Educate clients before working together

Educate clients before working together because education is an important and crucial element in forming expectations. Because prospective clients that grasp the value of a product or service better appreciate the effort required and the time it takes to achieve a given outcome. When this understanding is absent that is when all sorts of troubles, inconsistency of expectations, and problems arise. And quite frankly, there’s nothing worse than a headache caused by an inconsistency of expectations. So how can we solve the problem? Easy,  educate clients before working together. This applies to every business and is not unique to any certain type of business.

When this understanding is absent that is when all sorts of troubles, inconsistency of expectations, and problems arise. And quite frankly, there’s nothing worse than a headache caused by an inconsistency of expectations. So how can we solve the problem? Easy,  educate clients before working together. This applies to every business and is not unique to any certain type of business.

Educating clients to appreciate the means to an end

Helping customers and clients understand the necessary effort, investment, and time required to achieve an objective is an important element in reaching that objective. As business owners, managers, chief marketing officers, you probably encounter situations where you presented a set of solutions to an engaged customer / client and then they begin a sequence of questions that perhaps should’ve been addressed from the start. Our customer / clients begin to ask about why the price is so high, or why is it going to take so long, or why can't I just do this myself? These are perfectly legitimate questions, and questions that require a very good response.

When we educate clients before working together and by putting education at the forefront of our marketing efforts, you'll find that more qualified customers will be the ones making their way through your pipeline. Because in the education process, where you are offering information that provides value, you're also providing and helping prospective clients appreciate the means by which you are helping them achieve an outcome.

Why educate clients before working together

There are very good reasons as to why it is crucially important to educate clients before working together. It's often the case that the customers / clients who come to us for guidance, generally may not know so much about the particular process required to achieve an intended outcome they're looking for and so by providing information beforehand, it helps our customers find comfort in the process, because they have some knowledge and a semblance of an idea about what is supposed to take place.

Additionally it's a good thing for customers to ask you questions, and when they have information then they can engage in the process, by asking questions and presenting the opportunity for us to present our expertise. All of this leads to a collaboration and a working experience that is mutually beneficial.

Positioning your expertise

When we begin to educate our clients before working together, it immediately puts us at a position of authority and certainly presents the best opportunity to demonstrate expertise and our qualification. It helps those customers move through the pipeline and better appreciate the advice and judgement that we are bringing to the table.

Because in demonstrating our expertise freely, we are communicating as experts and it helps our clients move forward in their decision-making process. It's seldom that I advise clients to simply focus on marketing, instead I usually advise educating customers first, and or using a combination of both a marketing campaign and an educational campaign simultaneously.  

Educating customers towards a better choice

Face it there is a lot of competition out there and we are all generally trying to get the same customer, but here's a subtle difference when we start to put education at the forefront, We now have another group of customers who are well informed in relation to those who are not so informed on the particular solution, product and or service.

When we educate clients before working together,  we're helping customers become more informed in their decision-making, and they're able to differentiate the different service offerings and if we’re providing a truly superior product and or service, then a more informed client is more inclined towards the better products and or services. Furthermore with education we are building a strong foundation in the relationship with our customers.

Putting education in front of the lead generation process.

There are several ways we can put education in front of the lead generation process and some of the key ways that you can employ is through content. For instance communicating key concerns through regular blog posts.

Anticipating the particular issues and or concerns that customers may have about moving forward in a decision can be a great idea repository from which we develop information and valuable content that educates clients before working together. We've actually taking it a step further, by developing online courses on different marketing topics that helps businesses make better decisions.

Today we can make information available through various mediums and packaging. So from creating informational websites and developing blog content that answers important questions that customers may have.

We can also create podcasts that engage prospective clients through audio, additionally we can create informative videos and put them on YouTube, and we can even create ebooks and PDF whitepapers that delve deeper into a potential customer’s need. All of this at the forefront of the lead generation process creates a filter that generates a more qualified customer that's engages in the process knowledgeably.