Hey, it's Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast. This season, we're talking about consulting ideas, and I thought I would talk today about what's working now, the technique that I used over the past year that has brought the most new clients into my business. So this is what's working now in my consulting business, and I think you might find that it could work for you as well.

So the answer to that is virtual Zoom meetings. These little events that we give in which they're workshops in which we do some things together and everyone leaves having had an experience of me, and then that turns into people who come and inquire about joining my programs or working with me privately.

So I wanted to talk not so much about the how to of that, but why that is working and what you could do to replicate that in your business. So an important thing is that these are Zoom meetings and not webinars and you know, you can use WebEx or any other platform out there. The point is that there are, everyone is visible on the screen at the same time and it is interactive. So you're asking people to unmute themselves and answer questions or be active in the chat like the engagement is part of it. And so if that's a thing that you're not comfortable with, that's the thing to really work on.

The number one reason why these things worked for me and could work for you is that that kind of thing gives your audience a huge experience of you. So I always call to have a big dose of your brand, like dipping in the ‘you pool’, right, at that big dose of your brand gives people insight into what the experience of working with you would be like.

So what ways do we give that experience? What are the dimensions of that experience? Well, what are the number one experiences that people have when they come in and they look at all the tiles on the screen is your other clients. And so they get an opportunity to ask themselves, Are these people like me? Do I fit in here? And since I work exclusively with consultants, I have a narrow audience and sometimes my clients are in these actual zoom rooms and so the guests can look around and see, Oh, that's somebody who has the same background as me or who is working in a similar area to mine or, you know, is a consultant. That's a commonality that they have.

And then they can hear from other people, including my clients, about the results that they've gotten. So that big dose of my brand is, goes a long way towards turning them into a client for me. What's your version of that?

The other thing that we do is during the these zooms, the actual thing that we do, I'm not lecturing. We're actually are digging into exercises that I do in my real programs and giving everyone a chance to experience like how we work together. So the experience isn't just of me and my personality, it's like, this is what the work would be. And they see again, they see their peers who are my current clients, getting in there and doing the exercises with them and sometimes like asking questions or speaking about their own experience with it. And that helps other people to see like, Oh, this is the way the work goes and those other people are having this kind of experience with it. And look, they're they're learning, but they're not, you know, they're not stopping learning, they're continuing to do the work. In fact, I have one very successful client who comes back regularly to these kinds of workshops that I give because she is revisiting the ideas and wants to continue to do that work.

And here's an interesting thing. One of the things that we do in there is we talk about, you know, I've talked about creating your 100K offer, whatever is 100K for you. So whether that's like a 50K or an actual 100K, or maybe it's a two 50K. Well, my client Patty, whom you have seen on the show, returned to one of my workshops because the last time she had worked on creating a two hundred and forty thousand dollar offer, she'd already sold one. So she said, I've come back because I need to work on like the next level of that for myself. That's so thrilling for people who are in the room with her because they think, Oh my gosh, the thing that I'm creating today could also become my reality. So I'm not selling in that, right. I'm just giving people an opportunity to experience the potential for themselves. How can you do that in your business? Do you have exercises that you do with your clients that you could bring in and do with potential clients?

I know that a lot of people have the question of like, Well, am I not giving too much away when I do that? Aren't I? Like, isn't this like proprietary and shouldn't this only be for my clients? And what I would say is, like, you know, I want to serve my audience in general. I'm going to serve people who will never, ever work with me, and I'm not giving out too much information. I mean, honestly, if people can take the work that we do in an hour long workshop and go and grow their whole business like, you know, knock yourself out, I hope you do. And what I also know is I have real clients in there and we're working on this stuff every single week for years, and I know that you can get better and better and better at it. And what really helps is not just doing the exercise once, but continuing to do the exercises. So I know that there's benefit in experiencing it one time and then there's also ongoing benefit in, you know, sharpening the saw and being better and better at it. And by the way, I got more than one exercise, believe me.

So that kind of experience of doing it, digging in and doing the work, I think is very gratifying. They also have some outcomes from that. So people walk away from these workshops holding something that's like completed that they can put in to work like later today or when they get back to the office on Monday. And so I really like those like hard outcome based trainings. So that's a lot of what worked for me was delivering trainings that weren't just kind of like visiting an idea or, you know, the what and the why, but not the how this is like the actual how in some cases, to do certain things, a small part of all of the things that I can teach them, but nevertheless like this is actionable information that they can go. And I mean, I hope they put it into action that they can go and put into action immediately.

So when you do that, I believe you build, you know, the experience of my brand hopefully is like, Oh, I trust that if this is what I'm getting at this free workshop, like, imagine what I would get if I were paying for it or this is an idea of what the program is like. So I really like to be able to give an idea of who I work with through the Zoom meeting and who they see attending. I like to show them how I work, which is very action oriented. I like to give the expectation that they should go and implement this because that's the expectation that I have for my clients. So the experience of the event is incredibly aligned with the actual experience of working with me, and that's what I think has really worked so that the people who have come and attended either think, Phew..not for me. Let me out of here. Or they think, Aha, this is for me. This is how I want to work, and this is how I think I can get results. And then like, what questions do they have after that? They've already gotten a big dose of me and the community and the expectations. And so really, the next logical step is to enroll in one of my programs.

What's your version of that? Let's say you work with a corporate audience. Can you invite from your corporate audience members, from the same company, from various companies? You know, the same basic type of person, including with your your current clients, and bring them together in a room for like a roundtable, for a discussion, for a workshop, for a skills training in what could you do to bring your people together in which you know you're the impresario, you're the emcee of that event, you are the expert who is leading this whole experience for them.

So the value in it again is that big dose of you, a big dose of the experience of what it would be like to work with you. And then it's just down to timing. Is this the right thing for the right people? And they self-select.

So yes, it's important that there is a call to action in this meeting. We are just hold this and then let them go and then kind of like, let them connect the dots of like, Hey, you could work with me. You want to have a call to action in there. I'll give it at the very beginning. Hey, the intention of this meeting is to help you to learn the information that's in here. If it's right for you and you want to take this off and implement it on your own, then awesome. And if not, you'd like to learn more about how to work with me. I'm going to be sharing that information over the course of the next hour. Cool. So when you say that at the beginning, the people who are like, I don't want to hear that, then they can leave immediately. No one ever does. Or they can stay till the end. But all along the way, I'm saying, if that's something that you want to hear more about, you can feel free to get in touch with me. I have an assistant who is active in the chat and so she can provide resources, you know, and a link to my schedule or an application or wherever you want to send them. And then, you know, by the end, someone is probably going to be pretty clear on whether they want that. But importantly, you give them that reminder. Hey, so if this has been an experience that you'd like to to replicate or you want to learn more about how I take the things that we've done today and turn those into plans that help you add $150,000 to your consulting business over the next year, then feel free to get in touch with me here. OK, if you feel comfortable, you can do open Q&A. You can do, you know you can really turn this into something that showcases your strengths. So keep that in mind.

You don't have to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable. So if you feel like I'm not that great with rapid fire open Q&A, then how people can submit their questions in advance or don't take Q&A at all. You're in charge and you want to create an event that both showcases you and your strengths and also the benefits of working with you.

So that is the thing that worked best for me last year, bringing in new clients into my business. I actually really enjoyed doing them, which is another bonus. Zoom events, these virtual events in lieu of in-person ones which I'd love to return to doing as soon as that's feasible. And I hope that this has helped you to think about like what your version of that might be and how you can incorporate experience of giving your clients a big dose of ‘you’ in whatever way is a fit. And with that, I wish you a profitable and joyful consulting business.