Are your solutions (programs, presentations, resources, etc) ALIGNED with your customers needs, goals, desires? Are you frustrated because you’ve got great offerings that it seems no one wants to buy — but you KNOW your expertise can help people?
Oftentimes, when we aren’t packaged properly (likely due to misalignment with how your prospects want to buy), it can feel frustrating and cause us to look for external factors to “blame.” When you struggle to book business or sell your products, the fear of failure often sets in, causing you to second-guess your calling.
The next step of the Marketing Gameplan, Package Your Solutions to Solve Your Customers’ Problems, can breathe new life into your business by magnetizing your offerings so finding and attracting customers becomes almost effortless.
Learn more in this week’s podcast and also be sure to check out Misty’s “How Should I Market Myself“ program – a step-by-step, how-to guide for getting the marketplace to listen when you speak.
For many independent professionals, knowing where to “fish” for good prospects is a crucial step in putting together a solid marketing plan. Once you know where your most promising prospects gather, you can begin to identify opportunities to connect with, serve, and support them.
Key questions for finding the best prospects
There are a few key questions that can help you profile your customer and hone in on fantastic opportunities for serving them.
Ask yourself:
Who have I enjoyed serving most? Who has given me a particularly profound sense of joy, contribution and fulfillment?
Is there a group or industry that seems drawn to my work?
Who is giving me the most referrals? Why?
Do I have professional and/or corporate experience in a field or industry that would benefit from the ways I want to make a difference?
While there is no fool-proof road map to uncovering your ideal customer, there are some things you can do to begin identifying where in the marketplace a pool of great prospects exists for your work. I’ve offered several key research strategies for finding customers in my article, “How do I find good customers.” Tops on the list is uncovering which associations provide a gathering-place for people whose needs, frustrations, goals, hopes and dreams are aligned with what you offer.
Network with clients through associations
Associations are basically professional affinity groups, and there is an association for every kind of profession and professional imaginable. When you’re contemplating a certain customer profile, sometimes it can be helpful to learn what associations are acting as a hub for these people; then, you can find out what opportunities might exist for you to network and showcase within them through local meetings, national events, trade shows and industry publications, etc.
There are three resources that might help you find the association(s) you’re looking for:
American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership – Directory of Associations. This resource is easy-to-use and updated daily. We recommend using the “Association Name Contains” search feature. This resource will show you the associations, but not their email or web address. You will have to search the web with the association name to find the right URL.
Weddles Association Directory. This list is broken down by subject or industry, and will link you directly to the corresponding website. There isn’t a feature that allows you to do a search of the entire database. You will need to select from their industry categories.
“I need to find someone to market for me.” I heard this twice last week. And I’ve heard it dozens, if not hundreds, of times before when talking with the coaches, speakers and other experts. “If someone else would just do the marketing for me—and I’ll pay them!— my business and life would be perfect.”
Ahhhh, wouldn’t that be great? I mean, I agree with the sentiment, though the reality is that I don’t know ANY successful independent professional that just shows up and collects a check. It just doesn’t work that way.
No one can connect with your prospects like you can
To be successful in this business, you have to learn to be comfortable talking to prospects about what they’re struggling with and articulating how you can help. No one is going to connect as powerfully with the people you serve than you. An assistant isn’t you. He or she isn’t going to be able to intuit and navigate the challenges your prospects are facing like you can.
You can’t be disconnected and market yourself successfully
Oftentimes, the reasons people have trouble marketing themselves is they haven’t take the time to really understand who they serve, why the marketplace needs them, and how they need to package themselves to connect. It’s a pipe dream to think that you can somehow disconnect from this process of figuring things out and leave the “heavy lifting” to others. I mean, uncovering these distinctions radically changes how you deliver your content and how you serve your clients. Being disconnected from the process means that you aren’t making the necessary adjustments to how you deliver, and I believe this incongruence is pretty much the number one reason people struggle to get their businesses off the ground.
Now, you can get help finding leads, you can often set up systems to manage your grassroots marketing (newsletters, blog posts, etc), and you may even be able to find help networking. But at the end of the day, marketing your business successfully to a closed deal doesn’t often happen without your involvement.
You have to be involved in your marketing
This often comes up when I start working with a new client – I won’t take a client on who just wants us to figure everything out for them and “do all the marketing.” While we have a great team of people who DO help our clients with marketing, we can’t “figure things out” without the client’s involvement in strategy and content creation; oftentimes, the work we do serves as a backdrop for our clients as they interface with the marketplace and close deals.
In my last post, we talked about asking ourselves the powerful question, Who must I become to successfully complete this quest?One of the answer is: you must become comfortable talking to people about your business, and engaging with others to create powerful strategies for connecting with the marketplace and resolving problems. If you feel resistance to engaging in this way, go deeper. Introspectively examine why, understand your own psychology so you can break through.
All of your emotional upsets—personal and professional—represent points of resistance. Problems become pervasive when we hold negative emotions related to them. What does this mean? An event is just an event. We tend, however, to project our own meaning onto events. If an event doesn’t go as planned, as our projected ideal said it should, we are upset.
But the event itself is neither “good” or “bad.” We’ve all had things happen that seemed “bad” at the time but turned out to be a blessing later on.
If we accept that things are the way they are—without wanting to change how they are in the moment—we let go of our resistance and allow things to be. In doing so, we can enter a state of flow where we are more resourceful and better equipped to navigate life’s challenges.
Embrace marketing your business as an opportunity for you to truly make your work indispensable and to connect powerfully with those you are called to serve.
Question: Are you engaged with the marketing of your business? What do you believe about marketing yourself that locks you up?
