Getting creative about your clients

Leah Neaderthal0:02

You're listening to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their B2B consulting and coaching businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's so I taught myself how to do it, and I created a sales approach that feels comfortable, makes you feel confident, and that works consistently. And now I teach women how to land higher paying clients in their B2B consulting and coaching businesses. So whether your client contracts are $2,000 or $200,000 if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love, and get paid more than you ever imagined, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Welcome to Smart gets paid.

Leah Neaderthal0:53

Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning into this episode. I hope you're having a good week. I hope you're making some good progress in your business, and I hope you're also taking some time for yourself. So recently, I've been thinking back to my time in corporate when I worked in ad agencies, because I saw something in the news that really kind of took me back. That is that BlackBerry announced that they're going to stop supporting all of their phones. Do we see that? It was in the news recently, and it got me thinking back to when I worked at an agency called Arc worldwide in Chicago, which, right when I got there, became part of the Leo Burnett family and at ARC, and then Leo Burnett, I worked in business development, so our job was to pitch new clients. We would put together a pitch team with, you know, strategy people and creative people and account people and media people and the creative team would come up with anywhere from three to five actual complete campaigns that would be presented in a pitch like this huge like dog and pony show pitch situation. And one of the accounts that my team and I pitched and won was BlackBerry specifically for the launch of a new, smaller device that they were releasing called the BlackBerry Pearl. Do you guys remember that the BlackBerry Pearl, it had this like little track ball in the middle, which they called the Pearl. It was really small and really sleek. And I remember that they gave us all a BlackBerry Pearl for our own so that we could get to know it and try it out. And I felt super cool with my BlackBerry Pearl. So we pitched for two pieces of business. We pitched for the campaign to launch the BlackBerry Pearl, and then for a brand campaign for the BlackBerry brand. And I'm like early to mid level career During these years, right? So one of my jobs was to figure out whether the things that the creative team was coming up with were actually feasible, you know, so that we didn't pitch something that couldn't work in real life. So if the creative team was like, Can we shine the BlackBerry logo on the moon, it was my job to figure out if we could. And spoiler alert, you cannot shine a logo on the moon. And for this particular pitch. One of the things I did was, this is for the brand campaign. They wanted to feature cool, interesting, inspiring people who were, like, not mainstream yet, you know, like, under the radar. So they came to me, and they were like, can you find us cool, interesting people doing interesting things that aren't famous yet? And I was like, awesome. Yes, of course. And so I started digging around. But the problem with finding people doing cool things is that the people that you've can find most easily are already famous, you know, like, that's like, low hanging fruit. They're the obvious ones, the ones you can find, but those people, the ones that I could find, weren't available to me, you know, like, we couldn't use them. And so at first I felt a little stifled, because the creative team wanted to find people before they were super famous, and that's what I had to find. So I had to get creative. And once I started getting creative about it and getting creative with my search, then instead of feeling limited by the possibilities, I started feeling like there were so many possibilities, like the world seemed to open up to me with options. So I started thinking about it, and I thought, well, if someone's doing something interesting but they're not famous, then maybe they're not big enough to be famous, but maybe they're big enough to be speaking at a conference, or doing something interesting enough to be speaking at a conference. So I started researching conferences across all different industries and demographics, and I came up with a list of people doing really interesting things who were under the radar, and I presented it to the creative team and made my case for every person, and the people on the list actually ended up being in the campaign. So we put in Nina Garcia, the editor of Elle. She was already the editor of Elle, but this is before Project Runway, when she really blew up. We put in Kevin Carroll into the campaign, who he wrote the rules of the red rubber ball. I remember we actually tried to get Craig Newmark the. Founder of Craigslist, which Craigslist itself was well known, but Craig kept a really low profile, and I actually reached out to him through his people, and Craig himself got back to me and declined. I put one really special person on the list. I'm a total bike person, and I had a huge crush. Then on seven cycles, I put on a guy named Rob vandermark, the founder of seven cycles. And I remember that I reached out to his marketing people and was like, you know, we'd like to feature Rob in a Blackberry campaign. Does he use a Blackberry? And they were like, no, but we'll go out and get one, like, right now, if it means he can be in the campaign. And they did, like, he started using a Blackberry that day. And I know there were a few more people in there, but for the life of me, I can't remember who they were, and sadly, I haven't been able to find it online. But I was really proud of that campaign, the fact that we won both the pearl campaign and the brand campaign, and I got to see my contribution in the actual live campaign. So now BlackBerry is going away, you know, the devices at least, and I haven't owned a Blackberry in years, but it still makes me kind of sad. You know, this thing was kind of a big deal in my life at the time. So side note, I was actually feeling like, oh, whoa. Isn't it sad that this company that was once so revered has taken such a dive. And I asked my brother in law about it, because he works in finance, and specifically, he works in credit with distressed companies. And I was like, oh, you know, isn't it so sad that they've gone down the tubes? And he was like, No way. Their business is all on email security, which has these insane margins. And he showed me their investor report, and like, showed me the numbers. So yeah, they are doing fine. BlackBerry is doing fine. And okay. Last thing on this, I love the iPhone and everything. Obviously, it's attached to me, but I would give my entire kingdom for a phone with an actual keyboard, like, just the tactical feel of the keyboard, like, I know that makes me sound super old. I mean, I am an elder millennial. I don't know. I just, I just miss it, but yeah, all right. So anyway, I digress. Let's get into this week's call. So I am so excited to share this episode with you, and actually thinking back to the BlackBerry pitch, it totally fits with the conversation you're about to hear, because it has to do with getting creative. When I was tasked with finding people who were doing interesting things below the radar, I couldn't just Google Wait, and I couldn't just start with the first ones that came to mind. I had to think differently. I had to get creative and go beyond the obvious, and that's what you're going to hear my client and me talk about today. She's in a position that a lot of women B to B, consultants and coaches find themselves in right now, which is that even though your ideal clients may absolutely need your help right now, things are just a little crazy and they may not be ready or really able to move forward. And then the question is, what do you do? Then you're going to hear me talk through with a client of mine in this episode. As always, I want to send a huge thank you to this client for allowing me to share our conversation with you. And just a quick note, a little ways into our call, she says her target market, which you'll hear that we've bleeped out because in that instance, she's very specific in describing it, but all you need to know for context is that her clients are at the management level in the healthcare industry, all right, so listen in, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson that you can apply to your business.

