Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 168 with the wonderful Michael Zipursky, a coach to consultants.

Michael Zipursky [0:10]
Hi, this is Michael Zipursky and you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:15]
I’m so looking forward to an amazing interview with Michael Zipursky today on how to get your client attraction engine going in a big way. Because Michael knows definitely what he is talking about. He is the CEO of Consulting Success and a coach to consultants. He has advised organizations like the Financial Times, Dow Jones, RBC, Omron, Sumitomo and help Panasonic launch new products into the global markets. But more importantly, he has helped over 300 consultants from around the world in over 50 industry at six and seven figures to the annual revenues. Over 34,000 consultants read his weekly consulting newsletter. And Michael is also the author of the Amazon bestsellers, The Elite Consulting Mind, and Consulting Success, the book. I’m super excited. So let’s dive right in. Well, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Michael, welcome.

Michael Zipursky [1:22]
It’s great to be with you. I’m excited about this too.

Christine Schlonski [1:24]
Yeah. And I mean, we have so many things to talk about. And with your business and what you teach people is really, really amazing. And I want to start with one thing that I see right now people are struggling with, and that is actually how to consistently attract clients. And then I would love to talk about how to charge more that it’s still in alignment and feels good and we know we provide more value than being charged. But let’s start with this point because I see so many people that struggle with it.

Michael Zipursky [2:06]
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a very important topic because, without clients, you don’t have a business. Now, I think the important thing to just first establish is that there are variables that play. A lot of people, especially online these days will try and have you believe there’s only one way to do things. And typically, that’s their way of doing things. But it’s not necessarily the best. So, you know, it’s going to depend, first of all, who your ideal clients are, if you’re targeting, let’s say, a consumer, then your approaches will be different. If your ideal client is a savvy, you know, CEO or a leader of a, of an organization, those approaches, first of all, will differ but the other thing too is it depends on where you’re at, in what I call the marketing maturity of cycle and stage. If someone already has a business, they have clients that have a pipeline of opportunities. And what they want to do now is just start to create more consistency. And that their approach and their activities will be different than if you’re brand new. So if you’re a consultant or a coach and you’re just getting started, then your actions need to be different than if your business is already established. So you want me to go into a kind of both of those situations and cover what’s different about them?

Christine Schlonski [3:17]
Yeah, love to especially with like the solopreneurs. Because I know that they’re quite some people in the audience that are kind of starting out there, maybe in their first or second year. And they just feel they do everything like what other people tell them, be on Facebook, be on Twitter, and be on Instagram, but still, they don’t have the consistent flow of leads coming to them. And I think that would really make a big difference.

