You don’t need to convince or educate prospects that they need your services (here’s what to do instead)

Let’s get one thing clear: if you’re consistently finding yourself speaking to prospects who you know would benefit so much from your work, but they, themselves, aren’t sure they need it? The solution is not becoming a better salesperson who can “overcome objections,” and it’s not educating them on why they need your work. 

The real solution? Figure out what in your business is attracting prospects who need to be convinced and then fix it so that it’s no longer attracting those people, but rather attracting prospects who already know they have a problem worth solving, instead.

How? Well my friend, that’s exactly what this blog post is all about.

How do you convince people that they need your services? You don’t. Here’s why.

In preparing to write this article, I did some research to see what else is out there on this or similar topics. (The answer? Not much.) One article I did find, however, was about what to do when a prospective client says “no” to your services. In the article, they positioned the “no” from the prospective client as a shortcoming of the business owner, saying in short that the business owner didn’t sell well enough.

They should have articulated their value more clearly. They should have overcome the objections. They should have taken them through a more specific sales script.

Sure, the most amazing salesperson in the world can absolutely sell anything to even the most hesitant of buyers. But just because they can, does that mean they should?

I’m of the opinion that even ignoring the ethical implications, it’s still absolutely not worth it. Why?

It requires a lot of unnecessary time and energy (and maybe even money) from you simply to make the sale (let alone deliver).

There are people who already know they have a problem, and want and need a solution for it. The fact that you haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it means that your messaging and marketing are working: you’re attracting the type of person you’re talking to. If you can shift who you’re talking to in your messaging and marketing, there’s a really great chance it’ll work and you’ll find yourself attracting true Right Fit clients.

You can pour your energy into becoming a better salesperson, and having to constantly work really hard to make each sale, or you can pour your energy into fixing the real problem—the fact that you’re attracting wrong fit clients—and then have much more easeful and enjoyable sales conversations for the rest of your time in business. 

Someone who hasn’t decided, for themselves, that they have a problem worth solving is significantly less likely to see lasting results from your work.

Not because your work is any less great, but because true transformation—results that last—requires that the client is intrinsically motivated to do what needs to be done in order to achieve and maintain their desired outcomes. 

If you have had the experience of working with a client who you had to convince that they needed your services, it’s very likely that you also experienced quite a draining client delivery process. Maybe they didn’t show up to sessions prepared, or they didn’t complete their onboarding in a timely manner (or at all), even when you nudged them several times about it. Maybe they wanted to skip over pieces of the process, or they were frustrated that results weren’t happening right now. Maybe they needed you to go above and beyond and do all sorts of things with or for them that weren’t originally included in the contract, or they might have even gotten upset with you for some part of your delivery even though you know (on your good days) that you actually did nothing wrong.

However it practically played out for you, a prospect who needed to be convinced to buy is very likely to continually need to be convinced that it is worth it to solve this problem and produce the intended result. Leaving them frustrated, you drained, and no one is happy about this investment having been made. 

How to Stop Attracting Wrong Fit Prospective Clients Who Need to Be Convinced to Work with You

Step 1: Identify your true Right Fit client

Since the real problem here when you’re consistently connecting with prospective clients who don’t know they want or need your services is that you’re attracting wrong fit clients, we need to go all the way back to the beginning of the Sustainable Success System™ and clarify who your true Right Fit client actually is.

A lot of people complete an Ideal Customer worksheet and think, “Ok, that’s who I’m trying to attract!” but the truth is that an ideal customer profile is just one fourth of the information that you need to know about your Right Fit client. (It also happens to be the least important part of your Right Fit client.)

Your Right Fit client is made up of four foundations: 

1. Ideal Client
2. Best-positioned to succeed client
3. Purchase-ready client
4. Physiologically ready-to-transform client

It’s only through knowing these four foundations that you can truly understand who your Right Fit client is, to the point where you’ll be able to craft messaging and marketing content that speaks directly to them. (Yep, if you’ve found it difficult to “talk to your ideal client,” it’s likely because you don’t have one—or all—of these Audience foundations.)

Your Right Fit client is central to everything else that you do in business, so if you haven’t yet, go and read this blog post from our Foundations Series to get a better understanding of your Right Fit client.

Step 2: Audit and Refine your Messaging and Marketing

Once you know who your Right Fit client is, now you want to audit your messaging and marketing. Your messaging is the words and phrases you’re using to talk about your work, your marketing is the content and copy that you are using that messaging in. 

