Marcy told me about a virtual meeting of the Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado she attended last year in which she mentioned that she was moving to North Carolina soon. The next day, she received an email from someone who was a leader of the association and was familiar with Marcy through her participation in both local and national meetings. He commented that it is fairly difficult to get a private investigator’s license in North Carolina, and he introduced her to a member of the local PI community in North Carolina, suggesting he might be able to provide useful advice. This contact has turned out to be immeasurably helpful as Marcy works her way through the challenging process of getting her license, with advice on who to contact, what to watch out for, and how to speed up the typically glacial pace of the license application review and approval process.

As Marcy noted, this invaluable help was possible because of the genuine connection she had with the association leader in Colorado. It wasn’t just a matter of having her name in a membership directory. He knew who she was because she regularly participated in and contributed to association events. Leaders and influencers notice members who are engaged and invested in an association, and they use their network to help out members who have been generous with their time and talent.

Marcy reminded me of a book that has informed her business for over 20 years now, Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay. The focus of the book, now out of print, is the importance of building rich relationships with lots of people—not just the ones you think are likely to help you in the short term, and not just at the level of exchanging business cards and connecting on social media, but genuine connections that you continue to feed over time.

Marcy and I both noted the difference between the leads who have contacted us because we were listed in a directory and those who have been referred to us through our network. The former tend not to be a good fit, as most solopreneurs have specialized businesses and most directory-sourced inquiries are out of our specialized area. Contacts from our network, on the other hand, always get our attention. Whether it’s a referral of a possible client, a request for a pointer to an expert, or an open-ended question, we prioritize these contacts because we value the relationship we have with the other person. As Marcy noted, “I never would have anticipated needing a North Carolina PI license when I was active in the PPIAC. It’s important to just build your network as a great way to connect with good people, and the other benefits will follow.”

Both Marcy and I are active in the Association of Independent Information Professionals in addition to associations our clients belong to. What associations have you found helpful in building your solopreneur network?

The post The real power of word-of-mouth referral networks appeared first on Bates Information Services.

So, what approaches should solopreneurs take in their search for the ideal client(s), similar to the tactics of the singles searching for love?

Go where the boys (or girls) are. If you are looking for a man who enjoys the outdoors, attend a fly-fishing class or join the local Sierra Club chapter. If you are looking for clients who will love you for your ability to analyze their market and industry, go to meetings and conferences where these information-hungry prospects will congregate.

Hang out in the virtual spaces where your mate is likely to be. Do you have a passion for 1970s sit-coms? Do you know every back road in Tuscany and travel there every summer? Or, as an infopreneur, do you want to find competitive intelligence managers who will need someone with your expertise to track down elusive information? In either case, hook up with fellow aficionados on social media, in real life through Meet-Up or professional conferences, and on discussion lists or anywhere else your people are likely to be found.

Have a virtual presence that your prospects are likely to find. For singles, that might mean having an engaging profile and some flattering photos on a dating app. Infopreneurs should make sure their web site presence includes enough information to compel someone to call, and that focuses on benefits, not features. In other words, design a presence that demonstrates the benefits of calling you, rather than one that just lists your availability and vital measurements. “Single Female, in search of warm-hearted individual for fun” isn’t going to garner you many high-quality dates; “We’ll research anything” isn’t much more compelling.

Network like crazy. Most people find romantic interests through friends and colleagues; make sure that all your friends know that you are single, available, charming, wonderful and well-behaved. Likewise, remind your existing clients that you welcome referrals of colleagues who might be interested in your services, and who would like to subscribe to your blog, download your white paper or follow you on social media.

Always look your best. If you’re single, make sure you don’t leave the house in a funky t-shirt and oil-stained jeans (unless that’s the type of person you want to attract). Always be ready to meet Prince(ss) Charming, wherever he or she finds you. By the same token, present a professional “face” whenever you are out  either physically or virtually. Respond to voice mails and emails promptly. When you are at a meeting or conference, always dress professionally. You don’t want to stand out by being the one person in cut-offs and a t-shirt when everyone else is in professional dress.

