[00:00:00] Fi Johnston
When somebody else comes to this website and reads the words that are here, do they actually see themselves represented? This is especially important on your homepage and your about page. And look, not everybody agrees with me here, but in my opinion, your customer is always the top ranking. So what does that mean? I want you talking about your client first and you.
Intro
if we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favor of marginalized people, we need to understand the secrets to making money in small business. The more we talk about money and the secrets that usually stay at the golf club, the more likely we are to be able to make money.
My mission is to get more money into the hands of. Good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money secrets of successful small business owners. Let's go. [00:01:00]
Acknowledgement of Country
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Warri people of the KO nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work, and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present. And note that sovereignty has never been seated. This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Fi
Hey there. It's v Johnston here, the host of the Money Secrets podcast, and I am a moneymaking expert. I am a money coach, a chartered accountant, and a business strategist. Who works with small and medium business owners to make more money and impact in the world. Today I am going to record an episode, which is going to be the first of a four part series called the Sales Sprint.
This is based on some training we've just [00:02:00] rolled out within Good Money Club. So because Good Money Club is such a small community, we have no more than 45 members at a time. I know what's happening in everyone's businesses most of the time, and what I do is I listen for what my members are saying in our group calls and in our one-on-one calls, and then I develop training based around the needs that I can hear within the community.
There are a couple of really core elements to making sales or making money, or bringing revenue into your business, and I'm going to focus on. Attracting the right clients as our first episode. Our second episode is going to be about discovery calls. So how do we actually optimize these discovery calls?
And it's so funny, isn't it, because discovery calls are such a huge part of a service provider's business, but we actually don't talk about it much amongst ourselves. [00:03:00] I don't think there's a lot of training out there for small business owners around running discovery calls. So I'm going to do that in episode two of this four part series.
The third episode is going to be about how to create proposals that get people to say yes, and the fourth episode is going to be around how to follow up a proposal. Now these might seem like really foundational topics, and they are, and the fact is, I don't actually see a lot of training or discussion around these topics out in the world.
So I created a training series inside Good Money Club and I'm going to be sharing a little bit of that with you. And my hope is that out of each episode, you are going to get something that you can then take. To your actual business and put into place so that you can make more money. So thank you for being here on this [00:04:00] journey.
So today what we are gonna talk about in this first episode is how to attract clients. Now, I'm not gonna talk about marketing in terms of the marketing activities that you are going to need to do to bring clients in. I'm gonna talk more around the strategy and the high level of how to actually bring clients into your business.
So this is a really foundational part of business strategy and business strategy is essentially working out what do I want my business to look like and how do I get from here to there? Who your client is, is a foundational part of your business strategy. And in fact, your client should be at the core of every decision that you make in your business.
So the first thing that we wanna get really clear about is who is your ideal client? You want to actually name that client. You want to be able to express. What they are [00:05:00] called in your marketing, on your website, in your emails, you want people to know as soon as they land on your website, Instagram profile, TikTok profile, podcast profile, whatever it is.
As soon as they get there, you want them to know that they are in the right place. We want to know what problems your ideal clients are trying to solve. Sometimes we get a little bit bogged down in problems as though they're bad things, but it's really thinking about what is this particular client, this business, this person, this group of people, what are they trying to achieve?
Something is getting in their way of achieving that goal, and how can I be the service provider? Or the product provider who helps remove that challenge or barrier from them achieving whatever it is they wanna achieve. You might also think about what desires they have. So what would it look [00:06:00] like if they were able to get exactly what they wanted around this particular topic that you can help them with?
You wanna understand what is it about working with them that you love? Why do you love working with that particular client? Why do you love serving that particular client, and what do you know about them? What do you know about their life? What do you know about their business? What do you know about their situation or circumstance that might be interesting information to have if you are looking to attract them as customers into your business?
We wanna think about, once we've understood who our ideal client is. And what kind of problems or desires or goals they have that we can help them with. Then we wanna think about how we can create a great offer for them. Or in other words, what will our value proposition be? So we wanna think about things like, what is the [00:07:00] benefit or transformational or outcome you want for your client?
The word transformation itself is really overused, and I think a lot of people think that chat, GPT, overuses that word, but I've never used chat GPT, so I have no idea. But what you wanna think about is not just the kind of surface level thing that this person is wanting from you, but also what is on the other side of this benefit, this outcome that your client wants.
