Do you tend to focus on the short-term instead of planning for big long-term wins?

Here’s an example: a coach might engage in a business development tactic such as doing a talk. The coach will show up, give a great, refined and well-practiced talk, and walk away with 2-3 new clients.

Great! The short-term goal of getting new clients is accomplished. Gotta love that!

But where most entrepreneurs lack intention is in how to capture the people who are interested but don’t say yes right away.

What about the people who enjoyed the presentation, may want more information, but aren’t quite ready to sign up?

When I do talks, I make a habit of offering a free gift that will capture the people who fall into this space. This gift is something valuable that is related to the topic of my talk and will help participants get even more information to help them implement or execute what we’ve talked about. In exchange, I get their email address, which allows me to engage them further.

Then, I embark on the next leg of this journey: doing my best at keeping those people engaged in the conversation with me over the course of the next several months – or, in some cases, years – until they’re ready to work with me.

If we don’t take the opportunity to engage people who come into our pipeline but don’t say “yes” right away, they almost always go off into the ether. When they are ready to engage, they’ll end up hiring whichever coach is most present in their space at the time, even if you would have been their divine ideal coach.

Create Stacked, Multi-Branched Pipelines to Build Relationships

Building stacked, multi-branched pipelines to keep the “no for now” folks in the conversation with you is the way to nurture those relationships until they’re ready to say yes.

Begin building your pipeline by looking at every stop along the way in the journey that a client takes from meeting you to doing business with you. Look at each of those “yes/no” stops along the way. Each “yes/no” point happens when you make an offer of some sort that requires a decision and they say either “yes” or “no.”

For example: they come to a talk, you offer a complimentary breakthrough session and they either say “yes” or they say “no.” If they have a breakthrough session with you, at the end, they’ll either hire you or not.

At each junction, what do you do to continue to engage them if they are a “no”? This is what I call the Engagement Strategy.

You may have a different engagement strategy for each “yes/no” intersection in your pipeline that ultimately ties back to your email list engagement strategy. A good starting point is to look at your list and ask yourself, “Okay, what can I do next to stay engaged with these people?” Maybe it’s sending a helpful blog article or an inspirational poster that is tied to the work you do. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something you are excited to do, that is an authentic expression of your work, and brings value to your ideal client.

If you’d like more help with nurturing your list, let’s set up a time to have a complimentary business breakthrough session. Click HERE to sign up for a session.