I want to talk about something interesting…basically…how to get more clients to hire you by putting them into a psychology where they’re basically saying, “I have to hire this speaker.”
Not too long ago I sent an email to ask what people thought of the national speakers association conference and one response said that she loved it and would be happy to chat with me on the phone about it.
Now since I’m very strict with my time management, I told her that I only talk on the phone with coaching clients. And the reason I don’t just chat on the phone with anyone is because I know what my top activities are in my business that produces money and anything that takes time away from it needs to make me a certain amount of money. If it doesn’t, then I will more often than not spend time just doing the top activities.
So spending time to talk about an event isn’t a money maker for me which is why I said no.
But then she responded with something interesting that I know most speakers would want to know the answer to. She said, “I understand the time management thing. But how do you know I didn’t want to hire you and all I needed was a little 10-15 minute phone conversation to push me over the line and hire you as a coach?”
Now that’s a legit question that I’m sure most people have…especially if you have your own coaching program.
So let me give you the reasoning behind why I said no.
First, I kind of mentioned this earlier, it’s a time management thing. I know what the top activities are in my business that produces the most amount of money so I spend my time on those activities.
And second, you have to understand the psychology of your buyers and how people buy high priced items.
When people buy anything that costs them a lot…and ‘a lot’ can be different things to different people. $2,000 might be a lot to most but it’s chump change to Bill Gates. But when a person is going to pay for something that costs a lot, what happens is they first do research.
When you’re buying a car or a house, you don’t just buy the first one you see. You do some research.
And the same happens with your coaching program.
Now it’s also important to know what I mean by research. By research, I mean they don’t just jump into it. Someone who invests in your coaching program might have been following you for months or years before they invest in it.
They’ve probably bought your other products too.
Very rarely will someone just buy your coaching program without knowing anything about you. They’ve watched all your videos, read your blog posts, and they liked it. Then they contact you for coaching.
But what happens is by the time someone contacts you for coaching, they already know what you have to offer. They already know how good you are and they just want you to help them. You don’t need to convince them to join your coaching program, they’re already convinced…now it’s just a matter of details.
So when she responded by saying, “What if the 10-15 minute phone call would have been the thing I needed to pull the trigger?” Well think about where that puts me.
That means I have to persuade her to sign up. And if after watching all my videos, reading my blog posts, and following all my stuff, if after the hours of training stuff she still isn’t convinced, then the 10-15 minutes won’t do much.
If someone isn’t absolutely convinced that spending $10,000 on a coaching program will improve their business then a 10 minute phone call won’t change that. For someone to spend $10,000, they have to be absolutely convinced.
When you’re put in the position where you have to convince someone to hire you, you’ve lost the game.
This happened to my brother who’s a fitness coach.
He said that someone asked him why should he hire my brother when the guy could just go on the internet and find health meals, workouts, and all that stuff. Now my brother is ripped. 8-pack and everything. He competed in Mr. Olympia’s physique show…so if you just look at him then you know what he’s talking about.
But this guy still needed convincing. So my brother said something, don’t know what it was, and what happened…the guy didn’t hire him.
I told my brother not to waste his breath next time someone asks. Because if someone see’s him and still asks why they should listen to him when it comes to fitness then that’s not a client he wants to work with. It’s obvious that what he does works and nothing he says will convince them if they’re not already convinced just by looking at him.
You can tell the psychology of someone who is ready to buy just by the questions they ask.
Someone who isn’t ready to buy will ask questions like ‘why should I hire you.’ But someone who’s ready to buy will ask, ‘when can we get started?’ It’s simple but it’s something you need to pay very close attention to.
And this leads me to this point of how to get more clients to hire you to speak.
A lot of speakers have talked about phone scripts and saying things to persuade clients to hire them. They want to know what to say to someone to get hired. But they have it backwards.
Your marketing should be so good that by the time they contact you, they’re ready to hire you. It’s not a matter of why they should hire you, it’s a matter of where should they send the check.
I don’t use any type of sales techniques on the phone or in email.
When someone contacts me for an event, they’re ready to hire me. All the persuasion has already been done by the time they send that first email and now it’s just a matter of whether or not I’m available.
It’s important that you understand the difference.
If someone asks why should they hire you as a speaker then that means you haven’t done your job in the marketing of your business. That means something’s broken in your marketing process. Maybe you don’t have a great website, maybe you don’t have great video footage, it means that something in your marketing process needs to get fixed, not something in your sales technique when you talk to the client.
If you’re selling clients on whether or not they should hire you, you need to stop selling and get better at marketing because people should already be sold.
I remember when I was getting started, I used to get asked this question a lot… “Why should I hire you?”
And what’s worse is that when you read marketing books and go to events, the speakers tell you that you need a good answer to that question. “Why should someone do business with you?”
And you try to answer it by saying something cool. You try to talk about how you can change people’s lives or how you’re entertaining from the stage or how you do this and that. You try to answer that question literally.
But in reality, you should have answered that question before they ever contacted you.
Your website should be so good that it makes you look like a celebrity. You should have so many video reviews that people can’t watch them all. You stage footage should be so good that it’s hard to hear what you’re saying because the crowd just goes wild.
When you have all that, clients don’t say, “Why should I hire you?” They say, “Hey are you available to do our event? We want you!”
The way you’re going to get more clients to hire you to speak is to focus on the marketing you have in place before they ever speak to you on the phone or contact you through the email.
If you have so much social proof that it makes you look like a rockstar then their psychology is going to switch from, “Who should we hire?” To, “Holy crap, I hope this speaker’s available.”
That’s how you get more clients to hire you to speak.