When you need more clients, explore the things you can do easily without feeling like you have to become someone else. Add some things you’re not so good at yet, and keep adding to your skill set.
Sometimes, when you need more clients, you overlook obvious things:
–>things you already know you should do, or
–>things that you imagine would be effective, if only you knew you should include them…
–>and of course, the things that could be effective, if only you knew how to get them done!
It came home to me at a workshop about filling events… two days of nitty-gritty information on how to get people to come to your Feldenkrais® workshop, your Intro Evening, your book launch party, your training program, your teleseminar, your birthday party — whatever.
One of the things that really struck me is how much filling events is like a Feldenkrais® practice — and especially how much it brings out that everything I do is written in my own handwriting.
For example, an awful lot of filling an event is stuff I know, and don’t do on a regular basis. And it’s not just that I know TO do it — I also know HOW to do it. And yet — somehow, I don’t. Why not?
–>Well, sometimes I forget.
–>Sometimes I don’t want to.
–>Sometimes I think it won’t matter.
–>Sometimes I’m tired of it.
Remember earlier in this series — when I mentioned that Moshe told us that our clients don’t become someone else just because they walk through the door? Well, that means that I’m going to approach filling my events as the same person I am all the rest of the time.
There are lots of ways to let people know about what I’m doing — blog, email, phone, social media, mobile marketing, interviews, videos, print and radio advertising are just a few! Some may be in my repertoire already. Some may be new. Some may be easier to try than others. Some may be more effective with the people I want to find. Nevertheless, my success depends on my handwriting, my level of awareness and my willingness to do something new.
If I don’t see myself as a networker, I won’t even put networking on my list of things to think about in getting ready for an event. If I don’t have a blog already, I’m not likely to create one in order to advertise a workshop. If I see myself as disorganized or forgetful, it may be the last minute before I even see that I need to DO SOMETHING to get people to come!
Filling events is a behavior, just like any other one you might work with in your practice. If you don’t have the success you want, the remedy is to do exactly what you would tell your clients they need to do — look for the things you’re missing, get the help you need, and consistently include the new ways of acting in your life.
Amazing, isn’t it, how much the work we do is such wonderful preparation for everything we need to do to get the clients we want to do that work with!?? What parallels do you notice between what you do in your practice and getting clients or filling an event?
~~~~~
“What we are doing here is organizing ourselves. We can make that organization good now, so that if you had to face a problem suddenly, you would be able to negotiate it.” — Moshe Feldenkrais, in The Master Moves, p. 88
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12 thoughts on “To Get More Clients, Do What You Tell Your Clients To Do”
Hi Allison,
What I am beginning to feel is that my practice and my marketing are all part of the same arc. When I have a H2H conversation with a client, when I am more aware of my TA pitfalls in my interactions that that is marketing, one step leads to another. Yes there is social media, blogs…., but I am my own best marketing tool. thanks so much. Heather
Heather, I love it that you’re getting to that point in a way that feels easy and natural to you. I made the mistake of asking a question in a presentation once–how much time should you spend marketing? — and my answer was ALL the time, because you never know where your clients are! It totally freaked out the people in the audience, as I’m sure you can imagine! I learned not to use that in a first-look-at-Allison again… but it really is true, and when you can come from that internal solid place of knowing and being who you are, it makes everything much easier!
What’s a TA Pitfall?
Hi Valerie,
TA pitfall = the shadow side of a Trusted Advisor meaning things we do to get in our own way.
Valerie, Heather is speaking in Alphabet Soup that comes from Your Marketing Voice (YMV!). Trusted Advisor is one of the 3 marketing styles. Every style has a lot of strengths, and every has has “too much of a good thing” which turns it into a pitfall, or a way that your style can lead you into trouble, if you aren’t aware of it.
For example, one of the TA strengths is that they know that people will make the right decision if they just have enough of the right information, so they aren’t pushy. If they’re not aware of what can happen in the extreme, they can give people so much time to decide that people who really need help never get it!
This really speaks to me…stepping up to the “plate”, getting organized to do the things that are non-habitual, but effective and discovering success in doing what, at first, I really don’t want to do, am resistant to, as a donkey that wants to go home!
Thanks, Allison!
Charlotte
charlottechavez.com
Charlotte, I think you really nailed it. So much of what we could do that would help people understand how much we have to offer lies just outside the zone of what we DO do easily… it’s really an easy step, once we realize that our two feet are stuck together — and all we need to do is separate them by moving one forward!
Yes, so true. I found Brandy & Vinca’s material very valuable and vaguely familiar as well. We know what to do…we just have to DO IT!
“If you don’t have the success you want, the remedy is to do exactly what you would tell your clients they need to do — look for the things you’re missing, get the help you need, and consistently include the new ways of acting in your life.”
This sentence made my day.
Thanks,
Erik
Life imitates “you-know-who” — and so do our practices!
Always love when consultants fall into the trap- do as I say and not as I do…
Hey, Roy, thanks for stopping by! You know what? I think sometimes it’s not so much that we fall into a trap, as it is that we KNOW what we’re helping our clients do works, and we don’t see how to apply the same thinking to finding those clients.
Holistic practitioners are not so interested in marketing — partly because it takes time away from working with clients, partly because it’s a stretch to think that they can do it and continue to feel whole at the end of the day. So it doesn’t really occur to them that the way to get *Feldenkrais *clients
is to apply *Feldenkrais *thinking. That’s where I come in — to show them that it’s not really apples and oranges.
I’ve got 35 years as a *Feldenkrais *practitioner myself, so sometimes I have to remind myself about things I’m sure other people do like breathing. But then, there are things WE do like breathing that other people can’t fathom! So in the end, I guess it all works out!