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