How To Get A Consistent Flow Of Ideal Clients—with Dov Gordon

Do you struggle to attract a steady, consistent, predictable flow of your ideal clients?

If you’re finding yourself nodding yes to that question, you’ll absolutely want to tune into this week’s episode of the Let’s Talk Business podcast with “The Alchemist Entrepreneur” Dov Gordon.

Self-taught and self-bootstrapped, since 2001 Dov has been helping consultants, coaches and entrepreneurs build simple, client-getting systems that help them get a consistent flow of their ideal clients—without tricks, hacks or false fronts. Relying on fundamental psychological principles, he teaches simplicity over complexity with a discerning eye.

In this week’s episode, Dov teaches us:

• Why most business owners are overcomplicating their marketing
• A three-step process for building a simple, repeatable marketing and selling system
• The only two reasons a person will pay attention to our messaging
• The right and wrong way to answer the question “What do you do?” at a networking event

…and so much more!

Listen below enjoy Dov’s valuable tips on how to whip your marketing messaging into shape to attract a consistent flow of ideal clients.

Listen to the podcast here:

Download the audio file here.

How To Get A Consistent Flow Of Ideal Clients with Dov Gordon [Transcript]

For so many business owners I speak to, one of the biggest challenges they face is getting a consistent flow of ideal clients. After digging deeper, I often find that the main reason for the challenge is that they’re all over the place. They use a bunch of good tactics but they haven’t figured out a simple, focused and streamlined process for getting clients they could work with on a consistent basis. Our guest is Dov Gordon. Dov is a friend of mine and the leader of the mastermind group that I’m involved with. He helps consultants, coaches and entrepreneurs develop a consistent flow of ideal clients. I’ve known Dov for years as he’s leading a mastermind that I’m involved. That is why I’m honored to have Dove Gordon on the show.

Dov has a no-nonsense approach on how to create a strategic foundation with simplicity in order to get your ideal clients consistently. Pay attention to how Dov explains the three-step process of building that simple system. Also pay attention to how Dov explains that there are only two reasons why a person will pay attention to your messaging. Ultimately, he shares the difference between two approaches in selling when you meet somebody on a networking event. Dov Gordon, thank you so much for joining me on the show.

I’m honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

You and I have known each other for quite some years now. I’m not even sure exactly is it seven or eight or even more or less? At one point you reached out to me that you’re creating a mastermind group. You asked me exactly what I’m up to and if I should join. Was that the first interaction we had?

Probably. It’s been quite a while as you said, but that sounds vaguely familiar. I think somebody forwarded an email that you had to me and I might have had a look at what you were doing. It seemed like it might be in alignment with what we were doing. That’s why I reached out to you.

Our topic is getting the consistent flow of ideal clients. I do want to start off with speaking about masterminds and networking in general because throughout the years you created this group, which I’m part of, it is basically a collective group of people from around the world that are knowledgeable educators and marketing gurus on so on. The way you set it up and this is a lesson for the audience is we all come equally to the mastermind, which means we want to give and get. It works out so nicely and I’m seeing it throughout the years because when you give, then ultimately you get, and there’s so much knowledge that you can share.

The reason why I want to share with our audience speaking about this topic is that so many business owners or individual entrepreneurs are sometimes stuck in what they’re doing every single day. They’re looking to get out of the box or looking to expand any of their sales marketing, product offering or whatever it is. If they would be open to attending masterminds, going to networking events, you never know when your next big thing or big idea would come from. I know when we started this group, there are people that were solo entrepreneurs and a few years later they have thriving businesses with thousands of customers, hundreds of customers. Some of those ideas came out of asking and somebody else responding to it. Share with the audience a little bit of what was your mindset behind the group and why you feel that those masterminds and those networking events are valuable for every business owner.

