Why You Need a Signature Method to Grow Your Business
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying before: someone out there needs the product or service you’re offering.
It’s not just a cliche, it’s true.
Whether you're working with people one-on-one, in group coaching, or in a mastermind, you have a certain product or service that helps people solve their problems or enhance some area of their life. The problem is, you don’t know how to share your knowledge in a way that establishes you as a leader in your field while also allowing you to scale your business.
Want to know the solution to your problem?
You need a Signature Method
A signature method is a tried and true process that provides repeatable, consistent results with minimal hands-on guidance.
When we constantly change our process from one person to the next, we’re limiting our impact; playing offense, not defense; and we’re wasting time and money. On the flip side, having a defined, repeatable process, or a method to the madness, assures that the overall process that we walk clients through is going to be the same. Consistency is key. This will allow you to simultaneously grow your business, your influence, and allow you to establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Know Your Process
When I consider working with a business mentor, life coach, marketing strategist, PR specialist, fitness professional, etc., I don’t want to just hear that they have years of experience in their field or have an amazing product. I want to know about their process and what I can expect as a result. For example, when you work with me, you can expect to receive my 9 step, tried and true process to scale a business. I’m going to explain each step in detail, what I will be teaching you, and what you can expect to have learned or accomplished at the end.
You become an expert in your field with proven methods that you can outline, and that’s what sets you apart from the competition.
Are You Playing Offense or Defense?
But now the question is, are you playing offense or defense? What I mean by this is, how often are you operating from a reactive state in your business? This is a really common challenge for most business owners.
If your business has you working with individual clients or a group of clients, your highest priority should always be: what does your client need today?
Are you helping them work through the concept or idea that you know they need to focus on in order to get the results they need? Or are you just responding to the questions they have on your weekly call? Are you taking those opportunities to guide them through the areas they are struggling with? Guide them. Don’t let them steer the ship; you are the captain. You need to take control, using your method, system, or process and walk them through the steps for success. Don’t fall into the trap of coaching a client through their struggles, versus coaching them through a tried and true system that works.
Let’s use a weight-loss coach as an example. As a coach, you’ve likely worked with plenty of clients. While addressing their diet is important, you also need to step back and see the bigger picture. You have to talk through their history, their mindset, their belief systems, and narratives they’ve written on weight loss.
That first call with your client is exciting. They are ready to lose weight, which is why they hired you. They want to know if you can write them a meal plan that will allow them to lose fifty pounds. They want to know if this will work long term. But you know, from experience, that this isn’t just about losing weight, because odds are they will just gain it back. No, the first step is to work through any deep rooted issues that could prevent your client from losing weight and keeping it off. So you need to start by reassuring your client that you are excited to help them get started, but remind them to trust your process, because it works.
Time is Money
When you run your own business, you have to start realizing that your time is worth a premium rate; even if you aren’t charging a premium rate yet.
If you’re operating your business in a reactive state, you don’t have a replicable system, making it hard to be efficient. You may realize that you aren’t able to take time off or go on vacation and still build a scalable business because your business depends on you being there 100% of the time. Having someone that can manage your business while out of the office, or having a course that clients can sign-up for that eliminates the need for so many one-on-one consultations, allows you to free up time so that you can focus on recharging and scaling your business.
Start by packaging your products and/or services. Whether you offer courses, workshops, webinars, books, programs, masterminds, coaching, or speaking engagements, package items together in a way that allows your clients to get help in a more efficient manner, while also allowing you to spend less time on each individual client need. Once you have this system established, you can rinse and repeat with new clients, creating cash flow in your business that translates to more freedom.
You’re probably sitting there wondering, how do I better sell the services I offer? How can I bring in more money with my current product/service offering? How do I come up with new offers?
Map It Out
Start by sitting down and mapping out your Signature Method.
First and foremost, think about your ideal client. What are their biggest pain points? What are their struggles? What are the phrases they use over and over again?
Think of the people you’ve coached, served, helped, trained, or sold a product to. What did you do with them? What questions did they ask? Think back to the good experiences you’ve had and identify what went well. Then do the same thing with the bad experience and identify what went wrong and how you could improve.
To complete this exercise, you’re going to write down everything you know about helping your client reach their goals.
Let’s use the fitness coach example again:
I helped them clean out their cabinets and toss all junk food.
I taught them how to read nutrition labels while at the grocery store.
I explained how to talk with friends and family to get their support.
I helped them establish a fitness routine.
You might even dive into mindset challenges.
What resources am I recommending? Is it a book, a podcast, a FB group?
How do I help hold my clients accountable? Are we tracking nutrition and workouts?
Write out everything that comes to mind. Then, I want you to go back and number each item in your list according to your process. What steps do we focus on first? Can any items be grouped together and discussed at the same time?
The Pillars of Success
Next, I want you to create the pillars of what you teach. Your goal should be five to ten pillars that are the foundation of your success. These are the topics that must be addressed in order for your clients/customers to see success. Use the list you just made to determine what your focus for each pillar is. As a fitness coach, maybe your pillars are: Workouts, Nutrition, Mindset, Motivation, and Self-Love. I tend to focus on three pillars with the business scaling entrepreneurs I work with: brand mastery, lead generation and recurring revenue.
Name them, have fun with them, get creative! This is your business and your process - it should be unique to you!
How Will You Get Your Clients There?
Now that you have your pillars, I want you to dive in even further. How are you going to teach the principles of each pillar? What are the buckets that fall under each pillar? If you’re a fitness coach, maybe the buckets under each pillar are the lies we tell ourselves about our ability to eat healthy and lose weight. You’re going to use these buckets as opportunities to teach your clients and remove those limiting beliefs they have about themselves.
Want to see this in action? Check out my 9-Step Scaling Up method here! These are the steps I walk each and every one of my clients through to help them grow their income, impact, and time freedom.
Test Your Method
So you have your pillars, you have your buckets, and you have your process; now you need to get it out into the world. It can be terrifying, I know!
The bottom line is that someone out there needs what you offer. You are in this business to serve, and you can’t do that unless you take a deep breath and put yourself out there!
Your focus should now be on finding and attracting ideal clients/customers to your brand and then running a focus group with them.
How do you do that?
You could offer it at a discounted rate for any of your current one-on-one clients. Using current clients in your focus group allows for errors to be corrected and any confusing areas to be changed before launching on a bigger scale. Yes, the process is going to evolve as you and your business evolve, but by starting on a smaller scale, you are getting the knowledge out there and getting feedback while simultaneously making more money! You’re not putting this out there because it’s perfect. You’re putting it out there because you know that this process works and someone out there needs your help.
Next, conduct market research. Make sure that your target audience is correct. Find out if you’re pricing it at a fair, but competitive rate.
Then, you’re going to name your process, create a brand for it, and come up with a strategic marketing strategy.
And guess what? You did it! You’ve created your Signature Method that is going to establish you as a leader in your field. You now have a system that is going to allow you to scale your business while scaling back your time. You’re creating more freedom for yourself and for your family.
You are going to do amazing things - keep scaling up!