Jeff Howell: Existing Clients Are Key To Growth

Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Jeff Howell, and I’m coming to you with our first edition, 2022 of Mindset Monday. So the idea here is that every Monday we’ll come in and drop a video and give you some ideas about how to improve your mindset or remind you of some things that you already know. It’s an ongoing process to get dialed in with our mindset and grow as people and business and in life. And I believe that mindset is the key to that. So the first concept that I want to deliver here is that existing clients are your key to growth. This is a great approach to consider whether you don’t have any clients right now, you have a few, you have a bunch of clients like starting with the end in mind, will allow you to deliver your message and the value to your clients in a far more impactful way. For my mindset, I always go in wanting to build relationships with my clients that are going to last three, five, seven, ten years down the road and I tell them that when I’m having the initial conversations and that alone starts to build trust with them because they understand right away that I’m not here just to take their money and bail, which is probably happened to them in the past, but I generally want them to win. That comes through in the language that I use, comes through in the confidence that I have on the call and in the offer that I’m making them again, because I make it very clear that I want to work with them long term.

And in that little snippet of a line alone, it kind of like I think it motivates them to step up to the plate. It challenges them to step up to the plate. And again, it also helps me to deliver the message far more confidently, because if they’re not going to be if they’re not going to be a long term client, what’s the point? Right. I don’t want to waste my time having a client for two or three months and then being in the same position, prospecting again. So the main concept here is that your existing clients are your key to growth and profitability. You have to think about it like you’re sinking the time and effort into getting that client the cost of client acquisition as your maybe money, certainly time spent, invested and going doing the research into the local market, maybe creating a prospecting heat map video or whatever your your process is or your strategy is. But there’s time and effort and resources invested in that. So why not maximize it as much as you can in the relationship that you build? And earning trust is the key to that relationship. Understand that it can take time to build this relationships, but that’s where the true value is.

My mentor, who is a very successful sales person on a national level, says that relationships move at the speed of trust and that can be a very fast speed or a very slow speed. And it would depend on you how good you are in that, in building trust and how receptive they are in receiving that and building the trust back to you in return. So that can be a different process for everybody. But understand, it’s a process. I believe that if you stay in integrity at all times and overdeliver on value, you will win in the end. But realize, number one, it’s a process. And number two, that even if you do everything right on your side, you may not be dealing with the right person like the the prospect or the client may turn out to be not all they’re cracked up to be and that they can’t step up to your level and you have to be okay with that and leave them behind. That’s part of the process. Just just don’t let that trigger your mindset into some kind of a negative loop. Just keep moving forward. Understand that this is part of the process. Think about the relationship that you have with this group. For example, like would you buy from us? Have you are you using the software? Have you bought the software? Would you buy a coaching program from us, from Patrick or I or both of us? Would you would you buy something else? And then what would that cost be? What would your price point be that you would trust to hand over? Like if I offered a sales course for 10,000 bucks, would you buy it? What about for 1000 bucks or 100 bucks or a dollar? You know, that that thought process that’s going through your head right now is the same thought process that’s going through your prospect’s head when you’re offering them whatever your offer is.

And they may not they might not know hardly anything at all about you. So recognize the fact that building that trust is going to be key in getting them to convert and hand you money and there are multiple ways of doing that. I do that primarily by differentiating myself from other marketers and that’s through like a consultative. Sales approach. It’s called where you go in and you really ask a lot of questions. You mold what you’re offering into the solutions that they need and their particular situation and constantly reference back to what they’ve told you about their needs. And even if it’s a if it’s not a good fit, just be confident and straight up saying, hey, this is not going to be a good fit. Because again, for me, it’s like if I can get a trial client or somebody to come on board for some amount of money today, if I know that they’re not going to be able to hang with me long term, it’s kind of a waste of time, really.

It might be a little bit of money in my pocket up front, but I know I’m going to be back in the same place. Re Prospecting this in a very short period of time. So I just differentiate myself from, from other marketers by by doing all of these things. And so one of those ways, another one of those ways, rather, is to keep in touch. You know, I keep in touch with my clients phone, email, text, creating creative systems in the past and constantly up leveling systems on that so that I can track who I’ve talked to and what was said and all of these things so that I can continuously reference back to those those past, those past conversations and remind myself of what went on. One of the examples that I’ve given in some of the lives is a client that I have who wants an airplane. So we almost always mention this in our calls together and it just we send photos back and forth of planes and different things. And he wants the plane. He’s invited me to come up and take a ride in the plane like all of this is anchoring in and solidifying that trust in our relationship that I’m in it to see his goals realize as much as I want my own goals realized. And that goes so far. Like, I can’t I can’t even tell you how much easier it is to talk to somebody when you’ve built that level of trust.

