You want more clients, of course, but the best way to get them isn’t to focus on new clients but to focus on your existing clients, professional contacts, friends and subscribers.
Sure, you can get new clients through advertising and speaking and networking and writing, and I’m not saying you should give that up if it’s working for you. Or you’re new and don’t yet have a lot of clients or contacts or much of a list.
I’m saying it’s easier to get more of what you already have, your existing or “warm” market, than to do everything from scratch, which is what you do when you focus on strangers in the cold market.
In your warm market, you have leverage. In the cold market, you don’t.
It’s easier to get an existing or former client to “buy” more of your services. It’s easier to get referrals from clients and business contacts who already know, like, and trust you. It’s easier to get better clients and bigger cases when you have a good reputation in your existing niche.
Focus on your warm market.
Learn all you can about their businesses, their industries, and their local market. Strengthen your relationships with the people in those niches and their advisors. Stay in touch with them and help them in ways that go beyond your core services.
When you do, not only will you get more clients from your warm market, you’ll also get them from the cold market.
How? Your reputation. Word of mouth (as opposed to actual referrals, but you’ll get these, too).
People will hear about you and ask you to speak at their event or ask to interview you for their podcast or blog. People will hear your name a second or third time and decide to talk to you about their legal issue.
You want more clients and you’ll get them by focusing on people who know your name and what you do.
Just the way it works.
