Evolutionary Blog

A student of my material sent an email with some very good questions for client management including how to handle contract extensions, referrals, testimonials and general end-of-contract dynamics and structures.

I have re-posted relevant portions of the email exchange below for you.

I've listened to your recordings from previous coaching programs and have found them to be insanely valuable. I've signed 8 clients and raised my rates already in the first few months of the program, and I attribute it to following your sales process to a "T".

A HUGE thank you.

My pleasure. I am delighted to hear they were useful to you.  

As a couple of my 6-session coaching packages are coming to a close, I have questions around how you structure the end-of-package process. Here are some specific questions:

Do you formally review outcomes with your clients at the end of a package? If so, how do you structure this conversation?

 

Yes we do. Twice in fact. We review their outcomes and the stated evidence for those outcomes about 2/3 of the way through the process. This review is important so we can see where we are on track, see where we already achieved the outcome(s), and see where we need to focus out remaining time together.

Additionally, in the final session, what we do is review their outcomes [mostly I print them out and hand them the assessment we made together] and with those, I have them fill out an extensive feedback sheet or "exit survey" as I like to call it. 

When do you raise the issue of referrals? I love how you talk about referrals on the FAQ page of your site, and I'm wondering how else you support those ideas and maximize the chance of the client biasing toward action.

I never really raise the issue of referrals along the way. For two reasons really, 1) I find it a little off for the Evolutionary Sales™ approach, and 2) I usually I do not have to because they do--and when they mention this friend or that colleague, I tell them how to refer people to me--get their permission to give me their contact information and leave the rest to me.

Additionally, because referrals are part of the agreement they signed, the exit survey gives them an opportunity to write down two names and phone numbers for referrals they have permission from to do so--which re-presences it for them if they have forgotten; it is right there on the last page of the feedback sheet.

Do you collect testimonials from clients? This seems like it would be good material for my website, which isn't up yet. If so, how do you frame it? When do you ask for it (i.e. at the end of a package, when the client is at a peak)

Yes, of course. When they write or say something that is a peak or they are acknowledging me about something I simply ask, "can I quote you on that?" with a friendly chuckle. Then I ask them if I can edit it and send it to them for their approval before I publish it. Sometimes they want anonymity, but I then just use it and us this attribution:  " --Anonymity Requested".  

The truth is, I have no interest in the compliment personally [as in an ego boost or a pat on the back--no interest in that]. However, practically and professionally, you bet I want to hear that--as long as I can quote them on it. Compliments are of no value to me. Testimonials are.

Often, when they say something that would make a great testimonial, typing it up is the thing that is in their way and delays it becoming a testimonial. That, and they are worried about writing it well or "doing it right". So I offer to type it up for them to capture their sentiments and send it to them for their approval.

There are only a few components successful coaches and practitioners must incorporate into their practice to turn it into a business. At the same time, you can be “doing” these things, and still be unsuccessful unless you have the necessary techniques and ethical tactics incorporated into the components. 

Not just the “how” but “how specifically”.

In this free evening talk discover:

• The 3 Necessary Components for Building and Maintaining a 6-Figure Practice
• 7 "Tricks of the Trade" including :::
  • 4 strategies successful coaches and practitioners engage in on a regular basis to maintain their practice
  • 3 critical techniques to turn your initial consultations into results
• The Number 1 Mistake that Practitioners and Coaches make in their marketing strategy and their copy writing
  • [and it’s solution]

This from a former student :::

"Jason McClain is the real deal. His personal life story makes the stories of both Tony Robbins and Christopher Howard look like happy-go-lucky children’s books. He has been quoted as saying, 'if I can be happy and successful anyone can'.

"He built a 6-figure practice from scratch with an intangible service ::: “Personal Evolution”. Something no one wakes up in the morning and thinks they need or looks for. His success was as a result of the incredible efficacy of the system he developed by trial and error." -M.D.

A system I will hand over to you in this talk. Fine-tuned, and streamlined.

"I believe that right now is the time for the Evolutionary Professional™. The emergent agent of change integrating purpose and wealth; doing well as a result of doing good-- integrating universal spiritual principles and free market economics. I understand that the more of you I empowers to be successful, and have a full-time practice that is thriving, the better off the world will be.

Evolving the planet one client at a time is great, but it is horribly inefficient. *laughing* Let’s accelerate the process together."  --Jason D McClain

--

Jason D McClain will lead this talk. 

Acquire knowledge from one of the most broadly educated minds in the coaching business always innocently irreverent, funny, affable, approachable, and obviously committed to serving you by delivering dense value in his talks, expect the tips you will learn in this evening to bear immediate and lasting fruit in your business and in your life.

Bring something to take notes with. 

