The Accepted Authority: Recent Episodes
Greg Roworth
In The Accepted Authority, Greg Roworth discusses how owners of consulting firms can generate a predictable flow of premium opportunities to grow their business. Each weekly show features a lively discussion of a common growth challenge, covering strategies, tools, mistakes and how Greg has achieved results with clients or in their own business. Always useful, entertaining, and never more than 20 minutes. Sponsored by Business Flightpath.
Today, I want to discuss the five stages of marketing your consultancy practice.
From my experience with hundreds of consultancy firms and my own practice, I've identified five distinct ways consultancy firms market their services. These stages align with the historical ages of growth: Stone Age, Agricultural Age, Industrial Age, Information Age, and the Conceptual Age.
Let's explore each of these in detail.
Most consultancy firms tend to work on promotion as their marketing strategy, judging by their websites and the way they present themselves and their firms both online and in networking meetings. However, from what I see, promotion creates resistance and triggers questions that raise doubts about competence, trustworthiness and reliability.
On the other hand, the few consultants that use positioning as their marketing strategy, avoid triggering those same questions, especially when they are using authority positioning.
In this episode, I explain why authority positioning is a much better strategy than promotion, when it comes to attracting and acquiring more premium level clients who are ready to buy your services.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
Schedule a free 60 minute strategy session at https://businessflightpath.com/ss
There is one critical question your marketing must answer, if you are going to be able to create relevant marketing messages that connect with your ideal clients.
I see a lot of marketing from consultancy firms that fails to answer this question. The result is failure to attract the attention of ideal clients and an inability to attract regular new sales opportunities.
When you do answer this question, it makes the world of difference.
You find potential clients seeking you out. They come to you ready to buy. They already see you as the market authority when they come.
How can the answer to one question make such a difference.
Find out in this week's Accepted Authority episode.
For more information go to https://businessflightpath.com
To book a 60 minute strategy session, go to https://businessflightpath.com/ss
Many consultants have a fear that if they give away any or much of their valuable intellectual property in their marketing process, the recipients will use that material to solve their own problems instead of coming to the consultant who provided the material to ask for their help.
The conundrum is that we know that if we give away some of our IP it will enhance our authority positioning and attract some potential clients to want to work with us. However, if we give too much, we will suffer from people using that information without our help.
The question is: how much should we give away?
How much is too much?
How should we create the content that we provide our market in a way that it attracts them and motivates them to want our help instead of doing it themselves?
In this episode, I answer those questions and describe a successful format for providing educational content that elevates your authority and gets clients wanting to work with you, no matter what price you charge.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath or book a call with Greg at https://businessflightpath.com/ss
Most consultancy firms make a big mistake in their marketing that slows down their progress to new sales and acquiring new clients or may prevent them having an opportunity with some potential clients at all.
There is a predominant tool on most consulting firms' websites that asks for too much too soon. That is typically the innocuous "Contact Us" form. What comes with that form most often is the offer of a free initial consultation. What is meant to be an easy and fast way for potential clients to move towards working for you is actually the biggest barrier. That is the case because it violates natural human relationship building principles.
There is a faster way to sales that is achieved by actually slowing down the process. However, it ends up being faster, because it mirrors natural human relationship principles.
In this week's episode, I explain how the fast way to sales ends up being slower than the seemingly slower approach I recommend, an how mirroring natural human relationship development principles in your marketing will get you clients faster.
Discover more at https://businessflightpath.com
Learn about Strategic Authority Marketing here: https://businessflightpath.com/sam
In many consulting firms, operational processes are more complex than they need to be. Rather than offering a wide range of services to potential clients in order to achieve higher revenues, in my experience, operating with a focused specialization is what achieves greater simplicity in running the business, greater operating efficiencies, lower operational costs and greater profits. The fact that it also created differentiation from competitors and attracts more qualified clients is an added bonus that should not be ignored.
In this episode, I detail why having a focused specialization should be the strategy employed by your consultancy firm and use a specific example of where I have applied this strategy with one of my clients and how it significantly increased their sales and profits, while reducing complexity in their business at the same time.
Go to https://businessflightpath.com for more details or book a strategy session with me at https://businessflightpath.com/ss
Many consultancy firms do a lot of activities in their marketing with the aim of attracting their target market. But do these activities actually attract?
A lot of the activities I see consultancy firms engaging in don't get the results the owners of those firms are looking for. They don't attract.
Instead of doing things to try to attract more clients, I believe more owners of consultancy firms should be focusing first on making their firm more attractive to the target market. Many firms are not attractive, therefore whatever activities they try to attract their target market will fail.
What does it take to be attractive to your target market?
In this episode, I reveal the three essential elements of making your consultancy firm so attractive to your target market that you will have prospects lining up at your (virtual) door hoping you will take them on as clients.
