How to Attract The Right Clients (And Repel The Wrong Ones) – Part 2 (Present Your Plan)

Something strange starts to happen when we hear or see something interesting.

Let’s say you are driving, you’re inside a car and you see a giant billboard. You get hooked to that image or the words. Or maybe you are listening to the radio or a podcast, like what you’re doing now. And you listen to a tune or maybe hear someone say something.

And all of a sudden, your focus shifts. You’re now paying more attention to the billboard or the radio. I know, that’s one of the biggest reasons accidents take place. It’s distraction. But let’s not talk about distraction.

Instead, let's talk about the attention.

In the previous episode of this podcast, we talked about messaging. And you learned a simple, yet effective, way to construct a good message. If you did it right and put that on a billboard or radio or wherever else, you could get people to pay attention.

Now tell me if you’ve experienced this. This happened to me just this last week.

We were driving down on one of the main areas here in Bangalore. It’s a commercial hub in the heart of the city. That’s where people go to hangout, shop, and there are plenty of restaurants too.

I had stopped my car at the traffic signal, looking at the signal to turn green. As I saw the countdown go, I noticed a billboard at a distance behind traffic signal. I was at a distance, but the message caught my attention.

Just a couple of hours later, I found myself inside a restaurant. We decided to eat out, and I was with my wife and son.

Well, why am I talking about this?

To answer that question, I got to tell you about that billboard I saw while waiting at the traffic signal a couple of hours before.

What was on that billboard?

Well, the billboard had a giant clock with the message “It’s time to fix your hunger with the world’s best pumpkin soup” and arrow pointing to the right with the words “Walk 200 steps this way. The aroma will find you.”

And that’s exactly what I did. That’s why I was sitting inside restaurant with my family with a bowl of the world’s best pumpkin soup.

But why are we talking about pumpkin soups, billboards, and restaurants anyway?

It’s because of today’s topic. Today, we continue with he second part of the topic we started last week. How to attract the right clients and repel the wrong ones. Last week we talked about the message.

The pumpkin soup.

You see how this billboard did a good job with the message. By saying “It’s time to fix your hunger with the world’s best pumpkin soup,” they specifically spoke to people that loved pumpkin soup. I love hot pumpkin soup.

But that’s not why I went to the restaurant. There was something more to it.

And that brings us to today’s topic.

Present a Compelling Plan of Action.

What do you do when your message resonates with your target audience or target buyer?

You present them a compelling Plan of Action.

In other words, you invite them to experience your offer.

And that’s what this restaurant did with the billboard.

The words “Walk 200 steps this way. The aroma will find you.” did the magic. In my case, it told me that the restaurant was just around the corner.

And it also suggested I go there to taste the world’s best pumpkin soup.

It’s now time to look at how to create and Present a Compelling Plan of Action.

If you’re ready, let’s look at the details. Let’s see how you can give your clients a plan of action. And how you can make it so compelling, that they will take action.

Here’s how we’ll do this. I’ll first outline the six steps to create and present a compelling plan of action.

And then, we’ll look at each step in detail.

So what are the six steps?

Six Steps To A Compelling Plan Of Action

These are the six steps. Without wasting a moment, let’s jump into the first step.

Step 1

Start with empathy by showing them you understand.

If you went back a couple of episodes of this podcast in your feed, you know we discussed how to learn about your market really fast. But there is no point in knowing about someone and not using it. So…use it.

But don’t just use it in your message. You can use it to decide when you’ll communicate with your audience, and where you’re communicating too. In the case of this billboard, the restaurant knew it’s target audience really well.

They are hungry, most likely stuck at a traffic signal, they like pumpkin soup, if they aren’t driving they are shopping.

And that’s why they decided to put their message on this strategically positioned billboard.

When I saw that message, I was mentally smiling. I showed that to my wife and son, and then all three of us were smiling. We liked the restaurant’s smart and intentional messaging. We felt like they understood us.

And you’ll find this on our website too.

If you went to designyourthinking.com you’ll see this. We use a quiz to start building a connection with empathy. Instead of just giving a 90-day plan, we ask a few questions and give them a customized plan.

That’s step one - using what you know to connect better with your audience. Later we’ll see how you can use this in your business. For now, let’s move on to step two.

Step 2

Focus on the wants.

Put that another way, it’s about making sure you give them what they want, instead of what you think they want.

That was a mouthful, but I hope it wasn’t hard to understand. In the case of the restaurant, they focused on the fact that their audience wanted good food. Perhaps a good number of them wanted to taste the world’s best pumpkin soup.

