I see it all the time, in my travels around the internet. Business coaches and digital marketers ‘teaching’ the secret to finding and ‘winning’ your next paying client. Internet, I have some thoughts.
Your Next Paying Client Is A Person
This one feels like it should just be a no-brainer, but the way that the online world talks about clients and customers often feels as though they’ve forgotten this. And we really need to not forget this. Mass marketing has been around forever and I get the appeal, I do. But as an introvert, it’s really not that aligned for me.
You know what I do love? Connecting one on one with people in DMs, having great exchanges in a comment section, jumping on a call with someone to chat. When was the last time that someone in your orbit reached out to you and made you feel SEEN? Whether it was someone you follow and look up to or someone who follows you. Yeah, it wasn’t that hard, it didn’t cost them anything and yet it probably made your day or at least made you smile in that moment.
Your First Time
Your first paying client is likely someone you are already connected with. I know, I know, the popular advice is to join a bunch of free Facebook groups, dump the same post in each one ‘positioning yourself as an expert and then friend request and DM anyone who interacts. Ew. I mean, it totally works for some people but not my introverted arse.
My first paying clients were: a friend of a work colleague, someone I knew from the blogging world, the daughter of another coach in my coaching circle.
Who are you connected with already? Who is in your life who might know someone who’s your DREAM client?
What Is Your Energy Saying?
I see people in groups and conversations saying that everything would be better if they just had more clients. But that’s after they have lamented that life is busy, things are always coming up, they have a million other responsibilities and just don’t have time to focus that much on their business.
If this is you, friend, you don’t need more clients! In fact your whole energy is saying a big f**k off to clients right now.
Schedule in your ‘client time’ each week. Make time for your business. And, even if you don’t have clients, sit down and do something client-related in that time. Whether it’s reaching out and connecting with people, scheduling probono calls or discovery calls. Show up and energetically open yourself up for clients.
Content and Conversation
This has been the biggest one I’ve focused on this year. Making my content work for me using The Visibility Vault as the framework for doing this as easily as possible. This makes it so I create once and then have a bunch of simple steps to distribute my content so that it’s seen by more people. In fact, I started sharing on LinkedIn recently and on my second or third post, someone DM’d me to book in for a coaching session.
And conversation comes with finding your introvert-friendly way to connect with your people. For me, I’ve been commenting publicly on people’s posts but – even more so – I’ve been DMing people who I want to connect more with and building rapport with them. Not asking for anything, but just having genuine 1:1 conversations, the way that my energy likes it. It’s the long game, but you never know where you’ll find your next paying client.
Your Daily Habits
This one goes hand in hand with your energy and actually scheduling in time to BE in your business. And I am the queen of wasting time and not getting as much real work done as I could during the week.
Are you getting in front of your ideal clients each day or week?
Are you showing up each day and energising the big vision and mission you have for your work?
Are you having conversations with people who might like to work with you?
Or calling in the right people to work with you?
As ‘easy’ as social media makes business work, it actually requires us to show up and put the work in. I wish clients would just fall in our laps. But even when it LOOKS like that’s what has happened (or is happening for others), it is always the result of showing up and putting in the work. So what are you doing each day to keep calling those clients in?
Quick Tips For Finding Your Next Paying Client
- Make sure it’s EASY for people to find out about you. Post links to your website, your discovery call link, your social media or how to contact you EVERYWHERE. If it’s not easy, they’ll just go somewhere else.
- Give, give, give, ask. When you show up and give value more than you’re asking for people to pay you or work with you, the energy changes.
- Brainstorm all the people you’ve ever signed up to work with and why. Your ideal client is likely similar to you and this might give you some easy hints of what you can do.
- Follow up!!! More than 50% of people will not say yes straight away but will say yes in the follow-up. Check-in with people, ask if you can help them with anything else or if they have questions. Most of the time, people just get distracted and actually forget to take action.
- Have a simple system that shows people when they first connect with you that you know what you’re talking about and how you help people like them. Give them an easy opportunity to make a decision about whether yes, they’re ready. Or no they’re not (extra points if you have a ‘if this isn’t for you, maybe this is’ option available for them).
- Ask. If you’re not asking, people don’t know that you’re available to them.
- Follow up again. Yep.
- Have clear and easy results for people to see. Ask questions and share what you do in ways that – if you’re the right person for them and offering what they actually need – it makes it easy for them to see that they need to work with you.
- Create a VIP client experience so that from the moment someone first contacts you, they feel like they’re seen and heard and part of your inner circle.
- Keep showing up as yourself online so people can learn to trust you more. Show up without expectations or attachment to the outcome (but also, a clear call to action can also help the people who are ready to go know what to do next).
- Share your offer more than once. I know it feels like it’s ALL you’re talking about but not everyone will see every post. You need to post about it a lot.
- Automate the pieces that don’t feel comfortable for you but do take people through a journey so they can self select if they’re ready to work with you. This might be an automated email welcome sequence that leads to inviting them to book a call. It might be a template you have saved to follow up with people. Maybe it’s a checklist that makes it less of an emotional thing (for you) and more of a system that you just follow each day.
- Have free content available for people who need to see more of you before they make a decision.
- Refer people to your friends, peers, other small business owners who have a similar audience but a different offering to you. Firstly, that’s just a lovely thing to do, but also, you never know that it might be reciprocated one day.
- Check-in with old clients regularly and see how they’re going. Then, when you have something you think would be helpful for them on offer or a new offer, you can email them and invite them and it won’t just mean contacting them every time you have something to sell.
- Build a referral invitation or incentive (or an affiliate program) for when/if a past client sends someone your way. That way everyone wins.
Despite what the ‘business gurus’ might have us all believe that only certain people can have success and there’s not enough for all of us (yay, scarcity). It’s just not true. There are clients out there, it’s just finding ways to get in front of YOUR people and then having a simple way to invite them on the next step of their journey with you.
Want to check out the original training for finding your next paying client? Come and join us in The League of Extraordinary Introverts Facebook Group where we have live trainings every week specifically for introverts in business.
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