You know, sometimes when something isn’t working, you need to change course. I have always been an accomplished cook, but I had never baked. I didn’t really try, but I have always been convinced that I couldn’t bake.

Pear and Apple Crumble

Well, once I changed course and actually started baking, it all worked out. A few days ago I made pear and apple crumble. It was very tasty. And to think, if I were still thinking that I couldn’t bake, I would not have been able to make that great tasting crumble! This post is about doing the same thing in your business. If selling your services isn’t working for you, here is what you can do instead.

Many heart-based service professionals concentrate on selling their services. I see this every day. When I read someone’s bio on Twitter or Facebook, they tell me right off the bat that they provide services and give me a link to check them out and contact them about their services.

When I read heart-based service professionals’ bios that they attach to their articles, the same thing happens. They tell the article readers about their services and invite them to learn more about their services.

When I visit heart-based service professionals’ blogs, again, I get information about the services that they offer.

Unfortunately, many heart-based service professionals don’t get people to take them up on their offer to become a client, and that is no surprise. When you start promoting your services to people who had just met you on a social networking web site or had just read your article, you are skipping an extremely important step. Before you offer your services, you need to build trust between you and your prospects.

When you offer your services to those who already know, like and trust you, great things happen. People who already know you are much more likely to check out your services and become clients.

What should you do instead of offering your services to people on social networking web sites and people reading your articles and your blog? Instead of offering them your services, create an authentic process to invite them to your list instead. This process has no pressure and offers a ton of benefits to your potential clients. It will come as no surprise to you that many more people will take you up on this offer.

Once they are on your list, you will have many opportunities to tell them about your products and services. However, right now, when they are meeting you on social networking web sites, reading your blog and reading your articles, start by using your authentic invitation process to invite them to your list.

Here an example of how to apply this to your business:

Instead of saying: “I am a parenting coach”, say: “I help parents of teenagers communicate better with their teenagers. Get my no charge gift to learn how. [Add a link to where they can get the gift.]“

Do you see how your authentic invitation process is much more effective? Instead of telling your potential clients about your services, you are inviting them to get something that is of great benefit to them. This will they will take you up on your offer, and join your list.

Learn exactly how to create an extremely effective no charge gift and use it to invite people to your list in the Grow Your List Quick Start Guide. The Guide shows you an effective process to grow your list, which is as simple as 1-2-3. The price of the Guide is going up later this week, so get it before the price increase at

http://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

When heart-based service professionals see how many marketing techniques are there for them to use - Twitter, Facebook, social marketing, blogging, article marketing and many more - they get confused about how each technique is supposed to bring in more clients and help them build their lists.

Actually, social marketing, blogging, Twitter, articles, Facebook are just techniques that help you reach people in your target market, promote your expertise and build your list.

I recommend focusing on one technique at a time, discovering how to use it effectively to invite people to your list, mastering it and then moving on to the next one.

For example, if the technique that you are starting to use for building your list is blogging, here are some of the things you can do to use it effectively:

- Blog on a regular basis

- Add a very visible subscription box to your blog

- Using the RSS feed to your blog to share your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Once you are happy how a technique helps you build your list, move on to the next technique, and optimize it to do the same.

For more information on how to build your list in a non-salesy way, get my FREE Report, Four Keys For Building Your List at http://www.effectivelistbuilding.com/4keys/

You know the riddle, “How do you eat an elephant?”. The answer to it is “One bite at a time.”

I was reminded of it as I was reading a discussion on my Facebook Page, What is the BEST way for a service professional to build their list?

Here is my response to it:

“I don’t think there is one best way for every service professional to build their list.

I recommend picking one that resonates with you the most and mastering it. Then, once you know how to use it for inviting people to your list, continue using it, while trying out other techniques.”

It won’t work if you start using ALL of the techniques at once. You will immediately get confused, and abandon the idea of building the list altogether. It is much better to start one bite at a time, the same way you would eat an elephant.

