How To Win Clients With Workshops

Are you a coach or consultant who is spending hours on social media but finding that the visibility just isn't translating into new clients?

In this episode, I sit down with "Workshop Queen" Janelle Anderson to explore why traditional social media tactics often fail and how you can use workshops as a powerful marketing system to build trust, connect with your ideal audience, and generate a consistent flow of premium clients.

You'll discover:

01:16 - Why social media is a visibility tool, not a client attraction tool
04:01 - Why live workshops are the fastest way to build the trust you need to sell
04:48 - How to satisfy the "human craving for connection" in a virtual world
07:05 - What it means for a workshop to be the "front door" to your business
09:30 - Why your workshop should be an "appetizer," not a full buffet
10:00 - The danger of over-teaching and creating "learners instead of buyers"
12:34 - The "One Thing" secret to a satisfied and high-converting audience
13:51 - Examples of how to pick the right single problem to solve in 90 minutes
16:07 - The CLIENTS framework for creating the perfect marketing workshop
16:50 - Why a room full of the wrong people is a waste of your time
19:27 - Using joint venture partners to fill your room with high-quality leads
20:30 - How to know if you’re ready to add workshops to your business model


Key Insights:

– Social media is great for being "seen," but it lacks the real-time interaction and depth required to build the high level of trust necessary for high-ticket coaching and consulting

– A workshop serves as your business's "front door," providing a clear, low-friction entry point for people who are searching for a solution to a specific problem

– One of the biggest mistakes coaches make is over-teaching. If your workshop leaves your audience feeling "stuffed" and overwhelmed, they will go home to study the material rather than hiring you to help them implement it

– To maximize conversion, focus on one single breakthrough or "aha" moment. Less is more when it is highly targeted and satisfying

– High-volume marketing is irrelevant if the audience is a poor fit. It is better to have ten ideal clients in a room than a hundred people who just want free information

– Your workshop's primary goal is to enroll, not just to educate. You are showcasing your methodology so that the right people want to take the full journey with you

– You don't need a massive email list to start. Workshops are actually a superior way to build a list of highly engaged and qualified prospects from scratch

– Effective workshops are reverse-engineered from your core offer. Every point you make should naturally lead the participant to see why your full program is the logical next step

🎁 Free Resource Mentioned:

👉 Client Enrollment Workshop Guide:
https://clientenrollmentworkshop.com/

Thanks for listening to the Seven-Figure Life-Fulfillment podcast.

🎁 Claim Ken's free gift — Revenue Growth Stalled? Before you spend another dollar on marketing, make sure you're fixing the right problem.

Take the Revenue Roadblock Diagnostic™

It's free and takes less than 5 minutes.

👉🏻 https://scorecard.kensteven.com/diagnosis

Transcript

Ken Steven 0:00

If you're a coach or consultant who's been struggling to get a consistent flow of new clients, you are going to love my special guest today. Hello, and welcome to the Seven Figure Life Fulfillment Podcast, where we share strategies to help coaches and consultants grow their revenue by working fewer hours so they can build a life they finally enjoy. I'm your host, Ken Steven, and my guest today is Janelle Anderson. Janelle is an eight-time best-selling author, an award-winning speaker, and a certified coach who is known as the Workshop Queen. She specializes in helping coaches and consultants design workshops as a client attraction and enrollment tool that generates new clients every month. Janelle, I'm so happy that you could join us here today. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thanks, Ken. I'm very excited to be here. Thanks for having me here.

