3 Secrets To Getting Corporate Clients

Hey new listener. Thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on, don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you. Here are the three things you need to know to start winning more corporate clients. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach and welcome to the weeniecast. I want to let you in on a little secret and this is something that I train in all of my programs to my clients who are going after corporate contracts. So this is really like $1,000 tip that I'm giving you today and hopefully it helps you land some business that's worth north of $20,000. So really it's a $20,000 tip. Do with it what you will. The golden goose of offering a service is landing corporate clients. But most of the time when new business owners start out, they they go about it all wrong and they actually make it take way longer for them to land these clients. And to put it in perspective, if you're working with clients one on one and you're a coach, say you can charge anywhere from like $3,000 for a six month contract to $30,000 for a six month contract, depending on who your ideal client is. But if you're working in corporate, you're typically not getting paid less than 20 grand, especially if you're working with upper leadership. If you're running a workshop and you're just trying to enroll one off clients into it, you have to hope that enough people sign up to make it worth your while versus landing a corporate workshop. They're going to have a guaranteed audience and they're going to expect to pay a certain amount regardless of how many people show up. When I worked for Cisco Systems, I was talking to one of our HR people and she shared with me that to bring in a communications coach to work with their engineering team, they typically spent between 30 and $40,000 a day, which sounds absolutely insane until you realize all the work that goes into landing those jobs, all the pre work that is required and managing the account. Because there are a lot of decision makers when you go after corporate clients and you have to really work with all of them to make sure that you get the job. So there are three things that you need to do to make sure you are getting these clients and that you are moving this sales process along as fast as possible. So we're going to talk through who you want to get in front of to start these conversations, how to set your own expectations that you don't go absolutely insane waiting for an answer back from them and also how you get them to say yes through your sales process. And I will say right now, if you have a friend or family member who's starting a business who wants to land corporate contracts, I recommend you send them this episode because this is really valuable information and I do go deeper into it in my build your own business group program. So if you're interested in more information about that, then I urge you to go and book a generate income strategy call. You can do so by going to weeniecast.com forward/strategycall and that link is in the show notes. But let's get into the meat and potatoes, shall we? Trying to get corporate contracts is rife with rejection, both perceived and non existent and real. And for folks with ADHD who are sensitive when they think they're being rejected, it can really take a toll on your self esteem. It can really make you lose faith in what you're doing. It can make you doubt that this business is even going to work. Knowing these things about the process to get corporate contracts is really going to help you stay sane and not absolutely lose your mind. These three tips will also help you move the process along faster. You know, one of the things I'm going to talk about is the expectations you need to have around when these deals are going to close. And it's usually like 6 to 12 months. I don't know about you, but 6 to 12 months is a really long time for my ADHD. Like out of sight, out of mind. You know, if it's taking someone 612 months to make this decision, like there's a really good chance I'm just going to forget they exist. So it's so important that you implement these changes. You really accept what I'm telling you here because it's going to save your sanity. There's a chance it might not, but you know what, like you're in good company. If you are insane, welcome. You're with really cool people. We're so happy to have you. The thing about sending your resume and your one pager to hr, if you have adhd, you need consistent feedback. You need positive affirmation that this is good. We're happy, we're excited for what you offer. If HR is way too busy to even acknowledge your email and you're not going to get feedback that's going to give you the dopamine that will allow you to keep working on this, you're not going to be able to continue doing this. You know, there's a reason why people with ADHD get really easily addicted to social media. Because we get addicted to the dopamine we get when we get likes and comments and follows. Right. You want to be careful about that, but we also have to be realistic with it. Setting yourself up so you'd get positive feedback, or at least helpful feedback that helps you get better is going to help you stick with your strategy a lot longer. Squirrel. Squirrel. The number one mistake I see coaches and consultants making when they're going after corporate contracts is they think that the best way to get in front of their ideal client and start that sales process is to reach out to hr. And while, yes, yes, this can work, HR usually is the one who has to sign off on anything that's learning and development related, especially if you're in the coaching sphere. I want you to imagine how many emails and letters you get with people's one pager of their work and how they can help the company. HR doesn't just field these outside people that want to land a project with this company. They also have to deal with some internal stuff and usually stuff that's not very fun. So if you're sending them an email saying, hey, so and so, I'm a leadership coach or I do leadership development or this or that or the other thing, and here's my one pager, chances are they're seeing that and they're either archiving it or deleting it because they have bigger fish to fry. You're also just one of many who's emailing them. So HR often isn't the best way for you to get in with these