Let’s talk about how to use Facebook groups to find clients for your service-based business.
My name is Ryann Dowdy. I am a sales coach and I help brand new entrepreneurs build six figure businesses by mastering their sales conversations and their mindset. And the number one question that I get is where do I find clients?
Where are they? Help me find them.
That that is another topic. So, if you want to know where to find clients, you can absolutely go check that out.
Facebook groups.
How do we do it? It’s a piece of advice that I got a hundred times early on in my business building journey, and I never really felt like anybody did an awesome job of talking about how to use them.
I get it. Go into Facebook groups, but what do I do when I’m there?
So, first things first, I want a mindset to check a couple of things. Some people are uncomfortable networking in Facebook groups because they feel like it’s poaching other people’s clients and other people’s audiences. I want you to really think of this as a networking opportunity.
There are people out there on the internet who have already gathered your potential clients in groups and in communities. In fact, at this time, Facebook is loving groups. They’re promoting groups. They want people in groups, groups are a big part of their business model. So, Facebook groups are hot and they’re popping up all of the time. And there’s tons of groups for really anything. If you are in the BDC space and you work with moms or women or men or whatever.
You’re a health coach, you’re a life coach, you’re a parenting coach or whatever. There are groups of people already gathered. If you’re in the B2B space, maybe you’re a business coach, a digital marketer, a freelancer, a virtual assistant, or a bookkeeper. There are groups of business owners already gathered.
My message to you in all of this is somebody has already done the work of gathering all of these people together. And we are just going to view networking Facebook groups as a networking upper Trinity. So we’re not poaching other people’s clients. Our goal is to not go in and steal people’s money out of their pocket or anything like that. It’s to go in and build relationships because that’s how we find clients. It is by building relationships. It is no different than going to your local chamber of commerce or your local BNI or a local networking group in your hometown or wherever it is that you live and going there and meeting people. It’s the same thing as going to story time at the library and meeting other moms. We’re just using Facebook groups as a way to meet people.
So that is my first mindset check for you. We are not poaching other people’s clients. We’re not going into other people’s groups and being spammy or promotional. We are using already gathered groups of people as networking opportunities to build relationships because we build relationships. That’s how we get clients.
So, first thing I want you to think about is how do we build relationships with strangers? And my biggest piece of advice about building relationships with strangers is to make it about them. So I want you to view every networking, every Facebook group you go into as a networking event meets cocktail party. What do we do at networking events? What do we do at cocktail parties?
Well, at cocktail parties, we have fun at networking events. We talk to people. So when you go into a group, I want you to go in and talk to people. And I don’t want you just talking to people who are your ideal client, or just talking to people who fit a specific profile, or just talking to people that are looking for you. These are some of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that you are looking for people who are looking for you instead of going into a group and actually building relationships with everybody in the group, whether or not that your ideal client. If you were at a networking event, you would not just meet the people who are your ideal client. You would meet everybody. If you were at a cocktail party, you would not just talk to some people. You would talk to all of the people that you got the opportunity to meet.
So that’s the number one thing I want you to really think about. I am in this group to build relationships. The only way to build relationships is by talking to all of the people, not trying to cherry pick the conversations. Not to only get involved sometimes or only weigh in when I have something really, really valuable to provide, but really just how can I go in and talk? And there’s already conversations happening, guys. This is why Facebook groups are such a magical place to start. The conversation has already been started. People are already there starting conversations, asking questions, building relationships. So what do you do when you’re in the group? You provide value.
Some of you were thinking I’m brand new to business. How do I provide value? What does that even mean? I like to think of providing value as answering questions. Most people posting in Facebook groups are asking questions and they might be asking anything from how do I get my toddler to sleep through the night? What is your favorite protein powder? Or what email do you use for your business? Or how do I get clients?
I mean, there’s a million questions happening and I want you to go into groups and they want you to answer questions. Even when you are not an expert. Why is this important? Because it’s about building a relationship. If a girlfriend asked you what protein powder you do use, you wouldn’t tell her you don’t know anything about protein powder. You’d be like, well, we don’t actually do protein powder a lot, but what I have in my cabinet, I really like, I bought it at Sam’s club. It was X number of dollars.
That is how you would answer the question. I want you to answer the question in the same way. I want you to provide a value just like you were talking to a friend, because remember, we’re at a cocktail party and you wouldn’t ignore the question. You wouldn’t not answer the question because you didn’t have anything of value to add. You would add what you could to the conversation.