Michael Zipursky [3:43]
Yeah, so what you just described there is probably the reason you know, one of the reasons why they’re not getting the results that they want is because they’re too scattered. Marketing growth in my observation is really about subtraction, not about addition. It’s about doing fewer things, but doing them really well, and not trying to do a whole bunch of things just because others have told you that’s what you need to be doing. That’s kind of what’s trendy or popular today. But if we take someone who, let’s just say, has already had a pipeline, they have some clients they’ve been working with. And most likely they’ve gone to that place of where they are today just based on referrals and their own network, then their steps, their focus should really be more about thought leadership and putting out content, because they already have the benefit of some leads and opportunities in the pipeline that they can benefit from today. So they don’t, they’re not as hungry for that first piece of business right now. So they have a bit more time so they can benefit from creating more thought leadership, and really things that are going to give them leads, into the future. It’s evergreen. You post content on your website, or you start a podcast, depending again, where your ideal clients are, you can benefit from that. But if we compare that to someone who’s just getting started, or doesn’t yet have many clients, where people are often going through and making mistake. In my observation is that they try and apply that mindset of, do social media, do content, the problem of those things is that even though they work they take time. It’s not uncommon to see that it can take 12 months, 18 months for your content to really kick into the point where you can start to generate consistent leads and opportunities from it. If you invest too much of your energy and time just into content in the early stages, then you have to be prepared to wait a long time to see the benefits. So my suggestion to people who are earlier stage is that you need to be going direct, you have to get very clear on who your ideal client is. And then you need to figure out what is the most direct way to get in front of that ideal client. And so for some people, that might be Facebook, if you’re a life coach, if you work in that area, Facebook might be a great place for you. If you’re working more with a business crowd then LinkedIn is probably going to be a very good place for you to identify those ideal clients and then be able to actually start engaging with them right away and when you do that, it needs to be done coming from a place of value and focusing on relationships. The biggest mistake people make right now that I see online is with their marketing, their mindset is transactional. So they’re going in, they’re identifying who their ideal client is and they just try and sell them. Like, I’m sure, Christine, you’ve received messages on LinkedIn or Facebook where, “Hey, Christine, thanks for connecting, I have this widget and this product in this group, do you want to buy, do you want to join?” So just back up, I don’t even know who you are. And you would never go to a networking event or any kind of conference and meet someone says, “Hi, nice to meet Christine. My name is Michael, do you want to buy my fresh cup of coffee?”, that would never happen in real life yet that’s what people are doing, hiding behind technology. What I would really encourage people to do is to think about every interaction that you have with someone as a relationship and how can you add value for them? Of course, you want to introduce what you know what you do and what your expertise is, but do that at the beginning through the lens of what would be valuable for that person. And so my recommendation is to get very clear on who your ideal is, then start to create a relationship with them, look at how you can add value for them. And then what’s very important, and this is critical if you want to generate consistent lead flow is that you understand that you need to follow up consistently. If you have the mindset of, “I’m going to send a couple of messages to someone, and if they don’t respond, I guess this doesn’t work, I need to try something else. And I’m gonna jump off to a different technology or different platform or different whatever”, then you’re going to leave the vast majority of the opportunities on the table like it’s unlikely that you’ll see results, because there’s plenty of studies that show that it can take 7,8, 12 I just heard something of someone say 34 like touches you need to have these days before someone’s going to convert from just an initial outreach into a meaningful conversation or sale. I think you need to be prepared to at least get in touch seven or more times with an ideal client. And so that means you should be thinking about LinkedIn messages or Facebook messages, email, phone, text, maybe even something with direct mail. You need to be getting in front of your ideal clients consistently not to push them, not to say buy what I have, but rather checking in offering valuable resources, seeing how they’re doing, fostering and cultivating that relationship, which keeps you top of mind. If they really are an ideal client, they’ll be ready at some point to buy from you. Some people earlier on, some people later on, but if you get that engine going now, what you will end up having is a pipeline that will serve you for many years to come. As that picks up, as you kind of move down that that marketing maturity cycle, where there’s enough leads in your pipeline, then you can start to shift the percentage of your time you’re spending on the direct outreach and the content creation to be doing slowly more content. And then as your pipeline really builds up, you’ll find that you won’t need to do as much of the direct outreach because people will start finding you and that’s what everyone wants. Everyone wants to be contacted. But most people aren’t prepared to put in the work of the beginning to generate enough of that momentum and that traction to reach that tipping point.

Christine Schlonski [9:00]
Yeah. So can we talk about it? Because you mentioned Facebook and LinkedIn. And so depending on where your ideal clients hang out, you want to be on those platforms. But how do I, how do I reach out? Let’s say I’m on Facebook, and I’m a life coach, how do I know if somebody is my ideal client?

Michael Zipursky [9:20]
So I won’t personally speak about Facebook, because we don’t use Facebook, our expertise is working with consultants, and their ideal clients are all organizations. It might be a small nonprofit, or a company like Google or Nike or whatever, you know, a multi-billion dollar organization. So all of our clients are targeting other organizations, small or large. So for us on LinkedIn, if I can offer that that example is that’s definitely where a lot of this happens. Yeah, I mean, the process on LinkedIn is very straightforward, you can use Sales Navigator, which is an add on the pay for on LinkedIn, which allows you to put in different criteria to get very, very clear and specific around who your ideal client is. So if you want to target, let’s say, CFOs, at companies that have 200 to 500 employees in the north of Germany, in the pharmaceutical or let’s say dairy industries, I don’t know if those exist, but you could target them right, you would be able to see how many people match that criteria so that’s the starting point. Then once you’ve done that, then the next thing is to actually reach out to them. And so you can do that by sending a connection request. And the connection request doesn’t need to be elaborate. It can be very straightforward. You look for low hanging fruit, you look to see, are you already connected to some of these people that you haven’t had a conversation within some time? Who else are you both connected to? A second-degree connection, the mutual connection, what leverage and kind of point of mutual contact can you use and so when you reach out, you’re able to say, “Look, we’re both connected to this Jim Johnson or Sally Suitable or whatever their name might be, or we both went to this college or”, whatever it might be, we’ve often found that you can get 30%, even 50%, or higher level of acceptance with just a very straightforward message. Because what people are typically doing, when you send a connection request is they click on your profile, or they look at your title to see who you are. If it looks like you’re just a salesperson, or if it looks like you don’t really have much expertise, if you don’t have a good profile that’s kind of optimized, then they’re unlikely to accept. But if you’re a professional, and if you’ve really crafted that profile to look that way into communicating value, then it’s very likely that people will accept and even if they don’t accept, it doesn’t mean that you don’t continue going after and kind of trying to build a relationship, it just means that maybe they’re not active on LinkedIn. And so then you need to move to email or to phone or to some other method, but that’s what it’s all about. It’s just about getting in front of them, letting them know why you’d like to connect, and then as soon as they accept that connection request, then go in with value. Don’t try and get anything yet. Just try and get on their radar, but most importantly, give them some value. Offer them a resource or insight. Because that’s that’s a much more effective way to start a relationship.

