Good Marketing, Good Business

055: Five Q’s If You Want A Small Number of Quality Clients

• Shannon Stone • Episode 55

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There are a number of service businesses that only require a handful of clients in order to be successful and achieve their revenue goals. You’re likely already working with a few of these incredible clients right now and if you want more of them listen to this episode!

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

  • The questions that will help you find your quality clients
  • The reminders that your business can thrive with the right clients
  • How a no holds bar approach will help you find and keep the clients you want

This episode’s a goodie, I suggest you really take notes with this one… Enjoy!
--
Episode 003 mentioned, Turn Your Goals Into Reality Using Your Calendar - listen here

Resources:


If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Shannon Stone:

H ey guys. Welcome to the podcast, super excited to dive into this episode with you.

Shannon Stone:

Today. I have five questions. If you want a small number of quality clients in your business, definitely follow along and take notes for this episode. Obviously, there's the transcript there and we'll summarize at the action steps as well. But a lot of businesses that I speak to in the service-based sector they only need a small number of quality clients. For some of them it's five clients or 10 clients. But because the nature of what they're selling maybe there's retainer services built in or just that repeat type of business, or and or they're just larger type of clients that they're taking on. They don't actually need that many clients in order to achieve their revenue goals. So I want to share some things with you to help you. One, to remind you that you only need a small number of those ideal quality clients that you really, really want to to work with. But two some ways that you can go about actually bringing these people to work with you.

Shannon Stone:

So number one is to really identify who are they. So who are these ideal clients that you really want to work with? Who are these quality clients? And get super clear on what they actually look like. And a great way to do this is, I guess, to compare it against what is a client you don't want to work with. Maybe it's a certain size of business and like. Then, automatically that will cut out the ones you don't want to work with. So make it really clear. So it's almost like here's like a profile of someone, if you like, gave it to an algorithm, or if you gave it to someone to go hunting for that type of person or business or clientele, they would be much more inclined to be able to find them, because you've really mapped out the qualifiers, the details on who that person is, or that business or that client. So number one identify who are they. Get really clear on that. Number two is to work out for yourself in the business how many of these quality clients do you actually need? So for some people and this always generally comes down to their revenue goals but how many of those quality ideal clients do you actually need? Is it five, is it 10? Is it 15? And get really clear on that, that number. So number one is who are they? Get super clear on that. And then two, how many of those incredible, amazing quality ideal clients do you actually need? Because from there on, it really simplifies all the steps that are about to come.

Shannon Stone:

A question I didn't add into this, but I don't want to assume that you know it, but let's add it in as a secret question, I guess. But what are you actually selling to these people? So how many of these clients do you actually need and what service are you selling them into? So we can couple that with question number two. Okay, so this is like the foundation of that small number of quality clients. Then it's like going out there into the world and actually finding these people. But what I want to pause here for a second to remind you is that, say, you worked out you only need 10 of these quality clients, for whatever reason, because maybe they're bigger projects or retainer style or the nature of the way that your business works. Now you don't need to reach everyone in the world. So it's almost like I want you to go into this with a mindset of we only need our 10 perfect, ideal, quality clients. That's it. Yeah, we can have like more give or take, but I want to kind of present this to you because the next step, number three, is for you to understand or work out where are these people? So where are those 10 ideal, perfect people? And I almost want you to think of it, as I'm not just going to be posting on Facebook and hoping that they'll come to me and that they'll see the post, or posting on LinkedIn, like, really like right now.

Shannon Stone:

If you had to go find these people, pick them off the street or identify exactly on the internet where they were, how would you actually go find them? Do you know what kind of business they are? If you're in B2B? Amazing, because a lot of that information is probably very public. It's like finding their website. It's finding their contact details. Maybe it's finding their LinkedIn profile. You know where, pinpoint where they are they attending particular events. What events are they going to? Are they in particular associations? What are those associations you know? Get like as if you had to find one or two of those people this afternoon, how would you actually go and find it?

Shannon Stone:

And I always like to tell people, like, let's just make this real. Like really, if you had to go find this ideal, quality, perfect client right now, like take me for a walk in the park and tell me how we could actually identify them and find them, because if you can do that for one, you can do that for one, you can do that for 10. So question number three is to work out on a granular level. Where are they right now? Okay, question number four is how can you reach out to them or show up in front of them? Similar to number three in a way, but this is more about okay, found their website, I found their LinkedIn profile, I have their contact details, I have their phone number, I have all the things. But number four is how can I reach out to them and show up in front of them? And what am I actually even saying? Now, this is where you need to get creative in a sense, and also remember you only need a small number of quality clients.

Shannon Stone:

So if you laser targeted the people, just like we've done in this exercise, and say you wanted a 10 out of 10 conversion, say every person that you reached out to that was this ideal, quality, perfect client. You wanted each of them to say yes to having a meeting with you, at least having a conversation with you about how you can help them. What would you need to do? What would you need to say? What would you need to present in front of them? And maybe it's not just a one conversation thing, maybe it's a multi-step process, but this is where you get creative. You might say, okay, initially I want to connect with them. I want to just add them on LinkedIn, I want to send them a message, for example. Or maybe I want to find something on the website and write them an email and kind of connect the dots together. I want them to know that I've done my research. I'm not just another random person popping into their inbox, or maybe I'm going to send them something in the mail. I'm going to do some lumpy mail. I'm going to get really creative. So if these were the only 10 people and you wanted a 10 out of 10, knock it out of the park scenario where each, every, all of those 10 people and you wanted a 10 out of 10, knock it out of the park scenario where each, every, all of those 10 people you reach out to all want to book a call. We're not talking about becoming clients yet, even though that is the goal, but how can I just get these people to entertain having a conversation with me? So that is number four how can you reach out to these people or show up in front of them, and what are you actually saying to them?