Leah Neaderthal8:30

Do you have an actual sales process? I'm talking about not a general sense of what you should be doing, but a real process where you know exactly what step comes next, who to follow up with and when, and you can see at a glance where every potential client stands. If the answer is no, or if yours feels clunky or you're reinventing the wheel every single time I made something for you, it's called roadmap to clients. It's a free 20 minute video course, and in it you'll map out your customized sales process step by step, from the very first contact with a potential client all the way to a signed proposal. It's the same foundational process we use with every Academy member, and it's completely free. Go to smart gets paid.com/roadmap to get started. How you doing? So excited. Well, so in terms of this call, the purpose of today's call is to really see how you're doing, you know, check your progress with the system and give you what you need to move forward, and then talk about where this might fit with the rest of your business. But how's it going so far? It's going

Academy member9:33

really great. Actually, in terms of the LinkedIn posts, I'm getting eyeballs, I really like the idea of how it's micro blogging. So it's actually really great that I've always had thoughts on how to blog, or at least, you know, figure out a way to share my thoughts. I tried to start a blog on my own website, and it kind of overwhelmed me, but LinkedIn, I think, because that seems to be just the right size for me, so I really like. Like it. So that is really exciting. Let's see. I have seen an increase in my profile views, so that's been really cool. My target market is so they're all kind of busy right now. Why is there anything going on with health care, everyday illnesses? So I don't really know what their appetite is for somebody like me to go in and help them, but that's okay. I just have to get into my head that this is like the long game, and I'll get clients that way. Well, let

Leah Neaderthal10:35

me stay on something that you said, you know that your target being in healthcare, they're obviously super busy, right? But you said you're not quite sure their appetite to hire somebody

Academy member10:45

like you, yeah. So the profit margin is 3% so everything is just very, very tight within the industry. And I guess they're myself to be more like a want to have versus a need to have. And so I'm just wondering, I'm making the assumption that the decision makers would be thinking, you know, oh, we, you know, we could definitely use her, but maybe not right now, maybe in 12 months or so, when maybe things are a bit more stable, or when we have, when we have resources, that is, that's the assumption I'm making today. Yeah, I mean, I think that.

Leah Neaderthal11:22

I don't, I certainly don't want to overlook that, even though people, your clients, absolutely do need you. That's sort of, you know where I was going with that other comment. But you know, even though people may absolutely need you, I don't want to overlook the fact that they just may not be able to buy right now, and they may not know how to buy right now, especially if things are crazy, because you're you're selling in your services, not just to a person or to a business. You're selling it into a system. And the system is, you know, has a lot of moving parts and things that you know not the system may not be able to accept the help, but I think your approach of, first, you know, just understanding that this is a long game. It was a long game before, so nothing's really changed in that respect. And so being there, consistently helping them essentially build that know, like and trust factor, and getting them to the point, I mean, you can get somebody to where they want so badly to hire you as soon as things open up, right, so that it is possible. You know, one question though, is, is it an interesting time to look at, maybe people in industries that are sort of adjacent to your ideal clients, where it might be the ideal client, maybe not necessarily because it they have the right title or they're in the right department or whatever, but maybe because they just have the problem.

