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One of the reasons I love the business model I teach is because it effortlessly PULLS clients to me. I never have to chase them or worry about having as full a roaster as I want. The first step in making this happen is creating what I call your CFO – Compelling F.r.e.e. Offer. The problem is that very few solo-preneurs actually utilize this simple method of attracting all the clients they want.
Your Compelling F.r.e.e. Offer (CFO) is what entices people to want to find out more about you and what it is that you’re offering. When you make your complimentary offer compelling enough, more people will be interested in taking advantage of it, which increase the audience to which you can then market to.
Your CFO can be packaged in a variety of ways: a mini e-course, a checklist, a CD, an audio download, a special report, a free teleseminar, etc. I offer a few different CFOs – a special report, an audio download, and for joint ventures I offer one of my paid products for free as a bonus to their paid offering.
The content of your CFO should be broad in scope, yet address a particular problem your target market is struggling with, something that they’d pay to have a solution to. That’s what makes your offer compelling in the first place, and it’s what attracts them into your Marketing & Product Funnel. Your CFO should be loaded with valuable content, so much so that you leave your prospect thinking, “wow, if this is what he/she gives away, imagine what his/her paid stuff must be like!”
To lead them further down your funnel, you’ll want to be sure to not give away the store in your CFO, but share what the problem is, what your solution to the problem is, giving them a taste of how you can solve it for them. But what’s key to making your CFO successful is to not just give great content, but to leave them with wanted more. The ‘more’ comes by way of your paid products and services.
The results of having a CFO are three-fold: you build your credibility and become known as an expert in your niche, your word-of-mouth marketing catches fire, and you’re approached to share your CFO with even more people through joint ventures and strategic partnerships.
The mistake I made when I first started my consulting business was trying to pitch my services to people who didn’t even know me (I cringed when I remember all those wasted early morning networking breakfasts). We all know that it’s much easier to get business by referral, right? Because the person referring you has a relationship with you, and they have come to know, like and trust you well enough to pass your name along to their friends and colleagues.
That’s what this method of marketing does for you. Your CFO is the start of building that critical know, like and trust factor with your prospects so that when they are ready to invest some money in a solution to their problem – whether via a product or service – your name is at the top of the list.
And the best part? You NEVER have to sell them on what you’re offering. It’s brilliant, really.
So, start researching what it is that your target market wants most, what problem is keeping them up at night. Then create your solution and offer it to them as your CFO to get them into your Marketing & Product Funnel. It’s a winning formula every time!
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One of the many things I discovered when on my recent private retreat with my mentor coach Kendall Summerhawk was that I sometimes still have a tendency to bend in situations where I shouldnt. Not actually bend-over backwards, but enough that I end up not feeling good about the situation. Ive actually strengthened this boundary quite a bit in recent years, but as always, Ive been tested on that a few times lately, so I wanted to share some of the ways Ive strengthened this boundary within the way I run my business so you can do the same.
Here are 4 ways that you can gracefully set boundaries in your business:
1. Have a policy page
For every product, program or service you offer, someone is going to ask you to do something different for them. It could be to offer it in a different format, at a different time or day, with a payment plan option, or dozens of other scenarios than I cant possibly cover here. As a general rule of thumb, dont accommodate. Yes, there will be times when you make a different decision, but most of the time, stick to the parameters you created in the first place. You cant please everyone, and every time you accommodate someone, you a) typically un-accommodate someone else who was just fine with the way your offer stood in the first place, and b) attract more people who will ask you to bend things for them in the future.
What do you do with the requests you get? Create a policy page from each and every decision youve made on how you will or will not run your business. Then when the next person makes a similar request, you simply send them to that page that explains clearly what your policy is, and that the policy applies to everyone. It takes the edge of it feeling like saying no was a personal decision as much as it makes it super-simple for your team to handle these requests.
2. Be fair to ALL your clients
Being fair to all my clients is one value that I hold that makes it easy for me to be clear about the boundaries I have in place in my business. If you remember that its NOT that you arent willing or dont want to be accommodating, but that it simply wouldnt be fair to the rest of your clients and customers by doing so, it makes it much easier to say no graciously, and it keeps your integrity intact.
3. Have a buffer
Having someone on my team who manages these requests is imperative. First, as the businessowner and leader of my company, its not the best use of my unique brilliance to be dealing with these requests personally. Second, my team is quite capable of knowing when a request may require my attention, and I trust them to let me know. And third, it makes saying no less personal and much more graceful and respectful to the person making the request when they get an answer from my team instead of from me.
4. Be willing to let go
Ok, this is the one thats popped up more than once the last month or so and got me thinking about writing this article. I still struggle with a tendency to over-explain. I like to craft just the right words to make sure someone understands my decision about something. Ive realized that in doing so Ive wasted a lot of time, energy and emotion. So I stopped doing that for the most part. Recently, I found myself back in that loop again, and when I realized how much of my teams time I was wasting, it bopped me over the head. I instantly went back to my short-but-sweet way of responding.
Heres the thing: theres always going to be a tiny percentage of people who want you to customize and accommodate them. But let them go play somewhere else. Because what happens when you stick to your guns is that you honor your value, your time, and your self-respect. You attract more clients and customers who are ideal and who are respectful of you and your team as well, and your business runs more smoothly and more joyfully.
(c) 2009 Alicia Forest
About the author: Alicia M Forest, MBA, 6-Figure Business Breakthrough Mentor, teaches self-employed professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create wild abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com
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