15 Easy Ways To Let Clients Find You

Are you struggling to grow your business? Do you hate to sell yourself to prospective clients?

The secret is to parlay your expertise into great business leads through getting published, speeches and seminars. Use writing and public speaking to position yourself as an expert, obtain valuable publicity, build your reputation and even promote a favorite cause or issue.

You probably already know that writing and public speaking, albeit a struggle for many, is the best way to build credibility. But did you know that speeches and seminars are also the best way to keep your pipeline filled with qualified prospects? There is a proven process for marketing with integrity and getting an up to 400% to 2000% return on your marketing investment. At the New Client Marketing Institute we call it the Educating Expert Model, and the most successful professional service and consulting firms use it to get more clients than they can handle. The findings of our 8-year, $2 million research study about how the most successful professional and consulting firms use this model were published in our book, Client Seduction.

For starters, don’t waste your marketing dollars on advertising and brochures that merely assert your competence. The best proactive lead generation strategy is to regularly demonstrate your expertise by giving informative and entertaining talks in front of targeted groups of potential new clients. The trick is knowing who to contact to get booked as a speaker developing a topic that will draw the right audience.

Want proof? In 1991 a random survey of the top 1,000 U.S. law firms found that 89 percent held at least one client seminar per year. In 1999, 94 percent of law firms were regularly holding seminars. Lawyers at the top 1,000 firms ranked seminars as the most effective tool for cross-selling and gaining new clients (Source: FGI Research, 1999).

Here are the top 15 places for the professional or consultant who speaks to find or create a perfect audience:

1. Small-scale seminars and group consultations that you host with 4 to 8 in attendance
2. Public seminars that you or others promote and charge admission to attend
3. In-house workshops that pay you to present to one company only
4. Local and national association meetings where you are a break out session speaker, panelist or a roundtable moderator
5. Radio and television shows that interview you for how-to advice
6. CEO peer group meetings like Vistage (formerly TEC), Inner Circle and Renaissance
7. College courses and extended education programs, like the ones offered through university extension programs
8. Public workshop companies like The Learning Annex that pay you a percentage of the gate
9. Chamber of commerce events, from monthly breakfasts to special workshops and seminars
10. Teleseminars and Webinars that you put on or that others invite you to speak at
11. Promoter 50/50 seminars and expos where you are invited to speak and sell an information product and split the proceeds with the person staging the event
12. Pre-recorded audio and video products that you sell on your Web site
13. Service club speeches to groups like the Rotary Club and Lion’s Club
14. Multi-level marketing organizations that pull together people who sell for them
15. Churches that offer public programs

Here are some of the key benefits of promoting through public speaking:

 Allows your message to be heard above the noise of all the other professionals and consultants

 Systematizes your marketing with a proactive approach that is simple and affordable to implement

 Makes it easier for your clients and business advocates to refer potential clients to you

 Creates multiple streams of income because prospects actually pay for you to market to them

 Produces all-help, no-hype marketing you actually feel proud to communicate

 Leverages your time so you get more results in less time

Getting Paid to Market Your Practice

Is there another way to woo and win clients, position yourself as an expert and get paid for it in the process? Consider the humble self-published tips booklet.

What is a tips booklet?
• Tips booklets educate a target audience with tips, techniques, or strategies.
• Tips booklets have simple design, with minimal graphics, photos, and colors.
• Tips booklets measure 3 ½" x 8 ½" and fit in a standard business envelope.
• Tips booklets are 16 to 24 pages.
• Tips booklets typically sell for $1 to $5.

“Tips booklets are an imaginative way to promote your business at low cost and high impact,” says Paulette Ensign, who has been dubbed the “Booklet Queen.”

As founder of San Diego-based Tips Products International (www.tipsbooklets.com), Ensign works with individuals and organizations to help transform their knowledge into tips booklets to use for marketing, motivating, and making money. Personally Ensign has sold almost 1 million copies of her booklet, “110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life,” without spending a penny on advertising. She has students who have now surpassed her own sales results.