More information at https://businessflightpath.com
One of the most common scenarios that consultancy firms experience is what I call the sales roller coaster. That is where the firm goes from being busy with client delivery work for a while, maybe a month or two, and then goes through a subsequent period of having not enough work and needing to find new clients or projects. The main reason this occurs is that when the firm is experiencing a shortage of work, the focus shifts to finding more work.
However, the activities involved in finding new clients or projects are labour intensive and typically not the favourite type of work that consultants enjoy. It does get results though, which means that when the need arises, these activities, typically networking oriented, are the fall back strategy that consultants use. But when they succeed in generating new work, the focus shifts to getting the work done and happily, the networking activities are dropped in favour of doing the client delivery work that is either more enjoyable or more likely to generate more income in the short term.
This common approach is what keeps growth for the firm limited and commonly, even though over the months, sales results are up and down like a roller coaster ride, the annual results somehow tend to be about the same as the last few years. Growth hits a plateau that seems the limit to how high the firm can go.
The only way to break through this plateau and avoid the sales roller coaster syndrome is to develop a consistent marketing outreach system that operates continuously in the background without requiring the time and involvement of the consultants who are focused on client delivery work. If you only ever operate with a short term focus and continue to create the roller coaster ride by continually shifting focus to marketing or delivery when the need arises, nothing will change.
In this podcast episode, I reveal how to change the roller coaster scenario and avoid the ups and downs in work loads and short term revenue, by building a system that provides consistency and predictability in client acquisition and provides the platform for growth beyond the revenue plateau you may be experiencing.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
For most consultancy firms, client acquisition is not a systemtic process. Typically, we get clients through referrals and maybe networking, which ends up being a referral process too.
Unless we have our marketing systems perfectly dialled in, we cannot expect our client acquisition to be consistent or predictable. When this is the case, we have no confidence in being able to grow our business, and perhaps even no confidence about when and how our next client will turn up.
There are three steps to systematic client acquisition. The first and last of these are probably reasonably well understood, even if not well executed a lot of the time.
The first is what I call connection. We first have to make a connection with our likely prospects, whether that is through advertising or other organic methods. We have to get on their radar and we have to have some sort of interaction where we get their name and, or at least, their email address and any other information that helps us know who they are.
The third step is quite obvious. I call it conversion. That's when we convert the prospect into becoming a paying client.
Both these steps should be systemized.
The middle step however, is not well understood. However it is the critical step in the process that creates the bridge between connection and conversion. Even if you think you might know what this step is, it's my bet that you don't understand it in the way I explain it in this podcast episode. Most people get this step wrong, which makes it ineffective and leads to a lot of hard work with little to show for it.
Check out the podcast episode to find out what it is and how to get it right.
More information at https://businessflightpath.com
I believe there is actually a lot of confusion about the importance of branding and what branding actually is for many owners of consultancy firms. In this episode, I reveal my take on what branding really is and how we can waste a lot of time and money when we get this wrong.
In my experience, many consultants go about branding the wrong way, in a way that is ineffective and potentially harmful to the business. When you go about it the right way, you create connection by being more relevant to your target market. When you use an authority positioning strategy to create your brand, your target market creates your brand for you, which creates much more demand for your services than when you try to do it yourself.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
Many consultants make the mistake of hurrying an potential client towards the sale, without realizing that this process violates the normal buying journey that all potential clients take.
Our approach to selling is more like seeing the selling process as an event that happens around the sales meeting, instead of a journey that the client can take with you. It is your job as the consultant to provide the vehicle for the client to be able to take that journey with you. If you do not provide that vehicle for them, they will find someone else's vehicle to take that journey on. When that happens, it is unlikely they will come to you when they are ready to buy.
In this episode, I describe how you can build your marketing strategy to align with the clients' typical buying strategy and how to create the vehicle that they will be able to ride towards buying with you.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
Many consultancy firms are great at satisfying demand for their services, but not so great at creating demand for their services.
Most consultants start out in business for themselves and develop a team around them because they are good at what they do. They already demonstrate a level of authority in their field, especially when they can receive referrals that helps them grow the business. However, at some point, referrals cannot be relied upon to continue to scale a consultancy business. At this point, we need to become proactive at creating demand for our consultancy services.
The challenge here is that most consultants have never been taught about marketing. The result is that we tend to copy what we see others doing, and create the same type of ineffective marketing approach that is typical of consultancy firms. Hinge Marketing research has identified that around 87% of professional service firms state that marketing and clients acquisition is their biggest challenge.
Most consultants end up with a marketing approach that creates too much pressure on the sales process, where we need to try to convince our prospective client that they would be better off using our services. The typical response from that process is, "Send me your proposal."
When we create a demand creation machine in our business, we change the dynamics so that we bring prospective clients to our sales meetings already pre-sold, virtually demanding that we take them on as a client.
In this week's Accepted Authority podcast episode, I reveal the three steps on the demand creation machine that are required to create demand for your services from your ideal clients and have them coming to you demanding to take them on as a client.