I originally created it because I was looking to network with other people who are direct marketing savvy, looking to sell to consultants, experts, business owners and entrepreneurs over the internet. They’re looking to do joint ventures. I originally was looking for those types of people. I still am. That still is the core idea of what we do. Years ago, when we got started, we have a monthly conference call. Now it’s on Zoom video call. Back then it was a telephone conference call. I realized from the very first time we did that there would be nothing more boring than saying, “I’m working on this. Does anybody want to help me promote it to your email list?” There was nothing more boring than that. That would be a recipe for the group falling apart.

Immediately from the second one, I realized that we’re bringing together a small group of active people who are doing things, people out there doing things and happy to come and share both what’s working for them and what’s not working for them. From the second meeting we had, it was focused all about, “I’m working on this. I’m stuck on that.” We’re going around the room virtually seeing who can help who with what. First of all, you get help with something from other smart people because nobody knows it all. Even if you sometimes do know the answer, even if sometimes you can have an answer that would be great for someone else, it’s often hard to see for yourself. It’s often hard to see how it applies to you. That’s number one.

Number two is it builds relationships amongst people. When people have relationships, when they trust each other, when they get to know each other, that’s when they’re happy to promote each other. As a byproduct of masterminding, learning from each other, openly sharing as a group and one to one, if people happen to be at a conference, that same conference, they don’t go out to dinner together or meet for breakfast or whatever it might be. It builds strong relationships and that has since supported millions of dollars in business amongst the group. It’s probably more than that because there’s at least one member who has openly said, “I’m responsible for at least seven figures in his business growth.” The number went up the last time he said it. That’s fantastic. You’ve got to get out of your own head. You’ve got to get out of what you see.

I once heard a great line from somebody. He told me, “I never want to go a week without being in a place where I’m not the smartest person in the room.” This not a pitch to your group because obviously there are certain types of people that are part of this mastermind. I wanted to open up with that because there’s something that our audience hears me speak a lot about, the power of mastermind. Our relationship started off that way, so I wanted to share it.

One more point is it’s important to have somebody who is vetting who’s in there because anybody can go to any networking event. Probably everybody in the audience has wasted a lot of time at networking events. We’ve probably also had some good experiences at networking events, but when we’re talking about masterminds, you run some program as well. When somebody has screened who’s in the group and are they a fit for what we’re trying to create, that’s where some real value starts to happen.

I’ll share one small story that happened to me. I had a group of salespeople actually that it’s not an official mastermind, but they get together on a weekly basis. It was summertime and they asked me to moderate it. We got together, it was nine or ten sales people and they asked me to moderate. I said, “We’re going to do something totally different out of your comfort zone. Each person will walk out of the room, come in and actually try to sell what they’re doing to the group.” Then the people were saying, “What?” We went around and every person got to tell the sales pitch, got rejections, got all kinds of questions thrown at them and they were trying to overcome it.

Ultimately, everybody had to rate their sales pitch and ultimately give them some feedback as far as pros and cons, how they did, so on and so forth. There was one guy there who was pretty struggling, but he actually made it through. When he sat down he said, “I had a great experience. I learned a lot but ultimately I never pitch in front of more than three or four people at max.” I said, “You’ll never know. It’s a good experience.” We had nine or ten people other than the person giving a sales pitch. He called me up later and he told me, “I have to tell you the story. It’s the first time in my life where I walked in and there were ten people sitting at the table. It’s in the construction industry. All of a sudden, the designer of the building was there and the partners were there and the developer was there. My experience gave me so much context as far as how to position my presentation when it’s a larger audience.”

Those ideas don’t happen. Those happen when you actually actively go out of your comfort zone doing those type of experience. Let’s dive in to the topic that you are an expert on and you help consultants, coaches and entrepreneurs develop a consistent flow of ideal clients. I do want to stress the following two things, but I do want to open the conversation that we are business owners speaking to the audience. People want to grow their businesses rightfully so. They have this good idea and they have great value that they’re offering. We know a lot of businesses fail. Businesses fail for different reasons, but a lot of the reasons is they grow when ultimately they have a lot of businesses.

