Using Frameworks to Help Your Clients Confidently Say, “Yes!” to Working With You
Frameworks: using them for your business might sound complicated, confusing, heavy, or even boring, but I promise it doesn’t have to be that way!
Frameworks are just a really great way to succinctly convey information about what your business offers to your potential clients.
Think of frameworks as one way of taking all of the awesomeness of you and what you do and then distilling it down into something very clear. That way, your potential clients can immediately understand what you do, what they can expect, what they’re going to get, and what’s going to happen.
But if thinking about creating a framework has you like, “Where do I even begin? How do I even do this? This feels like too much; this feels like busy work,” I hear you!
That’s why I put together a simpler way to think about frameworks, and I’m sharing it with you right here!
There’s No Right or Wrong Way to Create Your Framework
First, the good news: you don’t have to figure this out today, and it doesn’t have to be set in stone!
So before you get worried and start thinking, “Oh God, here’s yet another thing I have to do in my business, and I just don’t have the brain space for more,” know that this is something you can keep in the back of your mind until the time feels right.
Logistically, there’s really no right or wrong way to create your framework.
There’s no magic number of steps that you need to have. I’m not about cookie-cutter or one-size-fits-all frameworks – I’m about what works for you.
From a practical standpoint, though, you probably want between 3 - 9 parts to your framework. That’s the sweet spot, because anything less than 3 parts might not be enough, and having more than 9 parts is going to get confusing and hard to convey.
You can even have frameworks across the whole of your business, too.
Your mission? Framework.
The work you do? Framework.
You can even have frameworks for each of your offers, especially if you have courses or programs that take people through a process.
But again — don’t get overwhelmed trying to create all this at once. Your frameworks will reveal themselves to you over time.
Your Process Will Become Clearer Over Time
If you’re someone who’s newer to business, it’s normal to feel a little murky around what your framework is. If you’ve only been doing this for three months and you’ve only worked with two people in that time, it can be really hard to figure out what the hell you’re doing with clients, let alone distill it into a framework that communicates that to other people.
But don’t beat yourself up – as you keep doing your work and you serve more and more clients, your process will become more clear over time.
I honestly think you need a bit of time doing your thing in the special way you do it in order for your framework to reveal itself to you.
But if you’ve been in business for a while and you’re regularly working with clients, then decoding your framework is a lot simpler.
Doing The Work is Key to Finding Your Framework
Three years ago, in my first mastermind, we were talking about frameworks… and I had a really, really hard time.
While I wasn’t new to business, I was new to this business. And I was like, “Oh my God, what the hell is my framework!?”
Then, one day when I was driving around running errands, it hit me out of nowhere. Three words just popped into my head: stabilize, strategize, scale.
So I Voxed one of my longest-term clients at the time, Amanda. I said, “Amanda, oh my God, I just got a download from the universe. I have to run this by you. Does this sound like what we worked on together?”
And as I was saying it, I realized that last word wasn’t scale… it was sell.
As Amanda confirmed back to me, “Yes, oh my gosh, that’s totally it!” I realized that through working with all of these different entrepreneurs who were scaling, I was always going through these three steps with each of them:
How do we stabilize the revenue that’s already coming in?
How do we strategize the next offer or iteration?
How do we sell the new thing?
Those are the three parts I take all of my clients – people who’ve grown a successful business and are now looking to scale – through.
And this framework only came to me because I was doing the work.
When I looked back on the process I was using to help my clients, my framework became super clear.
And then?
It became easy.
I could put my framework on sales pages. I could talk about it. This framework became a simpler way for me to talk to my audience about my secret sauce, how I work with people, and what my clients can expect in the process of working together.
Later, I was able to use this process to create other frameworks!
I realized that what I really help people with is designing offers that are in perfect alignment with their strengths, their schedule, the scope of the work they want to do (including who they want to work with), and their personal capacity.
In my two-hour Next Big Thing Intensive, we frame out all of the details of a new offer, create a launch plan, and get it sold. And I help them with a simple workflow plan in order to get it all done without adding a bunch more crap to their to-do list.
The framework for that offer has three parts, too: frame, flex, and flow.
Apparently, three is just a magic number for me! For you, it might be five or seven, but for me, my brain just works in threes.
3 Steps to Uncover Your Framework
If you’re ready to create a framework and figure out what it is you’re actually doing with people before you commit to a specific process, here’s what I suggest:
1. bRaIn DumP
List out all of your clients and just start a brain dump of what you did for them.
Do this for everyone. Get every chunk of what you did out of your brain and onto paper, and don’t edit or judge.
We’re super close to our own stuff, so there will probably be really juicy bits in there that you didn’t realize you were doing because they come so naturally to you.
2. lOoK fOr CoMmOnAlItIEs
Once you get it all out and get that 30,000-foot view, it’s time to look for commonalities.
If you have a really good friend in the world of business, maybe you can do this with them! It can help to bounce these ideas off of somebody else, and it’s especially useful if you’re really stuck.
Mull it over.
Look for themes.
Look for trends.
You can even reach out to past clients or look at your testimonials.
Once you see those common trends start to bubble up, you can start to condense them into a framework.
3. AdJuSt OvEr tImE
Remember, none of this is set in stone, and you do not have to have this done, like, tomorrow in order to succeed or to sell more.
Maybe you start with three parts and eventually realize it’s more like five. That’s okay!
Frameworks Foster Confidence and Trust
Remember, creating a framework isn’t meant to be just more busy work – it’s a way to clearly articulate to your potential clients what they can expect from you.
When people feel like there’s clarity, like they can really see the big picture and there’s an intentional framework you’re going to walk them through, it creates a level of trust and a sense of competence that’s really crucial before someone feels comfortable enough to spend money with you.
See? Creating and using a framework in your business does not have to be confusing, heavy, or boring.
If you can say, “this is the safe, proven process I’m going to take you through, and this is how I’m going to get you the results you want,” then people are more likely to confidently say yes!