When and Where  [specific locations to be announced]

Los Angeles ::: Monday, April 19th ::: 7pm to 9pm

San Diego ::: Tuesday, February  9th ::: 7pm to 9pm

UPDATE ::: This call is over. The audio from the call is now available here:

---

There are only a few components successful coaches and practitioners must incorporate into their practice to turn it into a business. At the same time, you can be “doing” these things, and still be unsuccessful unless you have the necessary techniques and ethical tactics incorporated into the components.

Not just the “how” but “how specifically”.

In this free tele-seminar discover:

• The 3 Necessary Components for Building and Maintaining a 6-Figure Practice
• 7 "Tricks of the Trade" including :::
  • 4 strategies successful coaches and practitioners engage in on a regular basis to maintain their practice
  • 3 critical techniques to turn your initial consultations into results
• The Number 1 Mistake that Practitioners and Coaches make in their marketing strategy and their copy writing
  • [and it’s solution]

Monday, March 15th, 2010 @ 7pm Pacific. Use this link to register for the call:

http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/7B344C7GLNT38MX

This from a former student :::

"Jason McClain is the real deal. His personal life story makes the stories of both Tony Robbins and Christopher Howard look like happy-go-lucky children’s books. He has been quoted as saying, 'if I can be happy and successful anyone can'.

"He built a 6-figure practice from scratch with an intangible service ::: “Personal Evolution”. Something no one wakes up in the morning and thinks they need or looks for. His success was as a result of the incredible efficacy of the system he developed by trial and error." -M.D.

A system I will hand over to you in this talk. Fine-tuned, and streamlined.

"I believe that right now is the time for the Evolutionary Professional™. The emergent agent of change integrating purpose and wealth; doing well as a result of doing good-- integrating universal spiritual principles and free market economics. I understand that the more of you I empowers to be successful, and have a full-time practice that is thriving, the better off the world will be.

Evolving the planet one client at a time is great, but it is horribly inefficient. *laughing* Let’s accelerate the process together."  --Jason D McClain

--

Acquire knowledge from one of the most broadly educated minds in the coaching business always innocently irreverent, funny, affable, approachable, and obviously committed to serving you by delivering dense value in his talks, expect the tips you will learn in this evening to bear immediate and lasting fruit in your business and in your life.

Be sure you have something to take notes with: and feel free to submit questions before hand. Space is limited to 99 participants to grab your spot now.

It is amazing how many coaches, solopreneurs, massage therapists, lawyers, etc. are competent at what they do--yet suffer financially. They are doing good, but they are not doing well--that is, they are struggling financially, mentally, and emotionally.

There are reasons for this. I have identified the top 6 reasons--and their solutions-that I have found in my experience in my own business as well as observing those who still have a "practice".

The first 3 are presented to you below. The next three will be in Part 2 in a couple of weeks.

Mistake #1:  Thinking "Money and Spirituality are in Conflict"

For some, "capitalism" is a bad word. Which makes sense. "Capitalism" was a phrase coined by the biggest enemy of the free market and free enterprise to ever live--Karl Marx. Yet, we keep that inaccurate and pejorative moniker. We were taught for thousands of years that to profit was bad--and then this meme was punctuated by the evils of capitalism laid out by a failed mathematician who had no foresight into the services industry--never mind respect for private property and Natural Law and was therefore essentially a thief on a grand scale. Even though with the rise of capitalism in the mid-1800s, our standard of living has more than trebled, never mind that our life expectancy has doubled in a short time as a result...it...is...bad.

While there was a a time when one could only profit by exploitation and manipulation or by inheritance or plunder, this has not been accurate for nearly 300 years.

[Before commenting on this, please read my series of articles on Spiritual Capitalism, found here: Read First || Read Second || Read Third.]

Maybe we should consider throwing off the chains of thinking birthed centuries before the Enlightenment and even before the founding of this Country and came to a head--and have been proven to be inaccurate, ineffective, and fundamentally broken in the last Century.

The truth is, it is not only possible to come from service and contribution in a "for profit" environment--that is to live a purpose-filled life--but also to profit well from it and to live prosperously. It takes some personal work--being mindful of your thinking, cleaning out your unconscious imprints of guilt and shame, and to constantly be of service while having sufficient esteem for your self to recognize the value you are bringing to another's life and to have them provide that value monetarily in exchange. It takes a lack of attachment to "closing that deal" and being more focused on service and "opening relationships"--and much more.

Actually, I have found what can be provided to our clients lives is priceless to them. Fees are insignificant when weighed against what the work we do in their lives will make possible. It is not a commodity. It is a gateway to greater freedom and happiness. We can live a spiritually oriented life--and integrate free-market, service-based principles into that.

By doing so, we integrate our spiritual and our financial life. This frees us from guilt, shame, and allows us to flourish spiritually while prospering financially.