All of a sudden, it slows down and then now they have a huge overhead that they can’t cover. We start dealing with clients unexpectedly than other clients. In what you’re teaching, and that’s why I brought you out onto the show, which is I want the no nonsense advice that you share. It’s two things. It’s the consistency of flow of clients, but you also mentioned the ideal clients because not having consistency or not having the ideal clients, both of them will actually throw you off in the long run. Share with me a little bit about what is the topic all about and let’s dive into the action steps for a business owner. What do they do?

Having a simple repeatable process for getting the attention and interest of ideal clients and closing and bringing them in as clients, having them happy to pay you a certainly does go a long way towards enabling you to make sure you’re mostly working with ideal clients. The thing is that most of us are over-complicating it and because of modern technology, there are so many things available, so many different tools and tactics available. If you have a business, you’re good at what you do, you have a valuable product or service and you wake up in the morning and you think, “How do I get more clients?” Everybody will get up and say, “You’ve got to be doing this. You’ve got to be doing that. You’ve got to be on Facebook, Facebook ads or tweeting or posting on LinkedIn.”

It never ends. We all know that and it’s overwhelming. What I’ve found is that most of us are asking the wrong question. We say, “What should I do to get more clients?” The real question to ask is it’s not what you do because every one of these tactics could work and every one of these tactics could fail. The question is, “When it works, why does it work? When it fails, what did it fail?” Because if you’re going to understand the thinking behind why it works when it works and why it fails when it fails, then you’re in a position where you can create your own simple, repeatable marketing and selling system that brings you the kinds of clients that you’re looking for. What we do is we take people back to the foundational basics.

Most people have skipped the basics without realizing it. They’re often too complicated, like paid traffic to automated webinar type of things. They’re rebranding, they’re writing a book or they’re looking for speaking opportunities. They’re starting a podcast and so on. Every single one of these is great ideas at the right stage for the right person and a bad idea at the wrong stage for the wrong person, especially if you’re just doing it because it seems like a good idea to do. I’ll lay out three things and say it this way, the basics. In every marketing and selling system, if you ask somebody, “What’s the purpose of a marketing funnel? What’s the purpose of a marketing and selling system?” What do you think most people would say?

To get more clients.

Most people will say, “It’s to fill my pipeline. It’s to get more clients. It’s to close deals.” That’s true, but I think of that as an oversimplified answer because it doesn’t help me know what to do next. I know I need a marketing funnel, a marketing system so that I can fill my pipeline, but it gives me no understanding. I nod my head as if I understood, as if I heard something that’s powerful and true and obvious, but I don’t actually understand anything. I want you to contrast this with what I came to understand. It’ll take a little more explanation, because when we hear yes, to fill your pipeline to make sales, we nod our heads, but we didn’t understand a thing.

To understand it, to get to the simplicity on the far side of complexity, it requires the explanation, so here it is. In order for your ideal client to go from total stranger where they’ve never heard of you to where they’re happily paying you for your service, your product, your product-service combination, whatever it is, they need to answer yes to three questions in their own heads. What are those three questions? The first question is, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting?” It doesn’t matter how they came across you. It doesn’t matter if it was a podcast interview, it matters if it was a Facebook ad or it doesn’t matter if you were standing on the street corner with a sandwich board. However they came across you, their brain always asks the same question, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting?”

We know that because we all ask that question. If we stop and think about it, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting?” If their brain concludes, “Nope, it’s not interesting,” then you lost them. They’re gone maybe forever. The first thing you have to do is lead them to answer yes to that first question. The first thing your marketing and selling system funnel has to do is to lead them to answer yes to that first question. “Yes, that is interesting.” As soon as they answer yes, instantly they have a second question, which is, “You’ve got me interested, but can I trust you?” Which includes who are you? What are you all about? Do you actually your stuff? Do you care about me or are you just trying to sell me something? There are a few aspects of trust but ultimately, they want to know, “Can I trust you?”

