19: Creating The Demand Breakthrough in your Business

Breakthrough #1: The Demand Breakthrough™

The #1 complaint of professionals is that the business is like a hamster wheel…and you’re the hamster!

You’re only making money when you’re working—prospecting, meeting with potential clients or delivering on your “work product.”

You are simultaneously the CEO, CFO, and factory line worker.

The challenges you face are unique to professional services and require new ways of thinking and new approaches if you want to breakthrough to real freedom, where you have a business that grows more and more, with less and less effort from you.

Over the last 25 years of operating and growing two professional services firms, I’ve discovered there are three breakthroughs you must achieve to reach true freedom in your business.

What is the Demand Breakthrough?

The Demand Breakthrough is the first hurdle in building a Business that Grows Itself. I’ve personally had conversations with hundreds of professionals in the course of our consulting. Common to most all of those conversations is the understanding by each professional that, despite being very good at what they do, they struggle to attract clients.

It sounds like this…

“I’m really good with clients. In fact, my clients love me. And, when I talk to new prospects, they almost always become clients. I just need to see more people…”

This is terrible trap for smart, talented professionals. Your enormous potential for helping clients—and for reaping the financial, lifestyle, and freedom rewards that go with it—are in sight, yet just beyond your grasp.

Why does it trap so many professionals?

The reason demand scarcity plagues so many professionals is that selling professional services is dramatically different than selling other products or services.

 

The sales tactics taught in books and seminars by sales gurus actually work against professionals. The professional sale is an authority sale. You must maintain your authority positioning and leadership status in your relationship with your client.

In fact, your clients are buying your leadership—your professional guidance—more than your “work product.”

“Closing” a client with some sales tactic, forces you to descend down from your position as an authority and leader, to become a sales person. Once you do, it’s virtually impossible to reestablish your position as the leader in the relationship.

So, all of the “conventional advice” for creating demand actually works against you. Most professionals realize that conventional marketing and sales tactics won’t work for them, but they don’t know what to put in its place.

As a result, most “hope” for referrals and settle for a slow-growth practice, with long hours and little profit.

Transforming From Event Mindset to System Mindset

What we find with most professionals is that the acquisition of a new client is an “event.” In other words, when a new client comes to them, it is simply something that happened—a unique event.

This makes getting the next client extremely difficult. It’s as if you’re starting all over at zero.

Successful professionals take a different approach by adopting a different mindset or way of thinking about how they acquire clients.

Instead of viewing each new client as a random piece of good fortune, they work to create a system that produces one client…then another…and another…in a predictable way.

Having a system for creating demand gives them two critical freedoms:

The freedoms of clarity and focus: When every new client is a unique and random event, and you never know how or where the next client is coming from, you have to say “yes” to every opportunity that might lead to a new client. So, you attend every networking event, you try every new form of social media, and chase every new tactic in the hopes that something will deliver a client.

When you have a system for generating clients, you have clarity. You no longer need to chase opportunities. You no longer need to be everywhere, just in case…you have a small number of focused actions that are proven to produce results.

How to know if you’re stuck

If you’ve ever felt like you would hit your goals and reach the next level of success “if you could just see more prospects” then you’re stuck in demand scarcity.

To escape, you need to develop a system that delivers new prospects predictably every month, without consuming all of your time.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Webinar: How to get clients without spending a dime on advertising
• Book: Unstoppable Referrals: 10 Referrals, Half the Effort