Christine Schlonski [12:06]
Yeah, I totally agree. The other day, I had like one of those requests, somebody like asking me, “Oh, do you coach online?” And I’m thinking like, “Well, if you would have seen what I’m doing, if you would have checked on me, you see that’s what I’m doing. If your profile shows me that you support people that coach online, I know, that’s all you want as a sales conversation. And I’m not interested.”

Michael Zipursky [12:30]
I mean, people are lazy these days. It’s technology. I’m a big fan of technology. I love technology. But technology is also really hurting people’s ability to grow their businesses because they’re so focused on trying to master these tools and technology and find ways to automate and be more efficient than it’s causing people to be lazy. It’s causing people to look at volume instead of value looking at quantity instead of quality. If you are willing to put in a little bit more time to really try and learn a little bit about the people that you want to create relationships with, that really stands out and that differentiates you. That says to someone, “Hey, here’s someone who’s actually taken some time, like they’ve read through our annual report, or they’ve checked, they’ve commented on a recent article that I wrote”, that shows that they’re not just spamming a whole bunch of people with the exact same message. That’s how you stand out from everyone else. And that’s a much better way to begin that relationship. Because they’re going to let their guard down and say to themselves, or think to themselves, “This person isn’t just trying to sell me right away, or even if they are trying to sell me and know that they might have something of value it like they’re knowledgeable. This is probably the kind of person that I should actually be speaking with.”

Christine Schlonski [13:41]
Yeah, I love that. And it’s, what, wherever, whatever platform you use, you can have the same approach. It’s just about building the relationship first, coming from that place of service before you start a conversation about how you can work together. What have you seen in your business? How long does it take for your clients to really get a good habit of reaching out until the switch kind of goes on to the other side where people are actually coming to them? How much time do you think an entrepreneur needs to invest?

Michael Zipursky [14:20]
Yeah, I mean, it’s a really good question. I can offer you an example. Like one of our clients, Elliot, he transitioned from the corporate world into consulting, and within about five to seven weeks here, he landed over $100,000 in new business and, you know, really saw that things were moving forward. But there are other situations where it can take, you know, three months, or people to really start kind of getting that traction. So I can’t really, I don’t feel that would be honest for me to offer like it’s exactly this amount of time because yeah, there are so many variables at play, but I can certainly say with great confidence because you know, we’ve been seeing this with hundreds of consultants, we worked with over the years, that if you are willing to get very focused on who your ideal client is, and then you’re willing to put in the work to reach out to them consistently and follow up and kind of follow the process that within a matter, I’d say a few short months, you can definitely start building a really thriving, pipeline full of opportunities, and doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have landed hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars in your business. But in many cases, we see a lot of people who do start generating and we just had another client, Nick, who’s coming out of the philanthropy world as a consultant, and she’s now just about eight weeks into the process. And she’s already landed $60,000 of new business, but she’s been doing the outreach, even having the conversation, she’s been making the offers. And so that’s been my own experience too, is growth and success comes from not just what you know, but it’s all about the application. It’s all but willing to, you know, to apply the concept of imperfect action which I share a lot with clients, that the belief and kind of the understand that you may not have all the answers, but even if you don’t, still putting something out there is going to be much more beneficial for you because you’ll learn a lot more about what does work and what doesn’t work. And that allows you to make greater improvements.

