One of the biggest challenges coaches and consultants face is how to create good results for their clients. And here we are to give you the AweSM formula for 8 steps to achieve this.
Step 1: Make sure you work with the right clients first
We know that it is not easy to turn down a potential customer. However, if you evaluate your clients right from the beginning and only work with whom you know you can help, it will increase your chances to create good results for them. Of course if they’re already doing well, they wouldn’t have needed your help. But you can evaluate them based on basic conditions that you know are essential for them to get to work, for example: basic skills, knowledge, ability, mindset. For example, one thing that we at AweSM do is helping people create their online courses and live webinars to sell their knowledge, so we find it really hard to help those who have neither basic computer skills nor the confidence to teach or talk to others.
Don’t think that this tip will make you lose profits. If you take a client that you know you can’t help, they possibly will not get any results and spread out bad reviews on your business and hurt your reputation. What’s worse, they may insist on a refund and you will lose more than just profits. On the other hand, if you only agree to work with people that you know you can create results for, they will be a free effective marketing channel for you, your success rate and reputation will be maintained positively for a good domino-effect. This is a good step that will save time for both you and them later on.
The right clients should be filtered through different phases of your sales funnel, from how you do marketing to attract your target audience, what your message should be, how you present your landing page, where you take your leads to, to how your salespeople should talk to potential clients. Just so, when a customer has gone through all those stages and come to the last part of your funnel, they must highly be the right one with issues that your product or service can solve.
Step 2: Don’t price too low
When it comes to pricing, there are many factors to consider, such as the value you bring to your customers and the cost of your business. But if you’re thinking about setting your price as low as possible, so much lower than your competitors so you can have more customers, think again.
Believe it or not, if you price your product or service too low, your customers will possibly not appreciate it. Consumers can have fear and stereotype that the quality of a product is poor if the price is too low. Besides, if they pay more for something, they tend to commit more and work harder for it so it does not become a waste. As a result, pricing your product higher can actually help your clients have better results.
Step 3: Require commitment from your clients
Good results cannot just come from your side, it depends heavily on your client’s commitments. Therefore, it is important for your client to stay committed with the amount of time and hard work they need to put out along with following your instructions. Not only your clients can require from you, but you can also express requirements for them in return. Being clear and straightforward from the beginning will help two sides work together more effectively.
Before getting to work, just be honest and warn them of what they need to prepare themselves for up front. Everyone can draw a beautiful picture of the goal they want to get, but not everyone has the will to go through or thinks about the ugly journey to that goal. Your job is to sketch out for your clients that challenging process so they can picture what they are going into. Also, you need to inform them in advance of certain requirements from your side, what you expect from them, how much time and effort they need from their side in order to get results. If they cannot commit to such conditions, if they are not ready to go through the process, of course they cannot get the results.
Step 4: Set specific goals along the way for your clients
If you set small goals in the process with your clients, you can more easily track and control their ongoing progress. This will also help you have quick proper adjustments right when they struggle at some point, instead of going till the end results to know if they’ve succeeded or not, which is too late to change anything.
Specific goals are also a good solution for procrastinators. If your client usually procrastinates and waits till the last minute to do something, you should set more small goals for them on the road, don’t just set 1 big goal at the end of the road.
Besides, each goal is a booster for effort. When we’re close to getting our goal, we are motivated to try harder to reach it. According to an e-book by Alexander Maasik: People with goals tend to achieve 10 times as much as people with no goals at all.
You can set goals based on the SMART goals principle which are:
- Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
- Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your client’s progress toward the accomplishment of their goal
- Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
- Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your client’s current situation and ability
- Timely: With a clearly defined timeline, including a starting date and a target date / deadline. The purpose is to create urgency.
Step 5: Really care for and listen to your clients
If you help your clients as if you really care and want them to achieve their goals, as if you are helping yourself or your best friend, you will work devotedly and do more than they expected for them. Listening is the key to understanding. So, spend time listening to your clients and you can figure out what their true needs and problems are. Solving that and you can deliver better results for your clients. Additionally, if they feel that you really care and try hard, it will also push them to work harder to not let you down.
Step 6: Identify and resolve the root of their problems
If you don’t resolve the core issue for your clients but just treat symptoms of the problems, they will easily repeat the same mistakes, run into the same struggles. A broken arm needs a splint or partial cast to stabilize and heal with time, not painkillers which just temporarily take away the pain that will come back after that. So, don’t just give your clients painkillers to ease their pain points in a short time, try to find the root cause of those pain points and cure it for good.
It’s like the iceberg theory which indicates that we cannot see or detect most of a situation’s data looking from the surface. With an iceberg, only its tip is visible, while the big bulk of it is below the water’s surface, which requires us to go deep down into the water to see. Similarly, in order to get to the bottom of your client’s problem iceberg, you need a lot of hard work, caring, understanding, expertise, experience, and ask them a lot of questions, but it’s worthwhile for its major influence on your success.
Watch Petter’s interview with Rich Schefren on how to find your customer’s core issue
Step 7: Keep learning, testing, improving your expertise
Out of all the tips and tricks, the one decisive essential for your client’s good results is still your true ability to solve their problems, which nothing can cover. The good news is you can improve it by learning and testing new methods. If your expertise becomes better, so will your client’s results. We know that you may already be an expert in your field, but there is always something new to learn, always room for you to develop yourself even further.
As in AweSM, we have one value called “One step ahead”, meaning we always strive to improve and we’re ready to test new tactics ourselves in order to know what works best to share with our clients. We want to be a been-there-done-that example for our clients instead of just speaking bubbles.
Step 8: Ask for your clients’ feedback
Sometimes our opinions and assessment can be subjective, so our clients’ feedback is very important. Make sure to ask for honest feedback from all clients, including the ones you feel like you’ve built a good relationship with as well as the ones you don’t. You can ask for your current client’s instant feedback as you guys work together in order to adjust your work better, and also ask for feedbacks of old clients who have finished working with you to have a general assessment.
It’s obviously not comfortable to hear someone disparaging you, but that will really help you to improve. So don’t be afraid of asking for their feedback and brace yourself for getting both bad and good reviews. It’s understandable that you can not satisfy everyone, so it’s better to face that and learn from your mistakes to limit that from happening in the future.
The Bottom Line…
We hope that the above 8 steps will help you get better results for your clients. Their results correlate with your business’ results, so spend time going over and implementing these steps to level up your infobusiness.