Discover more at https://businessflightpath.com
In this episode of The Accepted Authority Podcast, I discuss the difference between a consultancy practice and a consultancy business.
I see most of the consultancy firms that I come across being run as a consultancy practice, which tend to end up being complex operations lacking consistency and predictability around the outcomes they are striving for. This is in contrast to the few that are run as a consultancy business, which tend to be systemized, scalable efficient operations with consistency and predictability of outcomes.
I describe what makes the difference and how you can create a successful consultancy business, which not only performs at higher levels, but also creates more freedom of choice for the owners.
As we come to the end of 2023, I'm hearing thought from many consultants about how glad they are the 2023 is nearly over, but that they are worried about how the challenging economic environment might affect them in the new year.
What appears to be uppermost in their thoughts is how the external environment will impact them. What my concern is however, is how are they planning to improve what they have been doing in their businesses and in their marketing, so that they can control their own destiny.
In this episode, I describe a process of analysis that I have used successfully to help you assess what's been working well for you and what hasn't, over the past year. Once you work this out, you can decide what you can do more of and what to eliminate.
I think you'll be surprised at where I suggest you focus this analysis, as it's not a common approach. However, this approach has created significant improvement potential for both my companies and my clients who have taken this route over the years. I believe it has the potential to provide the greatest impact and upside potential for your firm, so that you can make 2024 your best year ever.
If you would like to learn more, go to https://businessflightpath.com.
If you would like to speak with me directly about your situation, go to https://businessflightpath.com/ss.
Many consultants display and obvious need for speed when it comes to selling their consulting services. However, this need for speed is counter productive to results.
Your need for speed in selling your consultancy services undermines your authority, which ultimately undermines your sales effectiveness and your financial results.
In this episode, I explain why many consultants display a need for speed, but also describe how to sidestep that need for speed to be able to establish, maintain and assert authority through the entire sales process, from the point of initial enquiry to the delivery of results the client will be delighted in.
After all, it's not just about winning the sale. It's about working with quality clients who enable you to do your best work so that you can deliver the results your clients need, not necessarily what they thought they wanted when they first made an enquiry.
Find our more about how to become the accepted authority in your market at https://businessflightpath.com
Marketing your consulting services as a consultant or owner of a consulting firm is often a challenge to conduct effectively. By effectively, I mean that your investment in marketing actually delivers new clients rather than just getting exposure on social media or being seen by your market but not getting results.
The marketing efforts I see from consultants often seems to lack the right strategy. I see lots of tactical marketing attempts that promote consultants and their services, but they fall flat in terms of building authority and getting sales.
In this episode, I discuss why most marketing for consulting services fails to deliver desired results and how to do marketing effectively, to get new clients and new sales.
I invite you to access our free resources to learn more about effective marketing of consulting services at https://businessflightpath.com.
Many owners of consultancy firms struggle to differentiate their consulting practice from their competitors and often have to compete against them to present proposals. Often in these situations, the cheapest quote wins. This is not a situation you want to be in.
The challenge around lack of differentiation basically comes down a failure to do the deep thinking and the hard work to develop a winning competitive strategy. Without a winning competitive strategy, your firm is typically seen as a commodity service provider, just like your other competitors.
In this podcast episode, I reveal the key elements of developing a competitive strategy and discuss a useful tool that has proven to be a very effective aid in creating a competitive strategy, enabling you to ascend to authority position in your market.
Learn more about strategic authority marketing at https://businessflightpath.com.
What does it take as an owner of a consultancy practice to be regarded as the accepted authority in your field?
Does it need someone to appoint you to that position?
Of course that's not how it happens.
Does it need us to claim that position?
Well, yes and no.
We can't just claim to be the authority and then go on doing what we've always done and just keep doing the same things as our competitors do.
We have to be different and stand out so that our target market acknowledges that we are the authority.
So, we have to claim that position, but it's our clients and target market that acknowledges that position for us.
How do we make that happen?
Listen to the podcast to find out, or go to https://businessflightpath.com to discover more.
Many consultancy firms suffer from inconsistent workloads which are the result of inconsistent lead flow. Inconsistent lead flow comes about because of the manual labour involved in the way most consultants attend to the activities required to generate new leads.
What if you could reduce the time and effort required to create lead flow?
In this episode of the Accepted Authority podcast, I reveal the process I have developed that has enabled me and my clients to create consistent and predictable lead flow and client sales flow.
One of the biggest factors involved in generating leads from marketing. compared to referral generated leads, is the lack of trust that is not there from the start like it is with referrals. That lack of trust is a major barrier to not only getting more leads, but to being able to convert those leads when they turn into sales meetings. In this episode, I reveal the six step system to building trust and authority with potential clients during their buying journey and how to influence them to want to buy your services, even before they come to your sales meeting.