clients. Often the best way for you to get in with these clients is to go to the department heads, the actual leaders, the people who are in the business, working on the business and running into some serious problems. Let me set the stage for you. Say you are a sales trainer. You've worked in sales for a really long time, you've developed this incredible methodology and you want to get out there and you want to help corporations really develop a more successful sales process and that incorporates you doing some consulting on how they set up their sales funnel. You also do sales training with their teams. You give them some scripts that are custom to their business and their type of customer. And you might go and also coach the sales leaders so that they know how to best support their teams to hit their quotas each month. What an amazing program. If anyone out there wants help building that, I would love to help you with that. You can absolutely go to hr. But HR isn't facing those problems, problems every single day. HR isn't having to have really difficult conversations with the Chief Revenue Officer about why so and so on their team didn't hit their numbers. They're not having to talk through all the hurdles that they're having to face every single quarter. Who is usually the director of sales or the president of sales. That is the person that you want to get in front of. That is the person who is going to be hungry enough for help that they are going to start the conversation with you. And when they realize that you hold the key to their life being easier, to their work being easier, and to them hitting and exceeding their goals as a team, they're the ones that are going to go and make the case to hr. Why HR needs to create budget for you. And in this scenario, you're extra lucky because this person is in sales and, and they can sell pretty much anything, including working with you, so you have a really good chance of getting the business. But this works across departments. So if you have an engineering director who is really facing creativity problems on his team or maybe his team isn't collaborating really well, you know, it makes a lot of sense that they would want to bring in someone who could train them to do that better because it makes their life and work so much easier and it helps them stand out from the the crowd because they were the leader that took this team from not so great to amazing. You were a piece of that puzzle. If systems are breaking, if the IT department has all these antiquated systems and they're just too busy fixing bugs that they can't update to something better, it makes so much sense for them to bring in a consultant who can do all that for them and help them transition over gradually without loading up everyone who's already in the business, already overwhelmed with more work to do. So you want to get in front of those people who are in charge of these kinds of things because they have the most painful problems that they face every single day that you just so happen to solve. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. So there are a few ways you can get in front of these people. You really have to pick what works best for you, for your business model and for your personality. You can absolutely start a social media campaign. I recommend doing this on LinkedIn because that's where these people are hanging out and looking for talent to bring in if they're already going to LinkedIn scanning for potential talent, when they see you talking about their problems in particular, you're going to get their attention. They're going to start following you, they're going to start taking advice from you. They may not comment on your content, but like I say to all my clients, the money is in the lurkers. Often the people who become our clients are not our most avid, engaged followers. They're the people lurking in the shadows who never out themselves until they book a sales call with you. You can become a speaker and speak at industry conferences. Now, this one takes a lot of footwork to do, but once you do it, you become the ipso facto expert in front of whatever crowd you're speaking to. And what's even better is if you're at an event in person and you're speaking to a crowd, you get immediate networking after the fact. Because folks who really need your help are gonna come seek you out. They're gonna try to stalk you at the bar and ask if they can pick your brain about something, and you're going to set a call with them. And of course, there's always networking and asking for referrals. If you've been a professional for 15 years, you know people who work at companies, and those people who work at companies probably need know someone on the sales team. And that person on the sales team probably knows their manager. Right? It'd be very weird if they didn't. And so asking your own network to help you get introductions to these folks is going to be incredibly helpful. If you have no idea how to do any of this, like I said, these are all things that I cover in my BYOB build your own business program. So again, if you're curious and want some guidance, go and book that strategy call. And really, when you're marketing to them, you want to remember two things. Follow the money and follow the ego. Businesses care about the bottom line. So if this person is either going over budget or not hitting quota, they're not getting the accolades they would if they were doing those things. You coming in and saying, hey, I can help you do these things better for, you know, less money in less time, with less effort, they're going to connect the dots that, okay, cool, this is going to help the business immeasurably, which means I will get attention for this. I'm probably going to get more attention for that next promotion that I want. The thing that we forget about when we're going after corporate clients is honestly that we think this is a business and it's going to be really formal and professional and they're going to want you to be the blandest version of yourself. Right? We forget that every purchase that we make is an emotional purchase. There's a person behind that decision who wants things for themselves. If you don't acknowledge how working with you is going to make their life better, make their work better, you're probably not going to get the sale. They're probably going to go with someone who understands the greater impact that doing this work will have because it connects with them. It makes this a much more urgent decision because they see it as something that'll make their life better. Okay, so that's number one. Find. Find your decision makers and get in front of them any way you know how. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Number two, you're probably going to want to punch me. No one likes hearing this. And thankfully, like, you can't punch me through the podcast. Damn. Damn. When you're going after corporate clients, it's really important to have patience. I know that's the most annoying advice ever. I know you don't want to hear it, but the reality about corporate contracts is that they can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to close, and sometimes longer. There are a few factors that go into this. You know, number one, you have a lot of decision makers. You know, the one person who is the head of the department who really wants to bring you in, they have to make the case to their C suite, to hr, to other people who are going to be impacted by bringing you in. They have to get all these people on board. I don't know if you've ever worked in corporate, but do you know how hard that is? Sometimes people like having opinions and they like sharing their opinions, and if something confronts those opinions, they're going to slow it down, even if it makes perfect sense. So you have a lot of decision makers that you have to bring on board. Now, of course, this is something I train all my clients on. How do you get them to be part of the conversation so they feel like a collaborator and not like someone who's threatened by you coming in. That takes time. For my clients with ADHD, 6 to 12 months is a long time to try to, like, follow up with someone. So to help you manage it, what I recommend you do is set up calls with this individual. If you know that the decision making process is going to take several months. Set up calls just to touch base on where they're at and if they need more information and if they need to make any changes based on new developments within their company. It feels really pushy to do that, but what it actually is is amazing account management. You're making sure that the proposal you sent to them in February is still going to be relevant to them in December. So that way, when they get to the budget conversation that they need to do in November, December, they're going to be able to accurately gauge how much money they need to put aside to work with you. And they'll do so knowing that what they're going to be doing with you is absolutely relevant to what the company's going through. Right. Then how much easier is it going to be for them to sell it to their boss when they can say, yeah, we got this initial proposal back in February, touched base with them in September. After this thing happened within the company, they updated the proposal. Here's the new pricing. It hits everything that we need. It also makes sure that you don't forget about them, which is key because we know it's really easy to forget about things that are out of sight, out of mind. Now that you know who you need to get in front of to get these contracts, you understand the timeline and what it's going to take patience wise and faith wise to get to actually bring these to a yes. Let's talk about the number one most impactful thing that I teach my clients that I'm giving to you for free in this episode. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode. Let's talk about the number one most impactful thing that I teach my clients that I'm giving to you for free. So number three, people share proposals. All wrong. The typical way to do a sales process that most people do because this is what they learned, is to have a meeting with someone, get the information of what they're looking for, and say, okay, great, love to work with. You can absolutely cover all this. Let me do this. I'm going to go and create a proposal and I'll send it over to you and you just let me know what you think. And so then they go away, they write up the proposal. They probably spend, you know, a good couple hours writing it, if not more because they really wanted to sell this person on saying yes. Then they send it over and they wait. It's the worst because you're just refreshing your email like hoping that they're going to get back to you. And then you get weird because you're like, well, I haven't heard back from them in a while, should I follow up? And then you follow up and you don't hear back immediately, like, oh my God, was that weird? Was I too pushy? Did I not make sense? Was there something I did in the sales call that made them hate me? Maybe they hate me, maybe they don't want to ever work with me. And then before you know it, it's six months later, you've never heard back from them. You're probably not going to hear back from them and you feel like garbage because you think you did something wrong. When in reality, if we were to go over to their side, they have the sales call with you, they're really excited about what working with you could look like and what it could do for them and for their company. You say you're going to send the proposal, they're like, amazing, I can't wait to look at this. You send the proposal over, they get it in between a few meetings. They have like 10 minutes in between meetings and they're like, oh my God, this is the proposal. They open it, they kind of scan it. Cool, looks great, I'm gonna come back to this. They go to their meeting. In the meeting, they're given a few to do's and a few more deadlines, and then they have another meeting and more stuff is piled on their plate. One of their team members come to them to complain about something or say that they need help with something and their week just gets completed, completely out of control. Oh, I still have to review that proposal. Great, okay, I'm gonna do that. Mental note. And then the next week comes and more stuff gets piled on in the back of their mind. They're like, I have to get to that proposal. After a while, it's been so long that they haven't gotten back to you about the proposal, they're gonna start getting weird. They're gonna start wondering, oh my God, I'm so irresponsible and rude. I didn't get back to this person in time. They probably think I'm an. They probably don't