Engaging Your Potential Clients through Dialogue: First Action Steps

I hope you enjoyed your magical time in the garden. Since finding clients for your ADR practice will never be as easy as in the Dialogue Marketing Garden, I also hope your initial pass at dialogue topics germinated some seeds of action for you.

Let’s take the ideas you generated in Exercise 4.2.2 and create a few preliminary marketing ideas you can set in action while you complete this blook.

You’ve considered the target audience you’d ideally like to reach, where they can be found, the kinds of conflict-related topics in which they’d be most interested, and the kinds of problems you can best help them sort out. Now it’s time to begin thinking about how you would create real opportunities for such dialogue to take place. If you’ve done the prior exercises thoroughly enough, then you know that audience well enough to begin testing the waters.

Exercise 4.3.1: How would you engage the dialogue?

Pick one of the target markets you’ve identified in Exercise 5.1.1. Where and how would you engage your potential clients in the kinds of dialogue you think would capture their interest and help them solve a compelling problem?

Start by considering location: Where would you go to meet and speak with them? Where would you send information to follow up your in-person engagement? How would you make use of the Internet to reach out to them?

Then consider how you’d engage them in dialogue: If you think you’d like to give a presentation, how would you turn it into dialogue? If you think you’d like to mail them your brochure, how would you turn it into dialogue? If you’d like them to visit your website, how would you turn that visit into dialogue? Press yourself to answer this question, as that answer helps you make use of the good mediator skills you already have.

Repeat this exercise for other ideal client demographics you’re considering.

Here are examples of ways mediators can begin building dialogue with key people in their target markets:

A mediator focusing on small- to mid-size businesses might sponsor a chamber of commerce mixer. As a sponsor, the mediator would have the opportunity to speak briefly about her business and offer to serve—right then and there—as an on-the-spot resource for attendees.
A mediator who serves the high-tech sector might visit online chat forums frequented by techies, “lurk” for a while (watched the conversations without participating) to get a sense of the culture, then post questions about the kinds of disputes most prevalent in the high-tech world and the types of help techies most need in those moments.
A divorce mediator who specializes in high-conflict post-divorce work may decide to build relationships with counselors and therapists as referral sources. That mediator might join a state psychological or counseling association and begin regularly attending conferences and meetings.
A construction mediator could write a regular “Ask Jamie” column in a trade publication, inviting readers to email their questions. Some questions may be suitable for future columns and some may lead to private work.
A mediator interested in micro-businesses could sponsor free monthly “coffee and chat” gatherings with other micro business owners. The gatherings could be an informal opportunity for micro-business owners and solo-preneurs to support and learn from one another and the mediator could serve as facilitator/convener.

I’m a big fan of getting started with an idea while you continue to flesh out other options. The act of getting started with any idea creates momentum in and of itself. With that in mind:

Exercise 4.3.2: What’s your first action step?

Look back through the ideas you generated in Exercise 5.3.1. Pick one idea that’s most attractive to you. Not two…just one. Now, identify the very first step you need to take in order to either put that action in place or explore its feasibility further. Make it an actionable step.

For example, instead of “Figure out whether coffee and chat is of interest to my target audience” (this is vague), you might write, “Call or email five small business owners in a 20-mile radius and ask if they’re willing to come to one coffee and chat test-run gathering.”

There are many, many opportunities to build in-person dialogue opportunities with your target market once you know how to find them and what they care most about. There are also online opportunities and if you’re not tapping them, you risk being on the trailing edge of a wave that other service professions are already catching.

In the next section, I’ll show you how to use low-geek-factor technology to create dialogue with prospective clients.