Don’t rule out a potential date based on his or her appearance alone. She might not be your ideal body type, but she may turn out to be the one for you, or know someone who is. And that client who looks like he would never be big enough to need your services? He may be a great referral source, and he might land a big contract and suddenly become Mr. Desirable.

Identify volunteer opportunities where it’s likely that you will find people of similar interests. Can you write? Do you like animals? Offer to help with the newsletter of the local animal shelter. Don’t have a lot of time to commit? Volunteer to help staff the next 10K race that benefits a charity you support. And if you’re not looking for a like-minded single person, you can still apply your skills in a volunteer capacity, and surface your infopreneur skills to the people you contact there. The other volunteers and the people who work at the organization will have an opportunity to get to know you, learn about what services you offer, and be wowed by your charm. And you also can feel good about giving back to the community.

So, go out there and start marketing yourself or your business. Who knows… you may wind up dating your next client, or start providing consulting services to your next date.

The post Client Dating 101 appeared first on Bates Information Services.

What do you wish you knew when you first started speaking publicly? It took me several years to realize that it’s not about me… it’s about the audience and the event organizer. My goal is to give people a tangible skill or insight that they didn’t have before. If the audience feels that they learned something that they could put into practice immediately, then they’ll be happy they attended my talk and the event organizer will be happy that the participants are happy. And, remember that the ultimate client in a speaking engagement isn’t the audience—it’s the person putting on the event.

When did you first start charging for your speaking? For the first three or four years, I spoke for free or, when the engagement was out of town, I would just be reimbursed for my travel expenses. My goal was to get people to know me, to see that I’m generous with what I know and committed to sharing what I’ve learned with others, and to build my leads by offering valuable information and then inviting them to subscribe to my (then) email newsletter. I wanted as much exposure as possible, so I tried to always find a way to say yes.

I finally started charging when I was getting more unpaid engagements than I could afford to do; at that point, I realized that I had the chops to speak for pay. And as soon as I started charging, I resolved that I would lose at least a quarter of my speaking invitations because I was too expensive. The only way I could determine the upper end of my speaking fees was to keep raising them until I started to get push-back and, as much as I enjoy travel, I’d rather make more money doing fewer speaking gigs.

What helped you get over the jitters? I take two approaches to that surge of adrenaline that always hits me 10 or 15 minutes before I get up to speak. First, I remind myself that adrenaline is my friend; it sharpens my brain and will help me while I speak to think quickly and clearly. And then I take a few deep breaths and remind myself that the people in the audience are on my side. They aren’t waiting to catch me making a grammatical error or to smirk if I lose my train of thought. Rather, they are sitting there assuming that I will engage them, teach them something they didn’t know, and leave them with a fresh perspective. They’re actually all silently rooting for me to succeed. So as soon as I get to the podium, I smile, make eye contact with three or four people in the room, and then focus on just talking to those friendly faces. It works every time.

Any tips to help introverts get started speaking? As a fellow introvert, I’ll let you in on a secret—many of the best public speakers are introverts. Think about it… instead of having to make small talk, you’re free to talk about what you’re passionate about. You get to share what you know with people who are interested in learning. And afterward, instead of having to start yet another awkward conversation, people come up to you with comments about your presentation. In fact, a pro tip I picked up from Marcy Phelps was to include an invitation at the end of my presentation for people to talk with me afterward and share their favorite technique / experience/ idea—whatever I want to prompt my audience with that will give them something to come up to me and talk about after my presentation is over.

Yes, my first four or five public speaking engagements were nerve-wracking, and I still worry whether my audience is going to find my presentation useful, but I have learned to accept my worries as simply part of the process. As with anything that moves me outside my comfort zone, it’s both challenging and really gratifying to effectively share my knowledge and enthusiasm with others.

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I market myself authentically. I speak and write frequently, and I’m known for having an informal, accessible approach. I make sure people see how much I enjoy what I’m doing and that I might be someone they would enjoy working with. I want to attract clients who enjoy what they’re doing and who like working with people who also enjoy what they’re doing. And if my style rubs a prospective client the wrong way, I assume that we probably wouldn’t have been a good fit.