Get more information on this process by downloading a free ebook, Strategic Authority Marketing at https://members.businessflightpath.com/sam-offer
Book a complimentary strategy session call with me to unpack your current sales and marketing processes and let me show you how to make improvements that enable you to gain more premium clients consistently and predictably at https://businessflightpath.com/ss
Selling consultancy services comes with a specific set of problems that relate to the levels of trust and belief that is established with your potential client. The typical lead that comes from a referral has led us into some habits in the sales meeting that don't help us with a marketing generated lead.
Unless we have thought about the challenges in this scenario and have planned and developed a system to overcome these challenges, ideally before we ever turn up to sales meeting, we tend to get treated like a servant in sales meetings and only ever have the opportunity to present a proposal on providing the service the client tells us what they want, rather than being able to proscribe a solution that, from our expertise, we know is what they really need. We have no power in these sales meetings to be able to influence the client so that we can provide them with our best service.
Selling your service with power and authority is about changing the dynamics in the sales meetings, so that you are positioned as the authority and have the power to influence the clients' thought processes during the process of marketing and selling, so that the come to you predisposed to buy what you recommend to provide the ideal outcome for them. This process builds trust and credibility before the sales meeting, making the sales meetings much more effective and powerful and helps to eliminate your competition from consideration, because of the authority and power you have.
Learn more on the podcast, or attend the upcoming webinar I am running on this system. See more here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/sellyourservicewithpowerandauth7126033081521590273/
When it comes to selling your consulting services at a sales meeting, what is the stance you adopt?
If your stance is to try to win the sale every time, perhaps you actually undermine your authority. Your attitude towards the sale and your demeanour in the sales meeting, will greatly affect the level of authority you portray, which will either enhance or undermine your authority.
Have you ever tried to change the dynamic in the sales meeting to where you are interviewing the client to see if they are qualified to become your client, instead of being interviewed by the client to see if you are worthy to win their business?
In this episode, I explain how changing the dynamic in the sales meeting like that gives you so much more authority in the meeting, and so much more power in achieving the results you want.
More information at https://businessflightpath.com
Most consultants are very good at communicating who they are and what they do, but most potential clients aren't interested in that, until they know it's relevant. Being able to frame the answer to the question, "What do you do?" in terms of an offer, is much more engaging, much more relevant to the right prospect and much more effective in extending the conversation.
In this episode, I discuss the value of the offer and how to construct an offer in a way that captures your ideal clients' interest and gets them to want to know more. In consulting services, we have to focus on building a relationship that lasts, rather than making a sale. Using an offer, or a series of offers, in your marketing is a highly effective way to start a relationship and extend the conversation strategically, so that your ideal clients are drawn towards you and towards buying your services in a way that builds trust and credibility before ever getting to a sales meeting.
Discover more at https://businessflightpath.com
When you are ready to scale your consultancy practice you need to be able to generate new business beyond the reliance on referrals that come organically from doing great work with clients, or through networking. You can't scale a business until you have consistency and predictability around client acquisition.
This is the time when having a marketing strategy that delivers a consistent stream of new client opportunities is vital. Using an authority positioning strategy is key to that aim.
In this episode, I detail why using an authority positioning strategy is critical to success in scaling your consultancy practices, and expand on the benefits that derive from authority positioning. These benefits are far reaching and go beyond just finding new clients more predictably. In the podcast, I explain how authority positioning also leads to simplification of your business model. greater efficiency in your delivery and reduced costs in your operations.
Get more information at https://businessflightpath.com
When selling consultancy services, often there is a challenge because your potential clients don't know what they don't know. They sometimes don't recognize they have a problem, because what they are dealing with is the norm for them. They don't know how things could be better, even if they don't particularly like their current situation.
An assessment model is a way of showing your potential clients the gap between where they are and where they could be. When they recognize the gap, they will be motivated to make the change, which makes selling your services so much easier. Using an assessment model also has other flow on effects that help your selling to be easier, including increasing your perception of authority.
Listen to the podcast episode to the value of using an assessment model, how to create one and how they increase your clients' motivation for change.
Get help with your assessment model at https://businessflightpath.com
What does it really take to create authority and be seen as the accepted authority in your market?
Some people say you need to write a book. But how many authorities do you know who have written a book, but still have hundreds of copies sitting in their garage or cellar. They have never been best sellers, but they are still authorities in their market.
Every authority has to have a message. It's not about the vehicle that delivers the message, e.g. a book, but about having a message that attracts followers.
How do you create a message like that?
A lot of people try and get it wrong.
In this episode, I reveal the way to create a message that creates authority. If you learn this process, you will attract followers and clients without effort.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
In selling our consulting services, which is more important, trust or value.
We know that what our clients buy from us is our value. Then why is it that when we try to sell on value, we are often challenged by sales resistance and scepticism?
Most of us try to establish trust in our marketing. But so often, the way we go about it does little to enhance our trust in the mind of our market.
