Things are getting tighter in the economy. Business owners are hosting budget meeting after budget meeting, focusing on “How can I make more money for the business now?” As entrepreneurs, we’ve all been subject to that fear.
But the problem with this question is that it encourages a scarcity mindset, removing the most important piece of the equation we can give our clients: value.
So today, I’m going to help you change the way you think from “How can I make more money?” to “How can I provide more value to my clients?” Don’t be worried that it will result in lost revenue. This is how we operate at OMH Creative. As I will demonstrate, it will only boost your client relationships and brand morale.
It doesn’t need to be super big or expensive. I’ll give you 3 simple ways to provide value, starting with questions you can translate to your own company. Present yourself as gracious and generous, and do it from a place of abundance. I promise, there’s more than enough to go around.
3 Key Takeaways
- You are in a position to share your knowledge that’s simple to you but helpful to others. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the marketing industry or hairstyling industry.
- Take as little as two times a week to write an email that can provide value to a client. Watch how it acts like magic for your business.
- By providing free value to customers, you’re not only showing generosity but training them to be good customers; they now know what quality service looks like, and they know that it’s you.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Full Episode Transcript:
Well, hello. Welcome this week to the Storied Life Coaching podcast.
I’ve got one for you that’s going to help you by changing one simple question: the way that you think about approaching “How can I make more money?” Just changing that question in your brain: “How can I make more money? How can I sell more things? How can I help my business make more money today?” Changing that to “How can I add more value for my clients?”
Sounds really simple, right? But we make it so hard. I know I do this. I’m like, “Ah, there’s all this news and everything out in the world and the New York Times and everyone’s saying we’re heading towards a recession and now people’s budgets are gonna get tighter and there’s going to be hiring freezes, and there’s gonna be all these things. It’s going to be harder for people to buy my wares.” I’m seeing a lot of people freak out about this right now. People are tense. They’re having budget meeting after budget meeting after budget meeting. People are freaking out a little bit. And so as a result, entrepreneurs like myself that have very valuable services, that before it might have been a little bit easier to get that order filled, whether you’re like us, a production company and you’re making videos, or you’re helping people with coaching, things like, that people are reevaluating their budgets and where they allocate and spend their money.
So it’s a really good time for you, instead of being in a scarcity mindset and by scarcity mindset, what I mean by that is, “Oh my gosh, I need to figure this out. Otherwise, the money’s gonna go away,” or “I’m not going to be able to reach my goals,” to change that because that energy is not going to serve you. I know this from experience. Change it to “How can I add more value for my clients today?” And it doesn’t need to be as big as you think. You don’t need to invent something that’s super expensive, super time consuming. Something that doesn’t already exist: this is how we’ve been doing it in our business. I’m gonna give you some examples right now. In fact, I’m gonna give you three ways to add more value for your customers while making them better customers. How’s that? So I’m going to show you how to move from scarcity to an abundance mindset. This makes it so fun for me. And for the people that I work with, we’re like, “Ooh, how can we, how can we surprise and delight them today with something they didn’t even know they were getting?” Isn’t that fun? Isn’t that a way more fun way to approach sales? How can I add more value for my clients? How can I give them something they didn’t even know they were gonna get that they didn’t even know was awesome? And we’re not going to add a bunch more work to us by having to invent something, having to spend a bunch of money or anything like that.
So I’m gonna give you some examples of how we’re doing this in our business and then I’m gonna ask you some questions to make your brain, your supercomputer, go to work on how you could translate this to your own entrepreneurial journey, to your own business and how you could add value for your customers and your clients. It really is a mindset thing and once your brain starts getting used to asking the question, this way of “How can I add some more value for my clients today,” sales gets a lot easier. It’s really funny how that happens. And so look at ways that you can do this. Like, for instance, we have something that we’ve done where we emailed some clients. In fact, we made, I made an appointment on my schedule. there’s a block of time on there. It’s only 30 minutes long. I sent two emails a week or have two contacts, so two different customers per week. Something that helps them. My rule is it has to be simple and it has to be kind and for both those people that’s 15 minutes a piece in that time block that I have each week that I do it. So something simple and something kind. Here are a couple examples.