Academy member12:38

That is an interesting idea I have not thought about and I have light bulbs going off in my head right now.

Leah Neaderthal12:45

Yeah, well, so I think that it's just a different way of maybe thinking about who the ideal client is. I think that a lot of people, because they've they've gotten advice that leads them to say, my ideal client is in a particular industry, company, size, what have you. But I like to think about it in terms of the problem that needs to be solved. So if people have the problem that you are solving it, you know that's how you can sort of focus on an ideal client. What else comes up for you, on that that we could talk about, or as you think about these other industries, what

Academy member13:13

else comes up for me, for that, I think I'm now like, really just about thinking about these ancillary and these related industries that I'm gonna like, spend the rest of my day trying to find connections, because that is so brilliant. One of the things that I was thinking about with my that I was thinking about especially this week, I guess it's been like day 10 or day nine of posting, but they have not been about healthcare. My first healthcare related post actually was yesterday, and so I was thinking, and I I consciously realized that I need people to see that I am also a healthcare expert, so I need to start digging deep into my experience that I have of healthcare specific stories and nuggets of wisdom so that I can be Seen as that kind of an expert, right, right?

Leah Neaderthal14:02

And how are you thinking to do that?

Academy member14:05

How am I thinking to do that? So, yeah, that is a bit of a challenge also, because actually, a lot of the problem, well, I want to be able to pepper my posts with either some statistics or facts of some kind that are really eye opening and just kind of bring that to light. I think there's

Leah Neaderthal14:24

an opportunity to take what you're talking about and just add a really light wash for health care, you know. So it's the difference between saying something like, you know, why do most projects fail because these three things, versus when you're in health care, why do most projects fail? Because of these three things, you know, making sure that healthcare is really front and center and and just the opener for your work. It's almost like having, like, a mental checklist, you know, like, okay, have I done the nod to healthcare? Uh huh. Does that seem doable?

Academy member14:58

Yeah, absolutely. I. Actually, that seems very, very doable. I think that's actually going to solve a bunch of my problems. How do you know this? How do you know what is in my head? This is, yeah, it's all there.

Leah Neaderthal15:11

It's just, it's just trying to sort of see it a different way. And plus, I have struggled with this. That's how I know. That's what really forced me to learn it, and that's how I know where the problems are.

Academy member15:23

Wow, this is incredible. I'm writing down notes.

Leah Neaderthal15:27

Love it. You're also gonna get a recording of this so, oh, super. You don't have to write down

Academy member15:35

all the notes. Okay, okay, okay. I have so many ideas.

Leah Neaderthal15:40

Good. I have, I feel like I know how you're going to spend the rest of your day looking for ancillary, ideal clients and just going crazy with content ideas.

Academy member15:52

Yeah, yeah, okay. This is very exciting. I feel

Leah Neaderthal15:56

like, you, I'm picking up that like, you're, you're kind of like me, like, as soon as you have this breakthrough, it's like, you want to run out and do the breakthrough, like, sort of follow it. Is there anything else on your plate that you want to talk about as it relates to LinkedIn, getting clients, anything like that?

Academy member16:14

Okay, so I do have to tell you. So I do have to tell you. So I'm working with this startup and and we had this really big event last week with this organization, so we were trying to do promotion. We're supposed to get eyeballs to participate in these presentations that he was doing at the end of last week. And how are we going to do that? And I said, Look, try this out on LinkedIn. And so I wrote a post for him, and I told him, before I give you this post, you need to first come up with a list of people you're going to email directly with the link to this post, and you are going, like, you know they're going to respond and like, not like some random person who doesn't know who you are, but like, someone's going to click on the post and like it because they like you. Then he came up with the list. I wrote the post for him. He posted it, and at the end of the day, I was peppering him, and I was like, how many views are you getting? He couldn't believe he got like 2000 views previously. He got like 36 on his amazing. It is amazing. He couldn't believe it. And we were on, we were doing a video call so I could watch him. I said, go to LinkedIn. Tell me how many so I was watching his face. He looked at the computer, and he did, like, the, like, the double take. He's like, what? He couldn't believe it. It was amazing. I mean, I know he should, well, he shouldn't take your class because you, you teach women. But I was like, I can't believe, like, she's not making this up. It was incredible. So, yeah, I love it. I'm so glad. And so now you're basically an expert. Well, yeah, I'm getting a lot of views, and I keep telling my husband, and I'm like, eventually, eventually these views and these eyeballs are going to turn into clients. It's going to happen. I know I need to tweak my About section just a little bit more in the rapid review, but you told me that it was a little bit soft, and I need to make some changes, which I still do need to make. I think a lot of it is mindset, which I touched on a little bit in my post today about interrupting a senior leader like I very much. And this actually has gotten me into trouble a few times where I don't interrupt or like I don't, I don't want to. I don't kind of assert myself with the knowledge that I have or the authority that I have. I always defer to someone who's older, or someone who I consider to be more senior, or someone who, you know, sort of like somebody else. And that doesn't really work out for me all the time. So I just need to, I think, make my profile a bit more assertive. I'll get there eventually.

