On today’s episode of Nutrition for Your Business, we’re showing you how to create nutrition services and programs that clients will actually buy.
We have seen way too many nutrition professionals invest a ton of time into creating programs and services that no one buys. In fact, we’ve heard from nutrition professionals who have created entire services like membership sites, workshops or group programs only to have no one interested in purchasing. You invest hours of your time into creating something and no one cares. This is seriously the worst!
But, when no one buys, it is usually because the program or service you are offering doesn’t actually solve a problem for your ideal client.
This is super unfortunate because we know that when people are experiencing painful problems, they will pay to have them fixed. It is up to you as a health professional to figure out what those problems are, and then create nutrition services and programs to solve them.
But in order to figure out what your client's problems are, we need you to get into a problem-focused mindset. It sounds simple, but many health professionals really struggle with this.
When identifying their ideal client, many health professionals pinpoint characteristics like age, gender or occupation.
These are your client’s characteristics. Not their problems.
The fact that your ideal client is female, 30 to 40 years old and a stay at home mom is good to know, but it says nothing about their problems.
So before you go any further, we want you to completely change the way you think about your ideal client. Instead of thinking of them as characteristics, think of them as people who have certain health problems that need to be solved. Then, make it your number one mission to solve them.
Once you are in the right headspace, it is time to dive into creating nutrition services and programs that people will actually buy. This is a super-simple two-step process.
Step 1: Ask Your Clients About Their Problems
Now that you have committed to focusing on your client’s problems, it is time to get to know what those problems actually are. In order to do this, you are going to have to ask them.
Don’t assume.
Don’t guess.
You need to actually talk to your clients and ask them what their problems are.
Honestly, we know this is the point where we will lose many of you. We know you are probably thinking, “No way. I’m not going to ask my ideal clients what their problems are.”
Because having these types of conversations can be uncomfortable, right?
But we can tell you with extreme certainty that the health professionals who are talking to their clients and understand their problems are the ones that are succeeding. So buckle in, get a bit uncomfortable and commit to having real conversations because it can make or break your business.
You can have these conversations face-to-face, at appointments, over the phone, on social media or anywhere else you interact with clients. It doesn’t need to be a formal interview, just a casual conversation.
Now you might be wondering, “Okay, but what do I ask my clients to find out what their problems are?”
To make having these conversations super easy for you, here are three powerful questions you can start with.
Question 1: What challenges are you facing in regards to ________?
The blank is your area of expertise.
For example, say you are a nutritionist who specializes in helping women with PCOS. You would ask “What challenges are you facing in regards to coping with PCOS?”
By asking a leading question about their current issue, specific to your area of expertise, you can quickly pick up on any problems they are experiencing.
Question 2: Can you tell me more about ______?
The blank is the problem(s) that came up in the previous question.
This is where you will dig into the real problem.
Often your client’s surface-level complaint is not actually the real problem. By asking them to tell you more about a problem they mentioned, you can dive deeper under the surface to uncover the client’s real issue. This simple question will allow you to learn so much more about the problem.
So let's go back to that nutritionist who specializes in helping women with PCOS. You ask her what challenges she is facing in regards to coping with PCOS. After she tells you about her struggle with constant breakouts, you listen and say, “Tell me more about that”.
From here, she opens up and tells you how much these breakouts affect her confidence, so she’s totally avoiding all social events and just stays at home. When she’s at home, she feels lonely, isolated and depressed and often turns to food to fill the void, which she feels is making her breakouts worse. So she feels like she is caught in this vicious cycle.
Wow. See how much more information about her problem this simple question gave you? It shifted the conversation away from the problem and towards the personal impact. What started out as her simply struggling with acne has now evolved into deeper emotional issues.
Talking about these deeper issues allows you to fully understand the bigger picture. This information will help you understand your client's problems so you can create a product or service to address them.
Question 3: In your mind, what would help resolve these issues?
This is another amazingly powerful question because if a client can tell you exactly what they want, then you better understand what to offer as a service or program to help them.
Once you have had one conversation using these questions as your guide, go have a bunch more. We can guarantee that the more people you speak to, the more you will start to see trends in the problems that they have, and what you should create as a service or program will start to become glaringly obvious.
Remember. You have to actually ask these questions to real humans to get genuine answers. You can’t guess or predict this stuff. If you take one thing away from today’s episode, please let it be to actually talk to your clients about their problems and experiences. Don’t shy away from this.
2. Create Products & Services to Solve These Problems
Now that you actually understand your client’s problems, you can create products and services to help them solve them.
Let's go back to that nutritionist who specializes in helping women with PCOS one more time.
Before you sat down and had real conversations with women with PCOS, you might have assumed that their biggest desires were to balance their hormones. But by actually talking to them, you learned that so many of them were struggling with frequent breakouts, which was having an impact on their social life, confidence and mental health.
From this, you are inspired to create a “Four Week Glowing Skin Program for Women with PCOS”. This program will be designed to solve breakouts through better nutrition, give your clients their confidence back and introduce them to other women with PCOS for emotional support and social connection.
This program speaks to their actual biggest desire: to clear up their skin and feel confident and connected so they can show up in all areas of life.
If you would have assumed that you knew what your clients wanted, you probably would be creating something around "balancing their hormones", which probably wouldn’t resonate with them. You know that their hormones are out of whack, but all they care about are these horrible breakouts, and now that you have had a conversation with them, you better understand that. Now you can help them solve that problem with an amazing program.
Instead of creating a "hormone balancing program" that doesn't resonate, you can now create a "glowing skin" program that you know can help solve your ideal client's biggest pain point, all because you took the time to actually talk to them and understand their needs.
By talking to your clients, not only do you learn more about their real problems, but you also learn how they talk about their problems, which you can use to market your services in words that resonate with them. For instance, instead of calling it “acne” in your marketing, you call it “horrible breakouts” because those are the exact words your clients used and that is what will resonate with them.
We are so proud that many of our That Clean Life members have really nailed it when it comes to creating programs and services that clearly offer a solution to the problems their clients are experiencing.
Example 1: Robyn is a holistic nutritionist who works with women who have endometriosis.
Robyn understands that her client's number one complaint is pain related to endometriosis. Knowing this, she created a “28-Day Pain Fighting Meal Plan for Women with Endometriosis”.
Example 2: Vanessa is a nutritionist who works with families dealing with autoimmune disease.
Vanessa knows that families struggle to live a normal life after an autoimmune diagnosis. Knowing this, she offers an “Autoimmune Family System” for parents of children diagnosed with autoimmune diseases to help them get back to living life on their own terms.
Example 3: Jeanine is a nutrition coach who specializes in the keto diet.
Jeanine knows that a big problem her clients come up against while following a keto diet is weight loss plateaus. Knowing this, Jeanine offers a session called the “Keto Weight Loss Stall Buster”, where she works with clients to help them overcome the plateau.
Each and every single one of these health professionals have followed our two-step approach.
- They identify their client's biggest pain points.
- They create their services and programs to address them.
As a result, they have no problem attracting clients because what they offer is actually solving a problem.
We want you to be a wildly successful health professional who releases products and services that really help people. But in order to do this, you need to get focused on your client’s problems. You need to talk to your clients, and you need to match your offerings to their problems and provide a solution that they are willing to pay for.
Remember what we said at the beginning. When no one buys, it is usually because the program or service you are offering doesn’t solve a problem for your ideal client.
Your ideal clients have problems. So start creating solutions.