The job of your marketing and selling system at that point is to lead them to answer, “Yes, I can trust you.” As soon as they conclude, “Yes, I can trust you,” instantly they have a third question which is, “You got me interested. I see that I can trust you. Is what you recommend right for me?” The job then is to lead them to answer, yes, what you recommend is right for me. Congratulations, you have a new client. Rather than saying that the purpose of my marketing system is to close deals to fill my pipeline, we say the purpose of your marketing system is to lead your ideal client to answer yes to the only three questions on their mind in just the right order. It requires a little bit more background as I just gave you, but as soon as you hear that, you can instantly see how well now I actually understand something.

This is such a valuable point. What this does is something that I speak a lot to salespeople that obviously are looking to expand their sales. It’s basically the selling process. If you don’t know which stage that person is or how to overcome or get the person to say yes to those three questions you mentioned, when ends up happening is you mix them up or are you going too far too quickly to the third, which is, “Buy from me.” That person is not paying attention even to what you’re selling. Even if they pay attention to that because they are in need, you didn’t earn their trust. When you identify it in your market, not only it becomes scalable as we’re going to get into and ultimately you could build around it but ultimately, even you are more comfortable in the sales process because you know exactly where those people are. Sometimes you hear a salesperson, we all get pitched all the time and they right away go to benefits and features. “We have this technology, that technology,” I don’t even know if I have that problem yet.

Before you’re going to lead me somewhere, sales are leadership as I see it. Sales are not convincing. Sales are not getting you to do something that I want you to do. It’s me offering to lead you from where you are to where you want to be if you’d like my help. You’ve got to be willing to walk. You’ve got to recognize that not everybody who should follow you will choose to follow you and most of the time, perhaps it will have nothing to do with you. We need to focus on getting good at that leadership. There’s the marketing and there are the sales.

Marketing is drawing people into your orbit so they hear about you and the first question is, should I pay attention? Is it interesting? Is it likely to be a result of marketing? The second step is, “Can I trust you?” It is also likely to be marketing, but sometimes that overlaps with sales. The third question is what you recommend right for me, is likely to be sales. I will clarify that marketing could be one to many. Sales could be one to many. Marketing could be one to one. Sales could be one to one. If I’ve confused anybody, let’s keep moving onto the next point but for those who got it, that’s the context and the geography there.

It’s very clear. Obviously, we speak to a larger audience and everybody’s in different stage or different way of marketing and selling. It’s whatever marketing you’re doing. It could be speaking from the stage. It could be you’re advertising billboards on the freeway, whatever that medium you’re using, you still need to know this is what it needs to accomplish. This is the question I need to answer.

Even if you’re cold calling, which people don’t think of as marketing, they think of it as cold calling sales. Even if you’re cold calling, the first thing you say is designed to help them answer yes to their first question, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting?” You are not yet in a sales conversation. It’s an important distinction because I’ve had people study our Elegant Sales Conversation Training. We have training on how to elegantly lead your next sales conversation. People get a little confused because if they used it and they’re like, “How does this apply if I’m cold calling somebody?” I’m like, “You need to stick in another piece a little bit at the beginning.

In the past we have interviewed Wendy Weiss, which we both know is the Queen of Cold Calling and she also spoke very importantly about changing your mindset. It’s not a cold call, it’s an introductory call. You’re introducing yourself to the person and you want the person to pay attention? That’s exactly what you want from that first initial call. Let’s move on, we have those three questions answered.

The next thing is that once you recognize, once you understand that’s the job of everything you’re doing, you contrast that to the shallow understanding that most people have, “It’s to fill my pipeline. I don’t know what to do next.” Now, you know what to do next. Now I know that I need to put in place one thing that will lead my ideal clients to answer yes to each question. If I can put in place one, maybe two things that lead to answering yes, then yes, then yes, I have a wonderful marketing and selling system. If I can work that consistently, I will have a consistent flow of leads and consistent flow of sales and a certain percentage will become clients or customers. The question is, “How do you lead them to answer yes to question number one?”