What you’re specifically looking for here is any language that is not speaking to someone who is a true Right Fit, AKA someone who is best-positioned to succeed, purchase-ready, and physiologically ready to transform. This is quite nuanced work and you truly do need to know your Right Fit client before you can make an accurate assessment, but here are some examples of what the “wrong” messaging and marketing and “right” messaging and marketing might look like.

Attracts a Wrong Fit Client	Attracts a Right Fit Client	Explanation
A copywriter for online service providers saying, “I’ll write your sales page copy so you can start making sales.”	The same copywriter saying, “I’ll write your sales page copy so you can make even more sales.”	An online service provider client of a copywriter is likely not best-positioned to succeed if they’ve never made any sales before, because that indicates they likely don’t really KNOW the things they need to know in order to have the copywriter write effective copy. This prospect is not best-positioned to succeed.
A yoga teacher saying that joining their yoga membership will help you “go after your big dreams.”	The same yoga teacher saying that joining their yoga membership will help you to “build lean strength and flexibility that allows you to move with ease throughout your day.”	Yoga does not directly support someone to go after their big dreams (though it might contribute to it!!). Overpromising in this way therefore will often attract a client who is not physiologically ready-to-transform.
A plant medicine guide saying, “You need to microdose in order to break through your limitations.”	The same plant medicine guide saying, “How to use microdosing to expand beyond your limitations.”	Trying to convince someone that they need your work often attracts someone who is not Purchase-Ready (specifically, they are the Problem Unaware client).
A digital marketing strategist saying, “Struggling to get seen and be found online?”	The same digital marketing strategist saying, “Ready to get seen and be found online?”	Leading with pain-point language often attracts someone who is not physiologically ready-to-transform. You absolutely can acknowledge a prospects present reality, but leading with it tends to speak to the person who is stuck in it rather than the person who is experiencing it but has the capacity to contextualize the difficulty.

Once you’ve pinpointed precisely where you’re not speaking to a Right Fit client, you’ll want to fix it! Again, doing so takes quite comprehensive business-building acumen on your part, which is not really something that most of us are taught in this online business world! (psst! That embodied ability to lead your business, yourself, is precisely what we equip you with in our core programs here at WholeCo!)

Step 3: A simple yet effective exercise you can complete right now

The simplest approach you can take right now, however, to at least get started on auditing and refining (or entirely reworking!) your messaging and marketing is choosing one page on your website or one recent piece of content. Go through it sentence by sentence, word by word, asking yourself: who does this attract, and is this who I want to be attracting?

How do you know if your edits to your messaging and marketing are working?

You’ll know you’ve made effective edits when you’re no longer attracting prospective clients who need to be convinced that your work is “worth it” or “relevant” or “necessary,” and when the people who show up on sales calls with you or in your DMs are already aware they have a problem, and know they’re seeking out a (paid) solution (like yours!).Want to fully adjust your messaging and marketing so that it’s attracting true Right Fit prospects? That’s exactly what I equip you to do inside of our content marketing incubator, Marketing Magnified.

Marketing Magnified is a messaging and marketing course that equips you to attract Right Fit, ready-to-buy clients through extraordinary and effective content, on every platform you market your business on. (& typically from the audience you already have!)

Through action-oriented modules that spark your creativity and help you channel it into content that shows your audience exactly what it’s like to work with you, you’ll:

• Identify Your Right Fit Client so that you can attract ready-to-buy and ready-to-transform humans into your work.
• Develop your Transparent and Magnetic Messaging so that you can always know exactly what to say to sell your work in integrity, without relying on over-inflated promises that you can’t guarantee.
• Build a bank of ready-to-use content ideas (no content buckets needed) so that creating content becomes that much simpler, and even on your “lacking inspiration” days you can still show up for your community.
• Craft extraordinary & effective content that allows you to show up in your marketing like you do with your clients: powerfully, and deeply in service.
• Practice and refine so that you can master the art of bringing Right Fit leads directly to your digital doorstep through extraordinary and effective content (no in-depth sales pages necessary, unless you want to use them!)

You have the power to attract Right Fit prospects into your work. We know this is true because you’ve been attracting wrong fit or not-yet-Right-Fits through the messaging and marketing you’re already sharing! Now it’s time to learn how to craft that extraordinary and effective content that brings the right people into your audience and work. I’ll show you how inside Marketing Magnified!