want to work with me. If I get back to them now, they're probably so annoyed with me that they spent all this time with me and I didn't give them an answer. God, I can't go back to them or I should. What should I say? Oh God, like this is going to be weird. And then they're going to get a follow up message from you and then they're going to feel even worse because here you are following up with them and they're the asshole. And people don't like being the asshole. There's a reason why there's a whole bunch of Reddit threads. Am I the asshole? Because people want to be reassured that they're not the asshole. But our brains are not very kind to us. You know, in a lot of scenarios we make ourselves the asshole. We assume a whole bunch of stuff about what the other person's thinking and so they get really weird. And then six months later they're like, I can't work with this person because they probably hate me because I completely dropped the ball in this. And then they start the process with someone else all over again. So here's the critical mistake that the business owner made. They didn't make sure the ball stayed in their court. And yes, that was a sports metaphor. If you're playing our bingo game, you can cross that one off. And if you don't know about the bingo game, there is actually a bingo card for the Weeniecast. One of our listeners made it up. It's hysterical. You can go and play bingo. If you want to check out the bingo card, you can go to weeniecast.com bingo we have yet to have anyone message us just that they got bingo. But I cannot wait for that day. What do you do if that whole process that you've been taught or that you figured out and you've been doing for a while, if that's not actually the best way to get clients, what do you change? And it's really simple. Instead of saying, I'm going to send you a proposal and you just get back to me, you set a follow up call. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. You can leave your comments in Apple Podcasts, castbox, Spotify and Podchaser. Just go to weeniecast.com forward/reviews and scroll till you find the chosen app. That's weeniecast.com forward slash reviews. The beautiful thing about setting this proposal presentation call and making sure that you're both blocking off time to sit down and look through it is you're not just saving yourself from that perceived rejection that that rejection sensitivity dysphoria getting activated, you're actually protecting them too, because they're going to start perceiving or making up the story that you hate them, they're going to start thinking that you're going to reject them. If they come back to you, you're actually being so kind in helping them go through this, be accountable to it and have more structure around when they need to give you an answer. There's also that element that there may actually be something in your proposal that they do not understand. And I want you to think about any corporate situation. Are people in corporate situations likely to feel comfortable admitting they don't know something? No. So even if they do set aside time to go through your proposal, if there's stuff in there that they're like, ooh, I don't know what that word means, or I'm not sure what they're talking about here, there's a big chance they're actually not going to ask about it. They're just going to like, say, okay, cool, I'll get to this later. But then the idea of admitting that they don't know the thing can be like, too shame inducing. So you get to protect them from that. You get to hold their hand, you know, and say, is there anything in here that doesn't make sense? You want more clarity on. And they have full permission in that moment to admit they need more clarity. The number one thing I want you to know is, is that this is possible for you. If you're consistent, if you have an actual sales process that works, then you can absolutely get consistent corporate clients. And you say, cool, you know, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go and set up this proposal. Why don't we do this? I wanna make sure this proposal covers absolutely everything that you need and that there's no questions you have when you get it. So let's book a time for a proposal presentation call. On this call, we'll go through line by line, all the parts of the proposal. If there's anything missing, I can add them in. If you have any questions, I can answer them then. And also there's anyone else who's involved in this project who needs to be on that call, bring them in so they can see what we're talking about. You're holding them accountable. You're making them actually block off time in their calendar where they're going to sit down, look over the proposal with you holding their hand and explaining, explaining every bit. They're going to be able to ask questions, they're going to be able to process the information, and if any changes need to be made, they're going to feel like you are super responsive. Because, you know, if they're like, oh, well, we actually wanted there to be a workshop included in the company retreat that we have in February. Can you add that? You're gonna be like, oh, yeah, absolutely. I'll add it in here. Do you have dates? Because I can go and block those off right now. Because also, that's another thing. If you're blocking off time in the future, they're going to feel extra responsible to get back to you, and it gives you a reason to follow up with them because you have the time blocked off and you can create some urgency around that. I've had people make this one change and double their yes rate, just scheduling a proposal presentation call now. Of course, you have to have a proposal that's worth presenting if you don't know how to do that. That's one of the things I train in my programs. Happy to talk to you about what those look like to help you really create proposals that convert. I love that saying meat and potatoes because it completely jumps over vegetables. It's like, whoever made that saying was like, yes, meat. And I love potatoes. And that is what we should be focusing on. They didn't bring up dessert, so that's kind of disappointing. I appreciate their appreciation of potatoes, and maybe they're considering potatoes vegetables, which technically they are. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So, as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode.