Salutations and welcome back, friend! I understand how difficult it can be to want to expand your clientele to include corporate clients while being unsure of how exactly to accomplish that. In today's conversation, we'll discuss how to attract and serve corporate clients as new business owners. I believe that this will benefit you by providing the tools necessary to position your business to attract the right high-value and high-paying clients for you. Hit play and settle in, friend. Let's get started.
🎯 Top Takeaway from Today's Episode
One of your greatest assets is the ability to address your desired clients high-value problem.
📌 Key Points from the Episode
💡 Take Action
Speak to your clients (current and past) and define what high-value problem is common to them.
🔗 Links
✍🏾 Sign up for the Corporate Coins Training: How to Attract, Sell and Serve Corporate Clients training
💌 Be a part of our growing email list: Co(i)nversations & Community
👋🏽 Connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram!
🌟 Leave us a review and a 5-star rating: The Profit Scale Podcast
0:00:07 Salutations, friend! Welcome to The Profit Scale podcast, where we help independent Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs earn at their highest levels by learning how to secure corporate contracts.
I’m your host, Ruth-Joy Connell, your Corporate Consultant and Sales Enablement Expert. I’m on a mission to equip you with the systems and strategies you’ll need to build a business of generational impact and income.
Around here, we bring culture and coins together — providing all the learning, community and support you’ll need as you scale your business. If you’re ready to step into your next level of income and impact, then you, my friend, are in the right place!
Turn up the volume and lean in, ‘cause we’re about to get started!
0:00:59 Salutations, friend! Welcome to a new season of The Profit Scale. We've taken quite a long break between the previous season and this one, and I've genuinely missed having these conversations with you. Last season being one of our first, there was still a lot of learning for me to do around creating and running a podcast, and it was a steep learning curve for me. Let me tell you. I have a whole new appreciation for podcast hosts. This stuff is not easy. It takes so much time, work and energy to put these episodes together, so part of this break was spending time just learning.
Learning how I can improve our processes so we can bring you more content consistently. The conversations we have here on The Profit Scale are so important to myself and the team that we want to make sure we're bringing you our best. I'm excited for you to experience that this season.
Every season is going to get a little bit better over time, and so hopefully you see that this one has gotten better from the past and is going to continue to get better as you listen.
I'm excited to announce that you can expect a new podcast episode every other week. To make sure you don't miss it, there are two ways for you to stay up-to-date.
First, go ahead and hit subscribe and follow us on whatever platform you're listening to. That way, you'll get the notification right away and straight to your phone every other Monday when a new episode is released.
The second way is to make sure you're subscribed to our email list. We send out a notice when a new episode drops, so go ahead and do both because this season's episodes are ones you are not going to want to miss.
As I was preparing the episodes for the season, I've been reflecting on you, the listener, and the challenges you're facing and the dreams you have for your business. If there's one thing I know, it's that you want to earn big money. For most of our audience, that means serving high-value, high-paying clients, like corporations.
How do you position yourself to attract and serve these clients when you're just starting out? That's the question, and today's conversation is going to explore the answers.
In today's conversation, we're going to talk about three simple strategies to position your business to attract high-value, high-paying corporate clients.
Let's start off by defining what high-value and high-paying means.
For the purpose of our conversation, I'm going to define a high-value client as a client that makes a significant impact on your revenue — a positive impact, of course, and I'm going to define a high-paying client as a five-figure plus or more, so that means $10,000 or more for a single transaction.
These can be corporations, but based on this definition, it also means that they don't have to be. Any client who fits this definition is who we're speaking about attracting in this episode. Working with high-value clients means they are willing to invest at a high level, and that also means that they're expecting a return on their investment in exchange.
That's why we're having this conversation. The three strategies we're about to discuss will help you position your business as the expert.
All right, let's get started.
0:04:26 Every business solves a problem, but the type of problem you solve has a huge impact on the prospect's perception of your level of expertise, how much they're willing to invest, and whether or not there's a sense of urgency for them.
A high-value problem is one that when unresolved will have a direct negative effect on the company's ability to meet its goals.
I'm going to say that again just so you can catch the definition.
