Balancing Act

As business owners we have all been there. We have conceived the perfect business. The right services. The right pricing. Over time, we have become experts in our field.

Yet for all of our planning and executing, the phones are silent. Clients are not racing through your doors to see your latest and greatest offerings. Usually it’s moments like these when we are tempted to seek out clients that are distant to us. We might be tempted to rent a mailing list or spend money on advertising. In essence, these are “Hail Mary” tactics.

The truth is that many business owners and many sales professionals really have no clue about what customers are really looking for when making buying decisions. Instead, most sales professionals that I talk with are simply casting about. They are throwing their sales against a wall to see what sticks. This idea of going out and finding prospects is all too common and at the same time usually less than effective. So how do we avoid being in that situation again?

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Well, we learn how to attract our ideal client. This is a very different concept than pursuing prospects. Yet every successful business that we have worked with has achieved their success by understanding and implementing this simple but important client attraction formula.
If you have read this far, you are probably wondering if I am ever going to reveal the formula.

Wait no longer.

Being Real + Getting Out = Client Attraction

I told you this was a simple formula.

Now I will describe these two components and give you a couple of examples.

What most successful business people realize is that clients do not focus as much on your expertise as they do on the type of person you are.

There is a pithy platitude that goes:

“People do business with those that they know, like and trust.”

While this may not be a big shock, you will notice that the platitude does not say something like the smartest widget maker will be the wealthiest.

There are countless examples of people making a buying decision based on familiarity instead of outright superiority. Banking is a great example. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, all outpace some of the smaller banks and credit unions that offer better service, etc. In part the decision is based on the fact that we know these institutions. Heck, they are on almost every street corner.

In a very practical sense, our expertise is typically assumed.

The real difference between one business and its competition is how they relate and care for their client.
Customers enjoy working with genuine and authentic people.

We have a dear client, George Fox who is the President and Creative Genius behind NFW. To be certain, NFW is not a name that instantly comes to mind when you think of luxury watches. It should, but it does not yet.

Like others in the industry, NFW makes a superior watch. I could go on and on about the quality of materials, the painstaking engineering and design process, the craftsmanship that goes into each watch and the like.

While the designs are very striking, (I have a Blok and a Vector myself) one of the reasons that NFW has cultivated such a loyal following is because of the man behind company.

George Fox takes the time to relate to the client. He communicates with his clients. He gives of himself and the company in a way that develops lasting customer relationships. He has raving fans (myself included) because his customers relate to George as a person.

This is but one example. I know from experience that our clients choose to work with Rosen Professional Services because of Tracey and myself. We seem to make a connection that lasts. There are many other firms that offer similar types of services but the clients who hire us are attracted to the high touch personalized service that we offer.

So the second ingredient to client attraction is getting face time. It is almost impossible to attract clients if you are stuck behind a desk.
I know this from experience from when I was a client relationship officer at a wealth management firm.

People simply have to have the opportunity to get to know you and what you represent. In this sense, it is almost like dating. If the goal is to attract clients, then you have to get out and meet people.

My recommendation to many of my clients is to actually schedule networking time. At least a couple of hours per week. You can be creative and look for different groups and activities to network with or you might want to focus on a particular group. I think the most important thing is to pick some networking activities at which you feel like you can be yourself. Give people the opportunity to know who you are and what you are about.

If you put into action these two ideas of letting people know who you are and getting out in the world, you will find that you will attract clients more naturally with less effort.

For more information, please do not hesitate to contact Rosen Professional Services at (203) 404-3974.