Have you ever been on the Internet and you’re searching for a service that speaks to you? No matter where you turn you just don’t seem to find exactly what you need? You settle and take what is available, you know you’ve heard of the service but no one seems to have exactly what you need.
This is a common infliction I hear from my clients’ customers. They feel like businesses are playing monkey in the middle. Prices are not negotiable, making excellent services out of their reach. Money Mindset seems to be a major transformational work for these clients, we see great success in helping them understand true value, and their true values. Sometimes clients discover someone they like to work with but their just not getting what they need. They say oh well I’ll get what I can and move on. How do you maintain excellent customer service, provide what they need without going broke? This has been a huge challenge in my business for years. I finally discovered the answer.
As a business owner it can be a challenge to know what to do for your clients. You follow your heart, and your intuition, you ask all the right questions, and yet, something is still missing.
Sometimes clients just fade away never to be heard from again. Others go buy bigger services from another provider. I know when it happened to me I was left standing on the sidelines with my mouth hanging open wondering; “why they didn’t ask for what they really wanted.” Has that happened to you? You know you could have helped them, but they just never realized you could do it. One solution, excellent research on your existing clients, you’re not being nosy, you are offering solution based-open ended questions. This can allow you to charge more by adding more value.
For those clients who have “perceived money issues’ one solution might be to offer discounts for those clients, or offset it with their willingness to help you promote your business through their mailing list, also known as referrals.
There might be a plethora of services your clients could do for you that would serve your bottom line, make you money directly or indirectly. My personal favorite gives me some time away from the office. I have one client who has a house in the mountains, another at the beach, one who’s boyfriend has an airplane and takes us for a nice Sunday flight. Next week my husband and I are going for a nice flight in the Columbia River Gorge.
Self-care is so important in the service industry. If your burnt out by your workload, how can you be of excellent services to your clients? You know you need to be at your best to help them or they will find someone else who can do it with more care. If you need to take care of yourself but you don’t have the cash to get away, barter.
Here is another thing I like to do, have a retreat at their secret hide-a-way, have them invite only their closest and dearest friends. Then Play With Your Clients! But…
Stop Playing Monkey in the Middle with your Clients!
Wouldn’t it be smarter to get all relevant information straightaway to help your clients.
What if you could really understand their need, and if you don’t have it, build it for them!
In a recent article I wrote featuring Kaya Singer from Awakening Business Solutions, she debuted her new program called Niche-360. We tried it out, and loved it!
It’s free and we encourage you to take the time to go through the program. She will enlighten you about why you need to create what your clients want.
In our class Self-Knowledge is Self-Power you discover some things about yourself that you didn’t know before. This class is designed to help you bring the joy back into your life. Feeling joy allows you to feel light and airy. Your tasks no longer feel like a heavy and dark burden. In the program we use a process allows you to see the darkness you are currently filtering everything through. Our gift to you is to “Illuminate The Dark Corners Of Your Bright Ideas” to discover what is holding you back from expressing life from a place of joy again.
It is often your own insecurities. We will help you find solutions so can you leverage your time, energy and resources to give more value to your clients?
Lack of simplicity is the main reason why most service providers do not discover how to determine what they’re clients need. We have a motto around the office “As We Awaken We See The Simplicity Of Life.” What to know the simplest way to find out what your client needs? Ask them directly.
There are a couple of challenges that come with this solution though. When you ask them simply, it does not mean ask them in a way that would challenge their intelligence. To leverage your services so they think of you as the solution builder, you must ask your questions in a simple and intelligent way so they see you as someone who easily can solve their need.
There is another twist that comes with simplicity: because most service-based businesses believe that exclusivity and making it hard to get in touch with you give your customers a sense of being in a private club. That is a wonderful idea if you have so many clients you need to be careful of your time and put people on a waiting list.
If you are not getting the clients you need, it might be that you are making it too hard for them to get to you.
- Use a dedicated telephone line for your business
- Use a service or software program like youmail.com as a way to create a beautifully welcoming message for your clients, or new prospects when your not available. This service needs to be available 24-hours a day 7-days a week.
- Be available between appointments to answer questions, either by phone or on the Internet in your social media sites.
- Make sure your bills are paid on time, so you are not worried if the call is a bill collector or someone selling you something. Answer the phone every time it rings during office hours, or turn the ringer off so it goes directly to your voice mail service. If your phone rings and rings and rings and no one answers, potential clients will move onto the next service provider on their list.
- Create a dedicated e-mail address where only potential clients or current clients can reach you. This will help you solve your clients needs faster and more efficiently when they need you!
- Have a calendar system available for your clients so they can open your calendar and schedule their own session immediately. There are free systems like Google calendar, or Tumbler. There are many such free systems; another option is to use Coaches Console a full service company with many other features. I use it, and if you want to buy it, please consider using my affiliate link, that way you get a great service and I get a little extra cash, always appreciated.
- Have affiliate or referral links for services you don’t provide, but you feel comfortable offering to your clients. This helps you ease the burden of not being able to help them directly, offers you a little extra cash if you have someone right for them, and the person gets exactly what they need, the minute they need it. Hero! Get your referral bonus from me!
- Offer your key partners a referral opportunity or an affiliate program so they too can earn money by referring potential clients to you. Incentive is the key with referrals & affiliates.
- Keep is simple, but give great value, and a lot of it. Michael Port of Book Yourself Solid system says this; “put yourself out in front of, and offering your services to, those whom you are meant to serve – people already looking for your services”
The point is to offer what your clients need, do not make them chase information, be clear and concise on your website, in your marketing material and in the services you offer.
If you make your clients hunt for information, this is what I call the “Monkey in the middle” problem.
Through our BizRichment™ Business Solutions we help you discover what is making your clients or potential clients work too hard to reach you. We help you build relationships with others to help share your services to reach more people who you want to work with and who are asking for information about you.
Because information sharing can interfere with how potential clients might see you, we help you understand the process of communication between those who would share your services with others, and your desired prospects. The key is to discover if you are keeping your clients or potential clients feeling like a monkey trying to catch on to what you do, what other obviously love about you, but they just can’t reach you. This chase can cause them stress, it costs lots of money and as we all know this game very well – it can even be extremely painful for them.
Let us know how we can help you solve this problem for your clients, for you and for your bottom line. Feel free to call us 24-7 if we don’t answer leave a message we will get back to you!
(503) 762-3118 | e-mail: info@gotocoach.net
Our perfect client is someone who is a small business owner, entrepreneur or solo-entrepreneur for a service-based industry. We help them see where the money is falling through the cracks of their business.