Ken Steven 0:49

Well, hey, I I'm eager to have you here because what really caught me attention, uh, caught my attention about your method is that you you don't teach workshops as a as a as a product offering per se. You teach workshops as a as a marketing system, as a way to attract people into your ecosystem, really, and get them to be interested in becoming clients. So I really want to kind of explore the possibilities there today. Let's start out by talking about where coaches and consultants are right now, what they're probably trying to do to increase their visibility with their marketing. You know, they're probably out there right now spending a lot of time on social media, and and they're hoping that that visibility is going to translate into clients, but but that's just not working out so well for them. So, why do you think that tactic's not working out well for them?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

So it is a visibility tool, but it's not necessarily a straight client attraction tool. Gives you visibility, people see you. And the purpose of, in my opinion, of social media is that people start to see you more and more and they get interested and intrigued and curious, and then they go to your website or to whatever your call to action is to actually find out more. But it's not a direct place to get clients directly. And I think a lot of times coaches are looking at social media as the place to get clients, and they're getting frustrated because they're putting posts out there, they're not getting very many comments or likes, and nothing seems to be happening. But that's because there's there's a piece missing, and that piece is how do you get them from seeing you, from you being visible, to actually connecting with you and um then talking to you and getting to know you, which really builds the trust, uh no like and trust, right? So so I think it's how you see what's the purpose of it and how you're using social media and understanding, you know, its role basically. There's also the problem of so many people on social media, and whatever you're putting out there is going by very quickly on people's feeds, and the algorithms don't really work in our favor. Uh, many times people aren't even seeing what we're posting. And so if that's your only strategy, it's not going to work very well. Um, I remember early in my coaching career that that wasn't my strategy. And I it was very frustrating to spend hours and hours posting and then trying to comment and trying to, um, I had a Facebook group, and when people would come into the group, I'd try to get a conversation going with them. And a few times, maybe one or two became clients because I did like really pursue that conversation with them through a direct message because that began to build a little bit of a connection. But to just put a post out there and hope that, oh, or even a video, oh, that's gonna bring in clients. It's it's uh it doesn't work.

Ken Steven 4:00

So, why would what makes workshops a much stronger marketing tool to attract people into your pipeline?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

So many reasons. I've been doing workshops for 12 years or more, just always use this as a strategy because I figured, wouldn't it be better if I had a group of people in front of me that I could share what I do and invite them to work with me instead of just one at a time? And that was my early um strategy, was just get in front of them around some kind of topic and then hope that they would sign up with me. But it did make sense to me that it would be better to have a group in front of me instead of just one person. So that's one of the benefits of having a workshop is that you have more than one person in the room with you. And the biggest benefit to me, and a lot of people don't even talk about this with workshops very much, that is the connection that you can create inside of your workshop with the people, because people are craving connection. We have a lot of lonely people in the world. And um, one of the questions I always ask in my events is how many virtual I do virtual events, how many virtual events do you go to every week? And I'll get answers like two or three or four or five. People are going to virtual workshops like crazy. And what are they looking for? Is my next question. What's the reason that you're taking your time to get on all of these events? And it's number one is I want connection. And two, I want to learn. So the connection piece is very important when you are in a room with your people and you're teaching and you're talking and you're asking them questions, and they're able to ask you questions and they're able to interact and feel your energy. And then for them to feel like you see them and you hear them and you value them, then that starts to really create that trust. You you won't get clients without a trust foundation built. People don't buy unless they trust the person, have some level of trust. And so that's one of the biggest benefits of having a workshop is that real-time, live, not pre-recorded green, you know, evergreen. That has its place. But I'm talking about a live, interactive experience with you in the room. Um, there's nothing like it. There's just nothing that replaces that, my in my opinion, as far as being able to build that trust and that relationship, at least the beginnings of it, enough for them to say, you know what? I want more. I want more of this. I want to take the next step with you.

