How Much Do Prospective Clients Know About You?

What do you tell prospective clients about yourself? What will they know about your passion for your work, and what led you to your choice of career field? Do you generate trust and rapport with bits of your own life story?


If you are like most of my clients, you probably feel uncomfortable with those questions.


A big issue in marketing among many of my clients is how much to disclose about themselves. As counselors, coaches and NDs, we've all been taught to keep extremely tight lipped about ourselves.


That training is a huge obstacle when it comes to effectively attracting ideal clients.


There is a natural conflict between the standard ideas about no personal disclosures and the need to talk about one's personal unique selling points and compelling story in relationship-based client attraction marketing.


Successful business owners work through this uncomfortable conflict.


Strong, prohibitive indoctrination about revealing anything about yourself generates fear of judgment from peers. We're left with a serious misunderstanding of what might or might not be ethical in marketing ourselves.


Consequently, most solopreneurs in the healing arts err on the side of just listing educational credentials and licenses, which often has a cold, egotistic, and distancing effect.


This is institutionalized, professional self-sabotage, similar to what doctors and lawyers faced decades ago when the AMA and ABA frowned on marketing private practices. It's a fear-based mindset that belongs to a past century, and that's out of step with today's business world.


It's a mistaken idea that marketing a self-employed business means talking about yourself. That type of self-promotion doesn't work very well.


A bit of your own life experience helps establish the know you, like you, trust you factor that is important in relationship-based client attraction marketing.

Is Your Fear of Risk Slowly Killing Your Practice?

These two terms -- solopreneur and risk-taker -- are operationally synonymous, when looking back from the vantage point of success. Businesses that succeed engage in continuous investment in marketing foundations and growth structures.

This is especially true of one-person practices in the helping and healing arts.

Yet, when looking forward from the mindset of a novice self-employed business owner, taking risks seems to be an anathema. I see a lot of this anxiety in those who are used to working for others and getting a steady pay-check.

Therapists, NDs, and coaches who aren't experienced with or temperamentally suited for wise risk-taking get emotionally, financially, and operationally paralyzed. When they can't overcome their fear, they soon find themselves out of business altogether.

It doesn't have to be that way. Fear of investing in your practice can and must be tamed.

One way to do that is to relate to your business as if it were your own child. It needs care and feeding, and new clothes on a continual basis. You can't feed it once in July and expect it to thrive on its own until October.

If your fear of risk is slowly killing your private practice, here are the action steps to turn that around.

1. Set a monthly budget -- think of it as an allowance for your child
2. Use all the do-it-yourself resources you can
3. Get expert help in outlining a marketing plan so you know the right things to do and when to do them
   
4. Discipline yourself to tend to marketing your business every day
5. Increase your budget as your practice grows
   
6. Develop and market multiple streams of income
   
7. Track the results of your efforts, discard what isn't paying off, increase what is

Above all, don't focus on the fear. Focus on the steps you are taking to nourish your child.

How 6 Psycho-Graphic Factors Will Fill Your Practice

A few days ago I used the word psycho-graphics and was surprised to learn that it was an unfamiliar term among some of my self-employed healing arts colleagues. Whereas demographics outline the objective facts of what age, gender, ethnicity, location, income range, education level, etc, pertain to specific individuals or groups, psycho-graphics are the more subjective factors that pertain to their buying decisions.

In developing an ideal client profile, it's best to know both the demographics and psycho-graphics of your niche market. This knowledge tells you whether a specific group is viable for you as a population to pursue. The psycho-graphics will also suggest how many and what kind of obstacles you may encounter in reaching that niche market.

In crafting your ideal client's identity, it's not enough to know what you can do for them. What you must focus on is what they want and don't want, when are they actively seeking change, and what are they willing and able to pay for. So you aren't done with defining your ideal client until you can provide specific answers to these six questions:

• What are they experiencing that they don't want to experience?
• How does it impact normal daily functioning in job, relationships, and personal satisfaction?
• What motivates them to get help?
• What compels them to be willing to pay for help, and when will that occur?
• Who do they turn to for referrals or recommendations?
• Where do they look for resources and information?

When we know these psycho-graphics, we know where and how to deliver marketing strategies that will connect with our ideal clients at the moment of their readiness to pay for our help.

If we concentrate our marketing efforts on connecting with this moment, the urge to hire us is almost irresistible. Filling a practice then is so much easier, because clients practically beg us for appointments.