How To Attract More Wonderful, High-End Clients - With Robert Middleton
May 13, 2021Tom Bailey, Founder of Succeed Through Speaking, Interviews Robert Middleton.
Robert Middleton has been helping self-employed professionals attract new clients for the past 35 years. Author of the bestseller, The InfoGuru Marketing Manual and the weekly, Fearless Marketer email newsletter, Robert has helped thousands of consultants, coaches and trainers be better marketers of their professional services.
Why you've got to check out Robert's episode:
- Learn how Robert helps self-employed B2B professionals, coaches, consultants and trailers that offer high end services to companies.
- Discover the four key challenges that Robert solves for all of his clients so that they can charge more for their services, get in front of the right people, communicate their value powerfully to their clients and how to close business.
- How many of Roberts clients say "I am great at what I do but I can't sell enough of what I have" and how to resolve this in your business.
- The importance of getting in front of your ideal clients at the front end of your marketing funnel through speaking, webinars, interviews, videos and being proactive to give an experience before asking for the business.
- Get access to Robert's eBook called 'Get More Meetings Land More Clients' so that you can attract more wonderful, high-end clients.
- Understand the importance of failing more, getting out there and risking things, be creative and courageous and be ok if you do miss a few of the shots that you take.
Resources / Links
Transcript
Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to the Flow And Grow Expert Interviews. Be place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'm joined by Robert Middleton, who is the author of the best selling book, the Info Guru Marketing Manual, as well as the weekly Fearless Marketing Newsletter. So, Robert hello and a very warm welcome to today's episode. Thanks.
Robert Middleton: Good to be here.
Tom Bailey: And whereabouts are you in the world right now?
Robert Middleton: I live in Boulder Creek, California, which is in the San Francisco Bay area on the top of a mountain in the middle of the redwoods.
Tom Bailey: Wow wonderful. Sounds amazing. But you've got some amazing views over the redwoods as well. Yep. They're right in my backyard.
Oh, fantastic. Well, one, thanks so much for that. And let me now dive into the subject of Robert quickly and in more detail. So, Robert has been helping self-employed professionals attract new clients for the past 35 years and has helped thousands of consultants, coaches, and trainers to be better marketers of their professional services. The title for today's episode is How To Attract More Wonderful High-end Clients.
And Robert's going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So, no pressure. Robert question number one is who are your ideal clients?
Robert Middleton: Well, you've already said it. Self-employed B to B professionals, mostly consultants, coaches, trainers that offer high-end types of services to companies.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Thank you. Very defined niche. And what is typically the biggest challenge that they face?
Robert Middleton: Well, there's really four big things that I work with online. Number one. Is having a good high-end program to sell, to begin with. I call it an H E O B high-end outcome-based program, not a program that can reduce, produce a measurable result for your clients.
If you can do that, you can charge more for it. So, an in-depth kind of program that's number one, challenge. Number two challenge is getting in front of the right people in our programs who work a lot on how to do that, how to. Get with people who can buy your services. Third challenge is how to communicate your value powerfully to your potential clients.
And I show people how to put together a powerful presentation. We'll talk more about that in a bit. And the third thing is how to close the business. Once you've got someone you're communicating to them, how do you convert that into closed deals? So those are the big challenges. If you can do those, you can get a lot of great clients.
Tom Bailey: Great. And I guess the starting point for a lot of your clients would probably be, they haven't got those three things solved yet. So, think of that. Yeah.
Robert Middleton: Or actually they haven't got four of them often. They're terrible at all.
Tom Bailey: Yes. Yeah, of course. So those clients that are terrible at all of them, what impact does that typically have on their business?
Robert Middleton: What's the impact of not having those notes? Well, the impact is not enough clients struggling and efforting with marketing, not good at communicating, you know, frustration about the whole marketing process. So that's what, you know, people contact me when they say, well, I'm great at what I do, but I can't sell enough of what I have.
Tom Bailey: Yes. I think the biggest impact, like you said, is not having enough clients effectively. Cause then that equals not enough revenue as well. So, thinking of these people then with, with not enough clients and what is the biggest, or what is the most valuable piece of advice that you want to give to somebody to really help them solve that problem?
Robert Middleton: Well, the thing that I like to emphasize, I'm giving a presentation on this later today is. Give your prospective clients experiences of what you do and who you are. Yeah. So, for instance, this is an example, you're doing an interview. People get to see me and experience me, people put way too much time into social media content marketing.