Ken Steven 6:52

Okay. So that that that's interesting because it you have a guide, you have a guide that people are going to be able to download at the end of this podcast. Yeah. And and I I read through that guide, and you said something in that guide I thought was very interesting. You say that a workshop should be the front door to your business. All right. So tell us what you mean by that.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yes. So in the way that I look at workshops is if you kind of can picture in your mind um this scene where people are on a path, they're coming to you from different places, and sometimes social media, as we talked about a minute ago, they've seen you there. Maybe they've seen a video, maybe they've heard about you from someone else, or you know, maybe you've been speaking somewhere on a podcast or a summit. You know, there's all these various ways that people are on this path looking for you. I always say your people are looking for you. So many coaches feel like they have to go out and find a client. They'll they'll ask me all the time, how do I find clients? And I'll say that's the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is, how do I help my clients find me or find you? So you have this door, and on the door is the name of your workshop, which should really very clearly tell them what's the problem you're going to help them solve in that workshop. So they're out there on that path looking for help with this problem. And they see your door and they come to the door, and that's their first encounter with you often in real time, in real time, like face to face and hearing you and talking to you. They may have seen you, seen a post on social media or see or heard a video or an interview, but this is their first chance to actually meet you at the door. And inside that door, if they step into it and and you know, you make an offer during your workshop. If they step into it, then they're stepping into your world more where you can work with them in your program. So the front door to your business is that workshop. It's the place where people really get to meet you and get to know you and take that first step with you.

Ken Steven 9:05

Okay, so that that's that's kind of the important thing, right? It's that first step towards your core product offering, right? So it's important that whatever you talk about in that workshop directly relates to what your core product offering is about, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Absolutely.

Ken Steven 9:23

So that that's a key thing. And and uh I also read it there that you you you talk about, think of your client enrollment workshop as an appetizer, not the full buffet. An appetizer is easy to digest, satisfying, and leaves people wanting more. And you've talked about that already, you know, get get people wanting more. And a buffet, on the other hand, overwhelms your guests with too many options, right? So in that workshop, what you're saying is that you you should only be talking about this principle called the one thing, right? Tell us more about that. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yes. So one of the um things I discovered that I was doing it was over teaching in my workshops. In fact, many times people look at a workshop as a place to teach when it should be your enrollment workshop, right? It should not be a teaching workshop because if you're gonna teach, then you're creating learners, not buyers. Right. And so when we come with the uh mindset of I'm gonna teach this cool thing, and many of us have lots of topics to teach on. And I always talk about having a monthly workshop. Sometimes people will say, Oh, that's cool. I can teach on this topic this month and this topic that month and this topic the next month. And I'm like, No, all that stuff you're teaching on can be packaged up into your offer, into your program where they pay to do that, to learn that and to work with you. So your workshop then becomes the taste, it becomes the appetizer or the first taste they have of the things that you can teach and work with them on. Instead of you giving away all of your um expertise and all of your knowledge for free in all of these workshops, and then nobody ever takes a step to work with you because you gave them everything. And the overstuffing happens a lot where we try to pack into that hour and a half all the things that we think they need. And one of the major reasons people do that is that they feel like I want to give value to the people that come to my workshop. And we do, we want to give value, but if you're giving them so much that they walk away feeling like, oh my gosh, they'll they'll tell you that was great, that was wonderful, thank you so much. Now I have to go watch the replay and study this to really get it. Because they didn't have time to absorb it, right? And digest. It's like it you go to eat a if you ate a whole buffet, you'd be so stuffed. You wouldn't want to eat for another two weeks. But if you just have an appetizer, you're ready for the meal. And I heard people say that so many times, like, thank you, this was great. I've got to go now study this. And so I'm not ready to take a step with you because I feel like I have to I have to achieve everything you just told me before I can move on. It's one of the biggest mistakes people make. So if you give them an appetizer, you're basically just giving them a bit of an experience with you. You give you can still give value. In fact, you give more value, less is more, because now if you focus in on one thing and think about what's the one aha I want them to walk away with one thing, pare it down to just one simple idea or insight or breakthrough that they can have in your workshop that will feel so satisfying that they had this one thing. And in your workshop, it gives you time to go into it more and give them time to do a little exercise with you or you know, come up on stage with you, where you could do some coaching a little bit. It gives them time and space to absorb that one thing, and then it's like now I'm ready for the next.

Ken Steven 13:19

So the one thing, the secret to making that one thing work, right? The secret to attracting people to even want to attend the workshop. Yeah, that one thing should be something that's keeping people awake at night, right? Yes, a solution that they're desperately seeking an answer for.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Absolutely.