A high-value problem is one that when unresolved will have a direct negative effect on the company's ability to meet its goals. This can mean a disruption in their
Inherently, a high-value problem requires specialized expertise and experience and often has a sense of urgency attached to it.
For the company, the cost of not resolving their problem is higher than the cost of addressing it, which is why clients are often willing to invest in a solution — and that solution is your service.
I want you to take a moment and evaluate the problem you solve. Is it a high-value problem for your clients, and how do you communicate that?
A simple question to ask yourself to help you figure this out is, "What is the impact on the company if they don't solve this problem?” Answering this question will help you understand the nuances of the exact problem you solve for your clients, which is going to serve you well for the next strategy.
This leads us nicely into strategy number two.
0:06:17 We just spoke about making sure the problem you solve is one that's going to be impactful for your clients. This strategy is taking it one step further, allowing you to communicate your expertise and allowing your prospects to self-identify.
The two key components of the strategy is understanding that it's characterized by depth and clarity. Let's define the two just as we've been doing.
Let's break each one of those down a little bit further starting with depth.
I mentioned that depth is reflected in your understanding of the problem. This means going beyond simply identifying the problem itself, but also your ability to identify the symptoms of the problem. The symptoms are how that one problem is affecting other areas of your client's business.
The ability to tie their day-to-day challenges with the problem you identified in strategy number one adds depth to your expertise. There's nothing more powerful for a prospect than having an expert give them insight into their own business that they didn't have before.
This also creates an opportunity for you to paint a picture of what their life and business can look and feel like once that problem is resolved. Incorporating these points into your marketing is how you demonstrate a depth of understanding to your prospects.
It communicates 1) that you know what they're struggling with, 2) that you understand how it's impacting them and, in some cases, even better than they do, and 3) that you can help.
The second characteristic is clarity. That's all about communication. Communicating with clarity around the problem means speaking about the problem in the same language that your prospects use. It means speaking their language, so they can self-identify and know that you are speaking directly to them.
Oftentimes, as the expert, it's easy for us to speak about the problem we solve using language that assumes our prospects have the same depth of understanding as we do. That's not always the case.
Our prospects speak about their challenges from a first-hand perspective because they're currently in the middle of it. They're experiencing it in real time. Often, they're using emotionally-charged language, while we, as the experts, are often speaking about the problem from a third-person perspective, from the other side of the challenge.
Often, we're even using insights that we gained by having overcome the challenges ourselves. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but we do have to be mindful and intentional to meet our prospects where they're at now, so that we can help them through to the other side.
I want to encourage you to pay attention to the language you use in your marketing. While it should showcase your expertise, it should also be able to meet your prospects where they're at today, so that together you can move them forward.
Lastly, when it comes to clarity, Leonardo Da-Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” That is true here as well. When you speak to your prospect's challenges, keep it simple. The quality of the knowledge and understanding you present speaks louder than the quantity of it.
0:09:52 Hey friend, so you know when you were younger and you found out that the popular kid in school was having a party, but then you realized that you weren't invited to the party. Everyone you knew was going to be there. Then, you're like, "Who cares? I don't want to go anyways," but secretly you wanted to go. This is kind of like that, except you're invited.
I want to personally invite you to join me for our exclusive Corporate Coins Training. If you're an avid listener to the podcast, then you already know that here we cover all things serving corporate clients, but this workshop takes everything you're already learning to a whole new level.
During this free training, I'll be walking you through the framework, of course, for how to attract, sell to, and serve corporate clients while also diving into the coins and culture to address the challenges that we specifically face in these environments as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs.
This training is interactive. It's high-energy, industry-leading content, jokes and laughter, and of course, it's a safe space for us to come together, have real conversation, and for you to be supported on your journey.
Here's the catch: there is no replay.
You either come live or you miss it. This, my friend, is why you're going to want to make sure you register for this training and mark it on your calendar. The training, of course, is free, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an investment required. The investment is your time — that's it. You bring you, and I'll meet you there with everything else you'll need.
To get all the details and to register for the free training, just click the link in the show notes to save your spot. Trust me! You'll be glad that you did.
All right, friend. Back to the episode.
