If you want more profitable clients, or if you want to save money and time by marketing less, you should work on generating more referrals from your existing clients.

Referral clients are great clients to have. They take very little marketing effort on your part to become clients. (That’s because they’re responding to word-of-mouth from a trusted friend, which is the most credible form of marketing that we all respond to). And, once they are clients, they are more likely to be loyal clients because they come to you fully trusting and understanding what you do (rather than clients who showed up through a marketing channel who might not totally trust you or who might not fully understand what you can do for them).

Better clients at less marketing cost? That is a great combination! Here’s how to develop more referrals:

Get into the habit of asking your current clients if they know of anyone else who they might refer. Now, a word of warning is important here: Obviously, you don’t want to hassle your clients so you need to find a tasteful way to do it, and perhaps after every meeting is too frequent. You’ll need to decide. You can invite them to refer others simply by saying, "Phil, I’m enjoying our time together. I have a space open and rather than fill it with a brand new client, you’re welcome to recommend someone who you think might benefit from my services."

Consider a group session or a luncheon in which they invite friends. This will need to be low-key (so the friend doesn’t feel that you’re going to pitch to them throughout the session) and the friend should obviously get a tremendous amount of value out of it. If you’re confident that you can deliver great value and win a client’s friend to your service, consider saying something like this: "Pam, we’ve been talking about your friend Teri for a while. I’m interested in meeting her and hearing about her business first hand. I think she can help you with your business, too. Instead of the two of us meeting in my office for our next session, why don’t you invite Teri to meet me for lunch? We’ll talk about your business plan and see if there’s a way that she can help you."

Consider creating an invitation-only webinar or teleseminar and telling your clients that they and their friends can participate. This content should be highly valuable but, at the end, can include a short pitch about your services.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

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Remember those thrilling days when you first started your practice? You were fresh and bold and excited about the future. You relentlessly marketed. What else could you do? There wasn’t anyone sitting across from you in the office to pay your bills so you went out and grew your practice by telling people what you offered.

Fast forward a couple of months or a couple of years. What’s happened? All of your marketing paid off and you became busy serving clients. Then suddenly – ZAP – everything disappeared. Your busy business faded. Things slowed down. Your schedule opened up.

With coaches, it’s often feast or famine. The reason is because marketing and serving clients are two elements that compete for your time, but, because serving clients generates revenue and marketing does not, guess what gets unintentionally deprioritized!

Think of it like a set of scales weighing clients on one side and prospects on the other. When there are a lot of prospects (because you’re out marketing) and there are no clients, the marketing side of the scale tips. But your marketing will slowly generate clients and the scales will begin to tip in favor of the revenue-generating client side. Soon, without realizing it, there is little or no marketing because your schedule is full of clients.

Many coaches would be all smiles when this happens because it seems to be the optimum use of time: 100% revenue generation. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The optimum use of time is less than 100% revenue generation, with some time spent on marketing. To revisit the illustration of the scales, you need to find the balance between serving clients and marketing. It won’t always be 50/50 (the exact balance depends on your business and your ability to market and your niche and a thousand other factors). You might need to spend 25% of your time marketing and 75% of your time serving customers.

The bottom line is that you can’t aim for 100% client service and ignore marketing because that will create the feast or famine situation that every coach should avoid. Instead, schedule time each day to market your business. If your balance between clients and marketing is 75/25 then schedule 6 hours of your day with clients and 2 hours of your 8 hour day on marketing. Once you’ve scheduled your marketing time in, treat it just as you would treat a client appointment and don’t let anything eat into that time.

You can also consider hiring a Virtual Assistant to help you with marketing, or even help with some of your other business tasks that don’t have to be tended to by you.

Being busy is good. But being business to the point where it sacrifices marketing time will be good for now and then will hurt you in a couple of weeks or months. Striking the right balance between marketing and client serving will eliminate the feast or famine problem and keep a steady stream of income in your practice.

Contemporary VA

@contemporaryva on Twitter.  Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

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Today’s current economy opens even more doors for professional coaches to be of assistance in the areas of business strategy and growth, and to assist individuals with the expansion of skills and flexibility for the job market and other goals.

In today’s age, many people and businesses are utilizing the Internet to find resources, including coaches.  It’s important to expose yourself so that when they reach out they can find YOU. You can’t just sit in some corner on the web and hope they find you.

Every business needs to create an online presence and be active in its’ marketing.  It’s no longer just about being a name in the phone book.  Businesses are working with coaches and other businesses across the country, and even across the world.

So what do you do to expand your exposure?  A number of things.  You can reach out to resources that can assist you in your marketing efforts like a Virtual Assistant Firm (who can also help you with other key elements of your business) or you can undertake your own marketing efforts.

Marketing online requires the maintenance of a website and/or blog and actively promoting the same.  Social Marketing and Networking should definitely be part of your strategy.  Learn about online marketing strategies and tips to help you along the journey. The key is to put yourself out there.  If you don’t, and someone seeks your service, they may just find your competitor instead of you.

Karen J. for ProfessionalCoaches.com

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