8 Strategies to Optimize Your Client Journey (For More Freedom!)
If you run your business as a one-man show, you need to be efficient.
Or else you’ll be swamped with client work. And fall behind on projects you know would improve your business and strengthen your brand.
Each strategy I’m about to tell you deserves its own article. But I couldn’t resist giving you a glimpse of what’s to come in the upcoming weeks.
We’ll start at the beginning of your customer journey:
Positioning
The OFFER you make money from
Turn Your Services into Packages
You know what’s best for your clients because you’re the subject matter expert. Pre-design packages to align with what they typically need. Packages make it easier for buyers to select you and will save you time building proposals.
Price Your Services Like a Business, Not an Employee
There’s a cost to doing business. And it’s more than just your time. Do not. I repeat. Do not set your prices based on a hunch, what you think the client can afford, or hourly.
Your prices should reflect the cost of doing business—including all your expenses AND your time spent marketing, selling, and doing admin. When you start paying yourself for the extra stuff you do beyond client work, you won’t need to work overtime to squeeze in these important tasks.
Marketing
The things you need to do to GET prospects
Practice Marketing Minimalism
Marketing minimalism is a mindset where you focus on a single strategy that works and ignores everything else. When you commit to ONE marketing funnel that targets and converts ideal clients, you can free yourself from the pressure to do more. Ride the wave, baby!!
Build Your Brand
If you getting clients outside of referrals, you probably don’t actually have a brand. Effective brands work like magnets. They attract people with similar values than do the heavy lifting in sales, so by the time you get on the phone with a prospect, they’re basically already sold.
If you didn’t know I helped with this, you do now.
Sales
The things you need to do to CLOSE clients
Automate Your Onboarding
Please don’t tell me you’re updating, exporting, and sending your contracts manually. Even worse—coordinate meetings via email. If you are, you’re truly missing out on time that could be saved with technology. Dubsado is a game-changer. Here’s 20% off.
Stop Serving Everyone
Based on your past clients, who did you actually enjoy working with that paid you well?Define them. Then have the discipline to say no to leads that do not fit your ideal qualified prospect profile. You’ll avoid time wasted chasing deals unlikely to close.
Execution
The things you need to run efficient projects
Hire Help Before You’re Ready
As a consultant, your time is worth $80/hr, minimum. What work are you doing that is worth a fraction of that? Delegate so you can take on more paid client work. Or chill. Your choice.
Resist the Urge to Scale
Scaling your professional service business into a full-blown agency might sound sexy but it can be an incredible burden. You’ll constantly be on the hook for payroll, which means you’ll chase bigger, more demanding projects and clients. Sounds like the opposite of freedom if you ask me.