I approach each project with curiosity. One of the benefits of regularly working on bonsai research projects is knowing that no two projects are the same. My initial phone calls with clients are always open-ended, and we’re often both surprised at how the scope or focus of the project changes after our conversation. Part of my value is being a sounding board and talking through what my client’s desired outcome is and how I can best help facilitate that outcome. I’m not looking for opportunities to up-sell; I’m looking for ways I can contribute the most.

I check my ego at the door. My clients bring me into a project because they need to get something done, or understand a market better, or provide better value to their clients. They’re only going to be happy if, at the end of our engagement, they were able to accomplish whatever it was they set out to do. If that means I need to rework my deliverable, or refocus my approach, or (sometimes) put in some unbillable time to make sure my client is happy, I’ll do it. Happy clients mean repeat business and referrals to other great clients.

I use flat-fee pricing. I want my clients to feel like they aren’t taking a big risk when they engage me, and I want them to know that I’m confident in my ability to meet their needs. In my experience, agreeing on a flat fee for the project serves as a promise to my clients that I’ll hold up my end of the agreement. Of course, I make sure I build in a little wiggle room in the budget; this helps me feel generous with my time if it takes a few back-and-forths for my client to feel happy with the final deliverable.

TL;DR version: I look at every engagement from my client’s point of view, and try to discern what they are most concerned about and how I can make the biggest contribution. Doing whatever it takes to keep a (reasonable) client delighted means I look forward to every engagement I’m on.

The post How to attract and keep GREAT clients appeared first on Bates Information Services.

First, make sure you know what your prospective clients need, value and will pay you well for. If you haven’t conducted at least a half dozen informational conversations, in which you were able to learn what your market needs and how your prospective clients talk about that need, then you need to invest the time and energy into these essential conversations. See my blog post Making Yourself Irreplaceable for lots more resources on how to conduct insightful informational conversations.

If your problem is that you are getting inquiries about your services but none of them are turning into sales, then see my blog post Getting to ‘Yes’ for thoughts on what might be amiss in your approach or your market.

Next, I advise taking a three-prong approach to building your word-of-mouth referral network and establishing yourself as a trusted adviser.

• Start building your profile as a thought leader by posting well-written, thoughtful posts on your blog and on LinkedIn every week, based on the insights you gleaned from your informational conversations about your market’s biggest concerns. Yes, post every week. It takes time and focus, but it’s one of the most effective ways to establish your reputation. For a metric to indicate that you’re on the right track, aim to have at least one person reach out to you to inquire about your services within three months of when you start these focused, weekly posts.

• Identify local face-to-face networking events and attend at least two a month. The goal is not just to build your network but to practice your one-sentence intro and your 3-sentence story about your business until you’ve found ways to introduce yourself that engage the listener and convey what you most want to be known for. (For more about your one-sentence intro, see my blog post The Anti-Elevator Speech. For more about your three-sentence marketing vignette, see my blog post Marketing Vignettes.) Have as your goal for each event that you make at least three new contacts and you identify an intro and marketing vignette that kept a conversation going and that made you memorable to the other person

• Join one association where you believe you are most likely to find people who need, value and will pay you well for your expertise. Reach out to the association president, introduce yourself, and ask about where they need your specific skills. Focus on finding a member-facing volunteer role and be an outstanding volunteer. Watch for opportunities to present a webinar to the members on a topic you’re expert in. Be enthusiastic and genuine, and focus on how you can most effectively support the association’s goals. Have as your goal to understand the association (and your market) well enough that within 12 months you can get a speaking engagement at their annual conference, a regular column in their newsletter, or a leadership position in a member-facing capacity.

Granted, none of these approaches offers a quick-fix solutions to cash flow issues, but they will enable you to build a strong, steady business based on clients who know and value your expertise and who respect your thought leadership.

The post Help—I still don’t have any clients! appeared first on Bates Information Services.

In my experience, failure to convert interest into engagement is often caused by some combination of the following factors.

Nice vs. necessary

You are talking with someone whose need doesn’t match their ability or interest in spending money addressing it. Maybe you’re providing a service the person thinks is nice to have but not mission-critical, or their organization has prioritized other initiatives. Until you are talking about the prospect’s most pressing problem, you probably don’t have their full attention and you won’t get their business.

