How do I get better clients?

In today’s episode, I answer a question I get asked frequently: “How do I attract clients who____” (fill in the blank with one or more of these: want to go deep, will commit to doing the work, are at an advanced level, willing to pay more.) Watch the video or scroll down to read the article. What we cover:

• Identifying those clients
• Creating an offer for them
• Approaching the marketing (with examples!)

Attracting good clients begins at the foundation of your business. Before you dig into the marketing, you need to have really good answers to these questions:

• Who is going to buy?
• What are you offering them?

Fortunately for you, I AM one of those types of clients who wants to go deep with the work or take the advanced classes.

So this advice is coming not just from the “business coach/consultant” perspective – but straight from the mouth of someone who buys these sorts of classes, programs and services.

Identify your ideal clients (the people who are going to buy)

If you want clients who go deep, you’ve just identified the first attribute in your ideal client profile: they need to want to go deep.

Before you brush this off as coming from Captain Obvious, this is an important point.

Often, when people ask me about getting clients who want to go deep, what they’re actually asking is “how do I convince the people I’m currently attracting to go deeper?”

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Any time you find yourself needing to persuade or convince someone, you’re not actually talking to a potential client.” quote=”Any time you find yourself needing to persuade or convince someone, you’re not actually talking to a potential client.”]

Instead of persuading or convincing, you want to outline the criteria for who qualifies – just like they do for fairground rides: “you must be this high to ride.”

Demographic information like “women between the ages of 30 and 50” is not helpful for describing these sorts of clients.

Instead, you want to get clear about their values, their interests, their level of familiarity with the service you offer. What do they want? What are they struggling with?

Often, your ideal clients will be beginners in your industry – or even your peers. There’s a reason why coaches have coaches and trainers take workshops. People often choose to go into these professions after having an experience as a client – getting the training meets their desire to go deeper!

Make a deep offer (your product, service or workshop)

If you want clients who want to go deep, who are committed, who are at a higher level – you won’t attract them with a product or service that is for anyone or everyone.

• Advanced-level students don’t want beginner-level courses
• Luxury buyers don’t want run-of-the-mill products
• People looking for deep transformation don’t want yet another self-study video program

Increase the intensity (more sessions or longer sessions), provide in-depth feedback, ask challenging questions.

Make it clear that your offer is not like everything else. Skip the cookie-cutter looks-exactly-like-what-everyone-else-does template and make something that is clearly unique and different and addresses your ideal client’s exact needs.

Promote it with deep marketing (and ignore popular advice)

Write copy that speaks to your specific market and offer – make it clear that it’s not for just anyone.

Do NOT say things like “for everyone” or “all levels welcome.”

People say things like “all levels welcome” because they don’t want to “narrow their market” or leave anyone out.

It has the opposite effect to what is intended.

As someone who has taken about a dozen yoga classes in my life, I don’t want to attend a class full of advanced bendy people. I want a class that’s for beginners ONLY.

On the other hand, as an experienced speaker, I don’t want to sign up to a speaking program that accepts beginners. Pick a lane.

Recognize the fact that the people you are seeking are in the minority. So ignore the advice that speaks to the general population and says things like:

• No one reads anymore
• No one will watch a video longer than 3 minutes
• “People” have short attention spans

Want “deep” clients? You won’t attract them with fluffy motivational quotes and the same old recycled surface-level content.

Give them in-depth articles or videos – and skip the beginner topics.

Let’s look at some examples…

The toughest writing course in the world

I signed up for Sean d’Souza’s article-writing course a few years ago. Unlike everyone and their dog who promote “fast and easy” –  he billed his program as the “toughest in the world” and that was a big part of the attraction for me. Some other gems from his copy:

• If you’re not serious about getting outstandingly good, then don’t bother signing up.
• It’s not easy, and that may put you off. But nothing really great is easy to achieve.
• I read every article. And comment on every article. And give you assessments of your progress.

All of these points speak directly to the kinds of courses and programs I’m looking for:

• I want to be “outstandingly good”
• I don’t want to be spoon-fed “easy”
• I crave feedback that will make me better

You can read the whole thing here: article writing course

If you click the link, you’ll see that the course sells out really quickly – and it’s not cheap. This is a combination of great marketing and copywriting – along with a solid reputation.

Sean delivers on his promises with an intense level of feedback and support. The students he attracts show up and do the work.

When people do the work, they get results – and that creates repeat business and referrals.

I will not assuage short-sighted habits!

I read Jay Abraham’s books many years ago and when I stumbled across him again recently, I signed up for his newsletter and spent about 3 days devouring the articles and videos on his site.  (See for yourself here: Jay’s site.)

Some snips from his most recent email:

• I know that most people prefer ever-so-brief little Video-snippets
• I refuse to strip critically important elements down to mere superficial skeletal points — just to assuage the short-sighted habits of an online world that prefers entertainment over education… shallowness over in-depth mastery.
• For all you who prefer two-minute mental pabulum — I can refer you to hundreds of websites eager to serve fast-food, non-nutritional mental nuggets

Going directly against common advice to keep things short – he sends a long email with multiple links to videos of full-length presentations.

For those of us who prefer to go deep, those “ever-so-brief video snippets” he refers to are frustrating and the full-length presentations Jay offers provide the depth we’re looking for.

600,000+ readers in a world where “no one reads anymore”

Tim Urban writes really long (bordering on book-length) blog posts that contain more information than a lot of the “books” I’ve read recently.

In 5 short years, Tim has managed to attract an enormous readership, an invitation to speak at TED and funding for his work through Patreon – despite the fact that “no one reads anymore” and the commonly-recommended length for a blog post is 300 words.

It probably helps that a good percentage of Tim’s audience identify as “procrastinators” – judging by the popularity of articles like this one: Why Procrastinators Procrastinate (If you prefer video, you check out his TED Talk version: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator)

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