In this episode, I explain why trust must come before value in our marketing and sales process, even though value is so important. I also describe ways to build trust that are typical, but ineffective, as well as how to demonstrate trust in ways that see us positioned as the accepted authority in the market.
Receive a copy of 10 Mistakes That Explain Why Marketing Your Consulting Services Doesn’t Work – And How To Make It As Reliable As A Machine at https://members.businessflightpath.com/10-mistakes
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
Marketing consulting services is typically a challenge for owners of consulting firms and there are a number of critical mistakes that typically undermine the success of marketing campaigns.
In this episode, I expose the top three marketing mistakes that kill the chances of success in marketing and identify the underlying faulty beliefs many have that lead to these mistakes.
I also reveal the keys to turning the mistakes around in order to create marketing that works like a machine in delivering highly qualified and receptive opportunities consistently and predictably.
As I was only able to expose three of the ten mistakes I have identified in my 30 years of experience working with consulting firms, I have prepared a guide, titled 10 Mistakes That Explain Why Marketing Your Consulting Services Doesn’t Work – And How To Make It As Reliable As A Machine.You may have free access to a copy of the 10 Mistakes guide at:
https://members.businessflightpath.com/10-mistakes
In many consulting firms, marketing is an activity that is often delegated to a junior person, or someone whose job it is to publish content to increase the visibility of the firm. In this episode, I expose the futility of that approach and reveal from my personal experience, how I was able to overcome my own ineptitude around marketing and ultimately take responsibility for marketing so that it achieve the result of being the catalyst for our firm attracting premium clients consistently and predictably.
Taking personal responsibility for marketing in your consulting practice is a must, if you ever want it to be an activity that gets real results instead of an activity you are ticking the box on, because it's something you think needs to be done. In this episode, I discuss why most of us, as leaders in our firm, would rather abdicate our responsibility for marketing our consulting services. But also, I tell you about my journey out of the mire and show you how you can become responsible for marketing in a way that makes sense, as well as dollars from new premium clients.
Learn more at https://businessflightpath.com
As consultants looking for new clients, it's important to establish a level of authority when someone comes across us, whether we have initiated the contact or if they have stumbled upon some of our content. Without that authority, we can easily undermine our efforts that have earned their attention and perhaps even gained their interest.
However, without the assets we need to be seen as the authority, we fail to answer the questions our potential clients will have about our capabilities, and level of understanding of their situation and whether we can actually solve their problems.
In this episode, I highlight two personal experiences where the potential service provider, offering me their services, has failed the authority test and left me wondering how credible they are, which meant that even though I might have been interested in what they were offering, they had failed to gain my trust that was needed for me to take the next step to contact them.
I then further detail what is required and what is worth investing your time and effort into to be able to build the assets to be seen as the authority.
If you need support to help you with this process, please reach out to me through my website at https://businessflightpath.com
Many consultants use content such as articles, video training, ebooks, webinars, etc to educate potential clients and attract them to their services. However, most such content merely provides information to the consumer, without them taking the action that the producer of the content wants, e.g. booking a sales meeting.
In this episode, I reveal a principle arising from a historical event from 400BC, that makes the difference between content that informs and content that compels action. We want the consumers of our content not just to learn something from our content, but to be compelled to take action because of it. I highlight the important concepts you must employ to ensure your content is action compelling content and not just one of the many informative pieces you will find on LinkedIn or wherever else you post content.
If, after listening to the podcast, you would like to explore how you can produce action compelling content more often, I invite you to book a call with me by going to this link:
https://businessflightpath.com/ss
The Accepted Authority podcast talks about how to position yourself and your firm as the authority, but that begs the question, "Who are you the authority for?"
In this episode, I highlight the need for focusing on your premium clients to be seen as the authority for them. Instead of attracting a mixed bag of clients of different types and profiles, why shouldn't you focus your marketing on attracting more clients exactly like the clients that are your best clients now? To achieve that, you need to know how to identify them, how to connect with them and how to become irresistible to them so they seek you out and make your sales meetings easy and more successful. Then you end up with better clients, a better business, a more satisfied and motivated team and a better life.
What is the right focus for marketing your consultancy services or consulting firm?
Many people would choose getting more leads as the aim of their marketing. But is that really the best focus?
In this episode, I discuss the results of a poll I conducted on LinkedIn to identify the current marketing focus for consulting firms.
The results that came in shocked me, even though they weren't that surprising.
They tell us a lot about the marketing approach of consulting firms in general. However, perhaps this is just an indication of the general lack of marketing skill and capability that exists in consultancy firms.
I believe the focus of marketing consulting services should be diametrically opposite the results that my poll uncovered. In this week's episode of the Accepted Authority, I detail why that is the case.
Selling consultancy services is often a complex process that many consultants are poorly prepared for. Many lack the understanding of what is required in order to gain an agreement from a prospective client to proceed with providing the solution.