Now these can be good for certain kinds of businesses, but if you're a professional selling a high-end service, I think a lot of that is a complete waste of time trying to get people to your website. All of that. I don't put any effort into that. I work on getting in front of people and then giving an experience of who I am so they can go, Oh, I get it.
I see who you are. So, it's, it's being proactive. Got it. It's breaching out. Instead of being passive in their marketing. You know what I mean by passive it's like, well, I'll do a great job. And then I'll, I'll use my prayer strategy to attract clients, which I pray that they'll send me referrals instead of finding ways to get in front of people.
So, what I've done a lot in my business is done. Lots of presentations, lots of webinars got in front of professional groups. That kind of thing. That's, what's gotten me clients, lots and lots of clients.
Tom Bailey: Fantastic. I absolutely love that advice. And, and like you said, that the, normally, normally the person stood at the front of the room is the one seen as the leader.
So, if you can put yourself there and obviously all eyes are on you and that's a great way to get yourself out one of your prospective clients. Absolutely. So given that, what is one valuable free resource that you can share to help people with this problem in their business.
Robert Middleton: You forgot my biggest failure.
Tom Bailey: That's next.
Robert Middleton: Oh, that's next. Okay. It's in a different order than you had here. One what you can do is go to my website actionplan.club/pc, not.com. Great. And I have a booklet called get more meetings, land more clients, fantastic ebook. So, you can get that there.
Tom Bailey: Great. Get more meetings, land more clients, and you can get that from actionplan.club/pc
And I'll put that link below the episode so that people can click on that and jump right in. Terrific. So, you were one step ahead of me, but the next question is what is your greatest failure that you've ever made either in life or business? And what did you learn from?
Robert Middleton: Well, when I thought of this, what popped into my head, this is really a good one, is that I haven't failed enough. Yeah. I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is not trying enough things, risking enough things, getting out there and doing things. And it's what I see with my clients as well. Well, I can't call these people because, Oh my God, they might reject me. And I said, who gives a damn yeah.
You know, sooner or later you connect with enough people, try enough things. Be creative. You're going to find things that sticks. So, you know what you're doing, Tom is a very creative thing when I saw this thing seven minute interview. Yeah. That's a crazy thing to do. No one does this. And so that's trying something being willing to fail.
Yeah. You know, and I'm sure you've failed at some things, but I failed at a lot of things, but I need to fail at more. Yeah. Now I'm getting sort of near the end of my career. So I want to fail hugely to have taking risks, doing crazy things, being out there more, more, you know, I think that's really important.
Tom Bailey: I love that. And I don't know if you first said this, but Michael Jordan famously said, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. So, like you said, you need to be out there taking those shots. Even if you're going to miss a few of them, you know, you've gotta be out there taking those shots to actually score a few points.
Robert Middleton: Yeah. So what I'm saying is equivalent of you're not taking enough shots.
Tom Bailey: Yeah. All right. It's okay. If you miss a few shots, it's not the end of the world. You just keep taking more, right. Absolutely. Right. Thank you so much for that. And the last question I've got for you today is what is one question that I should have asked you that will also give great value to our audience?
Robert Middleton: My question is how do your clients get stuck
Tom Bailey: And what, what would your answer be to that?
Robert Middleton: They believe what they think. Yeah. You know, we, it's sort of related to the last one. It's like, well, if I do this, then this will happen. Well, if I try that, no one will be interested. I mean, we're, I call it the mind made mind made matrix.
Yeah, know the matrix? So, we live in our mind in a virtual reality that tells us that things aren't going to work. We live in a virtual reality, that things say things are hard and that marketing is difficult and that, you know, all these limitations and fears. So. You know, I have to do a lot of work with people to question their beliefs about what's possible.
Yeah. Yeah. It's just made-up stuff for the most part. I mean, not always there's things that maybe are stupid to do, you know, but in the most cases, it's, it's stuff that they they've just made up based on some, something someone told them or some past experience. And that's what stops people.
Yeah, limiting beliefs based on our own perception.
Tom Bailey: Not necessarily on reality.
Robert Middleton: Exactly.
Tom Bailey: So, yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for that. That's a really great point to end on. So Robert, thank you so much again for your time today. I really appreciate you joining us.
Robert Middleton: Thank you, Tom. That was fun.
