A lot of people are lazy!

They do the same old things in the same old ways and wonder why results don’t change.

Many small business coaches are no different.

They attend the same old networking events and meet the same old people.  Leads dry up and their daily tweet and Facebook post produce no discernible interest!  Then they complain times are tough!

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

As a local coach you can take control of how you find clients.

Yes, I said, find clients.

For all the hype around attraction marketing and inbound marketing, the reality is these strategies take time.  They’re vital for the long haul but they’re not going to work overnight.

You need to go out looking if you want success!

Here’s how you can take control of how you find clients.  I call it Local Market Mapping.

You’re going to get to know your local area inside out.  And it’s easy.

To do this you need an open mind and a determination to follow this through without questioning the results as you go.  You see, too often we pre-judge who might work with us and simply miss a whole group of businesses who need are help AND can afford it.

So here’s what you need to do.

1. Take a walk.  Walk down your high street and make a note of every single small business you come across.  Notice the B&Bs, the hotels, the shops, the garages, the dentists, solicitors, the cafes and restaurants, the hairdressers and tanning shops, the health shops and pawnshops.  Notice them all and write them in a notebook.  Take as much factual information as possible – name, address, website, phone number.  Don’t judge just write.  Make it fun and treat yourself to a coffee in a future’s client’s coffee shop!
2. Now find your local business parks.  I don’t mean the ones with McDonalds, Currys and the hypermarket.  I mean the hidden away ones.  The ones that have affordable commercial space for garages, serviced offices, private storage facilities, call centres and more.  Walk around it.  Discover what businesses are there and write it all down.  You’ll be amazed at businesses you couldn’t even have conceived of nevermind approached!  Write it all down!
3. Now search online for local business networks.  Visit their sites and see who their members are and, you guessed it, write it all down.
4. Now make a list of all the small business types you can think of – anything and everything.  Brain storm til your eyes are popping out and your brain is melting.  Don’t edit  the list or try to judge if they’re useful business types.  Just write, write, write.  And with this list (and this might be a bit tedious but nothing worth having is free of some hard work) type them into Google one at a time adding your town name to produce information on each of those business types in your area.  And of course write it all down.
5. Finally collate all this information in a way that makes sense to you.  You could try ordering it by industry type, location, size, priority to secure or whatever approach suits you.

And that’s it! You’re done.

Well, OK, that’s the first step at least! You now have a thorough, personally constructed map of your local small business landscape.

“OK, now what?” you might be thinking.  “I could have got that from a Thomson Local!”

No you couldn’t!  You might have got the names and addresses but you wouldn’t have immersed yourself in the discovery process, you wouldn’t have personally realised how much you had been missing out on by going to the one weekly network event.  You wouldn’t have discovered the things you found surprisingly intriguing.  You wouldn’t have made the comparisons between companies that you naturally made as you went.  You wouldn’t have both consciously and unconsciously been noticing things: what the companies are doing well or doing badly; where they ranked on search engines; how they actually look; and so so much more.

This is YOUR map not just a list of people in a directory. And from this you can begin to plot your way forward.  Maybe you’ll take one sector at a time such as restaurants and look at how they’re marketing themselves.  Or maybe you’ll go with what jumped out at you.  Maybe you’ll use direct mail which clearly reflects your new-found understanding of the local landscape or maybe you’ll create a local workshop that suits the needs that you have uncovered as you went along.

The map is just the start but it one of the very best ways to truly get to know your landscape and find your small business coaching clients.

Has this helped?  Do you have any questions?