Here is what I mean. Let’s say you picked article marketing technique to get started with. Here is what you will need to do:

1. Find good topics for your articles by doing research and finding topics that your target market is interested in. Create a list of topics.

2. Pick one of the topics to write an article, keep the rest of them for future articles.

3. Create an outline of the article, doing this will make it much easier to write your articles.

4. Write the article, edit it.

5. Create an eye-catching headline, the better your headline, the more readers you will get for your article.

6. Create a Resource Box that invites your readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

7. Post your article to article directories.

Repeat steps 2-7 for the rest of the topics that you have research. Once you have written enough articles and mastered article marketing, you may move on to the next technique, such as blogging, free teleseminars, social networking, etc.

More blog posts to help you build your list:

- How To Invite People To Your List In A Non-Salesy Way

- How To Create An Irresistible Gift

- List Building Secret No One Is Telling You About

I have met service professionals who took a year or even longer(!) to launch their newsletter. First, they spent months agonizing over whether they need to start a newsletter in the first place. Then, they did research to make sure everything would be perfect. Then, they started thinking about which newsletter service provider to use. Then they did more research to make sure they find the absolute best provider. Then they started thinking about creating a page on their web site about the newsletter. Then they did some more research to build the perfect layout for their web page….

They were waiting to make sure that everything would be perfect before starting their newsletter. As a result, after months of trying to make everything perfect and agonizing over whether they make the perfect decisions or not, they still haven’t started their newsletter.

In the meantime, those service professionals who picked a good newsletter service provider, created a good gift and started giving it away in exchange for subscription to their newsletter have been inviting people to their lists and building their client base for months.

If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will never take action. Instead, make sure that you make good decisions on what you need and move on to taking action.

If you are starting your newsletter here is what you need to decide on:

- Your Gift To Your Newsletter Subscribers. Find a good topic for your gift and create it. A good topic is something that your potential clients really want to know - an answer to one of the questions that they have, a solution to a problem that is bothering them.

- Create A Page To Give Away The Gift To Your New Subscribers. This page is called a squeeze page, and its only goal is to convince the people you send to that page to register for your gift and join your list.

- Set up Your Autoresponder To Send Your Gift To Your New Subscribers. This is how you will deliver the gift to those who sign up.

Don’t try to make everything perfect before you get started. If three months later you find out that you want to make changes to your autoresponder or giveaway page, you will be able to do that. Right now your goal is to stop waiting for perfection and start building your list.

Get started now, so that six months down the road you actually have built a client base, instead of still waiting for everything to be perfect. Learn exactly what kind of gift to create, how to create a squeeze page (I give you one to model!) and much more in the Build Your List Home Study Guide at http://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

On my Facebook Fan Page I recently answered a question that I have received from many heart-based service professionals. Here is the question:

“How can a heart based service professional invite people to their list in a non-salesy way?”

I shared a short answer on the Fan Page, but I wanted to share a longer one here on the blog. Let’s say you are a life coach, providing life coaching services to women in their 30s-50s. They are unhappy with their current careers, and they are looking for something better. You want to help them first, define what this “something better” is, and then find it.

You are looking to invite many of these women to join your list, so that you can share tips and ideas with them, and they can get to know you, like you and trust you. And as you are sharing your tips with them, you will also be letting them know about your life coaching products and services. If they feel that they need your help, they will be able to take the next step with you and check out your offerings.

So the question is: “How do you invite them to join your list?”, because until they join you, they cannot start learning from you and building a relationship with you.

The best way to do that is to not just invite them to join you, but to offer them a gift. Your gift should be a report, an e-book, an audio recording, or an e-course on a topic that your target market is really interested in. You want them to say: “I want this!” and register to get your free gift.

For example, a great free gift for women in their 30s-50s looking for a new career would be a report on “Five Steps To Uncovering Your New Career”. Since they are looking for what it out there for them, giving them a report that helps them uncover this new career will help you build a list of people in your target market in a non-salesy way.