Christine Schlonski [16:19]
Yeah, totally agree. So now you mentioned those like higher numbers and I know a lot of coaches when they start out they just don’t get there. But also in when you say that, to put it in a real relationship to the outreach. Those people were probably people that have a higher price ticket. There’s nobody that sells like an online course for $200 or $1000 or something. What advice could you give people to implement in their business so that they really see this connection work paying off?

Michael Zipursky [16:59]
Yeah, well I mean, I think kind of what you’re getting at Christine is, how can you go from if you’re charging like a lower dollar value? How can you actually start growing your overall revenues, or your average kind of price point, per product or per service offering? And I totally get it because I still remember the day. I mean, we’ve been doing this now. So I’ve been in the consulting business for about almost 20 years and consulting success has been almost 10 years now. And I remember when we were selling like $97, ebooks so that low ticket stuff I remember and I was there, and I can tell you that the biggest opportunity for everyone out there to generate more money, more revenue and have a greater impact on those that you want to serve, really has very little to do with what you’re offering. It has almost everything to do with your mindset, your belief, and the positioning of what you’re offering. So if I cannot make this probably get a lot more tangible for you. We used to offer a product that we charged a couple of hundred dollars for. We saw people getting great results from it. But we also felt that it could be at a much higher price point because the value is there, of course, the concerns that are coming in and will if you raise the price point, does not mean you lose opportunities and people don’t buy it and like you, there’s all that kind of fear and anxiety that come around that but we just decided let’s go for it. And so we shifted that product up. Not only did we have about the same number of people buying the product, but people got greater results because they had made a bigger investment. And when someone makes a bigger investment, they tend to be right more invested in their results and their actions follow that. So that’s what a product example but I can also offer on a service side example. With our coaching program, we had at a much lower price point when we first started and I think that’s okay, the starting point for people. If someone’s listening right now you’re just getting started. There’s nothing wrong with having a lower price point to begin with because what that does is it validates your offering and gives you the opportunity to work with people to really fine-tune and hone and kind of optimize your engagement, your services, your products, and help you to get results. Once you’re confident you’re able to achieve results that could be crippled, there’s real value there. Well, then that gives you confidence and hopefully gives you the confidence to increase your prices. But I remember that many years ago, we started working with a coach and I was in a room with a bunch of people and they were charging me anything from like, around $10,000 to $50,000 for their offerings. At that time, I think our offering was maybe around like three to, it was $3,000 was like our maximum offering. We went back and after this kind of the whole event that I was at and everybody was in Hawaii, came back and I talked with my cousin Sam, was my business partner. I said, “Listen, we need to make some changes here.” We increase the pricing first to 6000 and then beyond. Literally, just the business took off, there was no difference in what we really do. We just repackage kind of our offering we positioned a bit differently and we just increase the price point. I’ve seen this time and time again with clients. I had one client who was taking a proposal, again, these are bigger numbers, but this applies even as something smaller. She was gonna be going in with a $60,000 proposal for a client that she had worked with. We had a conversation about the value of like, really what she was creating, and it was significant. She ended up updating that proposal before she sent it in for over $200,000 and she submitted it and she won at that level. She added it well over six figures and there was no additional time required for her to deliver on that. It was just how she was positioning it and the focus that she had on on value. For anyone listening right now, you don’t need to create necessarily new products, you don’t need more social stuff. You don’t need more likely much. If you wanted to grow your business right now. If you want to see an extra zero or you want to see revenue growth, just think about as long as the values there and people are getting results from what you’re doing, increase your pricing, test it, and you’ll most likely find that you’ll achieve greater growth front at least. That’s been my experience and many similar experiences with many clients. It’s just your mindset, and then how you position it and focus on value.

Christine Schlonski [21:22]
Yeah, totally, totally agree. I see that over and over with my clients as well once you can shift into that what I call sales success mindset, where you’re limiting belief of I can’t charge more or it comes with such ease and I know all the stuff I should be helping people because I know how to do it. That is really in the way so transitioning to where you have an offer that provides amazing, amazing value, but also charging a high enough price that you get your clients moving and invested in time and money makes a huge difference.