Frankly, if a restaurant is so bold to claim they make the world’s best pumpkin soup, I would also think that they make some good food too. Maybe they aren’t world class, but certainly not bad. At least they aren’t going to serve the world’s best pumpkin soup with horrible garlic bread. But I digress.

If you visited our homepage, we use the words “help you make more sales” (at least at the time of recording this episode). That speaks to what our clients want. That’s not what they need. On the podcast too, we try to talk about what you want. That’s what we do by using the words “repel the wrong ones”. Because we know you don’t want the wrong clients. You understand that the wrong clients can hurt your business.

Let’s look at step three.

Step 3

The third step is to make sure you give them what they need.

Wants and needs are different. You know this. Wants is what we prioritize for, budget for, put on vision boards. But needs are those we can’t live without. Someone may want to own a ranch house, but they need some money in the bank.

When people get what they want, but don’t get what they need, they aren’t going to be happy.

And the restaurant understood this really well. At least, their Ad agency did.

They understood that the need was hunger. It wasn’t just about people wanting great food or the world’s best pumpkin soup. It was also about the need to fix their hunger.

On our website, the 90-day marketing plan speaks directly to the need of our clients. While all our clients may not want it, they need it. If you look at this episode of the podcast too, you need to know how to create a compelling plan of action. But you may not really want it.

Step 4

Step four is to show them where to start and what the steps to the destination looks like.

Clients want transformation. But they hate to work for it. Unless, you make it clear what that work looks like.

It’s the lack of clarity of the steps that they need to take, that bothers them. But if you told them what exactly they need to do, they are happy to hop on the ride with you.

And that’s what this restaurant did with the billboard. The instructions were clear.

step one, walk 200 steps. Step two, stop when you smell the aroma of hot pumpkin soup. Step three, taste it. They make you feel like it’s easier to do what they say than trying to imagine the taste of the world’s best pumpkin soup. You burn lesser calories walking 200 steps than trying to imagine the taste of the world’s best pumpkin soup.

And you’ll see us do this too. In the 90-day marketing plan, it’s clear that you need to click the button to download, then you’ll get a marketing plan. In the podcast it’s clear that when you listen to these episodes with the title “how to attract the right clients,” you’ll learn, in three episodes, how to do attract the right clients.

So what did we learn so far?

We started with using what we understand about our audience.

Then in step two we focused on your clients’ wants.

In step three we focused on their needs.

And in step four we showed them where to start and what the steps to the destination looks like.

Let’s move on to step five.

Step 5

It’s time to show some empathy again, by handling your clients’ biggest fears and concerns quickly.

Human beings can get a lot paranoid sometimes. And this happens every time we see someone present a plan of action.

Have you ever seen something too good to believe and thought “what if this is fake? or what if this doesn’t work?” It’s questions like these that stop clients from taking action on your plan of action.

The restaurant handled this brilliantly. With the least amount of words, they clearly tell the reader that the restaurant is not far - just 200 steps. The arrow pointed to a specific direction. And they also state that it’s not hard to locate the restaurant once you walked 200 steps.

Even if you found yourself giving excuses, these details will help you stop overthinking, and start walking instead.

And like with the previous steps, we practice this at designyourthinking.com too.

By taking the 90-Day Marketing Plan quiz you already have started to work on your plan. All we are asking you to do is to get the plan you have already customized. By listening to the podcast, you have already started to learn. We ask you to download the Launch Plan Workbook so you don’t waste all that you learned and put that to action.

That’s step five. Let’s look at the last step. Step six.

Step 6

Body language matters a lot. And it turns out that people read your body language even when you do business online (or using billboards). I know what you’re thinking. “But they don’t see me!”

They are reading you though. And words can be very powerful.

When you are not confident of what you have to offer, people can see it. Words can help you transfer trust and emotion. And the restaurant did it very well with their copy.

The words exhibited confidence. If they weren’t confident of keeping up their promises, they risked their reputation. Soon you would see negative reviews and perhaps even some commotion outside their restaurant.

But instead, they campaign seemed successful. They managed to pull crowd.

Present your plan of action with confidence, because you are the expert.

Even on our website, we are not saying “do you want to try our new marketing plan?” Instead, we are making a promise and telling you that you can implement this plan in 90 days to get results.” I don’t show up on this podcast sharing good ideas. Instead, I share clear steps based on our work with clients and our experience working on our own business. And that’s why you are listening to this episode right now.

So these are the six steps you need to take to create and present a compelling plan of action.

How To Implement These Six Steps?

Let’s now look at how you can implement these six steps to create a compelling plan of action for your business.

That’s it.

You know what to do now. Download the Launch Plan Workbook. Because it has all these instructions and checklists so you can create a plan of action for your business.

Download the Launch Plan Workbook:

kartvee.com/launchplan