How to secure consulting clients in a recession, part 2

Leah Neaderthal0:02

You've been sort of trusting the universe, right, trusting the universe is not going to work. So what does this mean? It means shifting your mindset to proactive, from reactive. Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah Neaderthal, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting 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 the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process, get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, 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 thought you could then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share.

Leah Neaderthal1:10

Hey there. Thanks for joining me in this episode. I hope that wherever you are, wherever you're listening to this, I hope you're having a great week, making some good progress in your business and also taking some time for yourself. So we're back for part two of how to get consulting clients in a recession, and we're going to get to that in just a minute. But first, I just want to check on you. How are you doing? How are your holidays? How's your winter? I hope that you are staying warm, getting out, enjoying the winter. Over here in New York, it's pretty cold, and every winter like I can't think about winter now without thinking about the winters that I endured. Lived through when I lived in Chicago. I lived in Chicago for nine years after college. You might have heard me mention it, and you've probably heard how brutal Chicago winters are you should know that whatever you've heard, just know they are worse than you have imagined. But I did nine Chicago winters. And the thing about winter there is that, like you can complain, everyone does, but it's also kind of a badge of honor. I mean, at least for me, it was, you know, or is, to like, live there and go through a winter there, and you learn how to do layers really, really well, you know. So you can, like, bundle up, take the L, go to work. And when I was living there, that's also when I got into cycling. And there's actually a really big winter cycling community in Chicago. So one winter, I made the decision that I was going to ride my bike to work through the whole winter, like, through the whole winter. I think the coldest day I rode through it was something like six degrees, and like, God knows what the wind chill was, because, of course, it's always like, wintry, blustery, I don't know how you can, like, have a headwind, you know, in both directions, but it's possible, apparently. And you know, there's snow and ice on the path, but every day, I would ride from Uptown, where I lived, down the lakefront, through downtown and to my office in the west loop. And if you're from Chicago, or you live in Chicago, and you know Chicago geography, you're probably thinking, like, Wait, why would you take the lakefront if you're going to the west loop? But trust me, I mapped it, it was still faster than going any other way. And so this is where those layering skills I learned really paid off. Because Okay, so just to set the scene here, this is what I would wear from top to bottom every day. So starting at the top, I'd wear a neoprene like balaclava, right? It goes over your head and your nose and mouth and only your eyes are visible. So that would be to protect my face. I'd wear a helmet, of course, always I had like a cover that goes over the helmet, kind of like a windbreaker for your helmet. I would wear ski goggles, some type of base layer, or technical warm shirt. I wore a gator, like a neck gator between my shirt and my chin, balaclava, whatever I wore, a long sleeve shirt over my base layer, then a fleece jacket, then a windbreaker. So that's the top half on my hands. They have these special cycling gloves called lobster claws, which imagine these big mittens that are like split down the middle, between your middle finger and your ring finger to make sort of like two big fingers, so that you can still shift gears while you're riding. And sometimes I even wore gloves inside of those mittens on the bottom, I wore these fleece lined cycling leggings, and then over those, I wore basically like warm up pants to block the wind. On my feet, I wore really warm socks, and then my cycling shoes, and then over that, I wore these neoprene booties that cover your whole foot and then your ankle. So that was my outfit to ride to work every morning. And I'd pack my backpack with my clothes for work. And then there was a gym across the street from my office, and I would get ready for work there. And then. I'd put on everything again, I'd do the same thing to ride home. And yeah, I mean, listen, it was cold, there's no doubt. But I also felt really accomplished every day. You know? I felt like I was doing something that few people could do or would ever even attempt, and that made me feel good, and I ended every day feeling proud. So, yeah, that's my big accomplishment with Chicago winters, riding my bike through the winter. It was nuts, I know, but it was awesome. All right, so let's dive into how to get consulting clients in a recession, shall we? So, as I shared in part one, if we're going to talk about how to secure clients in a recession, we have to talk about how clients make purchase decisions in a recession, and there are seven shifts in how clients make decisions in a recession. In part one, we talked about the first three of those, if you'll remember, we talked about the first one called pains require painkillers, which means in a recession, clients only purchase products and services that solve their most critical problems. So as a consultant, especially now, you can't talk about your work in terms of the tactics that you do, or the things that you do or the services you provide. You have to You must like it's critical. You have to talk about your work in terms of the value you provide, how your work solves your client's number one, most important problem in our world, that's called a painkiller, and in a recession, it's the only way to get clients to care about what you do. Sounds kind of harsh, but it's true. We also talked about number two, called green light, red light, which means that in a recession, the sales process is going to feel a little bit like the game. Green light, red light, lots of stops and starts, and it's going to take longer than it normally would. So to protect your business and your revenue, you have to have more in your sales pipeline than you normally would. Essentially, you need to be having more conversations with potential clients going on at once than you normally would in normal times, so that whatever happens with any one of the sales processes that you're going down with your clients, you'll still be able to have the income that you need. And we talked about number three, called your biggest competitor is invisible. It's the fact that in a recession, you probably won't lose a potential client to a competitor. You'll most likely lose it to no decision. Essentially, the client won't make a decision at all, and they'll just stay with the status quo, even though the status quo is causing them some pain. So to overcome that, it's up to us to take the value that we provide, take that painkiller statement and put it front and center in all of our communications, every touch point throughout the sales process. So your website, or when you schedule a call, or in your follow up email, when you send a proposal everywhere, and when you do that, you remind the client, hey, this is why it's important to solve your number one most critical problem, not why it's important to me, but why it's important to you. So those are the three shifts we covered in the last episode. Now, in part two, we're going to talk through the next four of the seven shifts. And if you'll remember, what you're going to hear comes from a training that I led in the early pandemic times when everyone was kind of freaking out that clients were never going to say yes again, clients were never going to spend money again, and everyone was wondering what to do. So I put together a training called How to Get consulting clients in uncertain times.

Leah Neaderthal8:25

It was, without a doubt my most popular training that whole year, and what I shared then is just as relevant now. So that's what you're going to listen in on, and you're going to drop in right in the middle as we talk about the fourth shift. So if you're someone who likes to take notes when you listen to this podcast, you're definitely going to want to take notes in this episode. So fair warning, if you are out running or walking your dog, or you're listening to this while you're driving, all right, you are going to want to take some notes. And if, as you're listening to this, there's an AHA or an insight that this episode brings up for you. I'd love to hear it. Write about it on LinkedIn, post it, be sure to tag me so I see it and I'll give you a shout out. All right. So let's dive in, take a listen, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson you can apply to your business. 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.

Leah Neaderthal10:02

All right, the fourth change is called E Pluribus Unum. So if you live in the US, you are familiar with this phrase because it's on money. It means, out of many, one in times of economic uncertainty, when making decisions feels like a risk, clients are going to tend to evaluate more providers than they have before. They're going to want more options to choose from, even though studies show that actually makes it harder to make a decision, it's going to feel like they that they're reducing their risk by evaluating more options. So e pluribus unum out of many, one clients will tend to evaluate more providers that they normally than they normally would and will tend to go with the safest option. Okay, so let's talk about what it means to be the safest option. The safest option is the option with the best know, like and trust factor. It's the option where, where clients feel like they know you. They know your business. They like you and they trust you, all right. They know that you're not a fly by night person. You can do what you say you can, and you have the results to prove it. Okay. So what does this mean for you? How do you become the safest option? You start showing up, you start being seen, getting in front of people being seen as an expert. You start putting out information about how you think, how you work, the results your clients have seen, your client stories being seen as an expert, because, and most of the time this is going to be on LinkedIn, I would say, for 90% of the people on this call, this is going to be to do this on LinkedIn, that's where your clients are. So because your clients are going through anywhere from two thirds to 90% of the sales process, in a way that's totally hidden to you, because they're taking in information they're learning about you, that education process is always happening, and if you don't give people a chance to learn from you, then how are they going to learn about you? How are they going to know that you even exist? Right? So Nancy Russo is a woman who I had the pleasure of speaking to over the past week in that project I was telling you about. And she said, this is she's been in business for 35 years, you guys. She said, in the last recession, I thought this is the time to stay in front of people market. She said, you're not necessarily selling to people, but you're giving them valuable information. You're being in front of them so that when they come out of that, they think, Well, you were one of the helpful people, and you're also good at what you do. So she said, that's what I did. I just kept marketing, and you know, it's worked because she's been in business for 35 years. I was reading something recently that really illustrated this so beautifully that it actually gave me chills. I was reading a book called because internet, which is about linguistics. I'm a total word nerd. If you've worked with me before, you know that I geek out over words, and it's this woman who's an author, a researcher in Media and Communication Studies, wrote, in order to exist online, we must write ourselves into being. Isn't that beautiful? Write ourselves into being. So this is what I need. I want you to do. Write yourself into being. Show up, let people see you, let people understand you and understand how you work. That's the first step to, you know, becoming creating more opportunities, becoming one of the helpful ones. All right, so that is E Pluribus Unum. The fifth change is called, help me, help you. All right, you guys remember this? I mean, how could you not? So what's on the screen? What I'm referring to is this slide has an animated GIF, or GIF, or however you say it, I say GIF. It has an animated GIF of that famous scene from Jerry Maguire where Jerry Tom Cruise is in the bathroom with his client, Cuba Gooding Jr, just begging him to like, Please make my life a little bit easier. Just saying, Help me. Help you. Iconic scene, great movie.

Leah Neaderthal14:10

Let's keep going in times like these, clients obviously won't want to free up budget very easily. I mean, that's probably a given, right, but they can free up budget, you just have to think differently about how to help your clients do that. So help me, help you. Means clients are going to have to make a very strong case for why the company should make this particular investment. What that means is that consultants will have to help clients navigate their company's own buying process, okay? Because even in normal times, you're, you might think that you're selling to a person in a company, but you're, you're really not. You're selling into a system. You're selling into a system of needs and people and priorities, and it's almost like a rope that's been. Knot it up, right? So your job is to help clients navigate that process, have them navigate their own buying process. How do you do that? Go beyond the standard discovery questions, you know, how many? What do you need? What's the timeline? How do you you know? How do you guys work and start to uncover how buying decisions are made. Okay, then you can lead the client to help clients navigate that process within the company. So one important question is, who is part of the decision? Right? Find all the stakeholders. In some cases, it's their you know their boss, their superior. Some cases it's management or a committee. It could be finance or procurement. If you're doing individual work and or work with individuals, in addition to companies, it could be a partner or a spouse, so understanding who's part of the decision and what's in it for them, and also asking questions to really establish the decision process. Here are a few examples, asking, you know, who feels the pain in this problem, or who's involved in the this decision, or even, like, how do decisions like this get made? And letting the client tell you, the client might actually not know how to navigate their own company's process. They might know what the process is, right, have to go to legal or whatever, but they might not know how to navigate it and sell in. So, you know, you and when we talk about selling in, what we're talking about is, you know, most of the sales process actually happens when you're not even there, because your client might have to sell it into other people, and so it's helping your client do the sale. Right? Help me help you. So for example, you know that your client has to talk to their boss or whatever you know, offer to write some bullet points that he or she can take to that conversation or ask what they need for a presentation about this topic, right? Help your client sell on your behalf. All right, so that's helped me help you. The sixth change is called dating, not marriage, all right, so in times like these, clients are going to feel kind of skittish about entering into engagement that might feel like a commitment. All right, they're going to want to test things before committing. So anything that's that like starts at zero and then the clocks or the meter starts running is going to feel very risky to them, especially so if you're doing hourly work, this is sort of where this hits right. But even if it's a time bound engagement, because it feels risky. So dating out marriage means it'd be harder for clients to say yes to an open ended or a time based consulting engagement. Don't propose marriage, go on a date first, right? So what does that mean? What are some examples of that I want you to provide a way to build trust and demonstrate value through a clearly defined project, and what does clearly defined mean? It means defined value, defined engagement and defined price. Okay, so let's look at a couple of examples of that. This is an example from my client, Sherry Taylor, who helps nonprofits pivot to larger donations. So she has a program called the let's grow fundraising accelerator where you can pivot to teach you how to pivot from low dollar donor activities to larger gifts, like major donor stuff. All right,

Leah Neaderthal18:29

she has a set of outcomes. You your clients, can grow into larger gifts. You'll be able to create compelling pitches that allow better track and retain donors. You'll be able to fully fund your programs and on and on and on. Right? Those are outcomes. It's a 90 day program at a fixed price. Okay, so let's break this down defined value. The the value is front and center pivot from low dollar donor activities to larger gifts. If you're somebody who has or if you're a nonprofit who wants to get into larger gift that that value is going to speak to you, defined outcomes which are part of the value. And notice, you know, she still hasn't said, like, I do an assessment. It's a three hour workshop all of that, right? It's all about the outcomes, defined engagement, and then defined price. All right, so that's awesome work, Sherry, but I just saw one yesterday from my friend, who's a designer. She's launching a new program. It's a one day intensive where she'll design your whole brand in one day. So we're talking about defined value and defined engagement, really clear so you can date instead of proposing marriage. Okay, so that's dating, not marriage. The last one is really important. It's called buy a ticket.

Leah Neaderthal19:50

So there's a really wonderful old Italian joke about a woman who goes to church every day and sits in the pews and prays for hours before the. Statue of her Saint just says, you know, dear saint, please, please give me the grace to win the lottery. And it goes on for months and months and months, right coming every day. Finally, the statue comes to life. Looks down at the woman and says, My child, please, please, please buy a ticket. All right, have you guys ever heard that before? I love that. That story. Buy a ticket. If you want to get consulting clients, you have to start getting proactive. I talked to a lot of women who who confessed to me that they haven't really they've gotten clients, but they haven't really done anything to get clients, you know, so you should have gotten clients in spite of yourself. Maybe they've trickled in through referrals, clients has just sort of found them, or they've come through word of mouth, but you haven't done anything to actually make that happen in uncertain times like these that we're in right now. That's going to slow down this whole like, you know, low hanging fruit, the clients are just sort of find you despite them you know not doing anything that's going to slow down. So if you've been sort of trusting the universe, right, trusting the universe is not going to work. So what does this mean? It means shifting your mindset to proactive from reactive. So many women I talked to, have spent a lot of time being reactive. You know, a client comes your way, they need this. You're like, yeah, I can do that right, or maybe even the money's not great, but I'll take it on, because they need the money. What we're talking about here is getting proactive. So what can you do? Reach out to past clients, reach out to current clients, reach out to potential clients in your pipeline, show up, get visible, start to be seen as an expert, you have to do something. And I know the tendency, because, you know, I know that I work with a lot of very high performing perfectionists and people who women who hold themselves probably you hold yourself to very high standards. All right, I want to encourage you to look forward, not backwards. If you feel like, oh, I should have been doing this the whole time. How could I have let myself get to this point? Stop kicking yourself for not having done this so far, because you are here. You're in the right place, you're learning about the right things, and this is the time to start. You know, there is no better time to start. It's like, when is there's a like, a parable or something, or a that says, like, when was the best time to plant a tree, like, 100 years ago, but the second best time is right now. Okay, so these are the seven changes pains require painkillers. Green light, red light. Your biggest competitor is invisible, e torbus Unum. Help me. Help you, dating, not marriage, and buy a ticket. All right, so I just created this little chart for you so that x, I know it's a lot, just to sort of summarize the changes and my recommendations. Okay, so now I want to know what's the one thing that you can do right now, this week, or today or this weekend, tell me of the seven, and I'll put them back up. Actually, of the seven, what can you do right now? Let me know in the chat. Just some. Let's, let's get it out there. Let's have some, some, you know, zoom, accountability. Anne says, buy a ticket. Buy a ticket. Dating, not marriage. Patricia says, petitioning, positioning my work as a painkiller, repositioning, showing up, I'm buying a ticket. Defining your engagements. A lot of buying a ticket. I love this. Buying a ticket, I love,

Leah Neaderthal23:41

I mean, I love all this. What I would say is, if I were, if you're not sure, if you're not sure, I would think about starting with pains, required painkillers, and buy a ticket. Because if you are already out there, if you're if you've already bought a ticket, if you're already proactive, if you are already a painkiller, then, yeah, come up with an offer. If you are hidden right now, then it doesn't matter what offer you create if nobody sees it. So I would say start if you're starting, literally at Ground Zero. Start with pains, required painkillers. Then get proactive, and then date don't merit get married. All right, I love this. All right, you guys, I love I'm just scrolling up. You guys are committing. We're getting some group accountability for committing to I'm seeing a lot of buying a ticket, a lot of being visible, yes. Okay, you guys. I love this. So I can stick around for about five more minutes with questions. If you guys have questions, I think I'm seeing some questions here. Julia asks, how can you get clients proactively? If you post online and get crickets, or you reach out and referrals and don't get any Okay, here's what I'll say to that. Julia, getting new clients, being proactive, buying a team. Get filling your pipeline is not an event, it's a process. It's a long game. And so you, I promise you, you will not get clients. Nobody will. It's impossible, but you will not get clients by doing things every now and then. You will get clients by showing up consistently. And so is it worth it to post proactively? If you post online and get crickets today, yes, because you will keep posting and you might not get, you know, you'll get more of a response later. You're setting that in motion. If you go on LinkedIn, where your actual clients are keep showing up. Same thing with referrals. If you ask for referrals and don't get any. How can you take that from an event to a process? Who are the people who you think could refer you? How are you staying in touch with them more often? So consider that mindset shift. You get clients, not from what you do sometimes, but what you do consistently. All right, let's see some Catherine's asking stress management for accounting, what would be a painkiller? I think that's a really important question for you to maybe explore over the next week or so. Sit with it. If you're wondering, what's the painkiller for your business, I bet that it's in your notes from client conversations. Clients will tell you their biggest pain if you ask. The problem is that most of the times when we're talking to clients, when we're responding to clients, we really focus on the services or the deliverables or whatever. What do you need? What's your timeline? What's your budget, not necessarily, what is why is this important? Why is this important to the business? Why is this important to you personally? To you personally? What happens if this fails that the answer to what is the painkiller is in those questions, okay, if you've had these types of conversations with with your clients, then the answer is in the notes. All right, so you guys, I'm so glad that you've spent this time with me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for stepping out of your crazy life and spending this time with us. I will talk to you soon. So in the last episode, I mentioned that this list of seven ways clients make purchase decisions in a recession, this isn't just a to do list. It's not just, you know, a bunch of things that you need to start doing. It's really shifts in thinking and in what I shared here today. It's shifting from thinking of showing up or getting visible, as you know, I just want sales, and that feels weird, to seeing it as building the know, like and trust factor so that you become the safest option. It's a shift from thinking of it as selling into your client, you know, your main contact, and instead shifting to thinking of it as helping your main contact sell in when you're not there. It's a shift from marriage to dating by creating something that clients can say yes to, and a shift from reactive to proactive by buying a ticket and really putting yourself in the driver's seat of your own business, these shifts are going to make a meaningful impact in your ability to get clients, even in a recession and really beyond too. And there are really two things I want you to take away as you start applying these lessons to your business. First, I want to go back to the Chicago story. So, you know, I rode my bike through a freezing, very windy Chicago

Leah Neaderthal28:24

winter, but I didn't tell you what happened after that. So when the weather warmed up and everyone else started riding again, I was in incredible shape, because I'd been riding the whole time and riding through some really, really tough weather, and tough you could that same year, that spring, I did the AIDS ride for the second time, where you ride from San Francisco to LA to raise money for AIDS research and care. It's a seven day ride over these huge mountains, and on some days, you're riding over 100 miles a day, and then you have to wake up and do it again the next day. And you know what happened? I rode that seven day ride faster. At the end of each day, I felt better, I recovered faster, and I was actually able to enjoy it, and all because I was stronger, because I had gone through the rough parts of the winter. And so the first thing I want to leave you with is this, I feel like you us, all of us right now, we have a choice right now, kind of like I did that winter, because, you know winter was going to happen. You can say it's too cold out. You're not going to get out there. And then, you know, the thing is, the day will come when it warms up and you'll want to ride, but you'll be out of shape. Or you can go through the cold parts, the tough parts, and keep going, because every ounce of effort you put in will absolutely pay off. And that's the same choice you have right now with your business and the recession. You can say that it's a recession. You can say getting clients is impossible. Clients won't say yes, they're not going to spend money. Let's wait and see. And. Eventually the day will come when it does get better, but you'll be in the exact same position that you are now, or you can go through the hard parts, you can learn how to adjust, and you can keep going and growing, because just like in writing, every ounce of effort you put in now will absolutely pay off, and not just pay off only in the end, it'll pay off now today, if you're willing to make that choice. But there's something else I also want to leave you with. One thing that makes hard things hard is when you go through them alone. What makes them easier and easier to keep going is when you're around other people who are going through it with you, and in a place where you can get help. I actually saw something a few weeks ago that made this so clear in such a beautiful way. I was watching a show on HBO called the Lost kitchen. If you have HBO, check it out. It's a heartwarming show about this teeny, tiny, little restaurant in Maine, and at the time when they're filming the show, it starts, I think, like right around February, March 2020, and it's this bustling little restaurant, and then the pandemic starts. And you know, they have to, like, shut down service. They have to find new ways to make money, all of that. And you know, everyone in this tiny little town is, you know, having to do the same thing, like all their suppliers, the farmers, the producers, etc. And so in one of these episodes, the restaurant owner, this woman, Erin, who's adorable, goes to visit her bread provider, this couple that makes this gorgeous, like artisanal wood fired bread. And I guess by that time, it's like late summer, maybe mid to late summer. And so the three of them are talking about, like, how just WTF everything is these days. And the bread guy says, This is what he says when everything started falling apart. It was really a test of, how much do we love this, you know, like, how much are we willing to battle to keep going? And it was definitely heartening every time we saw one of our buddies, like you, like Aaron's battling. Aaron's gonna keep on making it happen. And I love that line. Essentially, what he's saying is it's heartening every time we saw one of our buddies succeed. So what I want to leave you with is this, the way we're going to get through this time isn't just with skills or strategies or shifts. You know, all of that is helpful, but the way we're really going to get through this is with each other, it's community, it's support, it's accountability. That's how we're going to do this together. It's why my favorite channel in the slack group for the Academy is wins, because we're celebrating all types of wins there so that everyone feels seen and supported, and the motivation and accountability really spreads. Like one of the members

Leah Neaderthal32:41

posted that she just signed a PR client where she's charging double what she would have charged a year ago, and another member just had her highest dollar amount proposal to date approved. But it's not just the client wins that we celebrate. It's the wins along the way, the keep going wins we celebrated that one of the members has made a practice of reminding herself what she's accomplished. Another member had a former client who sort of slid into her DMs asking her to meet up and pick her brain, and she deftly said basically, like, no pay me and we got to cheer that on. We celebrated that. A member shared that she has a full plate right now with client work, so she's dialing back to what we call simmer mode for her own business development, so that she has time to do life and have the balance she's always wanted, while she's still able to plant seeds for future work, we celebrate just like the bread guy said every time we saw one of our buddies succeed, that's How we continue on. That's how we keep growing and we continue to get clients in a recession. 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. Transcribed by https://otter.ai