I had a client recently. We did a bunch of cool coaching for them, for their company, we got some great results. I sent a very comprehensive report to them about two months before that said, like, “Hey, here’s all the statistics and all the ways that people on the evaluations love the training and here were a couple suggestions they have. If we do this differently next time that we can make it even better,” and all this great stuff that they could drill into. Never heard back from them, which is totally fine. People get busy. But they have that information if they need it. Here’s what I did: I didn’t do anything new, I didn’t make anything new. All I did was I took that information, I turned on my camera and in two minutes, I shared with them that information on a little video I made for them, only took one take, and then I sent that to them in their email so it was a video link on it. They could click on and watch the video where I started a little small screen share and just did some highlights for them, specifically the highlights that I brought during this time of year. Because for this specific client, it’s towards the end of their year where they are starting to work on budgets for next year and there’s all these team meetings and they get together and they look at what went well this year, what went well, and what are the shiny things that we were able to accomplish that we can show the other teams as a whole was successful for us this year? And so I thought, “Okay, if I was in that meeting, and I was in her shoes, what information would she want in order to, that would make her look amazing in front of her boss and her team? Like the wins that we got for them that would just make her look great. And so I made a quick video on that and sent it to her. Again, this was information I had already sent her. She already had it but I made it just a simple kind gesture, something easy for her to consume. I let her know like this might be something you want to use in one of those upcoming meetings. She loved it. She used it. It made her look really good. Now, in the end, that makes it much easier for me to be able to build my relationship with her, to be able to add value for her so that when budget comes up for her to be able to do more training with us, it’s much easier for her to say yes. We are the firm that helps her look good in front of her boss emotionally. We’ve created that kind of bond and we do things like that.
Now, please identify that I’m not doing this out of a place of manipulation. This isn’t: “I’m doing this so I get this result.” This is, “Hey, what’s something that this specific client could use right now in their job to make them look good in front of their team or their boss or just helps their day be a little bit better?” And just do, it took me 15 minutes or less, like I said, because I’m doing two people a week, sent that and that helped them. So these are the kinds of things that I’m saying you can, you can use.
Another example. So I had a client that we were working with, it was in one of our classes, and I noticed during the class that their background was really, really dim and we didn’t specifically cover how to solve that problem in what we were doing. But later on, what I did is I just followed up with them and I just sent them a quick link. I was like, “Hey, I noticed your background was a little bit dim. Here’s a really affordable light that you can get on Amazon and here’s the link. It will totally solve that for you and here it is, and it’s really affordable.” Just send them off to them. Again, they replied right away: “Oh, that’s so great. I’m gonna get that. Oh, and by the way, I have a question about this,” and now we’re having a conversation about something else. So if you look at this from the perspective of sales, we spend a lot of time. If you are an entrepreneur, if you’re in business, you’re selling something. You are a salesperson. Whether or not your title says sales or not, we are all in the business of selling something. If you’re in business, you’re a salesperson. Fat out. This is the reality. So if you’re gonna have conversations with people and you are selling things for a living, like I said we all are, then why not do it in a way that’s kind and is hopeful and have that be the way that you sell? “Here’s something that I thought would make your day better.” All these salespeople that I see on LinkedIn and that go to big fancy sales trainings do all this stuff talk about, like, how many, like, automated emails they send and what the return rate on that is and blah blah blah and there’s all these mechanisms they put in placem all this automation in order to get send 500 emails and get one, hopefully a one or two percent response rate.
How about you just pick two people that you already have a relationship with and help them out? Just help them out, out of the blue. I bet you can think of a couple customers that you can reach out to and can help them with something small, something that’s really easy that you already have some knowledge that you already have. If you are a stylist and you have a customer that you think a specific haircut would look amazing on, or there’s a color-attentive color that they had mentioned a while back but now that you know, is it more of a possibility for them? Are you able to reach out and let them know about it? Like, I’m going completely off the reservation with that example but that’s just my, my sister is a hairstylist and so maybe that’s why that came to mind but in any industry that you are in, there are ways that you can be the helpful expert. So what are ways that you can reach out and do that, to move from that scarcity mindset of like, “Oh, I want to get more clients. I want to get more sales. I want to get more consults. I want to sell more things,” to “How can I be of greater service?”