Shannon Stone:

And the fifth and final one when you work with these small number of quality clients in your business, I want you to ask yourself how can you retain them if they were to be your only clients? So say, you've got your perfect collection of 10 quality outstanding clients, and do clients stick around forever? I would love to say yes, they do. They can stick around for a really, really, really long amount of time, but for varying circumstances and reasons, they don't always, but I still want you to answer this question. So if you've got your perfect 10 sitting right there working with you? How can you retain them? How can you make sure that? If these were my only clients, how do I make sure they don't ever leave me? They work with me forever? And this is assuming you know that that's the nature of how your business is. You've got something where you know it makes sense to work with you for a really long time For some people.

Shannon Stone:

Just the nature of their business and their service offering. It's open, close Real estate. For example, you're selling a house. Even though there's ways that you can retain them, they'll come back and work with you. It's like sold the house, situation's done. But I want you to think how can you retain them? And a lot of this can come down to, I think, how can you retain them? And a lot of this can come down to, I think, two things your serviceability, so how you're servicing that client and to your customer service. Customer service and like the way that I like to work with people is just like treat them like family, treat them like deep friends, like these are the people that I really want. Like at my wedding, I'll be inviting these people to it.

Shannon Stone:

So how can you retain them?

Shannon Stone:

What would you need to do?

Shannon Stone:

Are you doing gifts for these clients. And again those two things serviceability. So obviously you got to do your job and you got to do your job right. So what are the things around how you work with people that can be a 10 out of 10? And then also just the extra things, the nice things that you could be doing. Are you sending them gifts? Are you checking in on them when certain events are happening in their life? Like, what are the other bits and pieces where, if you came back to saying to yourself, how do I make sure that these perfect 10 clients are the ones who stick with me for life or for the duration of my business and their business? See what you come up with and give yourself some time to think about this, you know, just give yourself the space, go for a walk and be like, okay, if I did want to work with these people forever, what would that actually have to look like?

Shannon Stone:

And even if your business changes in like one year, two years, 10 years, it's okay because we're going to answer this for today, because it's going to help you to retain that small number of quality clients that you want in your business, and it also helps you as well as you go through the lead generation part of this, before they become a client of yours. It helps you to, I think, anyway, get really excited about the people that are going to work with you. It's like when I know I'm going to really keep them around because I'm going to do these things, I'm going to service them in this kind of way, going to retain them in this kind of way, it just gets you well. I hope it does. It gets me really excited about the people that I'll work with and the people that I'll keep around, and it will be like that intimate scenario. It's like they will be friends, they will be family, they will be my pocket of people that I can go above and beyond for I can really help them.

Shannon Stone:

And like beautiful byproduct of all of this is probably that word of mouth that will spread from working with you. So it's like if you do good this way, your business is probably going to grow by default in ways that you didn't even have to do on purpose. You didn't have to facilitate that word of mouth. It happens because that serviceability, that laser targeting of the clients, it's really figuring out. Well, I don't actually need a lot of clients, but I do want really great clients. So how would I go about this? In a really I don't want to say strategic way, because it's not. It is like in a way it is strategic, but in a really I don't know, I feel like I think the word is like wholesome, like in a really wholesome service-led type of way, so kind of deep right. If you want a small number of quality clients, I think we can get kind of deep there. I think it really showcases the meaningful work that people can do in their business and I think it kind of brings a lot of this really full circle like why you're doing what you're doing, who you're doing it with, how you want your business to look and all those type of reasons.

Shannon Stone:

So, in summary, and getting to action steps, so the questions that we asked were who are they? How many of them do you need? And we added the question to that how many of them do you need? And what are you selling to them? What is that offering? Number three was where are they? Number four is how can you reach them? And number five was how can you retain them?

Shannon Stone:

So the action step from this is one you need to create a plan. You need to close, like if I've said anything here and you're like actually I'm doing that, but I'm not doing that. Like create a plan. Sit down and really create a plan. If you want a small number of quality clients, this is like the episode to like listen to and listen to again and create a plan and listen to it again until that plan is solid and then you have to follow the plan. It's like create the plan, but then also you need to follow the plan.

Shannon Stone:

Amazing episode for following the plan and I'll tell you the idea in like a quick nutshell as well is episode where we turn your goals into reality using your calendar. I'll put a link into that. I think it's like episode three or four, very early on. But the idea with having a plan is add those action steps in your plan to your calendar and then follow your calendar as if it's an appointment, as if someone was on the other end of that appointment there waiting for you. That's the best way to take action. Add it to your calendar, treat that calendar appointment like it's a person and, in summary, I kind of want to wrap this up by saying to remind yourself that it actually is really easy to generate a small number of quality clients, and it can be that easy because I'm assuming right now you've got a small number of quality clients. You might not have the number, the quantity that you're looking for. Maybe you do want to have 10 of those amazing clients, but right now you've got four or five of them. So you're doing all right, but we could be getting more of them. It's not that hard to duplicate what you've already done. It's not that hard to sit down and think okay, this is my business, this is what I do every single day of the week, and if I want to work with the most amazing quality clients, I'm going to put the work in to map all of this out, to find those people, and it really can be that easy. It can be.

Shannon Stone:

However, you want it to be as creative as you want it to be as simple as you want it to be, and the only way that you'll know if it's going to work is if you try it. So I can't wait for you to give this a go and you have my full encouragement. And if you want any accountability, you have to let me know that you are giving this a crack. So send me a message and I can hold you accountable to that. Now, that is what I have for you today. If you have any questions, definitely let me know, and I'm excited for you to give this a go and hopefully I'll hear back from you about how this is going. But have an amazing week and I'll talk to you soon. friends

Shannon Stone:

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