So even if you don’t have expertise, maybe you read an article, maybe you listened to a podcast. Maybe you watched a YouTube video. Maybe you’ve seen other people at other groups have conversations about whatever this person is asking. How can you be a valuable human? How can you provide a value in some way and then start a conversation?
So I’m going to go into my protein powder example.
I have no idea why I’m there. But, maybe somebody is looking for a recommendation on protein powder. I might say, Hey, we don’t actually do protein powder a lot in my family. But when we do, this is what we buy. We buy an organic protein. It looks like ABC XYZ. We typically buy it at Sam’s club, but let me ask you, what’s your goal with your protein powder?
So not only have I given them my experiences in what I have used, but I want to know their goal because not all protein powders are created equal. Like maybe my protein powder is meant for weight loss and somebody else is looking to bulk up. So we just want to provide value and ask questions and start conversations. Now, once we are in a conversation with someone, our goal is to take that back and forth conversation.
That’s happening in the comments and we want to move it into the direct messages. So, I want you to think about how walk up to your cocktail party, there’s a group of people you shake hands with everyone, and then you just kind of wind up chit chatting with people around you. That is the DM. The DM is the chitchat.
If we’re using my cocktail party and networking event example, and then the final thing that I want you to think about when you are thinking about how do we find clients is as you continue to provide value and comment on things and get into DMS, people are going to want to come check you out. And there’s a lot of controversy around this.
We have probably talked about this here as to whether or not to use your personal profile for business. Here’s my thought: you’re running a business in the year 2020 or whatever it is that you’re reading this. And honestly, Facebook has already congregated groups of potential clients. Why would you not use it as a business networking tool? You’re going to give me a lot of reasons.
What about pictures of my kids? Like I’m really private. This might be weird. And I encourage you to throw all that out the window and just say, Hey, you know, I am running a business. And so I have to network and connect with as many people as possible. And this profile gives me the opportunity to do that. Because when you’re networking in these groups, you’re networking from your personal profile, not your business page. People are going to come check out your personal profile and that personal profile has to be set up so people can figure out that you are a business owner.
It does you no good to go to all of these networking events if nobody knows what you do. If when they’re like, Oh, I met that person at the event, they were super helpful. They were awesome. What do they do? And they go look you up and they can’t figure out who you are, what you do, because your profile is locked out. It doesn’t make mention of your business. And it’s not set up in any way, shape or form for people to feel like they can or should start a conversation with you. So we’re doing all of this networking, but we’re leaving money on the table if our profile is not optimized. People need to know you are a business owner of some kind. We have to build relationships, provide values, and get into the DMS.
Our profile is set up and now what we need to do is make sure people know how to work with us. We need to tell them. This might be in the DMS or inviting people to sales conversations. Maybe this is a Facebook live video that you are doing. You are letting people know that you are accepting clients right now. Maybe this is a really great written post. I’m talking about the problem that you solve for your clients.
Now we have eyeballs. We have a network of people, and now we just need to make invitations to sales conversations to turn them into clients. That is how we use Facebook groups to get clients. We go into the groups, we seek to build relationships. We’re looking to build relationships with everybody in the group, not just the people looking for us, not just our ideal client, not just the people with money.
We are looking to build relationships. Every single person that you meet has a network of people. Every single person that you meet is an opportunity for you to build a relationship. I really want you to think about that when you go into these Facebook groups, and then I want you to be as valuable as you possibly can, answer all of the questions in a really thoughtful way, and make sure you ask a question in your comments so you can get the conversation going back and forth, and then finally make sure that your profile is set up.
Once people are thinking who is this super interesting person in this Facebook group? I totally want to meet them. They are the life of this cocktail party. They know what kind of business that you have, and that there are consistent invitations for people to interact with you in some way, shape or form.
So that might be in the DMs or inviting people to sales conversations. Maybe it’s a Facebook live. Maybe it’s written content, but people need to know how to work with you. And your profile needs to be set up to do that. And that my friend is how you find clients in Facebook groups.
If you have not yet, download our five-step system for getting clients – do that. It’s going to walk you through everything from lead generation to discovery, call to pitching your services and beyond. If you’re not yet in the sales skills for women in business, Facebook community, make sure you join us over there. And then finally, if you’re not following us on Instagram, we are @UncensoredSales. We want to hang out with you. We want to help you get as many clients as possible and make money doing what you love.