Learn much more about building your list in a non-salesy way in the Build Your List Home Study Guide.

During the Four Keys For Building Your List Teleseminar last week I shared with people on the call one thing that they MUST get right in order to build a large list of people who are interested in what they have to say.

So what is this one thing that you MUST get right if you want to build a large list? What is this one thing, without which it will be hard or nearly impossible to build a large list of your perfect clients?

This thing is your irresistible free gift. But let’s back up for a few seconds. What exactly is a free gift? A free gift is a gift (a special report, an audio recording, an ecourse, etc), that you are giving away to your new newsletter subscribers in exchange for their subscribing to your newsletter. If the topic of your free gift is of REAL interest to the people you want to invite to your list, more people will join your list. If not, then many fewer will join.

I have seen so many heart-based service professionals failing at creating an effective free gift for their new subscribers. As a result, they spend a lot of time on driving traffic to their newsletter subscription page, but they do not get many people subscribing to their newsletter.

What is an effective topic? Very simply, an effective topic for your free gift is the topic that your target market really wants to know about. It is a question that your target market really wants answered, or it is a solution to an issue that your target market is experiencing. Your free gift HAS to be something that your target market really wants.

As soon as your target market learns about your free gift, you want them to say: “I REALLY Want This Gift!” and immediately sign up to get the free gift and get on your list.

If this is happening to you, if very few people are ever requesting your free gift and subscribing to your newsletter, chances are they don’t really want it, which means you haven’t found a good topic for your free gift yet.

The good news is finding an effective topic for your free gift is not hard. What you are looking for is a topic that your target market is interested in, so how do you find it? Here are three different ways of doing that:

- Your current clients are the people you want on your list. Think back to what they discuss with you. So what questions do they ask you? What do they want to know?

- Social networking web sites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are great for doing research. What do people in your target market talk about on those social networking web sites?

- Ask them! Ask people on social networking web sites, people who already are on your list, etc, to see what kind of topics they are interested in.

Once you find a topic that your people are really interested in, you will be able to create a product on that topic – a report, an ebook, an audio recording, or an ecourse. And then you will be able to create an irresistible gift that your target market really wants.

This is an excerpt from the Four Keys For Building Your List Audio Recording. There is a lot more information about building your list and using it to grow your heart-based service business with it. The audio is only available for limited time, so grab it now at

http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/lb/

Yesterday, during the Four Keys For Building Your List Teleseminar, I shared with the listeners why you need to have a list.

When you have a list, a group of people who know you, like you, trust you and want to hear from you, everything changes! You are able to connect with these people on a regular basis, give value and share information about your products and services.

For example:

- If you are a parenting coach, how would you like to have a list of parents who want to hear from you on a regular basis?

- If you are a dating coach for women, how would you like to be able to share your tips and offerings with a list of single women who can’t find a soul mate and need your help in doing so?

- If you are a business coach, what if you could share your tips with a huge list of business owners who need help in starting and promoting their businesses?

When you have a list, your whole business will change completely. Learn how to build your list in this FREE audio recording, Four Keys For Building Your List Audio Recording

I am sure you have heard that it is great to have a list of 1,000 people, or, even better, a list of 2,000 people who want to hear from you.

What is very important to understand is that the list has to be targeted. A targeted list means that people on your list have to be in your target market. If you have a list of random people who are not in your target market, it is going to be hard to promote your services to them, even if you have a list of 2,000.

On the other hand, if you have a smaller list, but people on the list are very targeted and want to hear from you, you will get much better results.

Now for the secret no one is telling you: It is actually much easier to build a very targeted list than to build a list of random people who don’t want to hear from you.

Why? Because if you are building a list of random people, you are trying to appeal to everyone, and you are very unfocused. That is exactly the result that you will get - a completely unfocused, random list of everyone.