From my experience, I have identified that in order to make a sale, you must first establish 5 mini agreements with your client. If any of these mini agreements are not achieved, your chances of making the sale are almost negligible.
In this podcast episode, I discuss the challenges to making a sale of consultancy services and detail how to achieve each of the 5 essential mini agreements that are necessary in the process.
Most consultants are not born sales people, in fact, they are not fully engaged in a sales function in their roles much at all. Many struggle with selling and would love to know how to avoid questions and endings to sales meetings like:
- Send me your proposal
- Can I speak to some of your past clients?
- We don't have this in our budget
- Let me think about it.
The real problem for most consultants trying to sell their services is that they try to sell their services.
This learned process of selling that most of us experience before getting into a position where selling our services is a prerequisite, is actually a totally wrong approach, but most of us are tripped up by it.
In this episode, I will detail the successful sales process I use to avoid those questions and having most clients ending the sales meeting with comments like, "When can we get started?" This process avoids typically selling and sales resistance and is much more user friendly than the typical process where you have to try to overcome objections and convince people to buy.
I'm sure you will love this effective sales process when you try it.
This week LinkedIn introduced a new feature. They have introduced an AI function into the content creation/ post creation process.
In this podcast episode, I discuss the value of using this feature and how to use if effectively to enhance your ability to be seen as the accepted authority.
Most marketing for consultancy firms falls short of systematically attracting new premium clients consistently and predictably, because it fails to answer the critical questions that are in the minds of the clients.
Most marketing, particularly what we see on consultancy firm websites is flawed and makes some significant mistakes that render the marketing weak and ineffective. In the podcast, I reveal the three most critical mistakes I see on consultancy firm websites. I also reveal the five critical questions your marketing must answer, if it is to penetrate the psychological defences that all buyers have, particularly when a significant investment is required. When you answer these questions satisfactorily, you will satisfy the concerns of your potential clients and see them approaching you with hope, trust and willingness to engage, in a way that your competitors could barely hope for.
In today's episode, I draw some parallels between two current events: the Tour de France bike race and the current recessionary economy that many are experiencing are are being warned about.
The Tour de France is really a series of events which have many parallels in business. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. But only one rider emerges after all the challenges of the endurance races and uphill battles as the winner. It's how that winner becomes the winner that we can take note of and use to our advantage in business when times get tough.
Listen to the episode and learn what lessons the Tour de France has for us in succeeding in our consultancy practices.
Many consultancy firms suffer from a lack of differentiation from their competitors, which leads to them being considered as a commodity in their market. This situation creates stress in the sales process where they often have to present a proposal and sharpen their pencil on pricing to win a new client.
The remedy to this scenario is to be seen as the Accepted Authority in the market. As an authority you have more power in the relationship with clients and the ability to win more sales on your own terms. But how do you transition and bridge the gap from commodity to authority?
In this podcast episode, I reveal the quick way I was able to make that transition, and it doesn’t require writing a book. I also discuss the way many consultants are getting this wrong and what to do to have immediate impact.
In this episode, I discuss the way many consultants are treated like servants in their relationships with clients. However, that is due to poor positioning and leads to the client being able to dictate the terms of the engagement and often, being able to demand cheaper pricing than you may normally charge.
Positioning your firm as the saviour, not the servant means changing the dynamics of the relationship you have with clients, putting you in charge and leading to more freedom to deliver the services your way, less demanding clients and more money from each engagement.
Listen to how to make this change in the podcast.
There is a lot said about branding for your consultancy practice, so that buyers can be made aware that you exist when they need you. You want top-of-mind awareness so that when they have a need, they will come to you. And that’s a good thing.
Brand awareness is great when our clients have a need for what we do. We hope all the brand awareness activities we have engaged in will bring those clients to us.
But, one of the biggest mistakes I see owners of consultancy firms making is to focus all their marketing on brand awareness. What they should be doing instead is focusing on buyer awareness.
Brand awareness activities – focusing on what we do, the services we provide and the name recognition we try to achieve, mostly fall on deaf ears, because they have no relevance to our buyers, even though we know that most of them really need what we do.
Buyer awareness is about being the authority. As the authority, you influence the buyer’s journey to:
o Create buyer awareness
- Show you understand their situation
- Educate them about their problem and what happens if not attended to
- Show them your unique solution, based on your knowledge of what is best for them
- Highlight the outcome they will enjoy as a result.
o Build connection, trust, value and belief.
Slow down the sale – it’s about a relationship, not a transaction.
o Selling creates pressure which is responded to with resistance
o Relationship building creates trust and openness
Build a sales and marketing system that positions your firm as the authority for them, eliminates their resistance and has them trying to sell you on taking them on as a client.
Most consultants and consultancy firms tend to wait for their clients to come to them, either from referrals, or sometimes from inbound marketing. But in my experience, waiting for clients to come to you is too slow and does not give you enough control over the process of client acquisition for you to grow your business predictably or sustainably.
