Episode 43: Sticky Business – How to retain clients
How to retain your clients and stop leaving money on the table!
Hey there, incredible humans! Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we’re diving deep into a topic that’s close to my heart and crucial for any service-based business owner: creating a sticky business. We’re talking about how to retain those amazing clients you’ve already attracted and, importantly, how to stop leaving money on the table.
What Exactly is a “Sticky Business”?
It’s pretty simple: a sticky business is one where your clients can grow with you and keep buying from you over time. It’s about offering further ways to work with you once they’re already in your ecosystem. Instead of a one-and-done transaction, you’re building a continuous, evolving partnership.
For me, this looks like a “sales ladder” or “menu” of services. My clients can start small and scale up as their needs (and their businesses!) grow. It’s all about making it super easy for them to stay and continue getting incredible results.
My Sticky Business Menu:
- Work with me for one hour (a fantastic entry point!)
- Work with me for one day
- Work with me for one quarter
- Work with me for one year (my absolute preference for deep impact!)
- Work with me for five years
- I can even work directly with your team
My full, comprehensive offering, my hybrid approach, is designed for maximum stickiness. It’s not just about one-on-one time; it’s about a complete ecosystem of support.
Inside My Hybrid Approach:
- Monthly access to me: We’re in this together, every single month.
- An amazing community: Connect with other trailblazing women in business.
- Exclusive training: Unlock resources to upskill and grow.
- In-person client days: Four times a year, we get together for deep dives and connection.
- Strategic pauses (downsells): Life happens, and I offer flexibility if cash flow is an issue, so you can strategically pause but still get support.
- Maintenance packages: Once we’ve done the big strategic heavy lifting, we can move into maintenance to keep that momentum going.
Ultimately, I do everything I can to keep my ideal clients because we get results, we click, and you laugh at my jokes! That’s true stickiness.
Are You Leaving Money on the Table? Common Pitfalls to Avoid
So, why aren’t more businesses sticky? Often, it comes down to a few common traps that lead to leaving money on the table.
The “Creation Trap” for Trailblazers
This one is especially for my highly creative, A-type personalities (you know who you are!). There’s a tendency to constantly create new offers, new services, new programs… but without fully capitalizing on the existing ones. It’s a never-ending cycle of creation without monetizing what’s already proven.
Ask yourself: Where could I take what’s already established in my business and deepen it?
- Focus on making sure your existing services are truly profitable.
- Avoid diluting your efforts by having too many offerings and not using your resources effectively.
- Sometimes, the best growth comes from optimizing what you already have, not always chasing the next bright shiny object.
Not Leveraging Your Existing Assets
Many consultants and service providers have a treasure trove of resources they’ve created over time: PDFs, worksheets, frameworks, systems. But are you truly leveraging these assets?
Think about how you could:
- Use them more strategically in your consulting sessions.
- Offer them as low-cost products to attract new clients.
- Bundle them with your core services to add even more value (this is something I do a lot!).
This is another key way to create that stickiness and provide more value to your clients.
The “Over-Delivery” Problem (and Not Getting Paid For It!)
We’re often so committed to delivering excellence that we can lose sight of the value of our “over-delivery.” You might be doing fantastic strategic work, providing creative solutions, or offering extensive support, but if it’s not built into your services and pricing, you’re not getting paid for it!
To combat this and ensure you’re compensated for your full value:
- Have a clearer framework for your discovery calls: This is where expectations are set!
- Set expectations at the very beginning: Be explicit about what your services include.
- Ask targeted questions: Really understand the client’s current state, their goals, and their challenges.
- Present both current and future solutions: Show foresight and demonstrate how you can support them long-term.
These upfront conversations are critical for setting the stage and ensuring you’re valuing all the brilliant work you do.
Building a Sustainable, Sticky Future To Retain Clients
Creating a sticky business is about building a sustainable future for yourself. If you’re constantly chasing one-off projects, it can become soul-destroying and incredibly draining. By focusing on retaining clients and creating pathways for them to grow with you, you build a business that supports you for the long haul.
So, how sticky is your business? Where might you be leaving money on the table? It’s a question not enough women in business are asking themselves.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going!
I hope today’s quick episode sparked some ideas for you! If you found this valuable, please share it out with your friends and fellow entrepreneurs.
