows all the psychological hooks into the subconscious mind that create the urgent, even desperate, desire to buy whatever can be sold. To borrow a phrase I heard on a tv show, he could sell you the clothes you're already wearing.

Counselors, coaches and naturopathic doctors who try to emulate these types of sales letters for their websites will likely turn off more clients than they attract. It's the type of marketing we all hate, feel slimed by, that makes us want to run away screaming from the computer straight into the shower. UGH!

But, what can we learn that we can ethically use? Here are a few tips I'm translating from his tactics:

• Individuals in your target niche will be at various stages of readiness for your services. It's wise to have different methods for speaking to each level of readiness, and keep providing more and more useful help until they have decided to hire you to help them.

• More than touting your unique selling points -- a concept from the 1940s! -- is needed. We have to match a specific USP with our ideal clients' level of perception of pain or problem and their timeline of readiness to hire.

• Your website home page will work best if it follows the AIDA format: grab attention, connect with self interest, speak to your prospective clients' emotionally compelling desire, and use a motivating call to action.

• Tone, tempo and pattern in your content is important. Use them to create a sense of safety, rapport, trust, and confidence that you are the right person to help them resolve their pain or problem.

This stuff really isn't as hard as it appears, but it is a skillset that isn't as developed as it needs to be for most solopreneur counselors, coaches, and NDs.

I'd be happy to help you learn to use the marketing tricks that work AND are ethical for our professions.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

*A squeeze page is often a very long, one page website that pushes a single product or high ticket conference in a way that manufactures need, installs a sense of fear of losing out if you don't buy now, like it would be a bad decision to resist and affect your life or your business for years down the road. Usually the cost involved is not given until the bottom of the page, sometimes not even until you press the shopping cart button.

Free First Appointments vs Paid Initial Sessions

I attended a workshop the other day where I learned these useful facts in the context of coaching:

• paid intro sessions produce a higher conversion rate -- more prospects become clients
• paid intro sessions produce higher retention rate -- more clients stay with you longer
• paid intro sessions produce higher sales rate -- more clients buy higher priced packages

In contrast, I also had confirmed what I already believed, that:

• free intro sessions can solve too much -- immediate solutions create no incentive to pay for coaching
• free intro sessions tend to attract non ideal prospects -- fewer people ready and willing to hire you
  
• free intro sessions set clients up to undervalue you and your services -- retention rates are lower

Despite these facts, verified by the experience of most coaches with six and seven figure incomes, many new coaches succomb to offering the trial session as a way to "educate the prospective client about coaching." (hint: they don't really care, they just want a solution to their problem).

New counselors also are tempted to try the free first appointment strategy, although few have sustainable success with it.

There are, however, a couple hybrid models for first sessions that intrigue me. One is a type of donation basis strategy, while the other is a type of time control or end-now-or-pay-for-more strategy.

Intro sessions for both coaching and fee-for-service counseling can be offered with the understanding that the client will be asked to pay what they can, or what they feel the session was worth. Personally, I think the cleanest way to do that so that the client doesn't feel pressured to negotiate with you is to direct them to a Make a Donation button on your website, or send a button link to them in an after-session email. Another option is to direct the client to add an extra amount of their choice to their initial required payment for further work.

With a time control strategy, the idea is to provide 15-30 minutes for free, then let the client know what the fee is if they'd like to continue. This should be discussed in advance when making the appointment so that the client doesn't feel tricked by a bait and switch ploy.

Either way, coaches and counselors need to get comfortable talking about their fees and "closing the sale" when talking to prospective clients.