Don’t you hate it when prospects ask you questions, so you give, give, give your time and expertise for free, but then they say thanks and you never see them again?

If you’re like most entrepreneurs trying to get new clients, you often reduce your rate or even give your time away free just in the hope that they’ll come back for more. But it usually doesn’t work!

Why is that? …

They don’t come back because they don’t value your time or expertise. They don’t value it because you don’t value it. Stop doing that!

One of the challenges of running an expertise-based business, where you sell your time and expertise for money, is that the very nature of a service makes it really hard to acquire new clients at full rate without a few steps of pre-frame ahead of it.

The problem is that to a new person your service is invisible, nothing but a promise and a risk. There’s no way for them to know ahead of time whether you’re good or not. They can’t touch your service, hold it, or feel it. And even after they have used your service, they often still don’t know whether it was good or not (think accounting). To them, you are a risk and an unknown.

If you were them, would you pay full price? Probably not. That’s why expertise-based service businesses are often forced to spend some time up front helping new customers understand the value, and generally getting people to know them and trust them.

But this takes time, a lot of time. If you spend a half hour free (more likely one hour) with every curious person and only one in five (more likely one in ten) become a client, that’s two and a half hours for every customer you get. If you charge two hundred dollars an hour, that’s $500 of your time given away. And it’s time you give away free or at a discount. This is not a good way to go.

So what to do? … There are three solutions.

1 – The Power Of Information Products

What if there was a magic tool that would automatically attract clients, educate them about you, help them appreciate the value you offer, and build trust so that when they do call you, they are ready to get going right away and are willing you pay you what you’re worth.

How great would that be? Fantastic I say.

That tool is an information product, like a book, ebook, audio, video, special report, or combination thereof. You can quickly easily turn a small portion of your expertise into an info product.

Even if you just give the info product away, you’ll be able to attract a growing stream of high paying clients.

More importantly, once you’ve created it, you can let it do the heavy lifting without much additional time on your part, which leaves you with more income generating time.

2 – The Power Of The Group Presentation

The one time that is good to give your time away free is when you give a group presentation.

The reason this is a good thing to do is that you are building credibility and value with many people at a time rather than just one at a time. This is very scalable and allows you to multiply the value you give the world (and the value you get in return).

The key is to make sure your presentation generates at least leads, and ideally sales. This can be done online through teleseminars/webinars or offline through group presentations.

3 – Save Your 1-on-1 Time As Your Premium Offering

Don’t make your precious 1-on-1 time your loss leader. Stop giving it away free or at a discount.

Your 1-on-1 time and expertise is precious and valuable. Treat it that way. Make it exclusive, scarce, and premium priced. If you value it, they will too.

Your clients can still get your expertise at a more affordable rate through your info products and group presentations.

Conclusion

From now on, place a high value on your 1-on-1 time. Allow people to be educated by your free or lower priced information products and group presentations, so that by the time they call you for personal help they know you’re worth a lot and feel privileged to work with you.

Resource Box:

© 2009 Mark Lengies

Mark Lengies, the “Info Business Coach”, is the author of Internet Marketing Secrets. He helps coaches, consultants, authors, speakers, and info-preneurs grow six figure businesses. If you’re ready to jump-start your business, make more money with less effort, and have more fun … access Mark’s Business Growth BLOG at http://www.DiscoverGrowth.com/blog

Reprint rights: You may reprint this article, as long as it is reprinted in it’s entirety, including the resource box and all URL links.