Ep 99: How to get more clients
Have you ever asked 'how do I get more clients'?
If so, you're not alone. And today I'm sharing some questions and prompts to get you started on answering that question.
And of course it's not going to be any step by step hack or shady kinda behaviour - it's all based on connecting more, cultivating trust and building relationships. But it starts with getting curious.
Let's dive in.
Mentions
Episode Transcript
Laura Jean 0:04
Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Dietitian Values podcast. And I'm bringing something a little different to you today, I'm actually going to be giving you a series of questions and thoughts, that you can reflect on and possibly opportunities to generate ideas, and some thought noodles on generating more client referrals. now that's like very generic language. It's not really the language I would normally use. But the reason this is come up for me today, or the reason I thought I'd share it was there was a question in a Facebook group where somebody had said that they are working in private practice, how do people bring in clients? they've been in business for over a year, and they're struggling to attract new clients. So I shared some thoughts, they shared what they done, I shared some thoughts and questions, and I thought I'd share them with you because I think they could be supportive. The other reason I'm talking about marketing, and I will be probably for the next couple of weeks is because I'm doing a webinar May 26 in Australian time, or may 25 in the US and UK and it's going to be on marketing without manipulation. So if that's something that you are interested in, check out the show notes. I'll drop the link and also head over to @dietitianvalues on Instagram, if you want the details.
It takes time
Okay, so these questions are for you if you've ever asked yourself, how do I find more clients? How do I generate new clients, this can be a way to work on that, or some thoughts that can help you out. So the first step is to think about the humans that you are trying to talk to, actually before I say that, I want to just caveat all of this with the fact that building marketing kind of strategies and plans takes time, you're in the business of actually building trust with the humans who want to work with you, you're creating a space for them to trust that you are somebody that can support them. So that takes time, I generally recommend measuring things in 12 to 18 month spans so that you can get a better clearer picture of what "works" for your business. So don't just try something once or twice and think, oh, that didn't work with a lot of these things, you're kind of tweaking them a little bit. And some of them you're following up because you're building trust, but you're also building relationships and relating. And as we know, even within, like your life, relationships aren't built by one single action of dropping a mailer off at a GP clinic, for example. So let's go dive in. And hopefully you find this supportive. And then what you can do is use the rest of the podcast time that you would normally have to actually look at these questions. I will drop a transcript of the episode on the website as well in the show notes so that you can actually read through them if that's more supportive.
Is your niche already looking for you?
So the first question is looking at your niche or the humans you want to work with, also known as a niche, are the people in your niche already looking for you? If they are not, then I would really recommend that you consider a tighter or different niche. Because if you have to use your marketing efforts to convince people, it's going to take a lot more time, you really want your marketing efforts to be letting people know that you exist the people who already want your services, whether that's the direct human that you want to work with, or people that would be referring them to you.
So you want the people who already see the value of your services, and you just want to be literally letting them know you exist. building relationships of course, but you don't want to be convincing them. What often happens is people in the health space think of GPs and doctors. Unfortunately, we often have to spend most of our time and efforts convincing the GPs and doctors to think about us, convincing them to remember us, convincing them to actually refer clients. That's such a waste of your time. So looking for either the humans and also in those referral pathways, people that don't need convincing, but simply are looking for you already and you're just letting them know you exist. So that's the first step you may need to tighten your niche or change your niche a little bit.
Where do potential clients hang out (on and offline)?
Where do the people that you want to share your work with, your niche, where do they already hang out? What are they already going again, people might only be going to the GPs to get their scripts refilled or when they've got like as an acute injury. They're not going there weekly. They're not going there all the time. They don't necessarily bring these things up with their GP. There are some specific medical conditions of course where GPs and doctors and specialists are really great referral option. And for a lot of us, the people that we want to share our work with are going to other places, maybe they're going to Pilates on a Saturday morning, maybe they're going to their gym and they're talking to their personal trainer. So where do they already hang out? If it's online, perhaps they're listening to a podcast, or they read a favourite blog, or an online publication. So where are they already hanging out?
Who already has the trust of your niche?
Who do they already trust around their health and well being? And, where are the opportunities to build relationships with those people? So for example, depending on your niche, perhaps this person goes to the gym, and they have a personal trainer, and not all personal trainers, but there are a lot out there that see the benefit and value of I'm going to use the dietitian in this example. And they would refer them to you, there could be personal trainers who see the benefit of referring on to an exercise physiologist or physiotherapist for specific acute conditions. So where are the people? The people that you want to share your work with? Who do they already trust? Who are they talking about things to where you could be inserted into the conversation, and of those people who already sees the value in your work. Because again, we don't want to be convincing people, you want to be sharing your services, marketing your services to people who already see the value in what you do.
