Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

Your Coaches Toolbox: Getting Beyond Word of Mouth Without the Overwhelm

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If you’re a coach in the Portland area please join me for this kickass event on Friday, May 11th in downtown Portland! I’ve partnered up with 3 of my favorite small business consultants who are crushing it in their own areas:

Your Coaches Toolbox:

Getting Beyond Word of Mouth Without the Overwhelm

As a coach you know the importance of consistency and having a great presence – both online and offline. You started coaching to be a COACH, not to make your website work or to spend hundreds (thousands?) on branding and logos and setting up the right marketing systems, doing video and sending out a newsletter – how frequently?!??

We know. We’ve been there. In this interactive and hands on workshop you’ll learn from the experts on how your coaching business can grow beyond word of mouth without breaking the bank.

You will learn:

  • Why DIY branding is a great place to start
  • When to make big (and small) changes to your website
  • When to start collecting email address and when to start a newsletter
  • When to jump from Facebook live to setting up your own YouTube channel
  • What to do in your first year of business
  • Advice for growth as you start speaking, write a book or launch an online program
  • When to DIY and when to outsource in your business

This event is one you won’t want to miss…

Is Your Inefficiency Costing You Business?

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Is your inYes, it is.

Last week I signed up for a webinar for a training I needed to complete. The signup form was a Google Form which is okay, but there was no confirmation email or a link for the webinar. So, I figured they’d just send an email to confirm the day before with the login details.

Then the evening before I get a link that says I have signed up for the webinar but I actually just signed up to sign up for the webinar. “Please click here and sign up AGAIN.”

Dude. This is not awesome. Even better? There was only a start time on the webinar originally. And it’s not an hour it’s 90 minutes (WHHHYYYYY???) and I have a client call at the 1 hour mark so I missed the last half hour of the webinar.

And then of COURSE the webinar starts late (Side rant: when you are late for an event or webinar do you expect that everyone will wait for you? I sure don’t, if I’m late I’ll just jump in and catch up – so WHY OH WHY do people do this?!?!)

If you are running a webinar or ANYTHING you need people to sign up for in advance – do yourself a favor and don’t annoy them before you start. Here’s what I recommend:

  • Include the start AND end time of your event.
  • START ON TIME. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I budgeted the 30/60/90 minutes for your event and we were all told when it starts. I arrived on time and it’s not my fault that someone else had a call go long. They knew they were late and expect to catch up – your lack of planning doesn’t constitute an emergency on my end.
  • END on time – yes you can stick around for questions but be respectful of people’s time and what you PROMISED them.
  • Don’t be redundant. There was ZERO reason for me to have to register twice for the webinar. And my guess is that about 50% of the people who first registered will not re-register or attend the webinar. You’re losing people when you do this.

We all know I thrive on efficiency and streamlined processes so this rant shouldn’t come as a surprise. This was just a good reminder to me to ensure that I have the most efficient processes in place in my business so that I’m not wasting clients (or prospects) time with redundancies.

What redundancies in your business do you need to review?

How to Play Nice: Your CRM & Your Newsletter List

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I’ve been talking a lot about how to maximize your CRM lately. If you’re still panicked about not having one, jump on it, I promise you it’ll make your life more sane. After my latest newsletter went out, a colleague of mine called to ask a question about how my CRM integrates with MailChimp.

Her question was if I ask permission before adding people in my CRM to my newsletter list. Which is a GREAT question! The short answer is no, but the longer answer is…

I only add people to my CRM who are a potential client. Not that I want them to hire me even though they’ve given me no indication they’re interested in me, but we’ve had a real live conversation about them hiring me. People who make it into my CRM are people who are in my sales pipeline. They’re interested, we’re talking, I’ve probably sent them a proposal or some recommendations about what it would look like to work with me. I call this implied consent.

I treat my newsletter as an additional touch point. If 80% of sales happen between the 5th and 12th (12!) touch point, then my newsletter is one of those touch points (well, it’s hopefully years worth of touch points!).

This is why I think newsletters are such a great way to connect with your network when you’re NOT selling them something. My newsletter is full of helpful information that gets you to say “she’s the right person for me” or “she’s nuts so glad I didn’t hire her – UNSUBSCRIBE.” Your newsletter should be thought of as a part of your sales pipeline. It’s not a pushy part of sales process but one more way you can add value to your potential client and remind them that you are alive and in business and ready for them to hire you when they’re ready.

My friend then asked how often people unsubscribe and if I get complaints. A great question, and again the answer is NO. People have occasionally unsubscribed in time, which is OK, I’m not the right fit for them. No one has ever responded and been mad they were added to my list if we’ve been having conversations about working together.

As you look at your list and your connections, I will always make sure that you are adding in your current clients, past clients (unless it ended badly) and your prospects. Make sure that the people who SHOULD be hearing from you are hearing from you!