You wanna think about how your offer or value proposition solves your ideal client's problem? How are you improving their life or business? You also wanna think about things like what are the features or inclusions? How are you creating demand for your product or service? And have you actually tested this idea on real people?
In other words, do you have product market fit? Now it's time to [00:08:00] think about how to communicate the value that you want to include in your offer, in your packages, your services, your retainers. However, it is you do things. This is something that I see people get really wrong. We want to actually explain things in the voice of our customer.
So you might resonate with the idea that maybe you are very intelligent, you are very experienced at what you do. And you tend to use words that your customers don't because you are already on page 100 of the book. Your customer's still on page one, two, or three. So what we wanna do is think about how do my clients talk about this particular problem, or how do my ideal clients talk about this gain or this goal, or this desire that they have?
How do they explain the improvement that they're looking for? And you can get a sense of this in your discovery calls and in [00:09:00] your inquiry forms. What are the words that lots of different inquiries are using?
Once you've understood who your ideal client is, what problems or desires they have, what they are to achieve, [00:10:00] and then you've understood what is the outcome or benefit or transformation that you are going to create for them.
Then you wanna start communicating the offer. So we want to communicate your offer, your value proposition in the words of your customers. So we don't wanna use jargon, we don't wanna use really advanced terminology. We wanna use the kind of words that a 15-year-old who's fluent would be able to understand what we were talking about.
I don't wanna go too in depth, or I'll be giving everything away from my Sales Sprint challenge that we just created and ran through in Good Money Club. But I do wanna give you a couple of ideas for how to think about communicating these different topics to your potential clients. Your website is about your customer.
It's not about you. And this is a mistake that I see in [00:11:00] a lot of small business websites is we spend the whole time of our website or we, all of the words on our website are about us, our credentials, what we do, who we've done it for before. But what we really need to be addressing is who is our client?
Why would they wanna work with us? Which other clients have I worked with in the past that are similar to. The particular person who's looking at your website, so I really want you to think about when somebody else comes to this website and reads the words that are here, do they actually see themselves represented?
This is especially important on your homepage and your about page. And look, not everybody agrees with me here. A lot of business coaches and strategists believe that the about page should be about you as the service provider or as the product provider, but in my opinion, your customer is always the [00:12:00] top ranking.
So what does that mean? I want you talking about your client first and you second. We also wanna think about putting your prices on your website. It can feel like a bit of a brave decision depending on your industry, but it just saves so much time and awkwardness and embarrassment for everybody when you and your potential lead already know whether they are the right fit for you.
Now in order to have your prices on your website, your marketing needs to be really good because especially if you are a premium price, your website, your communication, your branding, your photos, your video, they all need to convey the idea that this is a premium product or service that you are offering.
We also wanna make it really clear what the call to action is for this [00:13:00] person on your website. What do you want them to do? Do you want them to send you an email to get in touch? Do you want them to book a call? Do you want them to send a DM on Instagram? Do you want them to call you? By the way, you'll never see my phone number on a website.
What I want people to do is book a call with me, because then we can both be really ready and prepared for that discovery call. I make it really obvious on my website how to book a call. It's in my top menu. It's on my contact page. It's on some of the other pages on my website too. So the action that I want people to take if they want to work with me is to book a call with me, and that is what you need to be thinking about too.
Okay, so. Let's just go back through what we've discussed in this short episode. Making money starts with understanding your ideal client, the problems they have, the desires they [00:14:00] have, and how you can go about helping them to achieve their goals or meet these desires that they have. The best way to do that is by communicating the value that you have for them by using their words, not yours.
Don't overcomplicate your marketing messaging by using jargon or technical terms or the sort of words that an expert in that subject would use. You want to use the kind of words that somebody looking for help in that area would be using. You also wanna consider that your website and any other marketing platforms that you have really explain who your ideal client is and what you can do for them.
And what is the next step that you want them to take? I really hope that's been a good starting point. If you go to the show notes, you'll find a link to actually download a workbook [00:15:00] for this Sales Sprint challenge because I want you to actually be able to take this advice and these tools beyond just listening on the podcast.
So go to the show notes. You'll see a link for the Sales Sprint workbook, and there you will find a workbook that you can go through and start implementing some of this advice into your business. In next week's episode, we are going to talk about how to run discovery calls. So if you are a service provider who does a lot of discovery calls, then I think you should come back next week and I will see you then.
Outro
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners. If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you subscribe to the podcast, but leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends.
I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective and I really hope you [00:16:00] enjoyed the listening experience.