The question number one again is, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting?” The answer is you have to talk about one of the only two things that they’re interested in. That’s actually a relief that there are only two things to talk about because a lot of things will get someone’s attention. If I send you a YouTube video that I tell you, “You’ve got to watch this. It’s funny.” You might take a few minutes and go watch it and then go back to what you’re doing. It got your attention, but it didn’t get your interest. Meaning it didn’t change your plans. To me, interest means you change your plans. If you and I are at some conference or walking past the exhibitor booths and we’re looking but not closely watching or paying attention to any of the booths, then there’s one sign that gets our attention and we say, “Let’s go have a look at that.”

What happened was our brain asking, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting?” Suddenly this time our brains said, “Yes.” We were heading straight, but we turned to the right to head over to that booth because it was talking about something that didn’t just get our attention but also our interest. We changed your path and that’s what we have to do. People will sometimes wonder, “How do I know what they’re interested in?” The answer is your ideal clients will be interested if you talk about a problem they have and don’t want and or a result they want and don’t have. That’s it. A result they want and don’t have could be an experience they want and don’t have, a change they want and don’t have. If you’re talking about your methodology, if you’re talking about your credentials and so on, it’s not likely to get their attention and interest.

You have to be talking about a problem they have and don’t want, a result they want and don’t have. We always talk about the importance of messaging, having a clear message. That’s something that people struggle with. We talked about the importance of having a clear niche, a clear customer avatar. Everybody hears these things, but few people master it. Why? Because most of the people teaching this are overcomplicating it. If you’re a $1 billion corporation or a multi-billion-dollar corporation, you’re selling to the mass market, you have whole departments of people who are analyzing your data and tweaking your websites and all that, wonderful. You’re in a position where having that level of depth of understanding about who your ideal client is. They’re between 35 and 55 and drives this car, has this number of kids and pets and all this stuff that people talk about.

For most small businesses, that’s a complete distraction. I have someone in mind who came to us after spending $10,000 with some consultant. He took him through a two-day workshop, develop his customer avatar and he had nothing that he could use. These are endless exercises that completely missed the point. The only thing that you need to understand in order to have a clear niche, a clear avatar, clear profile, the clear message is you need to be able to understand the answer to three practical questions. I’ll highlight these questions because these are things that you can take with you, sit down after this and write out the answers to. Question number one is, “What are the problems that you help solve? What are the results that you enable?”

You want to list things specifically. I’ll give some examples. The second question is, “Who has those problems? Who wants those results?” You want to classify or group people together in any way that makes sense. We’re not asking you to name specific names per se, but who has those problems? Who wants those results? What kind of people? Lastly, the third question is what are the qualities and characteristics of your ideal client? Not everybody is an ideal client. What are the qualities and characteristics of your ideal client? We tend to do well with people who are good at what they do. Some of our clients are world class at what they do, meaning they have some expertise.

Maybe they’re running a small professional service firm or they have a product that they’re good at. They’re passionate about it, they love it. I have a client now who are based in France and he’s an expert at industrial bun baking. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but what that means is that he will help big industrial bakeries set up production lines for baking buns. They have to come out perfectly baked looking just right. He’s the guy who makes sure that yours will come out perfectly baked looking just right. He loves it. It’s something he did for twenty years at McDonald’s. He went out on his own four years ago and we’re working with him to build up his private clientele and raise his prices and so on.

That’s one example. We have many but with someone who’s good, that happens to be a good fit for us because when people are good at what they do but they’re not natural marketers or salespeople, they leave the corporate world usually. They figure, “I’m good at what I do. I should be able to make more money, certainly have more fun, more independence on my own,” only to discover after several months or even several years in some cases that they haven’t even yet replaced their past corporate salary. It’s a lot harder to sell your stuff than it is to just do it inside a company. The three questions are, “What are the problems you help solve/the results that you enable? Who has those problems who wants those results and what are the qualities and characteristics of your ideal client?”