Of course, going alongside this is being bloody good at what you do. So that people also then see that that referral pathway gets strengthened by the fact that people go back and they're like, Thanks for referring me to that dietitian. For example, She was great or they were great. And I had such a great session and XYZ, so where that loop is happening, where that relating is being built.
What other services are your niche using?
Okay, the next one, and the next place that you can start to look is to dig into your stats, actually, before I go into that one, based on this idea of where people are hanging out whether you're in person or an online business, so thinking more about where they hang out, and also like what other kinds of adjacent services are they looking at? So for example, if you were in paediatric nutritional or you work with families and kids, where do they already go? Maybe they go to schools, maybe they go to childcare, or some sort of care. Maybe they go to community events, maybe they go to the library, you don't have to contain it just to the health space. If you're online, what other online spaces are people hanging out in? So the first place people come to would be your website, right? That might be where they hang out? How would they find it? Where do people hang out? They're doing Google searches. They're listening to podcasts. So how can you optimise those opportunities? Or where are the opportunities to look at say, optimising the SEO of your website? So when people are chucking something in a Google search, you show up.
Having things like a blog, or a podcast or some sort of content of your own, that builds trust with people so that when they're looking for a certain issue, you're answering that question for them. And then they're like, yeah, actually, I need to work with this person more potentially. If you don't want to do your own podcast, blog, vlog, whatever it might be, it can be thinking about being a guest on other people's. Again, if we go back to that question, where are people hanging out? In person, it might be that they're hanging out at the gym, online, it might be that they're hanging out at a certain podcast, every week, they're listening to this podcast, that could be an opportunity to do a guest chat.
It’s all about relating
All of this stuff's built on relationships, right, though. So you're building relationships with these spaces. Now, some, again, some spaces, it might just be simply you say, Hey, I'm a dietitian, I'd love to have a chat on your podcast, and people are like, Oh, that's great, we actually would love to interview you. And sometimes it's building that relationship. So it's not just a case of the transactional piece. And the reason that's important, for many reasons, but people are more likely to share your services to talk about you, if they like you, if they have a relationship with you, not because of any kind of 'getting out of it'. But think about in your own experiences - you're having a conversation with a group of friends in your life, day to day life, and they say, Oh, I've got a sore back, I really need to head to the physio, you're either going to recommend somebody you already know, somebody you've worked with somebody, you have a relationship with. So same goes for the humans that we work with, how can you build relationships where you are front of mind, when people are having these conversations, either with the people in their life, like their loved ones, their day to day people, or other professionals or other spaces they're in contact with?
Knowing your numbers
How are clients finding you?
The last part is to look at your current stats. So looking at where have people found your services in the past, or currently, if you're not collecting that data, I highly recommend either pop it on your intake form, or just a short conversation when you're working with somebody for the first time, Hey, 'how'd you hear about the services?' Or 'How'd you find me'. That will give you an idea of where people are coming from, you can then identify your key referral pathway or pathways. And you can look for opportunities to either double down on that and not double down in an extractive, suck more out of it way, but more like where are the opportunities to build more relating and connection through that referral pathway? You can look at how could you grow it, you can also look at where are some other like pathways that you could enhance so that you can build on to it.
So for example, somebody that I've been working with, a recent coaching client, we were talking about their referral pathways and one of the places they had gotten very, a smallish number but was from dietitians in the hospitals around them. And so we talked about how that could maybe be enhanced by building relationships and building connections. Now not as in, go in there and tell them why they should be referring to you, but building relationships and relating so that when people are coming in as inpatients and then they're needing to be discharged, she was front of mind. And so that was what you can look at.
Over to you…
So look at where you're already getting clients, where are the humans finding you right now. Now, if no one's finding you, you might just need to give yourself some more time to try out some strategies, pick one or two and just keep working on it. Keep building relationships, but if you already have referral pathways, and you've got a few that are really easily identified as your key ones, how can you build and enhance those?
Okay, so that's what I want to share with you those questions, go take some time to jump into those and I'd love to hear any thoughts that you have and if you're interested in the webinar, check that out. Until next time, bye for now.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