When you develop and systemize the process of creating your own clients, rather than waiting for them to come to you, you can grow your business much quicker and with less frustration. You can avoid the ups and downs that many consultants experience in their sales cycles and work flows, being busy one month but quiet the next, or not knowing where your next client of project is coming from.
Find out how you can create your own clients in this podcast episode.
Often in the early days of growing your consultancy firm, any client seems like a good client. We have financial pressures that need to be met and the only way to do that is to generate more revenue from new clients. So, it seems that any client we can engage will be a big help.
However, after a while, that choice to accept any client can prove to be a poor one. What we end up with is a mixed bag of clients, some of whom are great and a pleasure to work with, but there are a whole set of others who can be problematic. Our premium clients give us a great deal of joy to work with and contribute handsomely to our profits. Our not so good clients however, can be hard to work with, they don't meet their commitments on time, they can be demanding, disruptive and difficult.
But now that we have a significant amount of business coming from these challenging clients, can we afford to make a different choice to only work with premium clients? Often we can feel trapped by thinking that if we decided to stop working with these clients, we will lose a significant amount of income that will be hard to replace. Can we afford to do that? How do we replace those clients with better ones? How do we manage the workloads for our team if we reduce the current levels that the difficult clients create? Will we survive the loss of income that those clients provide currently?
I address these questions and others in the podcast. The answers may surprise you?
Lead Magnets are often used as the ‘1st attractor’ for potential clients. They are popular because in addition to attracting your audience’s attention, when used correctly, they simultaneously educate your potential clients on why they should engage with you.
But it’s that ‘when used correctly’ that is the stumbling block. Many lead magnets are created to be informative, not transformative. They fill the client’s head with knowledge, but provide no reason to engage with it. Worse, it can lead your clients to think ‘Great, we know about this now, we can have a crack at doing it ourselves’.
In this week’s episode I talk about how to create transformative lead magnets.
While many consultants are, of course, very talented in their chosen area of expertise, it’s also very common for them to struggle with their sales processes. It’s not something we typically engage in consistently like professional salespeople do and very few professional services consultants describe themselves as natural sales people, or find sales enjoyable.
In this week’s episode I’m sharing some of the key techniques I’ve adopted over the years to create my power selling system, allowing you to sell with authority, and avoid the dreaded ‘pressure sell’.
This week I’m looking at how marketing to business has changed in a post-pandemic world. Mckinsey & co have released a feature article looking at how business to business marketing and consulting has changed in the 3 years since the pandemic hit.
What has changed in those 3 years? What changes have become part of our new normal, and what has fallen by the wayside? And what should business owners be doing as we move through 2023? That’s the topic of this week’s episode.
You can find the McKinsey & co article referenced in this week's podcast here: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/marketing%20and%20sales/our%20insights/future%20of%20b2b%20sales%20the%20big%20reframe/Future-of-B2B-sales-The-big-reframe.pdf
Being the authority in your field is about far more than just proclaiming yourself the authority. Because while nothing stops you from standing up and saying ‘Yep, I’m the authority, I know what I’m talking about, you need to come and see me’, that doesn’t have any effect until your client base believe you.
So what makes the difference between claiming to be the authority and actually being the authority? That’s the topic of this week’s episode.
This week we’re exploring the question ‘What does being the Accepted Authority look like?’ What are the hallmarks a business needs to demonstrate to be designated as the Accepted Authority by its target market? And conversely, what are the signs that a business isn’t yet there? We cover off the 3 key elements that you require to be the Accepted Authority in your Industry.
Many professional services consultants use whitepapers or eBooks as part of their marketing / attraction strategy, but not many do it well. Because the whitepapers / eBooks they create focus too much on the ‘how’ and not enough on the ‘why’. In other words, they’re not transformational.
In this week’s episode we uncover the strategy behind the successful strategic use of transformational content, including whitepapers or eBooks.
We’ve talked a lot about being the authority in your sales process. Today we delve deeper into one of the techniques you can use to become the authority – positioning yourself as the Saviour, not the Servant.
Servants do what they are told – Saviours have the authority to direct their clients. In a sales conversation, that distinction makes all the difference to your level of success.
Where does submitting a proposal fit into your sales strategy? For many Professional Services Consultants, the answer to this question is ‘When the client asks for one’. And while that might sound like a good response, it’s also damaging to your authority positioning.
Responding to a proposal on the client’s request weakens your authority position and moves you from being in control of the sales process to allowing them to drive it. It also often derails your process into focusing on price, which drives the inevitable ‘race to the bottom’.
In today’s episode Greg discusses how to adjust your approach to the proposal process to maintain your authority.
Note: This week we have Greg flying solo while Andy takes a short break from the Accepted Authority Podcast.
This week we’re discussing the use of online events as part of your marketing strategy, including the key elements you need to consider to make the planning, promotion, delivery and follow-up of our event as successful as possible.