Mistake #2: Underdeveloped Skill: Sales, Marketing, and Ethical Influence

We have all had negative experience with sales people. Not sales professionals, but sales people--that is, people who want to "close a deal" rather than open a relationship. And most sales trainers teach techniques with little regard for a philosophical base or grounding. I do not support that.

I used to think sales was a dirty word. That was until I realized that until I could influence people to take action in their lives--leverage them beyond their limitations--I could never really do much good in the world. You can only be a positive agent for change if you can inspire others to move beyond their current thinking--the thinking that has them in their current life situation and has stopped them from being fully free and thriving.

Therefore--if you truly want to do good in the world, it becomes your duty--yes, your duty--to assist others in overcoming their limitations. That means learning to sell and market your services in a compelling way that comes from service and contribution while combining that with powerful tool of influence.

You must gain those skills if you want to make a difference and be prosperous.

While it may be hard to swallow at first [took me years to accept] you must be a sales person first--that is you must be able to enroll others in a vision--to live your purpose and prosper.

Mistake #3: A Lack of Structure: Service, Sustainability, and Packages

One you are coming from service and contribution, you begin to consider what would best serve the client. Most practitioners have session-by-session practices or monthly packages, but they do not have comprehensive packages that have stages and phases in them. How many people out there have dabbled here and dabbled there and never really bucked down and did the deep work to reveal greater depths within themselves? I have found most clients approach their personal development this way. "Well, I have tried this and I have tried that...", [but I never really got what I needed that was deeper].

The best thing you can do as a coach or a practitioner is to find a way to create a compelling 3-stage or 3-phase offering that allows the client to reveal greater and greater depths or to attain greater and greater heights. For a massage therapist, this may mean something like:

Every successful business person is a marketer and a salesperson first. If you want to be successful, you should consider that as your primary organizing principle. If you want to thrive, rather than just survive, then your primary focus needs to be on generating business and leads—and then opening those relationships.

• Are your marketing dollars working for you? How do you know?

One of the biggest mistakes a small businessperson can make is not being able to track their marketing dollars. That ad you placed—did it get any response or not? How do you know? That yellow page placement-is it increasing your business traffic? How do you know? Are your dollars well placed with the print advertising, TV spots, radio, or other form? How can you know? Did it even pay for itself? The key words you purchased on google or yahoo search—are they effective? Are they garnering traffic?

That person you are paying 10$ an hour to stand on a street corner and pass out fliers—are they even asking any questions, or just silently trying to thrust the paper into people’s hands to get rid of the fliers--bacause, you know, you pay them for how many they pass out, not how many leads you get from it.

What are you paying per lead generated with these methods? How do you track the efficacy of your advertisement and marketing and therefore make informed choices as to whether or not your dollars are well placed?

There are several ways:

• Place a landing page.
  • In the age of the internet, you simply MUST have a “landing page”. A landing page is a web page accessible to only those who would have seen a specific marketing piece. An example would be: http://YOURDOMAIN.com/magazine-name-where-the-ad-is-placed.html and the like. In this way, you can look at the referral logs of your web traffic counter and see just how many hits and clicks you are getting as a result of a specific ad placement or marketing prong.
    • Site Meter is a good one, as is Google Analytics, and if you are running google adwords campaigns, you may want to have all of those resources in one place
  • You can also set up a specific toll-free number to take messages specific to that marketing piece
• Test your ad copy. Just because you did not get as much response as you would have liked does not mean the venue in which you placed the ad is ineffective. It may be your ad copy, or often more importantly—the headline of the ad—that could be more effective.
• Use a tracking code. If you have someone handing out fliers, put some sort of tracking code on the flier so you can use that number, or landing page, or phone number to track your dollars to leads ratio.

The worst example I have recently seen of wasted marketing dollars was for a chiropractic clinic. They had people handing out fliers—but you would never have known what it was for. The flier distributor was standing on a busy financial district street corner—a location where there were probably plenty of prospects who could use an adjustment. However the person hired to hand the fliers out was simply attempting to thrust them into people’s hands. No engagement. No rapport. No questions or offers. No return on invested marketing dollars.

How much were they being paid by the clinic? How much more effective could those marketing dollars have been if they simply asked: “would you like to relieve your stress more effectively?” or some variant, and ONLY hand the fliers to those who said yes. How many people who needed the service walked on by because they simply did not want an unknown piece of pink paper in their hands?

We will never know—and neither will the clinic that hired them. What we do know is that there were plenty of wasted marketing dollars in that marketing endeavor.

Be sure to avoid their mistakes. Stop flushing your marketing dollars down the toilet. Begin now by following the simple steps above to make the most of your marketing dollars.

Another huge mistake people make is marketing to themselves. What would motivate them is often not what would motivate their target market or their ideal clientele. Buut that is another article for another time.

In Service,

Jason