Grow Your Client Base – The L. E. A. D. Approach to Client Acquisition

We recently introduced the concept of holistic lead generation as part of developing our L. E. A. D. approach for helping you to grow your client base. Here’s a quick refresher on what it means to take the L. E. A. D. for client acquisition:

• Listen – to your target audience and they will tell you how to convert them.
• Educate – your audience on solutions to their pain points.
• Adapt – to the needs of a broad client base.
• Develop – services or products that meet specific needs.

These steps will become the foundation for a fully integrated, well-conceived approach to generating leads that will address the needs of your target audience. This will enable you to communicate with them as individuals, not as a vague, superficial, poorly defined collection of personality types.

After all, you surely know (and dislike) how it feels to be pigeonholed into some generalized category by other internet marketers. If you resent their lack of effort to appeal to your needs as a real person, your prospects have every right to feel the same.

Holistic Marketing Example

(Yeah, we can, and get to, use “holistic” to describe just about anything these days. Thank you online coaching industry!!! LOL)

A great example of this approach is the way some grocery chains are marketing themselves. One chain in Rocky Mountain Region named King Soopers (owned by Kroger), regularly mails packages of coupons to customers who use their “Sooper Card”. However, these coupon packages are not for random products. Oh no, they are targeted to some of the specific products each card holder buys. In other words, if your family prefers Coke – you will not receive coupons for Pepsi. (And vice versa.)

This is a fantastic way to build customer loyalty, because it shows a concern for each individual’s wants and needs. Even better – the entire process can be fully automated. (Click here to see how we can help.)

Lead Generation Strategy

If you know anything about us here at YOMT, you know we believe in taking a strategic approach to everything: website development, online marketing, direct marketing, email marketing, what have you. The same is true for generating leads and the reason for that is simple – people expect more today!

And, you know what? They should! After all, they invite you into their homes, offices, and lives every day – virtually. Respecting that matters and, if you hope to be successful at finding new clients, you must always keep that top of mind.

So, with the foundation of your strategic L. E. A. D. approach in place, what should you focus on next?

• Avoid stereotypes about your target audience – Just like in the example above, it is NOT the case that everyone prefers Coke to Pepsi. If all you have to offer is Coke(ish), then you’d best focus your strategy on those who love that soft drink and STOP trying to market to Pepsi lovers!
• Stay away from generalizations about their wants and needs – As we mentioned in a post about creating opt-in gifts, nutrition coaches must always be conscious of the fact that not all prospects who mention weight loss as a goal are actually that narrowly focused. Many will instead be more interested in weight maintenance or healthy eating, which require a different set of standards for success – and for attracting and marketing to them.
• Don’t offer superficial solutions for their pain points – It turns out, not every person who has trouble reaching goals is bad at setting them. No, some have time management issues, while others have problems with focusing or with setting priorities. Still others simply take on too many responsibilities and find themselves unable meet their self-inflicted demands. Each of these people will be seeking different solutions, which means you must offer a variety approaches for coping and improving their ability to achieve their goals.

Truly, there are no one-size-fits all solutions for anything these days!

Make a Conscious Commitment to Serving Your Clients

Your commitment to satisfying the needs of your clients – of making them your only priority – is what will determine not only your long-term business success, but also the short-term results of your client acquisition strategy. This means your mindset must also be in the right place, and we have a few tips for helping with that.

• Do NOT offer solutions prematurely – Never assume you know what your prospects need before they tell you. Until you know what they consider their individual pain points or needs, you do them and yourself a disservice by offering advice before they are ready to receive it.
• Practice active listening for clues to closing – Far too many sales people (and coaches) forget to listen. The most successful sales people will tell you that every client they work with literally tells them how to close the deal, if only they listen actively.
• It’s all about them – Got invoices to pay; inventory to get rid of; sub-contractors to keep busy so you don’t lose them? So what! This is not about you – ever! All they really want is to find someone to hear them before offering any sort of advice, coaching, or training. (Yeah, they really just want you to shut up and listen to them.)

In our next post in this series on our L. E. A. D. approach to client acquisition, we’ll be diving a little deeper into more of the practical steps you can take to effectively generate leads for your business. Stay tuned!

Are we helping you with these posts on lead generation? Can you see us making progress toward a goal that will truly help you create and implement a client acquisition strategy? We would love your feedback so please, feel free to comment below.

Are you looking for more lead generation tips, email marketing ideas, help with your online marketing strategy, or other marketing ideas?  Get in touch with the YOMT Team today.