“How many times have you heard the same sound bites come out of your mouth to your clients, prospects, and audiences, almost boring yourself to tears in the process?” says Ensign. “Imagine generating money directly from those pearls of wisdom that effortlessly trip off your tongue.”

Ensign offers the following 10 steps for getting paid for your tips:

1. Capture those tidbits of information as soon as they come to mind. Jot them down in a notebook or get them into a Word document. They can be in a raw format, with just enough information to jog your thinking about what you mean. There will be time to refine them later.
2. Let a couple weeks go by, allowing most of the information to surface in your thoughts. It rarely happens by declaring two hours on a Thursday afternoon to sit at your computer to think of it all.
3. Refine and organize the tips. Divide them into categories and edit the text. Use a writing style similar to what you are reading here.
4. Be sure to include your contact details so readers can easily reach you. Add a brief section about your background so people will know your qualifications for presenting the information.
5. Hire a graphic designer to make the words look good on the page. Your completed product will be a tips booklet measuring about 3 ½ inches by 8 ½ inches when printed. The designer will create their part of the finished product as a PDF file.
6. Send the PDF file from your graphic designer to a printing company. Do an initial print run of 1,000 copies.
7. Think about who can benefit from using your booklet to promote their own product, service, or cause. Send them a sample of your booklet and a cover letter describing some of the ways they can increase their sales or further their cause by using your booklet as a promotional tool.
8. Consider corporations, associations, publications, and any other group that seems appropriate for the topic of your booklet. Reach out to as many of them as you can, on whatever budget of time and money you have available to you.
9. Realize that every time one of the large-quantity buyers sends out your booklet to promote their own product, service, or cause, they are also marketing your business. Your contact information in the booklet allows the reader to reach you directly.
10. Enjoy the expansion of your customer base and your checking account. You are now reaching a larger audience than you are likely to do single-handedly, thanks to the large-quantity buyers of your booklet. And you have been paid by your buyers to reach those new people.

“Those sound bites you have been saying for years will now be reaching far beyond your current clients, helping your buyers, their clients, and your own business,” says Ensign. “It doesn’t get any better than getting paid for your marketing materials.”

Play The Match Game To Find All The Clients You Need

Remember that old TV game show “The Match Game” with celebs like Charles Nelson Reilly, Fannie Flagg and Richard Dawson? They still show reruns on the game show channel (yes, there is such a channel--what do you expect from someone who was on Jeopardy! and Family Feud, but that’s another story).

Here’s how you can fill in the blanks and win clients. One of our mantras is “Free Resources.” You need to demonstrate your competence by giving away information that proves you know your stuff. Most people, we know, hate writing and speaking and avoid it like you know what. But you’ve got to have good content for everything else in your lead generation system, and you’ll need a good few solid topics to get you going. These topics, or headlines, will become the basis for your seminars, your articles, your columns, your speeches—everything you do.

How do you make a gripping headline for a prospect that’s focused like a laser beam on his or her frustrations, worries, and concerns? If you start looking at magazine covers, you’ll recognize these “recipes.” They’re everywhere. Thanks to Joan Stewart at the Publicity Hound for most of these headlines. (For more free publicity for your professional services business, sign up for "The Publicity Hound's Tips of the Week," an electronic newsletter. Subscribe at www.PublicityHound.com and receive by autoresponder the handy list "89 Reasons to Send a News Release.")

Here are ideas for your next article headline or speech topic. First, determine your expertise in a word or two. Next, read these headlines and put a star next to about ten that really appeal to you; then go back and fill in the blanks.

A Quiz: Test Your Blank Smarts

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5 ways to improve your persuasion power

If you write a book (or have a ghostwriter do one for you), build marketing into the book. Marketing is a process, not something you do at the end. So be persuasive in your marketing materials. To help prospective clients choose you, give them a persuasive mental shortcut. You can gain trust with clients through a proven persuasive secret called social proof.

With more than one quarter of a million copies sold worldwide, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD has established itself as the most important book on persuasion ever published. In this book that I highly recommend, Professor Cialdini explains why some people are remarkably persuasive.
The book explains six psychological secrets behind our powerful impulse to comply and how to skillfully use these tactics. The book is organized around these six principles of consistency, reciprocation, authority, liking, scarcity and social proof.