Now, if you don’t already have a customer to do this for, if you are just starting out with your business and your entrepreneurial journey, then think about who your ideal customer would be and what’s not out there. Or what have you not put out there that could help them? Some knowledge that you have. It would be easy for you to communicate on Instagram, or on doing a Facebook Live, or getting on LinkedIn and making a post about something that’s simple to you, but will be really helpful to them. What’s something that you could do? How can you add more value for them? How can you move from “How can I make more money?” to “How can I add more value?”
So those are two examples. I already gave you another one that I did, that our company did, was a scripts template and this one seems so duh! But I wouldn’t think that anybody wanted that but our customers love it and that’s: we have a scripting template that we will give customers to give them an example. It’s a filled-out template, just a Word document that shows them exactly how we write a script. Lind of like how it’s mostly broken down. We call it the T three technique, so it’s T’s tell told, and it kind of has the different things that are in there. it’s something that our customers and also our coaching clients learn and just made a simple word template for them that had one filled out with a commercial that we’ve done before and then has a blank one so that they can kind of fill one out if they want to write their own script. Now here’s the thing. 99.9% of the time, we write the scripts for our clients. If they are coming to us to have a commercial made or a video or an explainer video or anything like that, we’re writing it for them, they, we help them with the idea a lot of times, even. And then we give them a draft and then we go back and forth on it. So they hardly ever use this template that we’re giving them for free but they love it. They love it. When we give it to them, they feel like “Oh, that’s something that I can, I could have and I could use and that, you know, I could write my own script at some point.” They’re probably never going to, but they like having it. And here’s the thing that’s really great for us and for our team: they are learning how to be good customers by having this download. They get to see what a script professional script looks like. It’s filled out and there’s a blank template that they can use if they want to but what they’re really also learning there is, “Oh, this is how it’s supposed to be done.” So when our team does do it for them, like I said, 99.9% the time and they get that script from us. They know that that is the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the gold standard. That’s the way it’s supposed to look like. This is amazing. They know what a great script is now and they are better customers because of it and it makes it process smoother for us and for our team.
So these are just some examples of how can you offer more value with something you already have, or that’s very easy for you to do but that will surprise and delight and add value for your customers, to make you look and feel overly generous, that you are in their corner, that you are that trusted advisor. Think about what are the ways that you could do this in your own business. I don’t want you to spend a bunch of time inventing new things. Think about what’s easy that we already have. What do I already do? What have I already provided to a client before that just with five or 10 minutes of editing or a little bit of polish would actually help another client, that I have no strings attached? Just go ahead and forward it to them or show them or like my example of the Amazon link to a light. What’s your equivalent of that? Just a little something that could show that you were thinking about them and that you wanted to be kind and reach out and make their day a little bit better, to add more value to them and to strengthen the relationship you have with the, or the potential relationship you’d like to have with them. This doesn’t have to be overly hard, but really moving from that transactional mindset of “How can I get you to respond to my offer so that I can make a sale?” From that manipulation mindset to “How can I add more value to you today and then move on about my day?” And it’s amazing how people are so attracted to that. People are so aware right now that they are getting all of these LinkedIn requests and, you know, “Hey, just one quick minute,” “Hey, can I bend your ear for a second?” Or “Hey,” like, it’s so inauthentic. It just reeks of manipulation and bullshit and no one wants it. It’s the first thing is deleted in their email. It’s the first “No, absolutely not” on the request for a LinkedIn request to connect.
This is not the way to sell. If you really want to sell more things, move to value. “How can I provide more value for you right now?” Just put it out there and move on. Those were the three ways. Think of something, something that can be small, easy, it’s kind, it’s simple, something that you already are an expert about. It could be a phone call. It could be an Instagram post. It could be a DM. Something simple and kind that you could do for your clients today that would help you to be that trusted advisor in their hours.
Alright, my friends. As many of you are looking and working with different companies with different customers that are reexamining their budgets right now and that there might be a little bit of an atmosphere of fear going on, I just want you to know that you always have the choice to decide to approach things differently. To do it from a sense of abundance, that, there’s plenty out there for you. There’s more than enough, and that if you move from “How am I going to sell this? How am I going to get this customer?” to “How can I add more value to somebody today? How would that be fun for me and for them? What small thing can I do?” It’s like magic. Try it out. You’re gonna love it.
I’ll talk to you next week, my friends until then, have a fantastic week.
