Why Aren’t People Showing Up?

Dear Anne:

I really want to start offering programs to my clients.  I love what I do and my clients really get a lot of value from our sessions together. 

The challenge is that I don’t have a whole lot of clients and when I do offer workshops, they are either sparsely attended or I end up cancelling them, which frustrates me and makes me want to give up. 

How do I get to the point where I am successfully offering programs to my clients and people actually show up for them?

Dear Divine One:

I love this question!  I hear it frequently from spiritual entrepreneurs.  Why?  Because so many of them see other people offering classes and they see people attending those classes and then wonder what is wrong with them that they can’t get people to attend theirs.

Here’s the truth:

There’s nothing wrong with you.

What you may need, however, is the following: 

• training in how to message your work. 
• training on how to market strategically.
• training on how to hold a sales conversation with a potential client.  

Many spiritual entrepreneurs want to leverage their time and energy by holding workshops.  And it’s a very good idea.  But whether it’s the right time for you to do workshops is another question altogether.

Building your business is like building anything.  You have to build the foundation first. 

For example, here is a picture of the beginning stages of a garden I created in 2001.  What was the first part?  Learning about gardening.  Then preparing the soil.  Then planting the plants. (And celebrating with my daughter.)  It took several years for plants to grow and mature.  Just like your business.

During the first several years of building your business, your job is to: 

• get very, very clear about the work you do, the transformation you offer, and the benefits your clients get from working with you. 
• learn how to market your business more effectively,
• learn how to have successful sales conversations, and
• get your income stable enough so that you can then leverage your time by offering workshops. You do this through developing your skills as you work with your clients one-on-one. 

But you don’t do workshops and teleseminar programs until your income is stable.  You don’t do them until you have enough clients. 

Because the amount of time and energy it takes to fill a workshop is greater than the amount of time and energy it takes to find another client.

But the real reason is this:  if you are struggling financially in your business and if you struggle in your sales conversations with your prospects, then one of two things is going on: 

1) either you are not very good at what you do (which I seriously doubt), or

2) you haven’t learned yet how to speak about what you do in a way that causes people to understand it and to want it. 

The latter is the far more likely scenario. 

Trying to fill a workshop before you have enough clients and stable income is like trying to put the cart before the horse and then expecting the cart to move.  It ain’t gonna happen. 

For now, let go of the idea of workshops and instead focus on building your list of clients.  Have those sales calls – you know, the ones where you have a fabulous conversation with a delightful new prospect and then they say yes to working with you.  

Don’t try to wiggle away from having sales calls just because you’re scared, or because they are difficult.  

Learn how to make them undifficult.  Learn how to have them with ease. 

The only way to do that is to … well, uh …

Just. Do. It. 

If you don’t learn how to be successful at selling yourself, you will always have the challenge of getting people to your workshops and getting them to work with you.  So start with building up your private client base first, sell them, and then sell your workshops. 

Selling is fun, intimate, and very, very sacred – not sleazy.  Your business depends on you to learn how to experience that as your truth. 

The sooner you do this, the quicker you will be able to offer those workshops again.  And fill them! 

ty

Now go get your Divine ON!