“Good enough” is good enough

While interested in what you offer, the person is satisfied enough with the status quo. The cost to change their procedures or processes is too high – in terms of time, energy or personnel. If you aren’t offering the prospect something that is clearly superior to the current situation, you can’t make a sale. This is particularly true when you are offering a service or product already available to your client through internal sources. Consider conducting some reality-check interviews to find out what your prospective clients really need and that would make you irreplaceable.

“You cost HOW MUCH?!?”

You are talking with someone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t have the budget to pay your professional rate. It is tempting to reduce your rate, particularly if you are talking with a prospect with whom you would like to work. Resist that urge; a client who always requires a discounted rate or who complains that you are so much more expensive than so-and-so will never be a happy client. Make sure you are talking about your prospect’s biggest concerns and focus on the high value you provide. In fact, my approach when pricing myself for a public presentation or keynote is to charge a high enough fee that I lose at least a quarter of the invitations because I exceed their budget. (Of course, I make exceptions when I have other, overriding reasons to speak at the conference – many of the participants are my client base, or the conference is located somewhere I have always wanted to visit.) This pricing philosophy, while not for the faint of heart, results in my knowing what my market will bear and pricing myself at the top of that range.

“Pick me! Pick me!”

While you are talking about a service that the person is in immediate need of, your prospect isn’t convinced you are the person to address that need. You may be giving the impression that you are desperate for work, that you don’t fully understand the client’s business, or that you are more concerned with getting paid than with your client’s outcome. If you spend your time talking about your background or expertise instead of asking questions to better understand your client’s needs, you’ve demonstrated to your client that, yes, it’s all about you. Good networkers know that the less you talk and the more questions you ask of the other party, the more the other person leaves the conversation thinking you were a fabulous conversationalist. And, of course, you learn a lot more about your prospect’s needs and priorities when you are listening then when you are talking.

As you evaluate the effectiveness of your various marketing strategies – and yes, you do have tangible metrics and quarterly goals, right? – notice which efforts are not resulting in new revenue, and consider whether you need to change who you’re addressing your messages to and whether your message is addressing what your prospects need, value and will pay for.

[This originally appeared in the AIIP Connections blog of the Association of Independent Information Professionals.]

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#1. Consulting is what people do when they’re between jobs
In my experience, you can’t both start a business and look for a job; either you are focused on finding what your clients need most and how you can meet those needs, or you’re focused on finding who will hire you for your skills.

#2. The services I provided as an employee will be valued by consulting clients
Broadly speaking, employees are paid to maintain processes, while consultants are paid for outcomes. While you may do the same type of work as a consultant as you did as an employee, the focus – and what your client is paying you for – is very different.

#3. I know what my clients need
You don’t yet know what they need, value and will pay you well for, until you have conducted at least a half-dozen reality-check interviews. (tiny.cc/reality-check) I am always surprised by what I learn when I conduct reality-check interviews with my existing clients.

#4. I’ll be able to bill 40 hours a week
At least half your time will ALWAYS be non-billable. You’ll be doing marketing, administrative work such as paying bills and sending out invoices, more marketing, professional development such as attending the AIIP conference (aiip.org/conference), and more marketing. I’ve been in business for over a quarter century, and I still spend at least a third of my time marketing.

#5. I won’t have to work as hard / I can do this part-time
It takes 400 hours of solid, unbillable work before you can expect your first client. If you’re only working part-time, it will take that much longer to get your first paying client. See more at tiny.cc/400-hours.

#6. Once I’ve written my business plan, I’ll be set
Business plan? What business plan? Yes, while it’s important to know where you’re going, it is also critical to have short-term metrics that keep you focused. What are your measurable 12-week outcomes? What do you need to do to get that first (or next) paying client?

#7. I should make cold calls to generate business
Wrong, wrong, wrong. For starters, keep in mind that no one appreciates or trusts cold callers. More importantly, you will be more successful if you fish for clients with a net rather than a line. Rather than chasing after individual prospects, focus on broad efforts that attract the kind of clients you most want to work with.

#8. I should focus on finding retainer clients
Nope. Retainer clients aren’t good clients, for a number of reasons. They pay for process, not outcome, so they tend to be price-sensitive and focused on your time as opposed to your value. And they pigeonhole you; they see you as one cog in a larger operation, which tends to keep your billable rate low. And they lull you into complacency, as you get accustomed to that steady payment, until the day that they quit using you and you are suddenly faced with no income.

#9. I should price myself low to start out
You’ll wind up with price-sensitive clients who only value you for your low price. You’ll get low-value projects from them, and they will only refer you to other low-budget clients.

#10. I can do this on my own
You may be a solopreneur, but you’re not alone! AIIP offers resources that help you succeed – accountability buddies, mentors, a lively discussion list, virtual events where we talk about our biggest challenges, and opportunities to build your skills.

The post The top 10 myths of starting a consulting business appeared first on Bates Information Services.

Be curious. Read news sources that cover trends in your industry and reflect on what impacts new developments will have. Attend conferences; the conversations and serendipitous meetings enhance your credibility and expand your horizons.
Be a story-teller. Have a big perspective and communicate it effectively. Offer ideas that can be shared and acted upon.
Be generous. Share your time and insights with others, being mindful that generosity is always eventually rewarded.
Be yourself. You have a unique set of experiences and perspectives; own your own style.
Be brave. Put yourself out there, share your point of view, talk about the issues you care about passionately. Dare to be unique!
Be consistent. Earning your reputation as a thought leader takes time. Set meaningful goals for measuring your effectiveness and fine-tune your efforts as you learn what resonates with your client base.
Be human. Acknowledge when you make mistakes; share when you doubts about your own perspective. Keep yourself from seeing a situation as black and white; look for the nuances.

Plus a bonus trait, thanks to John Hutson. Be prolific: Blog frequently with content that showcases your expertise. This helps elevate your name in search results so that your prospective clients can find you.

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Enjoy life! We’ll manage the details

Like my favorite tagline from The Cleaning Fairies, We give you your weekends back, and Old Dominion Freight Line’s Helping the world keep promises, it focuses on why their clients would use them, not what they do or how they do it. Landscaping, housecleaning and trucking are three service professions that can be seen as commodities, just as many solopreneurs can feel like they are competing with the cheapest alternative on the web. By focusing on their commitment to their customers’ outcomes, they’re able to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

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I asked her for her thoughts on how she was able to learn so much from her time with her prospects. She told me:

My insights came from having face-to-face open-ended conversations with highly-qualified prospective clients. My approach was to have no expectations for the conversation; we were just going to get to know each other. At the end of each of these conversations, my prospect would bring up a big pain point that I knew I could address. It was never something I could have anticipated beforehand but something that came up organically during our conversation. I finally realized that I have done so many things in my career that, if we talk long enough, we’ll find something in my background that is an exact fit for what they need. I can’t guess what that will be until I have the conversation. I can solve so many pain points but until we schmooze for a while, I don’t know what their pain points are.

I think the key takeaway for me, the behavior I’d try to repeat given similar opportunities, is to be willing to simply hang out with people and let them talk, enjoying their company and their stories, and sharing my own when they resonated with what the other person was talking about. It might happen that we stumble on a need that I had the background to meet, but also possibly not.  But the true goal in that first conversation wasn’t to sell a service or land a client, but rather to create the basis of a long-term relationship that could evolve into a client relationship based on our mutual understanding of and respect for each other’s professional stories and circumstances.

Following this, she and I recorded a half-hour conversation going into more detail about how she was able to learn to see the world from her clients’ point of view and to identify and challenge her unknown unknowns. Listen to our conversation here. (Apologies that the audio on my end of the conversation is a little muddy. Fortunately, Kim came through clearly.) And read the transcript of our conversation here.

One of my favorite lines? “What am I missing? Would this be valuable, and if not, why? You’re looking for answers that tell you that you have an incorrect assumption, that you haven’t vetted your assumptions and have simply taken them for granted (which generally we all do).”

See more of my tips for managing your clients.

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