When was the last time you reviewed who you work with?

Your avatar is the key to your business success. The more you know them, their wants, dreams and desires, the easier it is for you to spot, attract and serve them.

Whether you are a speaker, author or coach the #1 desire is to have more speaking gigs, more customers or more clients, and that’s why we always get asked — how can I find & connect with my avatar? Our answer is usually a question — when was the last time you reviewed who you worked with?

As you change, they change!

That’s because it’s VITAL that as you change, you also need to update your avatar description. As you grow, as you add more products, or streamline or introduce new models in your speaking, writing or coaching, that you upgrade the language of your webpages, your programme descriptions and even your own bios. Certainly it means that you might review regularly the spaces you hang out in, the channels you show up on.

We recommend reviewing every 6 months or so. That’s usually enough time for you to have changed something in the business, and we want to make sure that all you have is ‘fit for purpose’ — and the purpose is ALWAYS to connect with your avatar.

Do the quick and dirty review

A sign that you know your avatar really well, even fully, is this: you are able to answer all these questions:

  • What services do they use? (and who provides those services?)
  • Where do they shop?
  • What do they buy — where from?
  • What are the marks or tools of their trade?
  • Where do they learn more of their craft?
  • Where do they get educated about things in their business?
  • What information do they most look up or look for?
  • What associations / memberships do they do?
  • What kinds of holidays do they go on?

These questions give you information about where to hang out so you are in the vicinity of your avatar. These include the:

  • networking groups
  • facebook groups
  • advertising in publications they read etc.

But one of the things that is most overlooked is blindingly obvious, yet little used. A really easy way is to work with people who have your avatar but don’t offer your exact services — so there isn’t any competition. So that list above might just give you some clues as to who to collaboration and connect with to get easy access to your ideal client.

The key question to ask yourself: “Who has my customers before me or after me?”

Don’t underestimate the simplicity of the question. Ask it often. Think about where your avatar is and what they do. Then take it wider and identify those who also work with them. And reach out, start making connections.

There are key aspects that you need to know about your business before you can fully make use of this little golden nugget. You need:

  • A clear & thorough description of your avatar
  • A defined product funnel & user journey
  • A crystal clear understanding of what problems you solve & where your knowledge/skills limits are

That then helps you to present yourself to someone else that you want to collaborate with and explain where you can start where they end or where they can take over when the avatar is done working with you. You can set up referral and affiliate arrangements that create a win — win win for all of you.

Figure out what clients bring you joy.

The prospects that you come across will be in 1 of 3 stages:

  1. There will be people who are too early on in their journey to work with you — for example in Kelly’s speaker agency, they don’t represent people who aren’t trained in speaking, haven’t spoken on stage in a professional setting and received great client feedback.
  2. There will be people who are at the perfect time to work with you — as they have the exact problem that you solve and are hungry to know how and love to do.
  3. There are people who have overcome the challenges that you educate them on and they actually represent who your ideal clients become once they’ve worked with you.

Now your job is to find partners who LOVE to work with people who are too early for you and who works with them after they have finished working with you — as you can feed these partners clients and arrange an introduction commission fee.

Your job is to also work with these people to arrange systems and processes for them to introduce clients to you when they are at your stage!

It’s also valuable to ask yourself who can sell on your behalf

On a professional level — do your people have accountants, lawyers, services of some kind? If so, as part of their packages, they can introduce you with ease for example.

On a practical level, what services do they use in life that makes it easy for them — think about valet, car hire, nanny’s, concierges, delivery services etc.

And on a personal level, where do they go for anything related to looking after themselves — clothes shopping, clubs, haircuts, personal trainers and the like.

When you start to think this way, there are LOTS of opportunities that should start to pop into your head and help you identify who to reach out to.

What to do when you’ve identified your potential partners

Once you have identified your partners of who has your clients before or after you or who can sell on your behalf it’s important to get your ‘ducks in a row’ so you can work together well and efficiently. These include:

  • Ensuring that these people align with your values, brand and ethics — it has to be a match or you might not get the avatar you want
  • Being aware of the offers / commission you are offering and how it effects your profit / budgets; and then presenting those offers in a way that makes sense to your clients — either for you offering others’ services, or that you can give to your partners to offer yours!
  • Setting targets for how many prospects you intend to get from referral partners and organising regular connection calls so you stay in alignment and do joint promotions
  • Creating the systems & processes you need set up to refer prospects and pay out commissions.

It can take a little while to set things up and even identify people, and build the relationships, but it’s SO worth it. Whole income stream lines have been added to our clients, marketing spend has gone down and time gets freed up to serve more people.

For more information like this, please check out our resources on the website, or better still join us in The Connection Hub where like minded speakers, authors and coaches hang out.

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