It is always good to spend time continuing professional development. Gaining more skills means you provide a better service to others, while living out your values. What could be better than helping to solve someone’s problem so they get their smile back?

Do You Know Someone Losing Sleep Over Their Problems?

Obviously I am proud to know so many people in professions which help others. All those others need, is a willingness to take action. Anything is possible if they are ready to put an end to their sleepless nights.

Which is why it is handy to have real / virtual access to the community of helpful people. People who coach; people who are NLP practitioners; women and men who are therapists.

How Do You Start Conversations Which Help Solve Problems?

Any time I get together with these helpers the conversation returns to the basic theme. What approaches work well when building powerful and authentic problem-solving connections?

In the last 7 days I have gained a bunch of insight from others’ marketing wisdom. Some of it has been completely new. Some insights put a fresh perspective on information I already had.

Here are some headlines you might find useful if your profession helps others perform better.

Top 5 Ideas For Engaging With Potential Clients

• Allow your outreach plan to signpost your next step. That’s the step which makes more potential clients aware of the benefits they gain by knowing more about your work
• The simple step after just knowing about you? Keep providing service. Go deeper so people really like and trust the benefits you offer
• Use the client’s language so they savour the sound / sight / taste / feel / smell of their exciting future
• When you offer to help solve their problem pause. That creates a space for the other person to decide how to respond
• Practice self-care. Be mindful about making the best impression you can while building the relationship and offering service. Accept that the other person could still say ‘No’. Don’t take it to heart if they do (you might be able to signpost them to someone else, which is still a good service)

Caring But Not Too Much

The last point is the tricky one.

Obviously you care about explaining the benefits of your service to the other person. You want them to connect the dots, so it is obvious that you can solve their problem.

Don’t do what I did after attending one corporate meeting. I thought it would be plain sailing once I sat down with the decision makers (and submitted a follow up proposal).

When I did not receive a response I emailed the decision makers. I waited.

No response.

Finally I called their virtual assistant.

She took a message and promised to pass it on. The silence which followed triggered a light bulb above my head.

The organisation was not into my proposal. They used a passive silence to get that message cross.

Lesson learned, I moved on.

Giving Credit For These Insights

• Hat tip to Clive Maxheath of the Men’s Action Project (full disclosure I Co-organises a MeetUp group for coaches with Clive) you can follow @Coachpreneurs on Twitter too. Details of Clive’s MAP work are available via the following link http://www.meetup.com/TheMAP/
• I also enjoyed learning more about marketing from a great a range of speakers led by Carole Bozkurt and Ann Marie Mayling at the Blueprint Practice – you can visit them here http://blueprintpractice.com/

What is your favourite strategy for engaging clients?

Go ahead and use the comment section to share your favourite strategy. How do you build your presence in an authentic way? How assertive do you need to be when you engage with clients (I’m leading a workshop on assertion on 5 July so the issue is very topical)?

I’m looking forward to reading your replies. The community reading your comments will be grateful for your wisdom too.

Finally, remember to share this post if you have found it useful, so others can benefit from reading it.