You do not have to know everything about them. The first two questions are from their perspective. What are the problems you help solve and the results you enable? It’s a problem that they feel they have. Who has those problems? Who wants those results? These first two questions are about understanding them. The last question is about you understanding what’s important to you. What are the qualities and characteristics of your ideal client? You’re not going to get lost in some deep avatar-building exercise that’s taking you off down some rabbit holes. You think of these questions as three overlapping circles in a Venn Diagram. As you answer one, it helps you answer the other two.

The second helps you answer the first and the third. Then you go back and see what you come up with. There are some common mistakes that people make. One is that they do not think of a specific problem, a specific result and they want to be very high level because they’re afraid of missing out on people. For example, I had a client who was a management consultant, a leadership consultant. She was struggling because people are not buying management or leadership consulting per se. There’s a problem they have and don’t want. There’s a result they want and don’t have, and they need somebody that they feel understands them, “You get me. What do you recommend?”

I asked her to make a list. I said, “Make a list of the problems that you help solve, the results that you can enable.” I looked over that list and I spotted something and I said, “That’s it. You can build a business on that.” I don’t remember precisely how she worded it, but what I helped her define it or refined it into was what we call a simple compelling message. If you ask her what she does, she’ll say, “I help companies solve the problems they have from that employee who’s too valuable to fire.” Imagine my client and a competitor of hers, another management consultant, they’re both at some networking event because you told them to go and they listen to you. There’s this CEO of a billion-dollar company and someone says, “You should talk to these two.”

Being polite, he asked, “What do you do?” He turns to the competitor. The competitor says, “I’m a leadership consultant. We help with organizational change and we help with maximizing productivity and engagement,” and all the other stuff, words and jargon that we hear all the time. He thinks to himself, “Yes, we’ve certainly spent lots of money with people like you and had varying degrees of success.” He turned to my client and asked, “What are you doing?” She says, “I help companies solve the problems they have with that employee who’s too valuable to fire.” You can feel the difference and not just hear the difference.

It’s not only that but he says, “I would be the person who would say, “Tell me more.””

That’s the response that we’re looking for. The purpose of your marketing and selling system is to fill your pipeline. It’s to close deals. I don’t know what to do, but if you tell me the purpose is to help them answer, “Yes, yes, yes,” the first question is, “Should I pay attention? Is it interesting? Tell me more.” We got you interested. You thought you were going just to be polite and then walk off to get some hors d’oeuvre, mini sandwiches or whatever is out there and suddenly you find yourself talking to my client because she has a message you can’t ignore. Why can’t you ignore it? Because she’s just talked about a problem you have and don’t want and a result you want but doesn’t have. She’s entered the conversation going on in your mind.

Years ago, Robert Collier, I never read his book, but I’ve heard it quoted many times over the years amongst the direct marketers. He said, “A good advertising enters the conversation going on in the minds of the customer.” I thought about that and I asked myself, “What’s the conversation going on in the mind of the customer?” I realized that they’re thinking about a problem they have and don’t want and or result they want and don’t have. That’s what they’re thinking about always. We need to enter the conversation at the level that they’re thinking about it. No CEO is thinking, “I need more engagement.” Maybe they are right but they’re thinking, “Why are my employees showing up late? Why are they leaving early?

How come everybody has to come to me to find out or to ask me what they should do rather than get their own jobs done on their own?” These are things that they’re asking themselves. These are things that they’re worried about. You need to enter the conversation at that level. When you do that, it requires a level of specificity and that’s what most people want or are afraid to do. When you enter the conversation at that time, at that level in a way that gets their attention and interest, then their brain goes, “That is interesting. I can pay attention to that.” They want to know, “What do you mean? Tell me more.” They’re into the point where they’re asking the question of, “Should I pay attention? Can I trust you? You’ve got me interested, but can I trust you? Are you for real? Tell me more. What are you all about?”

At that point you need to be able to educate them on what you do and how you do it in a way that leads them to conclude, “I’ve never heard anybody talk about it quite this way before. You do seem to understand me, my situation, what I want and the challenges that I faced in a way that no one else does because I’ve never heard anybody talk about it this way before. When you create that reaction, they’re thinking, “You understand me. You understand the situation. You can probably help me. You actually seem to care about me. You can probably help me. What do you recommend?”