Leah Neaderthal18:45

Yeah, on the on the mindset piece, I think it's really common. What you're describing is very common about sort of thinking or assuming, or somewhere inside of you, sort of assumes that other people either know it or are the right people to say it, or, you know, just sort of holding back. And you know, there are a lot of reasons for that, basically, you know, that come from how we're raised as women to, you know, the roles we take on in corporate or all of those things. There's a there's a specific way to sort of reframe that, where you can feel comfortable being assertive. It's one thing to be like, I just need my profile to be more assertive. But if you, if you don't feel that on the inside, it's going to feel very inauthentic. So just something to consider us, because it there's a whole world of information about mindset, but the mindset that I think is going to make it easier to do both LinkedIn and what we're, you know, talking about, about, like, feeling really comfortable and sort of taking that leadership more sort of role is really seeing yourself as a peer to your clients. That's sort of what we're getting at. Does that make sense?

Academy member19:49

It does that's a big mindset for that mindset shift for me too. Wow. Somebody told me a while back, which I have to constantly remind myself, is. What would an average white guy do? Just average, average skill. He thinks he's the shit pretty much, and my husband has walked away like a totally average skilled dude is never going to be like, Oh, let me I wonder if, if what I say is too aggressive, or I'm not going to speak up at the meeting, because I don't know if what I'm saying is actually correct or, like, they just, they just go out and do it because they think they're the bomb.com, and we just, sort of, if you think all these things and overthink, and then we lose that opportunity. And I have to consciously think to myself, of what would just some random guy on the street think he thinks he's the bomb?

Leah Neaderthal20:41

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're totally right. Put your put things in perspective. I'm just watching the time here, and I want to, I do need to jump off to another call. Yeah, listen, I think that what you've done so far is is awesome, and I know that you're, you're on the right track. If anything else comes up, let me know. Let me know. All right,

Academy member20:59

okay, thank you so much.

Leah Neaderthal21:03

All right, so there's a lot that we could talk about from this call, but I want to pick up where my client and I left off. We had to sort of jump off quickly at the end, you know, right when we were getting into some mindset stuff, which I love the mindset stuff, and it's so important. And I wish we had had more time to talk about it on the call, but here's what I would say if we were having that call now. So you heard her say that even though she's absolutely capable and an expert in her field, and she's been doing this work forever, and she's smart as hell, you heard her say that she finds herself deferring to other people and not speaking up, and this is so common for about 1000 reasons, and you heard me say that it comes from how we're raised and how women are socialized and all of that. So it goes deep, and it's really intertwined with a lot of other beliefs that we carry with us. But this idea of believing that someone else knows better, or someone else might know the right thing to say in social dynamics terms, that's called Putting that person in the one up position, and that puts you in what's called the one down position. As a quick side note, the woman who developed this concept of one up one down is an incredibly brilliant woman named Deborah Tannen, who's a professor of linguistics at Georgetown, and a New York Times bestselling author, if you're into this kind of stuff, she's written a few books that you should totally check out. My favorite is called that's not what I meant. So back to this one up one down concept. It sucks to find yourself in the one down position, or to be in the one down position when you are smart and capable and experience. And you know, sometimes you might be put there by somebody else, but more often, we put ourselves there by believing that somebody else is better or more qualified. So the first part of becoming more comfortable in these situations and with selling is getting out of the one down position. But the opposite of being in the one down position isn't putting yourself in the one up position. It's not artificially trying to sort of build yourself up and say, I know everything. I'm this shit. I'm gonna slay I'm a queen, right? Because when it doesn't come from a foundation where you believe it, then you're left feeling even more hollow than you were before. In my opinion, that's the problem with like, fake it till you make it, which I hate, because you can fake the behavior, but if your underlying beliefs don't match, then it feels even worse. The real opposite of being in a one down position is putting yourself at a peer level. It's believing not that you're better than somebody else, but that you're the same and that you can take up the same space and your thoughts are equally valid. This is a big part of my work with clients, and what we find when we work with clients is that no one wants to be in the one up position, right? Like nobody wants to be that pumped up, like I'm better position. It feels kind of like inauthentic and gross. But when we talk about being on the same level being up here that feels much more comfortable, because being on the same level and being comfortable with other people isn't that what we all want, saying and feeling that you're the same as someone else just requires you to believe that you're as good as anyone else and to know that you're good enough. And when you can do that, you can start speaking up, sharing your thoughts, showing up on social media and creating better, more equal relationships with your clients. Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network. How to lead a sales process with confidence, and how to get paid for your value, not your time, and there's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply and we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai