The real problem most consultants face (and how to solve it)

Leah Neaderthal0:00

Leah, so most women consultants actually don't need more leads. You need to be able to sign the ones you want at the price you want, and when you can do that, you actually need fewer leads than you think. 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. Hey there, Leah here, and thanks for tuning in. I hope that wherever you're listening to this, wherever you are right now, you are having a great week, making some good progress on your business and taking some time for you All right, so I'm just gonna jump right in, if that's okay with you guys. Okay, so it's fair to say that to get consulting clients and to grow your consulting business, you need two things. You need potential clients to sell to, and you need to know how to help them say yes. And between those two things, what I see is a lot of women are actually focused on the wrong one and focused too much on the wrong one. And I hear it over and over, and so in this episode, I want to tell you what that thing is so you don't waste time focusing on it. And I want to share what's a more effective way to spend your time so that you can grow your consulting business and continue to grow it and make it profitable long term. So I talked to so many women running consulting businesses, and there's something I hear a lot when I ask women what they need, a lot of them say they need more leads. But actually, most people don't need more leads. They just need to actually be able to close the leads they have at a much higher price. And in this episode, I'll tell you how. So you might have noticed that with the economy being as it is, things feel a little shaky. Referrals are slowing down, budgets are getting cut, and clients who you thought would say yes are saying no or not right now. And here's the thing, in this economy, you can't run your business by waiting for referrals. Clients just aren't going to swim into your net. You have to be intentional. That's why the best way to protect your business today and for the future is to have the two systems that every consulting business needs a marketing system to bring the right clients to you and fill your pipeline, and a sales system to help clients say yes and get you paid more. But it's not just about getting clients. It's about security and stability and making your business sustainable no matter what's happening out there, smart women are doing this right now, even in this economy, they're winning their biggest contracts, filling their pipelines, and their businesses are growing, which lets them do things like build up six months of family savings a lot sooner than they had planned, or go from having one to two months of revenue booked to having eight to 10 months of revenue booked, or getting to the place where you're able to pick and choose your clients and say No to the ones that aren't perfect. These are real results from women in the academy, because this is what we do inside the Academy. We help you build the marketing and sales systems that make your business and your revenue more stable, more secure and more sustainable. So if you've been in business for at least two years, if you made at least 120k last year. And if you want your business to feel secure no matter what's happening in the economy, join us. Apply today. It's marketspay.com/academy, we get started on Monday, February 9, because you can't control the economy, but you can control what you do about it.

Leah Neaderthal4:20

All right, so let's back up for a second. And actually, before we even do that, I just want to warn you, in this episode, you're going to hear me use words that are commonly used in selling, like lead and close. So if you're someone who feels like using these words is kind of icky, and this does happen sometimes, sometimes I talk to women who say, I don't even like to think of it as selling or like, I don't use words like lead or pipeline, like, it feels very sort of precious to them, but these are just descriptors. A lead is anyone who's expressed interest in working with you, and closing is when clients actually say yes. So. So whether you're somebody who feels weird at the idea that selling is how you get clients, or you're somebody who understands that selling is the way you get clients, and who isn't afraid of these words, these are just the words you're going to hear me say in this episode. All right, good, On we go. So let's get back to why a lot of women consultants think they need more leads. A lot of the women I talk to who are running independent consulting businesses have gotten all or most of their clients through referrals, so people within their like immediate network, and when you do that, you know the clients that you get, they come in and they're really warm, like they already know that you're good, and they already trust you. And so when you've gotten all or most of your clients through those warm referrals, it can feel like there's no sales process at all. Like, if you can get connected to somebody, then you can sign them, like, get an introduction, get a client, or get an inquiry, get a client, it can feel like there's barely any sales process or like no sales process there, but that's just when you're in this zone. So if you're listening to this on the podcast, picture like a bull's eye with three circles. Okay, these circles represent the people who could work with you. So in the first small inner circle are people who know you like people you've worked with. The second small circle are people who know those people. And the third circle is like everybody else you know, all the potential clients out there who have never worked with you before. And everybody starts in that inner circle. That's where your first clients come from, from that inner circle of people that you have worked with directly, and because they've worked with you directly, like I said, it can feel like there's barely any sales process, but as you go outward to these outer circles, you actually do need to know how to sell. And so sometimes women will tell me, like, I'm fine with the sales part. I just need more leads. Like, if I can get in front of somebody, they'll usually just say yes. And I've heard this from so many women, like, I'm really good at pitching myself, or I'm fine with the sales part. And these are women who have actually never had to sell in their career, you know, they're just doing it for the first time in their consulting business. And when they say, you know, I'm fine with the sales part, or I'm really good at pitching myself, or whatever, they say that it's almost like some kind of flex, you know, like, as the kids say, but I kind of want to tell them, like, it's actually not as much of a flex as you think it is, because what it tells me is that you're still in that little circle, that little inner circle in the middle, you're not out here in these outer rings, the people who haven't worked with you or haven't had that direct contact with you. So if you think you haven't had to really sell, it's because you haven't even had to really sell. It's like saying, oh, swimming is so easy, but you're at the beach and you don't realize that you're still really close to shore, like your feet are basically touching the ground. And I mean, it's not anybody's fault. It's not your fault for thinking that the sales part is easy. You just haven't gotten there yet. And I mean, seriously, if you do come from a sales background, then yes, I trust that you are good with the sales part. But if your career has never involved selling or being responsible for getting the clients, and then you tell me that the sales part is easy. Again, it's just not as much of a flex as you think it is, because again, what it tells me is that you're still in that first inner circle. And so when I hear that you need more leads, what you're actually saying is you need people from outside that inner circle, right? You need people from like, out here in these outer circles, because in this first circle of very close people, you know people who worked with you, like, the number of people in that circle is small and it's finite. It's not going to grow, because the only way that that circle grows is that you work at a company for like, three to five years and work with all those people, and then they know that you're good at what you do, but you're not going to work at a company for three to five years because you are running your own business. And so that circle, that inner circle, is not going to grow. But this circle, the third one out here, when you say you want more leads, what you're talking about is you want people from this circle. But what the women I talk to find when they get out here and enter that outer circle is that when you start talking to potential clients who didn't work with you for five years and who don't know how good you are yet, you actually do have to know how to sell. You have to know how to help a potential client. Go from basically potential client to paying client, and you have to know how to get paid, what you want to get paid. And when you don't know how to actually help a client go from you know potential client to paying client, a few things start to happen. You're going to start. To get more pushback on price, you're going to start to get more ghosting than you got before. What happens a lot is that you might lose a few opportunities that really should be a slam dunk, and it can make you start to doubt yourself. Like, why is this happening? You might think like, Did I do something wrong? Or did I charge too much, or, you know, all kinds of head trash comes in, and it can really cause you to shrink back, like back into your comfort zone. And it can make you doubt that you have something good. You have a service that clients need. And it can make you wonder if you even got what it takes to run this business. But you do have something that's valuable, and you do have what it takes you just happened to take a step further out into the water, and it's a little deeper and it's a little choppier. It's not that you can't swim in it, it's that you don't know how to do it. Yet, you're using the same skills for the clients that barely needed a sales process, and you're trying to use those same skills for the ones that do need a sales process. And so when you do find yourself in that situation, then what happens is, you think you need more leads, but even when you get them, it's like pouring water into a leaky bucket. You can work so hard to get leads, but your chances of having them say yes are, you know, fingers crossed, and you're certainly not getting paid what you could be getting. And listen, I don't want to scare anyone here like this isn't meant to be scary. It's simply what happens. Like, the truth is that learning how to get clients outside of your immediate circle just is a part of running a business. This is normal for a business. Like, once you go through the people that you know, you have to go to those next levels and start to work with people who didn't work with you for five years in your last job. And so if you find yourself working with clients in this inner circle and you're feeling like they're sort of drying up, or you've exhausted them, it doesn't mean that you've done something wrong. It means you've done something right? Because that's just what happens as a business grows. So where I'm going with all of this is so many women tell me that their biggest problem is that they don't have enough leads, like they need more leads. But the truth is that you can get leads through LinkedIn or through speaking or through referrals or being featured on someone's podcast or through PR or SEO, you can do all of that, and you can work so hard to get leads, but if you can't sign the clients you want at the price you want, then it doesn't matter how many leads you get, because you won't be able to actually land them and get paid as much as you could be. So let's say you know you want leads, right? Like, imagine you got 20 new leads from your website tomorrow, if you didn't know how to lead each one of them through a sales process, how to scope and price your work for profitability, which in our world means not just money, but protecting your time so you're not overworked. And if you didn't know how to help them say yes, then you wouldn't be able to sign the ones you wanted and get paid as much as you could. So most women consultants actually don't need more leads. You need to be able to sign the ones you want at the price you want. And when you can do that, you actually need fewer leads than you think, because then you won't be pouring into a leaky bucket. You'll be pouring into a bucket that's watertight, and the bucket and your bank account will fill up. So just as an example, imagine that with leads from outside that inner circle. Let's say you have a 30% win rate, so you sign 30% of the potential clients that come your way. If you had 20 potential clients come your way, that means you would sign six of them. And if for each of those client engagements, you are getting paid $25,000 then with those six clients that you got, you would make $150,000 so 20 leads to 20 potential clients, resulting in $150,000

Leah Neaderthal13:58

but let's say you were able to sign 60% of the potential clients from outside that inner circle, so 60% of the leads that came your way. And let's remember that sometimes clients can't say yes for a number of external reasons and things going on in the company, but we don't want any of the reasons that they can't say yes to be that we didn't know how to help them say yes and lead a successful sales process. So again, let's say you were able to sign 60% of the leads that came your way from outside that inner circle. Then if you had just 10 leads, and each of your client engagements paid you the same so $25,000 then with a 60% win rate, you would make the same amount, $150,000 and you would only need 10 leads. But then let's say you were able to sign 60% of the leads that came your way from that outer circle. But instead of getting paid $25,000 per engagement, you were getting paid $40,000 which is completely possible to get paid more for the same work or less by offering something of extremely high value using value. Based scope and pricing. So with those 10 leads, and now you're able to sign 60% of them instead of 30% and you're getting paid $40,000 instead of $25,000. With those 10 leads, then you would make $240,000 again, from 10 leads instead of 20 in the previous example. And these might not be your numbers specifically, but you can do this same math with what you're charging and with your revenue goals. So remember, in the first example, you made 150k and you needed 20 leads to get there. In the second example, when you can sign more of the clients you talk to, and you can get paid more for the same work or less using value based scope and pricing, then you make 240k and you only needed 10 leads to get there. So how do you actually do that? Well, to get consulting clients, like to get a new client, the actual unit of a new client is a signed proposal. And so we start with the end in mind, and we have to look at the steps to a signed proposal. You have to actually know what your sales process is. You have to know how to actually get a potential client onto a call. You have to know how to lead great sales conversations and do great discovery, where you uncover the value that they're looking for and you learn the information that will help you help them say yes, and so in those conversations, you can actually move the ball forward. You have to know how to give your clients something that they can say yes to that's priced for value, what we call value based scope and pricing, so something that delivers value to the client and is also highly profitable for you in terms of money and your time. You have to know how to write great proposals that clients are dying to say yes to. You have to know how to follow up effectively and actually get a response. You have to know how to do what we call navigating the jungle, where you help the client get buy in and actually get the Work Sold in. You have to know how to negotiate to protect your price, and you have to help clients sign on the dotted line. That is the process. That's what we want. So that when you get leads, when you get somebody coming to your orbit, you know exactly what to do to turn potential clients into paying clients. And when you can do this, you can get the clients in that outer ring, that universe of new people, and you can get paid for your value. And by the way, when I say clients in that outer ring who are not as warm, that doesn't mean cold outreach, that doesn't mean cold emails or cold calling. There are ways to get those people in that outer ring paying attention to you and starting to get warmed up so they are a little bit warmer, but that still doesn't mean that they have the benefit of having worked with you for five years. So I just want to say that, because when I say that outer ring, it's not that you get them through cold outreach, it's that they're a little bit colder in terms of their familiarity with you. And so when you can do this, you can get clients in that outer ring, that universe of new people, and you can start to get paid for your value, I've seen every one of my clients do this. One of my clients works with city and county organizations as her clients, and she had great relationships with people in her county government, and she had worked with them. But as her business grew, she was starting to talk to cities and counties outside of her home county, so potential clients in that outer ring. She said she was totaling up the work she had signed over the past few months, and it was $82,000 in three separate proposals. She said they've all been funded due in large part to the proposal and her sales conversations. And I love this. She said not one has pushed back on costs, lack of hourly rate or length, each proposal has been crafted in 60 to 90 minutes, and that's what we're talking about, because when you know how to actually lead the sales process, not only can you get paid for your value, you can get it by doing the same work or less. One of my clients, who does marketing consulting and works with tech companies, posted that she was able to craft a strong proposal and double my engagement price by adding more value without adding more work. She said, the client agreed, without blinking an eye. And when you know how to do this and get paid for your value, you can relax and stop worrying so much about leads and do the work you wanted and actually enjoy running your business, like one of my clients, who said, I now have a business that I love that works for the life I want. I've reached almost 300k in revenue this year, and I'm on track to exceed that next year, and I still have time to exercise and spend time with my husband and family. So why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you this because I talked to so many women who think they need leads and they're worried about leads, but if they knew how to sign the right leads and get paid for their value, they wouldn't need as many leads. And they're worried about the wrong thing, because they're either hoping for super warm referrals from that inner circle of potential clients, or they're going into that outer layer and work. So hard to pour water into a leaky bucket, but when you solve the right problems and the right order, then you can truly grow your business and solving the landing the clients problem before the leads problem, that's the right order, and it's more important to fix the bucket first before you start pouring water in. One of my clients said to me one time, I was on a call with her, and she said, getting clients feels like fishing. She goes, I just don't know where to find the fish. She said to me, she's like, do I go to a networking event? And which networking events? She actually hates networking, so she'd rather poke her eyes out. But she was saying, you know, do I do more on Instagram? Should I be on LinkedIn? I mean, she was really kind of spiraling, and I said to her, you know, you're right, getting clients is like fishing, but actually not in the way that you think. Because if you don't know how to fish, it doesn't matter where you go to find fish, because you won't know how to catch the fish. But when you do know how to fish, you can fish anywhere. So like when you do know how to sell, when you do know how to land these clients, you can actually find leads anywhere. You can make LinkedIn work for you. You can go to a networking event or a conference. You start to be able to listen for and actually identify opportunities from the people you talk to, and you're able to have great sales conversations and discovery conversations and move these opportunities from that first contact all the way to a successful close and when you can do that, you can go anywhere and find clients. And I'm also sharing this because I see so many women spending a lot of time and a lot of money on courses and coaches and consultants that promise to get you clients, but they're actually just getting you leads. They're just point solutions to help you get leads, and they don't carry through to the B to B sales process to actually help you land the leads that come your way. And then it becomes up to you to lead a sales process and get buy in and all of those things we talked about, but without the skills to do that. And so again, you're trying to use those inner circle skills on outer circle leads. And listen, don't get me wrong, getting leads is important, of course, right? That's why I teach my clients in the academy how to get leads, and they build a complete marketing flywheel to get visible, to attract the right clients and to get leads. But remember, you need two things. You need people to sell to, and you need to know how to help them say yes. And so I will always tell you, and I will always tell my clients to solve the right problem first, close the right skill gap first. And when you can do that, you can stop spending so much time worrying about leads and working so hard to get leads, and you can spend more time actually working with the clients you want, because you know how to help them say yes and you know how to get paid for your value.

Leah Neaderthal23:09

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