The last question is, “Is what you recommend right for me?” Whereas if you sound like everybody else once they get into it, maybe you do a good job initially getting their attention and interest and then you go on and you start talking about employee engagement and all that. You sound like every other consultant. Then they’re like, “I thought I found somebody good for a moment and now you’re just like everybody else. All those other people couldn’t help me solve this problem, so I assume you can’t help either,” and they’re wrong because you are the one they’ve been looking for.

For everybody, we had them talk about a lead magnet, people talk about a signature talk and so on. What is all this about? When you understand what it’s all about, then you can understand what you’re trying to accomplish and figure out what’s the way for you to accomplish that. In all those cases, you’re trying to accomplish to get their attention and interest and then lead them to conclude, “I can trust you. You seem to know your stuff. You don’t sound like everybody else. What do you recommend?” Lastly is, “Is what you recommend right for me?” I could give a few more examples of specific compelling messaging. Most people need to start on that and get stuck on that. Some people realize they’re stuck, some people don’t.

Ptex is a branding and marketing agency and people think that you need to compromise on the level of sophistication of your marketing or the visuals. In the past, some people were teaching something similar to this, which is as far as your messaging, pain points and it means you need to have ugly ads. You need to have ads which are full of copy. I will challenge the audience with a simple Father’s Day email that you’re sending out to promote a product. It could have the same visuals. Just make sure when the person seeing that visual and messaging is answering this question, “Should I pay attention? Is this something that I trust this company and is this solving a problem that’s why I need it?”

Sometimes even if it’s a fashionable product, it solves a problem. Maybe the person needs status, maybe the person is something along those lines. There is always a reason why a person takes out the credit card or some cash and purchase something. What you’re teaching is that once you get into this mindset, you elegantly explained it and what I love most is the simplicity of it. Like you said, most salespeople will get this meeting with the CEO or something that he works, maybe three months to get an appointment. He comes in and they kill the presentation by over-complicating what they’re offering versus coming in with a crystal-clear presentation, which is simple.

It addresses one of the two, like you said, “What problem do I have that I want to get rid of or what result do I want that I don’t have?” Once you build that into the framework of the selling process, which we go back to the three yeses that we want to get from the person, I do want to pay attention to what you have to offer. I am getting to know, like and trust you, so to speak. Ultimately, I know that you have a solution to a problem that I have or a result that I need. Ultimately, it’s a no brainer that those people are doing business together. This is for a salesperson, a working in a retail store.

Not every piece of it will be applicable but that mindset, person doing copy for a website or a homepage, the person has this few seconds to read a billboard. If that messaging is so vague, we help you grow wherever it is and if it doesn’t have that interest, let me hear more. Why should I trust you? What problem are you solving? Ultimately, you’re missing out on a lot. Going back to what you started, that automatically is your ideal client. People will ask and this was my follow up question but I answered to myself, “How do you know who your ideal client is?” Because if you have a track record of this audience is saying, “Yes, yes,” they are telling you we’re your ideal client. Is that the answer?

Yes, exactly. You need to understand your ideal client at a depth that you can enter the conversation going on in their mind. I’ll give you another example that will drive home the point why it is correct. I had a client once who solves cashflow problems. He solves cashflow problems for businesses. That’s what he was saying. If you go about promoting, “I help you solve cashflow problems,” that’s only the surface level of entering the conversation going on in the mind of your ideal client. This is something we really do with clients, is to go deeper. You ask another question, “What does your ideal client believe is causing their cashflow problem?” Most clients have some idea as to what they believe is causing the problem. I said, “In your experience, what are some common reasons that your ideal client might feel like they have a cashflow problem?” He says, “It could be that they’re not making enough sales. It could be that they don’t have good salespeople. It could be that their operations are broken and they’re behind on production and orders are being canceled.”

We realized that there are two different problems. If you’re the CEO of a company where you believe, “My cashflow is a problem and the cause is that I don’t have good salespeople,” then that is a very different problem from the CEO who feels, “My cashflow is in a bad situation. The reason is my production is a problem.” The question is if you’re looking to solve cashflow problems, who are you talking to? Are you talking to one of those people or are you talking to someone in a different situation? That’s a longer conversation, “What is it you’re doing to solve cash flow problems? What’s your approach? Who is the ideal client? What are the qualities and characteristics of your ideal client?” Because solving a casual problem isn’t usually a matter of manipulating some numbers, usually there are some decisions that have to be made. Some of the things have to be changed. When you ask and answer those three questions, you go deeper and we do have a deeper process, but that’s the starting point. There’s a lot there. If you ask and answer those three questions, it will take you quite a distance.

This is very valuable. Thank you so much. I would like to ask you one more question or actually get your opinion. What you said is valuable for business owners because otherwise they spent so much time and effort trying tactics, trying different new shiny objects as we call it. Ultimately, it’s not yielding the proper results because they never figured out the simple process of what the questions they need to answer. I do want to make sure that the clearer you are with your messaging, the stronger you need to be with the actual results you are actually giving to clients. I loved how you started off saying that you found that you work with people that are good at what they do but they’re just not good sales and marketing people. The more you hone in to solving a problem, you’re not vague. That person is buying into you because you are going to solve that problem for him or her and ultimately your execution needs to match up 100%, otherwise nothing helps. This is very valuable. I do know that you have a lot more to offer and even on this exercise, where could people reach you?

We put up something that people should pay attention to, which is I sold something that I called my manual for $97 for five years. I want to give it away. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s good. It’s 80 or 90 pages with zero fluff. We put up a page where we can give it to your audience at DovGordon.net/ltb.

Thank you so much. Let’s close with rapid fire questions. What’s a book that changed your life?

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which I read as a teenager. That did affect how I understood a lot of things that were going on in my life and some of that has stayed with me.

It’s so interesting because this book is one of their first books I have read for whatever reason. It’s a great book and once you understand what the book shares, ultimately it stays in your life. That’s great. What’s a piece of advice you got that you’ll never forget?

Stop worrying and just do your best. That’s a great piece of advice. I always remember it, but I don’t always live up to it. Everyday gives me another opportunity.

Is there anything you wish you could go back and do differently?

On the one hand, I’m sure there are some things. On the other hand, your experiences, positive and negative, make you who you are now.

We had it for multiple guests that said even in the failures taught us a lesson and we didn’t repeat it again. That’s exactly what we want to hear. Last question, what’s still on your bucket list to achieve?

We’re looking in my business to raise the bar and we’re raising the bar on what we’re able to offer to our clients. We have three levels, you as a force to be reckoned with, a force multiplier and then force of nature. We’re working with people in a small group, hands on way individual. That’s what’s mostly on my mind now is creating that. It’s a multi-year project, but I’m doing it while working with people. That’s the best laboratories. It’s not sitting back in the office and dreaming stuff up, but helping out in the real world and actually doing the work.

Thank you so much though for joining us. I know your time is valuable and that is why in the name of our audience, we will forever be grateful for sharing some of your time with us. Thank you so much.

Links Mentioned:

• DovGordon.net
• Elegant Sales Conversation Training
• Wendy Weiss – Previous episode
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

About Dov Gordon

Dov Gordon helps consultant and experts get ideal clients. Consistently.

There are millions and millions of consultant/coaches who are really good at what they do. But they’re not charismatic guru types. And they never want to be.

They LOVE their work. And all they want is a consistent flow of great clients. Clients who value their expertise, AND who value who they are as people. And pay them well for it.

Dov and his small team take a tactic-agnostic approach. They help you build a strong strategic foundation and to apply to it to build a simple, client-getting system that is best for YOU.

Dov has been a guest on The Art of Charm, John Jantch’s Duct Tape Marketing podcast, Jeff Goins’s podcast and dozens of others.

You can learn more about Dov’s work at https://dovgordon.net