In my last blog post, I told you about my advice to one of my clients who struggled to find a way to explain to his clients what he does: No one cares about what you do, so why bother trying to explain it?
When my coaching colleagues get together to talk about how to get business, this question often comes up frequently as: How can I educate people about coaching and why they should have a coach?
I often chime in to these conversations. I understand why my colleagues say this, and I get that they’re frustrated because it seems the marketplace might not “get” who they are or why they’re valuable. The challenge with this thinking, though, is it focuses your attention on the wrong thing: you.
Focus on your potential clients, not on yourself
Here’s the truth: few people really care to learn about your business if they don’t see that it’s valuable to them. Rather than focusing on talking about your business, focus instead on listening to them talk about their business, their situation, their needs, frustrations, hopes and dreams.
Empathize with them, show them that you understand their situation.
Ask good questions that shift their paradigm and help them realize another way of looking at things.
Offer resources that might be useful to them (have you thought about checking out XXXX?).
Share stories of clients who’ve found themselves in similar situations to your prospect and if they seem open, let them know how you helped.
Naturally, they will begin to “pick up” on the fact that you have something really valuable to offer, and they’ll begin to ask you questions about what they should do.
Be valuable in the moment
And when they ask questions, answer what you can in the moment. Don’t “withhold” because they aren’t paying you. Be valuable. If they ask questions that can’t be answered in the moment, tell them so, and let them know that you have programs or resources that could help them when the time is right. But don’t just say You can hire me to help you. TURNOFF. Truly be helpful in the moment … if they’re truly a prospect, they need your expertise beyond that question. The goodwill and credibility you build in the moment is far more valuable to you than the opinion you have that you might be tempted to withhold.
If you’re resonating with them, and if they’ve got sufficient leverage to make a change and create a different result in their circumstance, if you’re connecting and making sense, it won’t matter what title you give yourself; what will matter to them is that you obviously can help them.
Create an opportunity for a meaningful conversation, not to make a pitch
When it comes to getting business, it’s far more important that you understand who your customers are, what their pain / frustrations are, what they’re striving for, how they’re getting stuck, what outcomes they’re seeking, what dreams they have that are tied to realizing their goal, what conversations they’re having with others or themselves to try to resolve their dilemma, where they’re having conversations and what resources (however inept) they’re tapping to help them resolve their dilemma. Your ability to connect with them and create opportunities to have meaningful conversations is far more useful than a pithy line or “positioning statement.”
Don’t get me wrong … each of my clients has a succinct way they position themselves and a “statement” we develop they can use. But I don’t guide them to “focus” on figuring that out—instead, we focus on figuring their clients out, and looking for opportunities to connect with their needs in the marketplace.
Listen, Learn and Grow Your Business
To help you with this process, download the Emotional Triggers/Pleasure States tables. Spend some time answering questions from the How Should I Market Myself? worksheet. When you’re networking this week, look for opportunities to have conversations with your prospects where you learn about them—really LISTEN—and ask good questions, offer support, look for opportunities to be of service. LEARN. These are the kinds of opportunities you must master creating to fill your pipeline and grow your business.
I’ve been talking to quite a few clients lately about the publicity strategy: Will it help me grow my business? How do I know if it’s the right strategy for me? How do I choose a good publicist?
Publicity (we call it a “Stacking Strategy” because it super-charges a solid core marketing strategy [Visibility, Networking, Grassroots Marketing] – discussed thoroughly in How Should I Market Myself?) is typically implemented by hiring either a press release writer, a publicist, or an article submissions coordinator to generate media coverage (broadcast media interviews or publication in online / print media) for your platform (book, consulting, expert status, etc).
There are so many factors that determine your success with the publicity strategy. First, say you are interviewed by a high-profile news program like the CBS Evening Newswith Katie Couric. Can you expect your phone to ring with new business? How do you leverage this exposure? What can you expect if the Wall Street Journal prints one of your articles?
Media coverage rarely causes your phone to ring with people wanting to hire you. If you get a couple of calls, you’re lucky. If you’ve hired a publicist on a monthly retainer, it can cost you thousands of dollars for your 2 minutes of fame, with virtually nothing to show for it in the end.
Print media, especially the reprint of your articles, tend to be more effective at generating traffic for your website. It’s important to note that print media is typically better at selling books than services (speeches, consulting, etc). Very few independent professionals get their money’s worth (ie making back the money they invested) from hiring publicists (sorry, my sweet publicity friends). You’re better off hiring a reputable expert to write or edit your article for print / internet media and to submit it. Expect to pay between $250 to $500 per article. Want to triple or quadruple the number of publications that print your article? Follow up your email / fax blitz with a phone call to the top 50 editors on the list.
Getting an article printed is kind of like getting your bachelor’s degree: it’s nice to hang the certificate on your wall, but your phone isn’t going to start ringing with high-paying job offers. It’s up to you to leverage the degree when you’re applying for jobs. The same with a print article: you can leverage the fact that you’ve been published by USA Today or appeared on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric to build your credibility as you actively market your services.
I don’t recommend that any of my clients implement the publicity strategy unless they have a strong attraction strategy coupled with a strong Marketing Gameplan that is generating interested, qualified prospects. The publicity strategy will not save your business! It’s a great accomplice to a growing business that is getting some good traction in the marketplace, but it will not initiate new traction or momentum by itself.
My Cart
“I need to find someone to market for me.” I heard this twice last week. And I’ve heard it dozens, if not hundreds, of times before when talking with the coaches, speakers and other experts. “If someone else would just do the marketing for me—and I’ll pay them!— my business and life would be perfect.”
I’ve been talking to quite a few clients lately about the publicity strategy: Will it help me grow my business? How do I know if it’s the right strategy for me? How do I choose a good publicist?