Ken Steven 13:40

And that becomes the one thing that you help them figure out. That's that appetizer that makes them want to go on and learn more. So, what would be what would be some examples of of a one thing that could lead to a core product offering, just so people can see the connection there? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Sure. Uh, one of my clients uh he he helps leaders with their teams to communicate well and to you know uh produce well and to you know all the things that you have to do with with um a leadership team. Well, that's a lot of things to talk about in a workshop. So his is just about how do you how do you have or how do you manage um a difficult conversation? So in all of the conversations that a leader would have with his team, he picked out one type, which is a core problem, a top problem for a leader is those difficult conversations. They often avoid them or they don't know how to handle them. So he picked that one thing and that's what his workshop is about. So now let's just talk about difficult conversations. How much can you talk about around how to handle a difficult conversation? Well, there's a lot of things. So then he just picked out, you know, three core elements to that and even demonstrated it and had them do a little practice um and talk about what's a recent di difficult conversation you had with someone. How did you handle it? And then if you use his method, um part of it was like listening, and you know, he had three simple things. Um now they can picture that conversation, you know, doing it over again using these three simple techniques and understand how much better that conversation could go. So they leave there feeling really confident that they have three things they can try with the next difficult conversation they have. But guess what? There's a lot more other types of conversations and communication things that they would need. So that's a really good example. And they loved it. They loved that. It was it was everybody in the room was just really into it, and it it brings people in. They have um great conversations around just this one idea.

Ken Steven 16:00

That that is that's a great, that's a great example to illustrate exactly how the whole thing should work. Um, and you also mentioned in your guide you you have a framework, it's called the clients framework.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yes.

Ken Steven 16:11

And clients is an acronym, you know, C-L-I-E-N-T-S. Okay, it's an acronym for our seven-step process you have for creating the perfect workshop to be an enrollment tool as a marketing tool. And I want to focus on on the e-component, which which you have as an excite and attract your audience. You mentioned that a lot of people here fill the room and think they need volume, right? So your guide makes the point that a room full of the wrong people isn't really helpful. You get a lot of claps, but you don't get a lot of conversion, right? And so, so what should coaches and consultants be doing to make sure they were attracting the right fit clients to a workshop?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yes, this is so important. Um, I remember having a workshop once. It was called How to Talk to Anyone, had it at the local library. Great title. The local newspaper even sent a photographer and a reporter. So I got some newspaper. I got in the newspaper, and I filled the room. It was full of people, but they were introverts wanting to know just how to have conversations with people. They weren't my audience at all. That's not who I was working with. We had a great time. They loved it, but I got no clients. So you really need to be very strategic in where you market and who you get in front of, and and and how do you invite people in. And that involves a several different things. One is, of course, your messaging and your title of your workshop needs to very clearly speak to the people that this is for and the problem it helps them solve. And then you want in your, you know, your registration page to clearly spell out, maybe with some bullet points, what they're gonna walk away with, which also should be speaking to that core problem of the audience that you want in the room. So then as soon as they see the title and the subtitle and they go to that page, they're gonna self-identify, is this for me or not? That's an important piece of it. And then, you know, wherever you are marketing this and promoting it, I use uh a couple of strategies like speaking is a great way to do it. Get on podcast summits and like I'm doing right here. And make sure that when you are getting on those, that you're doing it with the right host with the right audience for you. And then don't go like if you're going to be using my earlier example, if my client was going to speak on a summit about leaders, he wouldn't want to be on a summit that's for, I don't know, wellness coaches or uh relationship coaches. I guess that could fit in a little bit of a way, but he's gonna want to get on summits and podcasts that their audience is leaders in businesses, right? So make sure that you're speaking at on the right stages in front of the right audiences and not waste your talk. You don't want to waste a talk on on the in the wrong room. And then um I also work with what I what we call joint venture partners or collaboration partners to help me get the word out. So I look for partners that have an email list or an audience of coaches so that when they promote my workshop, it's the right people and not a whole list of, I don't know, C-suite executives, you know. So be strategic about how you're promoting it and that you are actually putting it in places where your audience will see it and they'll be able to recognize, yeah, that's for me. I really want that. Um, and you'll you'll do much better that way.

