24th October 2022

Do you want more of the right clients?

An area that many advisers seem to find challenging is finding and engaging enough of the right clients. Naturally, there is a great deal of information and advice available in this area, however, if you feel you have diligently tried to find out what to do and yet continue to struggle then this article will help you to unlock the key to better results.

Rather than looking at client new engagement as simply a function of what strategy, tactics or know-how to employ, the real secret of consistent success has far more to do with mind-set. With a new understanding client acquisition can become one of the most enjoyable parts of your business instead of something that can feel like a chore. 

There is no magic bullet

The most common conclusion that people come to, if they are struggling with client acquisition, is that they just need to know what to do. This often sends people on a continual search for the ‘magic bullet’ that will be the breakthrough they are looking for and yet, as far as I can tell, there is no magic bullet. It seems to me, based on twenty five years of owning my own consultancies, that consistently engaging enough of the right clients takes commitment, time, effort, risk and a willingness to continually up your game.

Just the acceptance if this fact alone is often a major leap forward for people because one of the principle reasons that people struggle is that they continually avoid doing what it really takes to get the results they want.

Once we begin to realise that the barriers are in our own minds then we start to get out of our own way and are free to take the kind of action that is going to make a real difference. I saw a wonderful example of this a few years ago whilst participating in a six-month training programme for coaches.

It was a coach certification programme I attended and a condition of the certification was that you had to engage a certain number of paying clients during the programme. For people like myself who already had an established business this was straight-forward but there were a significant number of people on the programme who had no experience whatsoever of engaging new clients. Some of these people were really worried about this part of the programme and who can blame them? There are plenty of people who have been in business for years and still worry about it!

Despite the concerns that people had about their ability to engage new clients the message was crystal clear – if you wanted the certification (and people did) then you had to find a way to get over whatever unhelpful thinking you have about getting clients.

What was fascinating to me was that people did get over their thinking and got paying clients. As soon as they stopped engaging with their insecure, unproductive thinking their minds were free to get creative and clearly focused upon achieving the outcome they wanted. They realised that the ONLY barrier to their goal was their own thinking.

It can be quite astonishing what we can accomplish when we understand the relationship between state of mind and performance. In the sports world they realised this a long time ago and sports psychologists are commonplace in that world. Although the business world has been slower to catch on I am noticing that more and more business people are realising state of mind is a huge, and still relatively untapped, resource for creating step-change results. 

Why do advisers keep taking on the wrong clients?

Taking on the wrong clients is rarely a function of not knowing who the right clients are. Once we have been in business for a while then most people tend to get a natural sense of who they work best with.

The reason for continually taking on the wrong clients is because of an insecure state of mind, which results a scarcity mentality. This kind of thinking shows up in a whole variety of ways but can include attitudes such as “I hate to waste an opportunity” or “This client may be unprofitable now but they could be tomorrow’s lottery winner!” or “I have trouble saying “No””. The consequence of this is that too much time is filled up with the wrong clients.

The best activities for you and your business

You can take any business generating tactic – seminars, referrals, social media, third-party introducers, networking – and there will be people who are spectacularly good at it and, conversely, people who cannot make it work at all.

What you will find is that when people make something work it is because of the quality of mind they bring to it. In a clear mind we are highly motivated, focused, resilient, innovative, and really get behind what we do – the precise ingredients required to get real results. When people struggle it is because they are in states of self-doubt, procrastination, give up easily, blame circumstances and have low energy – the precise ingredients required to get poor results!

The secret to success is not in searching for the activities that will motivate you because this is a total misunderstanding of the source of our feelings. Something external to you cannot give you a feeling, which is why searching for the ‘magic bullet’ is futile. The magic bullet (to use the term), rather than being something outside and independent of you, is understanding the link between thought and feeling. As you realise this link you naturally drop unhelpful thinking and get the quality of thinking that is really going to help you get the results you want.

FREE webinar for advisers

On 15^th February we are hosting a FREE one-hour webinar called 'The inner game of client acquisition'. 

We will explore the real reason why people struggle in this vital business area and how to tap into the inner resource that turns getting new clients from something experienced as a chore and into one of the most enjoyable aspects of your business. 

You can reserve your place by clicking here.

John Dashfield, Dashfield Coaching & Development Ltd

John Dashfield, Dashfield Coaching & Development Ltd, Business Development