The principle of social proof states that one shortcut we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. As a rule, we will make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than contrary to it. This is why television sit-coms have canned laughter tracks and commercials use man-in-the street testimonial interviews.

The reason social proof is so persuasive is because we are all so information overloaded. Professor Cialdini says his research evidence suggests that the ever-accelerating pace and informational crush of modern life will make automated decision making more and more prevalent.

“You and I exist in an extraordinarily complicated stimulus environment, easily the most rapidly moving and complex that has ever existed on this planet,” writes Professor Cialdini. “To deal with it, we need shortcuts. We can’t be expected to recognize and analyze all the aspects in each person, event, and situation we encounter in even one day. We haven’t the time energy or capacity for it.”
How should professionals and consultants use social proof? The answer is testimonials with measurable results, and here are five ways to do it:

1. Interview past clients to obtain testimonial quotes you can use. Sometimes it is best to get an outside expert like a public relations professional or freelance writer to help you with this. You want to drill down to get measurable results. These include raw numbers (increased sales by $100,000), percentages (improved retention rates to 70%, which is triple the industry average) or time (accomplished more in six months than in previous three years).

2. Get permission to use the person’s whole name, title and company name. Just saying “Sally from Kalamazoo” or Bob from “Cucamonga” just doesn’t build trust.
3. Ask for testimonial letters on client letterhead that you can reprint and use in proposal packages being given to clients. The more you have to choose from the better.

4. Ask clients who are willing to be your advocate to record their testimonial stories. One way to do this easily is to hop on a free telephone bridge line and have a service like Audio Strategies record the call. This can than be used as an audio file on your Web site or turned into a low-cost audio CD that you can give potential clients.

5. Pepper your speeches, seminars and presentations with accounts of individuals who have benefited from your service. Always make the person seem likable, describe the problem in brief and give a measurable result you helped achieve. One of my clients said he helped grow businesses. This became so much stronger when he was able to say he helped grow business by as much as 500%.

How To Write and Get Prospects to Read It

Can your writing grab attention like this?

A Harvard professor began his series of lectures with a sentence
that grabbed his students by the throat: "Caesar Borgia murdered his brother-in-law for the love of his sister, who was the mistress of their father, the Pope."

How to grab a reader’s attention was one of the lessons I’ve learned by reading David Ogilvy, who Time magazine called “the most sought-after wizard in the advertising business.” Ogilvy, who lived from 1911 to 1999, made it a mission to codify what works in persuasive communications.

Without the reader’s attention, all is lost. “You can’t save souls in an empty church,” is another piece of wisdom from Ogilvy, who many call “The Father of Modern Advertising.”

In his books Confessions of An Advertising Man and Ogilvy on Advertising, he demonstrated his expertise by giving away valuable information. Oglivy told readers how to solve their communications problems in general; many became clients and hired him for his specific advice.

In early 2004, Adweek magazine asked people in the business “Which individuals—alive or dead—made you consider pursuing a career in advertising?” Ogilvy topped the list. And the same result came when students of advertising were surveyed.

Ogilvy credited Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising as the book that changed his life. Ogilvy was a scientist of persuasion, and all of us who seek new clients can learn a thing or two from his experiments.

As you write articles, book chapters, blogs, speeches and seminars, here are some lessons from Ogilvy to keep in mind.

1. On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the rest of the copy.

2. The headlines which work best are those which promise the reader a benefit. Make your promise specific.

3. Headlines can also deliver news, or offer a service, or tell a significant story, or recognize a problem, or quote a satisfied customer.

4. If your service is the kind which is only bought by a small group of people, put a word in your headline which will flag them down, like CEOs, health care, or women over thirty-five.

5. Specifics work better than generalities. If you can say increase profits by 37% or can save executives a day a week, by all means do it. Use percentages, time elapsed, dollars saved.

6. Body copy is seldom read by more than 10 percent of the readers. But that 10 percent consists of prospects who are interested enough in what you do to take the trouble to read about it.

