When you go looking for clients for your business coaching enterprise, occasionally you miss the obvious.

For example, I split my time between motivational speaking and business coaching. Originally, I missed how the two could entwine beautifully to generate more customers for each business.

Twenty-four years, 27,000 clients in 34 countries later, I now capitalize on the link between my businesses and use a host of other innovative ways to move clients into the sales funnel for my business coaching consultancy.

Here are seven tried and true methods that work for me that I know will work for you:

#1. Hone your speaking skills and use them strategically

When I deliver a rousing, motivational presentation, the people who come up to speak to me afterwards are fired up and ready to ignite the businesses they have been struggling to set on steadier ground.

I learned that if I could fuel that fire by establishing a personal connection right then and there, I had an amazing way to draw these potential clients into the sales funnel to hire my business coaching services.

It can work for you too.

Take some training from your local Toastmasters organization or a speaking coach and practice your presentation skills. Consider what is unique about you and your business and tell your story in a way that inspires others.

From that point forward, instead of merely attending conferences where you hope to find networking opportunities, try to get yourself invited to speak at them. Join a Speaker’s Bureau and make sure your topics are hot and in the moment, and you will get the jobs.

Once you give a presentation, spend even longer at the event interacting with those who listened to you and were inspired. Take an interest in their businesses and goals, and let it be known that you and your team could work with them one-on-one to help them get to the next level.

Make sure you secure contact information from each encounter. This is basic relationship-building and it works. You are starting from an enviable position because as the speaker, you are already perceived in their eyes as the authority on the subject.

But be strategic about the speaking gigs you go for. Know the avatar of your likely clients and seek out engagements that they will be drawn to attend. For example, I enjoy speaking at leadership and sales conferences, small and medium sized business conferences, and entrepreneurial events, especially those involving marketing professional services and consultancies.

When you get in demand, you will have your choice of audiences, so be sure to select those that will be most strategic for growing your other businesses as well as theirs.

#2. Share your presentations to a broader audience

The best cost effective way to encourage more prospective clients into your sales funnel is to create marketing materials that complement each other and flow together.

I discovered that after many people asked me if I could send them a copy of the PowerPoint I used to illustrate my presentations.

My PowerPoints are not traditional in the sense that they recount all the aspects of my speeches. I want to engage my audience and have them listen actively, rather than just read slides, so often they are just a picture with one key quote.

But still, that is something many people seemed to want in their email after a presentation. To double my impact, I include a one page primer summarizing my key messages as well.

Not only am I happy to collect their emails and be able to follow up personally with them, but I encourage them to share the material I send them with their contacts (you know they will say something nice about you when they move it forward) and that way my key messages find a broader audience.

I also post them on SlideShare (https://www.slideshare.net) and SpeakerDeck (https://www.speakerdeck.com).

The results I get from these initiatives are impressive. Not only do I get more clients into my sales funnel this way, but I also occasionally get hired in this way for more speaking engagements.

#3. Find ways to engage traditional as well as social media

Most people in business at this point in time are astute at using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to broaden their points of contact with prospective clients. But in the race for clicks and likes, don’t ignore traditional media.

The average person still considers a consultant quoted in traditional media as an expert in their field.

Even if you just manage to get a quote in your hometown newspaper, you can magnify its reach when you post the clip on your own social media sites.

How do you get quoted?

You stay visible and connected to your community so you will be top of mind with journalists in your area.

But sometimes they need a little memory jog. If a major story is hitting the headlines for a day or two and you have a unique perspective on the situation that can be supported by your credentials and area of expertise, issue a News Release or call an editor and ask if you could provide a column for the editorial section.

You would be surprised how many times this can work.

How can you translate it to your business?

Let’s say that as part of your business coaching you provide crisis communications training for your clients. You have expertise in your field, perhaps as a former journalist or communications professor. You look for a hot story. You notice that US President Donald Trump effectively keeps his name on the front pages of newspapers all across North America by making remarks that many people find controversial. He augments that with pointed Tweets.

It’s not the same strategy past presidents have used, but it is keeping him front and centre of the media stage. You offer your local newspaper an analysis of the speech techniques the President is using to stay top of mind.

It is such a hot topic that the commentary and your quotes get picked up by a national news agency, posted on line, and you are invited to guest blog for a media watch site. You are also called by a television and radio station to appear on talk shows. You end up with more prospective clients in your sales funnel as a result of that. It really can work well.

#4: Build what you know into a course

Still on the concept of repositioning what you have already created, take aspects of your presentation and any blogs or articles you write and create a course.

There are two effective strategies with courses to engage prospective clients.

One is to write a relatively short (1-3 hours) course on a topic of value to the clients you are targeting and offer it free on your website. At the end of the course, you offer a free half-hour consultation, and this gives you a chance to build a stronger relationship with them and turn them into paying clients.

The other is to create a passive stream of income for yourself by offering a more detailed, and even more valuable course to your perspective clients and charging for it. As with all courses, make sure there is an option at the end for you to engage with the client directly so that you can sell them your additional business coaching services.

#5: Blogging isn’t the thing: massive distribution of your blog is

Too many clients of mine tell me that they tried blogging but it “didn’t work.” What they did was create some canned, basic content without a shred of creativity or innovation in it, posted it sporadically on their website, and wondered why it didn’t bring in a stream of clients.

Blogging does work very well in generating interest in your business and bringing prospective clients to you. It is all part of creating your brand of being an authority in your field. But your blogs have to be different, they have to challenge the reader to think, and they have to leave them with nuggets of information that add value to their life today.

They also have to be distributed everywhere you can imagine. Put them on your website by all means, but also put the link to them on Twitter, put them on LinkedIn, respond to discussions about the topic and link your answer to your blog, and ask your contacts to share them freely.

Send copies of them to anyone that you mention in them in a complimentary fashion. Post as well on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/).

#6: Ensure every email you send adds a personal touch

There are a lot of business coaches on this planet, and the reason a client is going to go to you as opposed to someone else comes down to their trust in you.

You build that trust by building a good relationship with them.

But we often forget that. For the sake of efficiency, we send out form emails, or we have assistants handle things when the person wants to talk to us. I am against that in just about every imaginable situation.

Let me give you an example. Earlier I mentioned that people I meet following my presentations want copies of the PowerPoint or more data on services I provide.

If I listened to those who counsel that I should have this handled with a form email by somebody else, this is how it would look:

“Dear Mr. Lundrigan,

Here is the PowerPoint you requested from Paula Morand Enterprises.

Thank-you for your interest,

B. Efficient, executive assistant”

Do you know how many clients that will get you? None. But instead, this is the kind of message I send.

“Dear Bob,

I enjoyed chatting with you after my presentation at the Small Business Expo in Calgary today.

Your approach to focusing your marketing efforts on the 60-plus segment of the Canadian market was intriguing. Several of my more innovative clients took that approach to marketing their professional services firms, and they are experiencing amazing results. You might be interested in some of the campaigns we worked on with them that zeroed in on this market and provided us a lot of insight on how to best approach it.

If you would like to arrange to consult with me further about this, I know that I and my team could help your reach your goals. Email me anytime and I’ll get right back to you.

Thanks for taking in my presentation yesterday. Here’s the PowerPoint you requested. To ensure that you have the full context, I am also attaching a short summary of my remarks.

Here’s a link to my blog: http://www.paulamorand.com/blog/. A lot of what I write about touches on what we talked about.

I looking forward to talking with you soon,

Paula

Notice the difference. One fulfills the obligation of responding, but does nothing to pull this connection into my sales funnel or build any real relationship. The second does both. Even if Bob’s not ready to commit to being a client yet, there’s a really good chance he’ll start reading my blog, and our relationship will grow instead of fizzle out.

#7. Give a little extra to help the young entrepreneur

I’m a big proponent of mentoring, enough that I was named Canada’s Rock Star Mentor. Reaching out and supporting young entrepreneurs is an investment in your own future as well as theirs. When you are with them from the beginning, they will be with you to the end!