When you narrow your message and start looking for your ideal clients to join your list, it becomes much easier to attract people to it. When you know exactly who your ideal clients are, you can reach them in groups, you can reach them on social networking web sites, you can reach them with articles and you can reach them with your blog.

Once you narrow down your focus, you will have a much easier time building your list and your list will be much more responsive to your offers. What could be better than that?

When you reach out to targeted groups with a targeted message, you are going to build your list much faster, and you will not have to work as hard. You will start seeing much better response from your list, because people on your list are actually interested in what you have to offer.

During my no charge call, Four Keys For Building Your List, you will learn my secrets for building a highly responsive list of your ideal clients. Register for the call at

http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/lb/

Are you afraid of asking people to work with you? Are you literally overcome with fear every time you are talking with a potential client? Would you rather get your tooth pulled without an anesthetic than ask someone to become a client?

If you are overcome with fear every time you need to ask someone to work with you, I have a solution for you. Don’t ask people you have just met to become clients. Ask them to join your list instead!

Asking someone to get on your list is easy and effective. Many more people will say “yes” to joining your list. Once they join your list, you will be able to build a relationship with them and let them know about your products and services.

Every time you sharing content with your target market, make sure there is a way for them to get on your list. Here is how:

- When you are networking on social networking web sites, make sure a link to your newsletter is included in your social networking profile.

- When you are posting to a group or to a list, share a link to your newsletter in your signature.

- When you are writing articles and submitting them to article directories, include a link to your newsletter in your Resource Box.

- When you are blogging, make sure there is a way for your blog readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

I am on a mission to help you rid of the fear to ask for business once and for all! Instead, I want to help you create a thriving business by building your list.

On January 21st I will be sharing my list building secrets during a FREE call, “Four Keys For Building Your List: How To Attract A Massive Number Of Your Potential Clients To Your Business”. Click here to register for the FREE call

You found your calling, you love what you do, you love helping people, there is just one problem - you can’t get clients. So what should yo do now?

Many women service professionals have told me that they always thought that once they found out exactly what they are passionate about and they found out who they want to help - everything else should be easy.

If you have found your calling, but the clients are just not coming, then you must build your list! Having a successful business starts with building your list. A list of people who know you, like you, trust you and want to hear from you! When you have a list of your potential clients who want to hear from you, everything changes. Every time you send an e-mail to you list, you are able to get more clients and more sales. It is as simple as that!

If you have tried building your list in the past, but could not get more than 10 people to join your list, here is a simple three-step plan to help you get more people on your list so that you can do what you love:

Define WHO You Want To Join Your List

Inviting everyone to join your list is not going to help. Your calling is to help a specific group of people, and you want to invite these people to join your list.

If you haven’t identified the group of people you want to work with, now is the time to do that. Find the group of people who want, need and can afford your services. It would be even better if you can find online groups, where you can reach your target market. This way you will be able to connect with your target market and invite them to join your list.

Offer Something Irresistible

Now that you found your group of people, the group of people that you want to help, you need to invite them to join your list. The best way to do that is by offering them an irresistible gift. Just inviting people to join your list is not effective. When you invite people to get a gift, the gift that they really want, they are much more likely to get on your newsletter list.

How can you make the gift irresistible? An irresistible gift is something that they REALLY want. It is something that helps them solve a problem they are having.

I have seen service professionals doubling or tripling the number of people who subscribe to their newsletter (without getting any additional traffic!) when they simply started offering an irresistible gift to their new subscribers.

Build Your List

Now give away your irresistible gift! The more people you give away the gift to, the more people will join your list, it is that simple!

There are many places where you should promote your irresistible gift. Start with social networking web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Your blog is another great place to promote your gift. Another great way to promote your free gift is writing articles and submitting them to article directories.

It is all about consistently - when you invite people to get your free gift on a consistent basis, you will get more people on your list. So get started by scheduling some actions to give away your free gift every single day, and you will start seeing more newsletter subscribers in no time!