Good Marketing, Good Business

069: If Clients Aren't Coming To You, Do This

• Shannon Stone • Episode 69

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There’s only so long you can wait around for clients to come find you, even if you’re the host with the most, giving the best value through your marketing - by having a simple yet solid outbound strategy is going to help you build a robust business.

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

  • What a difference four emails a day could make to your business
  • How simple and effective it is when you’re proactive about generating clients
  • Four steps to help you go after the clients you want


Enjoy!

Resources:


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

Shannon Stone:

Have you noticed? So much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy-fairy Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing, good Business podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And, in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant, and for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time, and today's episode is no different. Enjoy, hey guys. Welcome to the podcast.

Shannon Stone:

Super excited to jump into this episode today. Today I'm going to be sharing about what you can do if clients aren't coming to you. I want to share a story before I jump in and I think the story will add actually a lot of value. So I was talking to someone who's very well-versed and very well-established in business. I love even just generally talking. I have a lot of friends who are older than me. I have a lot of friends younger than me as well, but I just love the wisdom that people can share just in all walks of life, but definitely when it comes to business, of course, and this amazing, savvy gentleman in business shared the most simple of strategies and I just thought if only everyone heard this. So I'm going to do us all a service and share it with as many people as possible.

Shannon Stone:

So he says and he's still running his business today he must have been in business for at least 30 years. But he says, when he wakes up in the morning and has his morning coffee, he sends an email to a potential client, then goes about his day, then he has morning tea. After morning tea he goes and he sends another email out to a potential client and then he goes about his day again. And then he has lunch, and after lunch he goes and sends the third email of the day out to a potential client and then he goes about his day and then afternoon tea comes and you can guess what he does he sends an email out to a potential client and he does this every single day Monday, monday to Friday five times a week. So let me do the math for us that is 20 emails a week that he is sending. He breaks it down into four a day. They're probably a couple of hours apart, and I just think that is just so amazing and so simple and so brilliant. But because of all those reasons above, so many people won't do that. And one, they won't do it, and two, they won't do it for any length of time.

Shannon Stone:

But can you imagine if you did something like that or your equivalent maybe it's not an email, maybe it's a message, or it's picking up the phone or something on you could either take the same strategy or you can take the same idea where you're doing the same thing very consistently for a really long time and you just rinse and repeat it. Obviously there's things that you can improve. So if you're sending emails, for example, where are you getting these emails from? Can you improve anything there? Can you improve anything within the email itself or the subject line, based on the response that you're getting back from people? Obviously you can improve things there. So it is a constant and never-ending improvement.

Shannon Stone:

But the gist of it is imagine how simple that is, or you can see how simple that is and he just does it rinse and repeat every single day. 20 emails a week, that's 80 emails a month that he's sending. Imagine if you sent 80 emails every single week to potential clients, what that would do for your business. So I wanted to share that story just to plant the seed, or plant the idea that could you borrow something from our amazing clients shared mentor in business now at this point. So if clients aren't coming to you coming to today's topic of the episode why can't you go to them? Clients can always come to you. They will always come to you. You will get referrals and all these types of things. I'm hoping you're doing some type of marketing and so people do reach out and inquire and book in a call with you and all those kinds of things. But sometimes that's not enough. So sometimes and when I say sometimes, I probably mean a lot of the time, if not all the time you need to have multiple strategies in place or stack your marketing on top so you'll have your marketing and the things that you do, but maybe you've got something outbound that you do consistently, like sending four emails a day, every single day, five times a week.

Shannon Stone:

So I love when businesses and people in general get very proactive about what it is that they want and they just go for it. I just don't see the point in sitting back and waiting, and that can totally be for some people, but like I'm a hustler at heart, I think I really am, or I must've been in a past life. I love to get my hands dirty. I love to feel in control, I guess, of where things are going, and I don't especially in business. We don't want to just sit back and just see how it goes and see what comes of it and see who books it, like I don't have time for that. I'm sure you don't have time for it.

Shannon Stone:

So how can we get more proactive around the growth of your business? How can you go to the people you want to work with rather than waiting for them to come to you? So I've got a couple of ways that you can do this, in addition to our story that we've already shared. Number one is, well, foundation. Who is it that you're actually wanting to work with? I'm sure there's several episodes on that. I'll find them, I'll definitely link them. But that is the foundation.

Shannon Stone:

But jumping into what are some ways you can actually go after those clients? Number one, especially if you're in services or B2B services, like a lot of my clients are, find their website or their contact details. It's so simple Find their website or their contact details or their LinkedIn, and then what do you do next? Our gentleman. He emails them, so he's developed some type of email and this is the thing like don't overthink it, like something is better than nothing. So is it that you send them an email? Is it that you send them some information about how you can help them? Is it that you give them something of yours, an audit or a complimentary service? Or maybe you've developed a resource or something that you can send over to them?

Shannon Stone:

Some people will do these cold emails and just pitch from the get-go. People will do these cold emails and just pitch from the get-go, and that can definitely work. It can actually work really, really powerfully when you target correctly. So if you're particularly in a niche service where there's not many people like you and you know you're so good at what you do this is like so many of my clients If you just get and they know this if you just get on the radar in front of the right people, they're going to flock to you. You just have to be clear enough on who they are and where they are. The second you show up in front of them and tell them how you help people like that. They want you. They're going to come after you. So sometimes we don't have to do those pitches, it's just a matter of getting onto the radar in front of the right people.

Shannon Stone:

So, number one find their website or their contact details. Number two is to and I've categorized this together but to attend events or join associations, so there might be industry associations. Keep this in mind as well. When it comes to associations, for example, my background has been everything to do with marketing, right, so I can join, say, the Marketing Institute of Australia. However, am I selling my services to other marketers? I do actually Even marketing. People need help with their business. But sometimes people will join their industry association. So a hospitality business might join the Hospitality Institute of Australia.

Shannon Stone:

But what you need to think of if you are wanting to join an association is what are the associations of the people you want to get in front of? So is it that you work with? Maybe you are in marketing, but your clients and the people you really want to work with are in tourism, so could you be attending tourism events or joining the tourism associations. Attending tourism events or joining the tourism associations. So think less about you and more about the people that you want to connect with. So attending events can be a really powerful way to go to the clients rather than waiting for them to come to you. So you can network at these events and associations. You can do presenting, you can be interviewed, you could sponsor these events or certain activations they might be doing. You can make connections with the right people there Lots of different effective ways to just get onto the radar of the right people.

Shannon Stone:

Main thing is you want to keep it consistent. You want this to be a regular activity that you do. You don't want to just join something and then throw it on the back burner or just like ad hocly, attend an event or, you know, submit an article to the newsletter, whatever it might be, if you're part of the association. You want it to be a proactive, consistent, regular effort that you do. Again, it's like we're not sitting back waiting for clients to come to us. That will happen. But if you want to grow at the speed I imagine you do, then you need to go to the clients. So that's number two attend events and join associations.

Shannon Stone:

And then the third one that I have for us is to develop collaborations and partnerships. This is a really nice strategic one. So I want you to think about who already has the captive audience of the people you would like to get in front of. So I always believe the demand for your services already exists. You just have to find where that demand is currently. Sometimes, if we just ask the right question, it reveals the answers in itself. So, with collaborations and partnerships, who has the audience? Who has the people? Who has your future clients sitting in a room or on their database, or attending their events or listening to their podcast, whatever it might be? Who are those people? Do a bit of a brain dump, a mind map, a bit of research to figure out who these people are, where these people are.

Shannon Stone:

The next step with it, once you've identified them, is to work out how you can collaborate with them, how you can partner with them and it would be different for every collaboration or every partnership that you do, but it is working out. What would that look like so you can add value to their network? We don't want to be a shark, but we want to be a good hustler. We want to be a good networker. We want to come from still a good place of integrity and adding value. We want to do it in a really tasteful on-brand, based on who you are type of way, so fuse that into everything that you do.

Shannon Stone:

Just a couple of ideas when it comes to collaborations and partnerships you could host an event or co-host an event. You can supply content for their newsletter or their blog or any kind of communication distribution that they're doing. You could be featured in certain material that they've got. If they do have a podcast or they do maybe masterclasses or events with their people, could you get amongst that? Could you offer a complimentary demo or asset that you have created, like an ebook, for example, or a service, depending on what you do? Is there a way for you to offer a little bit of a taster to their audience and you can still qualify all of this the way that you like.

Shannon Stone:

Some people are so afraid to give away their services and things for free, but I'm like you're not going to be flooded. You know millions of people are not going to be knocking down your door asking for that free service that you offered as much as we would love that, I'm sure. So don't be afraid to give away whatever it might be as a complimentary. Could be an ebook, it could be like whatever it is for you, and you can also limit it as well. So it could be like 10 a month, 100 a month. It depends on your services. It could be for the first five people, for example, so you can always add all those caveats to it. So we're not running you out of business in any kind of way. So lots of different ways you can collaborate and do partnerships with people, but who is it that has that captive audience that you would like to get in front of Now?

Shannon Stone:

I've shared several ideas here, and maybe that's a little bit of a disservice on my part, because all I want you to do is choose one of these things. But, being that we're not face-to-face in a one-on-one conversation, I've got to share a few different ways and hopefully, depending on whoever listens, something lands with different people. So what I suggest that you do is choose one type of strategy. It could be some of these that we've mentioned. Maybe you fuse some of them together. Maybe it's something that you've tried before in the past and it worked a little bit, but you stopped being consistent with it. But at the end of the day, how can you go to your people, how can you get onto the radar of your people, and how can you do that consistently.

Shannon Stone:

I still can't get past the four emails a day Wake up send an email. Morning tea send an email. Lunch send an email. Afternoon tea send an email. If you just did that four times a day, five days a week, that's 80 emails a month. I don't even know what that is. A year Like that is a powerful effort. And if it's not an email, swap it out for something else. It's always incredible how numbers really start to stack up. That can be a whole episode in itself, but that is what I have for you today.

Shannon Stone:

Action step from this is to choose one outbound strategy. So this is what this is Like going out to your clients is an outbound strategy. Waiting for clients to come to you based on your marketing inbound strategy. Waiting for clients to come to you based on your marketing inbound strategy. So action step is choose one outbound strategy and commit to it like a mofo. If you're of my generation, you know what that means, but you definitely want to choose one outbound strategy and commit to it. Stick to it. Refine it as you go, definitely, but don't stop doing it, because it will make an impact to your business. So that is what I have for you today.

Shannon Stone:

If you have any questions, reach out as always, but I hope you have an amazing week and we'll talk soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it. Whatever you need to do, the more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle-moving episodes to help you and your friends.

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