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Hello and welcome, Janet Beckers here with your Wonderful Web TV Tip of the Week. Today
I'd like to talk to you about free consultations. Good thing - Bad thing. It really depends.
So if you're a coach, a consultatant, some type of mentor, it is very common to use the
model of giving free consultations to people as a way of finding people and upselling them
into your paid programs. So I'm going to share with you my experience with that and I'm also
going to share with you some solutions. So, personally I don't do free consultations.
The reason for that is I don't need to. I've got people when I have time, instead of me
saying, I've got six spaces for six free consultations, I send out my email list saying, "I've got
time for six consultations for an hour for $550 each" and they fill up every time and
so I know that the people who take me up on that time, that they are very likely to be
the people that are going to benefit from my higher priced programs as well where they
can actually benefit from working more closely with me. So, I don't it because I don't need
to but that's because I've been getting results for people for quite a while now. Now when
I first started out, I did do free consultations and I tell you what, I sucked at it; totally,
totally sucked. What I did is I spent a lot of time giving away a lot of knowledge, a
lot of intellectual property and made very little money from it but that is because I
did not know the basics I'm about to share with you. So, let me share this with you.
The first thing is you don't want to be giving away consultations to anybody. You only want
to get people who are going to be on that phone with you, who are very likely to benefit
from the programs that you've got to offer and are likely to invest in them. So you don't
want to be wasting your time with tyre kickers who are just after free advice. So, to do
that, you need to have some kind of way of pre-qualifying the people who get on to that
phone call with you; who get that booking in the first place. A great way to do that
is to have a questionnaire that people need to fill out and you will have a look at their
answers and you will be able to know 'okay well this person here, they're not ready for
me yet, this person here might think they're ready but they've answered some of those questions
that show they're not going to spend any money'. So this is not a charity you're doing this
is a marketing and sales method. So, if you're going to be doing it, you only want people
there that are likely to buy. So, number 1: you need to be qualifying them. Number 2 is
you do not want to make it so that this is all that you are going to be doing. This is
a method of getting sales. You've also got to be spending your time on your marketing
and making the money so limit how many are available and that also gives it a value.
You can say with integrity, I've only got six spaces available this week or this month;
however it's going to be and stick with that so people know that if they get one, they're
lucky to have got one and it also explains to them why you have the pre-qualifying questionnaire.
So that's number 2. Number 3 and this is the thing that I really, really struggled with
and most people do is having a system to upsell people. Let them know from the beginning that
the whole idea of this is to let them work out if they can work with you and to let you
know if you can help them and so you need to have a system that guides people through
that process. Now that was something that I did not have at all and it's something that,
once I worked out how to do it, is really seemless and it's actually a great experience
for both partners; both people, the person who is looking at working with you and for
you as well. Now someone who is a legend with this is Bill Baren, I've got a link down below
for you to a program which helps you with that step of how do you guide people through
a process that gives value; you want to be making sure you're helping people. An hour
of your time is valuable but an hour of their time is as well so you give good value. A
way of being able to give good value and at the same time, help them work out what they
need from you and let them be very clear on what the next steps are and then to go on
to purchase and to you be able to do that without being salesy. So Bill Baren has got
a great system there so you can go and check that out. As an example, it worked so well,
I actually brought in a partner on our team to trial doing free consultations and so they
trialled in their own business first and it worked so successfully for them that their
practice filled up full time and we didn't end up using it in our own business and that's
cool; I'm fine with that so it worked really, really well for that particular coaching business
and again it could work really well for your business as well. So, I would love to hear
from you. Free consultations, what do you reckon? Nyet or yes? Have they worked for
you? Have you had success? Have you tried to do it and it totally, totally was a waste
of time and demoralising for you? I would love to hear from you. Now I know that this
video has been a bit longer than our normal ones but these steps are the things that are
going to make the big difference for you. so, can't wait to hear from you. Please leave
your comments down below, I would love to know any advice that you've got to share with
other people as well. Bye.