7. Winston Churchill said, “Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.”

8. If you don’t have one, get a toll free number and always include it for people to respond.

9. Close your body copy with your offer, your Web address and phone number.

10. Captions should appear under all your photographs. Twice as many people read them as read body copy. And use captions to sell. The best captions are mini-advertisements in themselves.

Ogilvy was a master at marketing with a book. His mentor was a master at marketing with a book. Take a lesson from the masters and start marketing your business with a book. If you can write an article, you can write a book. If you can’t write an article, hire someone to do it for you.

How to turn public speaking into clients

Publishing a book leads to speaking. Even though surveys consistently show that people would rather visit their in-laws than speak in front of a group, speeches and presentations are absolutely essential to long-term success for professionals and consultants who want to increase revenues with new clients.

To turn speeches into clients, I recommend you read From Contact to Contract by Dianna Booher, CEO of Booher Consultants (a communication training firm that counts among its client list 25 of America’s 50 largest corporations and 227 of the Fortune 500). Here are just three of her valuable tips.


1. Make Subtle Mentions, Not Blatant Plugs

A conference organizer’s greatest fear is that a session will turn into a blatant sales pitch. “Your audience will protest loudly if your speech becomes a sales pitch,” advises Booher. Still, you can (and should) create subtle ways to mention your services and organization. Choose case-based anecdotes to illustrate key points that showcase your expertise. Put descriptive slogans on your handouts and other reference material. And be sure to have the person who introduces you mention your organization and establish your credibility.

2. Provide Multiple Avenues to Your Front Door

When you do land a speaking engagement, you must give prospective clients in the audience as many ways as possible to contact you afterwards. In all likelihood, Booher points out, you won’t be able to speak with each one or answer detailed questions immediately after the session. Instead, offer several methods to let them get in touch later. Put your contact information on slides, handouts, and invitations to future events. Give them a good reason to visit your Web site (offer a download of your slides or other free information). Make it easy and beneficial for the true prospects in your audience to seek you out.

3. Be Stingy With Your Business Cards

When a prospect asks you for your card after the presentation, turn the tables unexpectedly and ask for their card instead. Why? Because if you give them your card, you’re dependent on them taking the next step. Booher points out that when you have their card, you’re in control of the follow-up process. Furthermore, she says, you should avoid exchanging cards, too, because that gives a prospect reason to say “I have your contact information; if I have a need, I’ll be in touch.” What you want, of course, is the opportunity to help them understand they have the need in the first place.

Places To Hear Henry Speak in San Diego and Miami

PRSA 2009 International Conference: Delivering Value
November 7–10, 2009 in San Diego, CA
San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina
Sponsored by Public Relations Society of America
For more information visit http://www.prsa.org/ic2009/index.html
Thrive in a challenging economy. The PRSA 2009 International Conference presents the hottest topics, including social media, crisis communications, branding and sustainability. Conference is just weeks away. Register today and secure your spot.
Learn everything you need to know in four jam-packed days of 80+ Professional Development sessions that give resourceful career strategies and real-world advice.
Network with the best and brightest—greet old friends and make new ones—when you join thousands of communications professionals in beautiful San Diego.
Henry’s November 10 workshops at the conference:
Way Beyond Research 101 — Better Engagement Through “Voice of the Stakeholder”
Henry J. DeVries, APR, marketing faculty, UC San Diego Extension
Chris Stiehl, marketing faculty, UC San Diego Extension
How can you truly understand another person's pains and priorities? Can you really learn how to think like a stakeholder? Learn techniques that companies like Cisco, Palm and Johnson & Johnson are employing to organize data in the way stakeholders think. Understand how to conduct a dozen in-depth interviews that will yield more actionable information than facilitating sessions with 70 to 100 focus group participants. Through case studies, learn the five key listening techniques to understand the pain of the stakeholders. Walk away with a template you can use to create guides for stakeholder interviews.
Dramatically Increase Productivity by Slaying the E-mail Monster
Henry J. DeVries, APR, marketing faculty, UC San Diego Extension
Michael Valentine, principal, Coffman Valentine & Associates
Lynn Coffman, principal, Coffman Valentine & Associates
This is not your father's time management. Based on programs taught to executives at the University of Toyota, attendees will learn how to eliminate up to eight hours of wasted effort each week. Take away a checklist of steps for handling e-mails, task lists, appointments and contacts. Learn the four things to do when an e-mail arrives, and how to invest 30 minutes in configuring and utilizing Microsoft Outlook (and other programs) to better support your work.
Effective Seminar/Conference Marketing
January 11-12, 2010
Courtyard Miami Beach Oceanfront
in Miami Beach, Forida
Sponsored by Clemson University
For more information visit http://www.clemson.edu/esm/
Learn tricks of the trade used by some of the biggest players in the seminar promotion business ¬ straight from the man who mentored them himself…