I could call him if I if I were in a bad position in my business and I needed five new clients this week, I could call him and ask him for referrals today, even though I’ve barely delivered anything to him yet. He’s a startup client, so we were creating the assets for him and so we expect those to be producing in the spring. But I would still feel very confident in calling and asking him for a referral even in that situation, because we have this level of trust. So that’s it’s very powerful to do it that way. So my my goal is to do this as much as possible with clients on an ongoing basis. Another way to differentiate, differentiate yourself. And it’s kind of the same concept, but it’s just like post-purchase communication, like reaching out, making sure things are going well, taking all of the data that you can get from the call system that you’re using or any of the data that you get from the leads coming in. How are these clients operating? Are they missing calls? Are they all the calls going to voicemail or are they following up? How presentable are they on the phone when they answer? All of this is going to help you maximize help them maximize the leads that you’re giving to them and let them know that you are in it to win it and that you are dialed in to their business and how they’re doing with it.

And I mean, it just helps increase conversions along the way for sure. So I’ve seen situations where clients are letting every call go to voicemail and then it’s time to pay and they’re like, Well, we’re not converting. And I can either help them try to solve that problem of answering the calls, or if they’re not willing to solve it, then it’s definitely indicative that I’m dealing with not the right client and that I’m going to have to replace them. So when that’s the case, again, I don’t let that get me down or like, you know, get me into a negative mindset loop or anything. It’s just I understand, I recognize that’s part of doing business. So then once you build that trust, you can, you can give them other opportunities to expand their business going into new markets, talking up new locations to kind of plant the seed of growth with them from the very beginning and then give them preferential treatment. Like let them know, like any of these locations are going to be exclusive to you. Like, I don’t do business with two people in the same city and the same niche, even though lead gen only makes sense really if you’re if you have one client, I’m not sure that everybody really.

You know, delivers that message and lets their clients know that you are my only client here and I’m not going to allow anyone else to come in and do business with me and your niche and your city. Give them that exclusivity. Let’s make them feel special. Like let them know that if if there’s somebody else that approaches you, that wants you to do business in that niche or an associated niche, you’re going to give them first, right? Or refusal and and all of that. So that’s another way to continue to build trust. We helped a client last year who was in a tight spot in a personal situation, and we gave them a little bit of leeway on the payment and whatnot. And in exchange for that goodwill, that client gave us about a dozen referrals. So this is how that trust can work. If you really if you really build it and you continuously foster it with clients like next thing you know, like a dozen referrals, I mean, it’s you can, you can change the trajectory of an agency with that many that many clients in new clients if you if you could handle it. So always be building trust and report rapport. So by building relationships you have, you will continuously expand the lifetime value of your client and earn the right in the process to ask them for more money as the lead in volume increases. And I recommend that you plant that seed from the very initial stages of dealing with the client, and then by offering them additional niches and locations as their ability to grow increases.

And then at the very least, like the trusting clients, you’re asking them for referrals to new clients and other niches, whether in the same city or different city or whatever. So those are the ways that you can earn the right to ask them to expand the business with your existing clients and, you know, just informing them about everything, educating them about everything and servicing them in a way that meets their needs. You’ll make it so easy to do business with you make it inspiring to do business with the you’ll inspire them to do to have better conversations and build better relationships with their own clients. And it’ll be it’ll be more fun. And in that way, they’ll want to do more business with you. And you’ll shine so far above 99% of the other marketers coming at them, it’ll be a no brainer to expand upon the business that you’re doing with them. So one thing that I’ve done leading into 2022 and since the beginning of 22 is 2022 is journaling. I’ve been journaling a lot more about, you know, the things that I want in my life and the actions that I’m taking to get there and just getting a lot more clarity about it. And I think that’s really the key, is once you have clarity on how you’re dealing with all of these challenges in business, which are inevitable and which will always be there, the more you’re going to be in, the better you’re going to be able to solve those problems and challenges.

So I have a couple journal prompts here for you, and I challenge you to sit down for a few minutes and write out what this is and answer these questions in some detail. Because just by doing that, even if you never reference it before, you’ll plant that seed in your head and you will create a better mindset around building relationships with your clients. So the journal prompts are, and I’ll drop them in the description for this video. If I could dream up the ideal client relationships, what would that look like? Number two, what could I do today to create those types of relationships? Number three, what would creating these ideal relationships mean to my business? And finally, how would having these relationships give me more confidence to grow the type of business I’m inspired to create? So that’s all I have for you today. I’d love to hear your feedback. If you’re interested or willing to share any of your answers to the journal prompts in the comments, please do so. Let’s go out and have an amazing week and crush it. I look forward to hearing about your wins on Wednesday and I hope you enjoyed the first edition of Mindset Monday with Jeff Howell. Take care.