Michael Zipursky [22:00]
Yeah, I mean, if someone’s charging $1,000 an hour $1,500 an offer for some program, depending on what they’re doing, but most likely, they could charge $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000, for some variation of that program, or maybe even the same program, it’s just the difference of, are you focusing and communicating the value of it? And then are you confident in it? There are people out there, plenty of people, a few who are willing to invest 1000 there are people who are willing to invest 5000, 10,000 50,000 500,000, a million-plus, depending on who your ideal client is. And so it’s not so much of, will there be someone willing to pay that? Is your offer focused on solving a problem that someone has? If the value is there, then you will start seeing that some people will resonate with that.

Christine Schlonski [22:49]
Yeah, so cool. So you have some fun facts you shared. And just one thing, it’s just curious, you do speak Japanese?

Michael Zipursky [23:03]
[Japanese Language]

Christine Schlonski [23:04]
How did you get to learn Japanese?

Michael Zipursky [23:09]
[Japanese Language]

Christine Schlonski [23:25]
Okay, totally clear. And now for all of us

Michael Zipursky [23:27]
That’s what you want to hear, right?

Christine Schlonski [23:28]
Yeah, the short version, please.

Michael Zipursky [23:31]
Yeah, the short version. So I got into Japanese in high school, actually. I grew up in Vancouver. I was born in Toronto. My parents moved us to Israel when I was very young. So my first language was actually Hebrew. When I came back to Canada. I didn’t speak English. I had to have a tutor. And I kind of went through all that I felt like an outsider. And then growing up in Vancouver, I was surrounded by a lot of people from Asia. In fact, in my high school, You have lockers on both sides, right down the halls. I don’t know how this worked out. But I was like the one white guy amongst a sea of people from Hong Kong and Taiwan and China. I’ve always loved cultures, I love people, I love languages. At that time, I was not only interested in Asia, because I saw just this deep tradition and respect for people and respect for elders. And that resonated with me. But I was also very into the business. And so at that time, and kind of the economic cycle, Japan was the number one business or the number one kind of economy in Asia. I was very drawn to not only Japanese culture and language and Japanese women, but also what was happening kind of in Japan business-wise. So I began studying Japanese and that was about 20 or so years ago. I’ve been going to Japan now for now almost, I guess 20, about 20 years I’ve been going to Japan now. A little bit under, maybe 19 years has been. I was in Japan this year, and I remember I was thinking I was like, “Wow, I’ve been coming here all many years as lots changed.” But yeah, I spent a year studying at a Japanese University. I then spent about five, six years living in Japan building one of our businesses, we took our one of our consulting businesses and open up a branch office there and work with some really great organizations like Panasonic, and Dow Jones and Sumitomo and a whole bunch of others. So that’s how the whole Japan side.

Christine Schlonski [25:32]
Yeah, cool, amazing, amazing. Well, for this episode, we’re already out of time, but we do have a second episode. So I’m really looking forward. And because we talked so much about mindset and how to get started, you have a wonderful gift for us, and it’s a 47-page consulting blueprint. I will have all the links in the show notes but tell people where they can find that.

Michael Zipursky [25:56]
Yeah, definitely, very simply go to https://www.consultingsuccess.com/blueprint

Christine Schlonski [26:02]
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I’m looking forward to the next conversation.

Michael Zipursky [26:07]
You too.

Christine Schlonski [26:08]
Well, I would love to know if you are getting your client attraction engine going, if you are implementing new habits to really reach out on a consistent base, to create the conversation, to create the relationships, and then to eventually invite people to buy from you. Hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab and connect with Michael. All the links are just one click away to his Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, obviously to his homepage to his Amazon best-selling books, as well as his wonderful free gift, the 47-page consulting blueprint. Make sure you join us next week with the episode, Understand that People like to Buy and what Michael has to say about that. In the meantime, you can still join the Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit at https://christineschlonski.com/hclgs-registration/ where we have 40, amazing experts, teaching all about lead generation, all the different ways to do it organically, paid in partnerships, combined strategies, as well as trends as mistakes, and as legal stuff. So hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ for the podcast. And also obviously once over there, you will have a link to the heart-centered lead generation summit on the menu. Thank you so much for being here. I’m so excited that you joined us. Thank you for spending your time with us. I hope this was very valuable and you had some fun, and I can’t wait to have you on the next episode with the wonderful Michael Zipursky. Have a wonderful day, wherever you are in this beautiful world. And I’m saying bye for now.