Ralph Elliott of Clemson University presents: “How to Promote Any Seminar or Event for Maximum Payback”

Putting on a successful seminar or event isn’t easy. There’s a ton of details to consider… countless bases to cover… changing budgets to deal with. And a big bottom line to shoot for.

Even the smallest misfire can spell trouble in lost registrants, unhappy attendees or unexpected expenditures.

Your organization's reputation is on the line,¬ maybe even your own job.

But you already know that. What you might not know is this:

There are scores of little-known ways to simplify everything involved in promoting any event. Proven tricks-of-the-trade that come only from years of experience, lots of smart testing, hard-won victories and even embarrassing defeats.

As with just about any endeavor simplicity breeds success ¬ in happy customers, repeat business and bigger profits.

Plan now to learn what those insider tricks are from a recognized expert and educator who will clue you in on everything from smart, efficient execution of direct marketing fundamentals to sophisticated selling strategies.

Whether you’re a newcomer or a veteran at filling seats at any event ¬ large or small, niche topic or general interest, high-ticket or low ¬ you’ll come away from a Ralph Elliott presentation with new and effective ways to pack the house and show a healthy profit.

Sound interesting? You bet. Sound easy? It is not; this is 12 hours of focused training with practical examples, shared experiences, and networking ideas.

Come ready to roll up your sleeves for two high pay-back days learning the ins and outs of promoting your next seminar, workshop, or full-blown conference. You will take away the savvy and support you need to…
• Tweak existing promotion models to crack that elusive break-even bar
• Start off at break-even if you are new to the seminar/conference promotion business
• Tailor your message and image to fit your audience, whether your offering costs thousands or $100 or less.
Or scrap your shop-worn promotion model altogether and leave with a brand new plan that has a fresh look and feel - more compelling benefits, a reposition pitch with a sweeter offer, a rock- solid guarantee, and an incredibly simple sign-up process.

Call Ralph Elliott at 864.710.2815 if you have any questions or e mail elliot@clemson.edu (notice one “t” in the e mail address).

Plan now to get the "ahas" you need to lower cost and raise your ROI, crank up your "buzz," simplify sign-up, repackage your benefits of attending so that people nearly beak down your door to register! Get the how to techniques and tactics to send event registrations through the roof.


About Henry DeVries

Henry DeVries is the marketing with a book expert. Along with his best-selling books -- Self-Marketing Secrets, Client Seduction and Pain Killer Marketing -- the buzz building tools of Henry DeVries have been used to dramatically increase marketing results and leverage budgets for more than a decade. In addition to his own writing, he has helped dozens of clients become authors through mentoring or by ghost writing the books for them.
Henry speaks to thousands of executives each year, teaching them new ways to maximize revenues and increase lead generation results through marketing with a book. Henry is also the Career and Workplace Editor for the San Diego News Network (www.sdnn.com) and the founder of the New Client Marketing Institute (www.newclientmarketing.com), a research and training firm that focuses on the latest trends in lead generation for professionals, consultants, and entrepreneurs.
In the past two years he as helped the continuing education arm of UC San Diego grow enrollments in certificate programs by 50%. He is responsible for public relations for 4,600 classes that annually attract 54,000 enrollees and revenue of $35 million. Formerly president of an Ad Age 500 advertising and public relations agency, he teaches public relations and is assistant dean for external affairs at UC San Diego Extension (www.extension.ucsd.edu).