The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 52 Degrees
It’s hard to choose which marketing “food” to serve when you’re out there trying to attract clients. Do you put out a plate of “raw cheese” or will all of that dairy sit there and rot because your prospects are vegan?
Figuring out which marketing “food” is most attractive to your prospects is a process you work through over time.
But one thing seems to hold true no matter what you decide to serve. And that’s the rule about the quantity you serve up. You might think that more is better, but it really depends on what you mean by more.
If you serve a “buffet,” (for example, you sit down with your prospect for 30 minutes and tell them all the ways you could solve their problems), your prospects will go away thinking they have been fed.
If you serve breadcrumbs, it will be clear that you are a source of good food, and that sample will increase the attraction towards you. If you charge for some of those breadcrumbs, the dynamic changes even more.
It takes discipline to serve breadcrumbs and patience to wait until your prospect digests them, figures out they like them, and comes back for more.
Serving a “buffet” makes you feel good about yourself right away. So it’s very tempting. You’re helping people right? Not really, it’s the illusion of helping.
Because that person most likely will never act on your advice. Because they had no skin in the game. There’s no value exchange there, just a one way outflow of energy from you. It’s kind of like a leech. But it’s not the prospect’s fault, it’s yours.
If you ignore this, you’ll attract prospects who live on free food. These folks might be great people but they do not make good clients. Would you pay to be a client if you could just go around eating at free “buffets?” Probably not.
I shut down my “buffet” and have no plans to open it again. It does a real disservice to my prospects. Instead, I serve breadcrumbs and some paid for a la carte items.
That’s why I offer paid Monday Mastermind Sessions, which is the outer ring of my process. It’s not a buffet, it’s an a la carte restaurant where the “food” comes at a price. Even McDonald’s has prices on everything. See what happens if you ever walk in there and ask to sample some burgers with the manager before you order…
Some folks aren’t willing to pay for these Mastermind Sessions, and they tell me that. And so my process does its job. We are simply not a good fit. Some prospects are not willing to pay for a consultation and I am not willing to offer one for free.
So it works out well. In the end, I save myself from wasting my time. My definition for that is to invest my time in prospects who don’t fit my criteria for prospects. They might be great people, but they don’t qualify as prospects.
If you’re serving a “buffet” right now, how can you start serving breadcrumbs? How can you start actually creating real value exchanges by charging for your advice, even before you get a client?
There’s no perfect answer, and I’m not saying you never make exceptions. The goal isn’t perfection, the goal is improvement.
Just a warning… closing down your “buffet” is much easier when you have the other pieces of the client attraction puzzle in place.
If you want the pieces of the puzzle, you can find them in Client Mastery.