0:11:43 This brings us to the third and final strategy. Speak about the problem consistently. If you haven't noticed by now, each one of these strategies has a theme and it's all centered around the problem.
Consistency is the foundation of trust. If there's one thing a high-value client needs before investing with you, it's trust. They need to trust you and to believe that you can provide a solution for their problem, and that hiring you is a good investment.
Consistently showing up is how you build that trust with them, which over time will open the door to a working relationship.
What do I mean by showing up? I'm talking about your marketing, meaning putting out content consistently.
Being consistent doesn't necessarily mean you have to put out daily content, but whichever platform you use as your main platform for publishing, decide how frequently you're going to publish and stick to that cadence.
I've learned over the years that being consistent on one platform is better than being inconsistent on many.
The content you create should regularly be showcasing the first two strategies we discussed, which was 1) that you solve a higher value problem, and 2) it should showcase your depth and clarity around the problem.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be on every platform. The beauty is that the high-value clients you're looking for, they're not either. I have found that LinkedIn is the best platform for marketing to corporate buyers and high-value clients.
If your target audience is on other platforms, then show up consistently wherever they are. That's completely up to you.
Wherever you publish your content, having a consistent cadence with which you show up communicates three major things.
Before prospects even reach out to consider working with you, they're going to do their due diligence. This often means checking your social media platforms, consuming your content and asking trusted peers about you.
Keeping your marketing consistent allows you to showcase a track record of your consistency and provides your prospects with a repertoire of your expertise that they can use to vet you before working with you.
Addressing their problems and challenges throughout your marketing, reassures them that you're the right person for the job. Honestly, it does a lot of the pre-work of selling, even before you've connected with them.
It's especially powerful when you can do marketing exceptionally well. Keep in mind that when high-value, high-paying prospects are looking to make a large investment, they don't rush into it. They may spend weeks or months vetting you before taking the next step. Showing up consistently ensures that you're building a relationship with them in the process, so that you'll be top of mind once they are ready to move forward.
I found a quote by the famed poet, the illustrious Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, that I think is going to help untie everything we've discussed together so far. He says, "Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency." I believe that is so true and so timely for our discussion today.
0:15:06 All right, friend. Let's recap the three strategies we discussed and talk about how we can convert these conversations into coins.
I just want to point out that these strategies are very simple. They're not technical, in nature. They don't require any extensive resources or a large team to implement. They are foundational.
The foundational strategies are often the easiest to skip over since they're often not very glamorous. That's exactly why this section exists in every episode to help you take action on what we discussed, so that the time you spend listening to these episodes can yield a Return on Investment (ROI) for you over time.
With that said, your action item for today is to define what a high-value problem means to your target client. The best way to do this is by speaking directly to them and asking them.
Reach out to your past clients. That's always a great place to start, and your current clients as well.
Start to define what a high-value problem looks like and means for your specific business.
If you found today's conversation helpful and you want to learn more about how we can help you price, pitch and close corporate contracts. I want to personally invite you to attend our free training, Corporate Coins: How to Attract, Sell and Serve Corporate Clients.
This free training is designed to walk you through both the mindset and the mechanics of attracting and successfully closing corporate deals. I've designed it so that whether you're brand new to this or you're looking to land your biggest contract yet, you'll leave the training with a path forward to your next level of income and impact, Whatever that may look like for you.
You can find the link to register in the show notes and go ahead and do that now. The training is completely free, we're going to be doing it live, and I would love for you to be there. Click the link in the show notes to register and to save your spot for our free training.
0:17:19 In the next episode of The Profit Scale, I'm going to be walking you through our signature Pillars of Pricing™ framework. This is going to help you understand how to price your services profitably, and to make sure that you're not leaving coins on the table when it comes to working with corporate clients.
To make sure you don't miss it, subscribe to the podcast. That way you'll be notified in two weeks when the new episode is released.
As always, friend, I'm so grateful that you chose to spend this time with me. My hope is that each episode plays a small part in moving you one step closer to building a business that will have a generational impact.
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On behalf of myself and the team, thank you so much for supporting us in doing so! Thank you for being here. I'll be here, at the same time and in the same place in two weeks. Until then, I wish you coins, confidence, and all the bags! Talk to you soon, friend.