Ken Steven 20:05

Okay, so if someone is sitting here now listening to this, saying, Okay, this sounds good. I think workshops is something I should try. Do coaches and consultants do they have to have certain ducks in a row in their business before they should even think about trying this? I mean, what how would they know they're ready to add workshops as a marketing tool?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Well, one of the very first things is to know, and and this is this is something that's kind of ongoing, but at least know to begin with who is your target market? Who who do you want to serve, and what is your niche? What is the problem you help people solve? And often people are too broad with that, and they're just like, well, I can help anyone because everybody needs coaching. Um, so you need to really work on that and get narrowed in a little bit to a specialization. Where's your specialization? Where's your expertise? Where's your sweet spot? And if you you don't have to have it perfect because it often changes over time, but if you at least have a starting point, like I started working with midlife women, figuring out what they wanted to do next. And now I do something different. But I started there because at the time that was my best starting place, and I did that for years actually. Uh, so that would be the first thing. If you're just starting off, you know, make sure you've got your business set up, you know, the very beginning. You get your business entity and your bank accounts and all that kind of stuff set up, and that you are really diving into who is it that I serve? What is the problem I help them solve so that then you know what your workshop's gonna be about. Um, and you you don't have to really have a huge audience to start doing workshops. Um, I start. Off with no email list and I didn't have much of an audience the first workshop I did because I looked at it as a way to attract my audience to begin with and as sort of like a testing ground. Let me try this out and see what happens. You know? Um, so I I often tell people don't look at it as you know, having this perfect presentation and you've already got your audience because it will help you build your audience. And you don't need to have a perfect presentation, you are trying it out to see what works with your audience. You get a lot of uh market research done this way. Um, but you the starting place is having a topic, having a subject, having a problem, you help people solve and knowing who the pre people are. And then the offer is super important. So if you don't have an offer yet or you don't have a program yet, you you probably should do that first before you put together your workshop. Uh, because otherwise, what you're going to do is just pick a topic that you know a lot about, and it sounds interesting, but then you don't have any it is not going to lead anywhere. So work on that. Like what would be the program that I would offer? What would be the my offer in the workshop? Then you can reverse engineer the workshop to lead to the offer.

Ken Steven 23:21

And that's how you ensure that the workshop becomes the stepping stone to the offer.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ken Steven 23:27

Janelle, this has been a great conversation. I think I think what's been really good today for everybody listening is it it kind of takes workshops from a nice idea, something you might want to try, to actually becoming a really strategic marketing tool that you can use to attract the right fit clients and get engagement and enrollment into your programs. So, uh, Jill, how can people get in touch with you and learn more if they want to set up their workshops and make sure they're doing this right?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yes. Uh I have workshops coming up actually that will take the guide that you're talking about that everybody's going to get today. And in the workshop, we walk through the client's framework and we dive a little bit deeper into a couple of key pieces and they get to work with me on especially like, you know, what would my offer be and how do I get people in the room? Those are two key pieces. So those are coming up, and um, you can actually sign up for them anytime. It's called the client enroll. It's uh the client enrollment workshop. And you can go to client enrollmentworkshop.com and find the sign up page and just get signed up for the next one. You can also go to my website, it's virtual visionary virtuale eventsvisionary.com. And I have on there lots of things that I offer courses and workshops and um downloadable things. So you can go to those two places and find me. And I'd love to see you in the room with me.

Ken Steven 25:00

Perfect. I'm gonna put both of those links in the show notes below. I encourage anybody who's gotten value out of this today, and how could you not get value out of this conversation today? I encourage you to click on those links, learn more from Janelle, and uh reach out, get her help if you're doing a workshop because clearly she is the workshop queen.

unknown 25:19

Yes.

Ken Steven 25:20

Janelle, thank you so much again for being on the show. Lots of gold nuggets shared today.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Thank you for having me, and I enjoy it very much.

Ken Steven 25:27

Okay. Everyone, we'll see you again on the next episode of the Seven Figure of Life Fulfillment podcast. Bye for now.