And if you want to know more about how to create a killer framework for those better discovery calls, reach out to me! I’m always happy to share mine and help you elevate your client conversations.
Catch you next time!
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Sticky business. Welcome to how to retain clients and stop leaving money on the table.
Some really important questions to ask yourself in particularly service based industries is can my clients grow with me? Can my clients keep buying from me? Am I offering further ways to work with me to my clients? Once I have a client, how can I retain them?
What’s really important if you do have a consultancy or service based business is keeping a business sticky.
So what is sticky business? Sticky business is I’m going to show you what I do, I’m going to share my sticky business.
So I have a menu or a sales ladder that you can, as you go and I grow, you can come with me so you can work with me for one day. You can work with me for one hour, you can work with me for one day, you can work with me for 1/4, you can work with me for 1 year, my preference is 1 year plus. And you can work with me for 5 years and I can work with your team.
And amongst all of that, particularly if you’re working with me in my full offer which is my hybrid approach, which is you get me every month. You also get my amazing community of other women in business, you get my training, you get to come and spend have in person client days with me four times a year.
You also have the opportunity to pause coaching and come onto what I call a downsell which is just a strategic pause where you still might need some help but perhaps there’s some cash flow issues.
And they also offer maintenance. So once we’ve done some of the big heavy lifting, strategic planning, you then can come through into maintenance with me.
So it’s a sticky business. Once you have started to work with me, I’m gonna do all I can, particularly if you’re ideal, to keep you, because I wanna keep you because I love you. We get on well, you laugh at my jokes, you’re getting results, I can actually see where I’m supporting you and that’s a sticky business.
So that’s how I retain my clients. And I don’t leave money on the table because what can happen is if you’re not growing with your clients and potentially making more offers to them, they’re gonna go and buy those things from other people.
So that’s where you’re leaving money on the table. Right.
So I attract highly creative trailblazing a type personalities which means we’re awesome. But what happens is they cause I don’t do this as much anymore. There’s a tendency to keep creating new offers without Fully capitalizing on existing ones.
And that’s where this constant creation and not actually stopping and monetizing it and see where it fits in can actually be a big pitfall.
So what can happen is because these types of women who are amazing, they tend to over deliver.
So just to reiterate that is sometimes we have a tendency to create new offerings without fully capitalizing on those existing ones.
So a good question to ask yourself around that is where could I take what’s possible, already established and deepen it?
So obviously gotta make sure like that’s focusing like it’s profitable, right? That that service is profitable.
Because what can happen happen is we can with all this effort going out with recreation all the time, we can dilute and then we’ve got too many, too many offerings and we’re not then using our existing resources effectively.
So another area you could be leaving money on the table is a lot of consultants in service based industries will have existing resources.
So they’ve got a lot of these PDFs or worksheets that they might give clients at the time or might build systems, whatever it is, but explore ways in which you can leverage those assets.
So could you use them in consulting sessions, could you offer them as low cost, could you build them and or bundle them with your services similar. That’s what I do. So. And it’s really creating that stickiness.
So we were talking before too, about how we can over deliver. And then what can happen is we lose sight of the value of our over delivery.
So we’re not charging for it. People can become quite strategic, but perhaps they’re only offering something that is like so maybe they’re doing creative services, but they actually are doing the strategy too. But they don’t get paid for that. They haven’t built that into their services.
So really focusing on what are you not being charged for. So we can do this by making sure we have a clearer framework in our discovery calls or when we’re looking at working with someone, making sure we set those expectations at the beginning and really asking targeted questions about our current state or the current state of business and their goals.
So that when you are looking at the gaps and challenges, you’re presenting current solutions, but also future solutions. So you’re actually really getting some foresight in those upfront conversations.
So sticky business, how sticky is your business and are you retaining your clients and where are you leaving money on the table?
It’s something that not enough women in biz in particular think about. They can be rushing off to build a one off thing and that can become really soul-destroying after a while because you’re constantly on.
So I really hope you enjoyed today’s short and quick how to retain clients and leave money on the table. Let me know once again. Share this out. Share it with your friends. Hit me up with any questions. If you do want to know how to have a framework for how to have better discovery calls, reach out to me. I’m happy to share mine with you and we can go from there. Anyway, share this round. Share with me what came up for you. Catch you later.