This week we’re examining a commonly asked question from consultants – ‘How much of my IP should I give away?’
Giving away IP is a scary, or downright ‘NO’ prospect for many consultants, but it shouldn’t be. By selectively sharing your IP as part of your marketing strategy, your clients learn that you understand their needs, you demonstrate your value, and you show what you can do for them.
Is your marketing working as well as it should (or could) be? What ROI are you getting from your marketing? Many consultants do not get a good return from their marketing efforts, yet they keep at it because ‘it’s important to be out there’. And yes, it is, but only if you’re ‘out there’ effectively.
In this week’s episode we look at some of the common mistakes consultants make in their marketing strategy and what they can do about them.
This week we’re taking a look at artificial intelligence tools and their place in your marketing strategy. While we do recommend that you remain open to the idea of using artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, auto-transcription, etc, it’s also important to understand what their limitations are.
It’s only once you understand the limitations and benefits of AI marketing tools that you can then determine where (if at all) they should fit into your marketing strategy.
There are many marketing channels out there, but how do you decide which are for you? A website? Facebook? LinkedIn? Paid ads? All of the above?
Many consultants approach their marketing from an experimental perspective, trying different platforms, following trends or doing what others say work for them. Unfortunately, that often results in a tactical approach, not a strategic one.
In this week’s episode we move beyond the tactics to discuss the strategy of sales channels.
A presence on social media is almost a non-negotiable for consultants nowadays. But posting content for content’s sake is a waste of time that delivers minimal (if any!) ROI. In this week’s episode we’re discussing creating effective content plans, creating transformational content and then sharing it appropriately.
When consultants try to create their marketing strategy the first question they often ask is ‘How do I promote my services?’. But is that the right question? In short, No. Today we discuss the questions you should be asking instead.
This week we’re talking about a pain point we hear all too often - ‘I don’t have enough time for marketing’. We share some strategies that you can use to overcome this pain point, including planning, systematizing, have a consistent day by day approach and delegation.
If you’re going to commit to learn something new this year (and we hope that you do!), then what should it be?
In this week’s episode, we’re discussing the skills gaps that we see in consultants’ sales and marketing techniques and provide our recommendations on the elements that you should be adding to your skillset this year.
In today’s episode we’re discussing marketing mindset. Consultants with a marketing mindset don’t hope that things will happen, they KNOW that things will happen. They’ve set their goal, decided on multiple pathways to get there, test those pathways, measure the results and then do more of what succeeds.
We discuss how to create and implement your marketing mindset for 2023.
Happy New Year and welcome to 2023! We’re kicking off the year with a look back at 2022, including what worked, what didn’t and what new changes emerged during the year. We discuss how LinkedIn’s policy and algorithm changes during 2022 affected marketing strategies and the impact it’s had on consultants relying heavily on it as a outreach platform.
Looking forward to 2023, we discuss the emerging trends that consultants should be looking to add to their marketing strategy, including the re-emergence of face-to-face networking in a post-lockdown world and how it’s becoming increasingly important to share a marketing focus across multiple platforms and methods
In our final episode for 2022, we’re wrapping up the year with a chat about how to use our authority to avoid selling ourselves in meetings.
When we establish ourselves as the authority, our potential clients recognise us as the best solution to their problems and they want what we have. It converts us from being those that sell, to those that recommend.
We’re taking a little break over Christmas and our next episode will drop on Wednesday Jan 4. We’d like to thank you for coming on board with the Accepted Authority through 2022 and we look forward to bringing you lots more of us in 2023. Happy holidays to you and yours, Greg & Andy.
In this week’s episode we talk about lead nurturing. Because leads seldom come to you ready to jump straight into a sales meeting, you need a process whereby you can stay front of mind without constantly contacting the client and thus seeming desperate.
Enter the nurture sequence. However, many consultants rely on spammy messages that add no value, and indeed, often do more harm than good in the long run.
We discuss some techniques you can use to make you nurture sequence a positive and beneficial experience for your prospects.
In this week’s episode we talk about staying in control of the sales process. When you lose control of a sales meeting, it’s often you’ve asked for the sale before the client is ready, you’ve gone into the meeting without a clear plan & objective, which allows the client to hijack it, or you’ve failed to maintain your authority position.
We look at the strategies you can use to overcome these common hurdles and allow you to run your sales meetings more successfully.
In this week’s episode we talk about problem solving! Specifically, we’re talking about why consultants should focus on defining the problem they solve and then how to sell that solution as part of their sales process.
Successful consultants can clearly articulate the problems their clients experience and the solutions they require, as opposed to just talking about the products or services they’ve created to solve them. We explore why this is a necessary skill and how it contributes to sales success.
In this week’s episode we talk about how to approach the all-important opening conversation with non-referral based leads. By taking an approach that allows them to help explore and identify their own problems, you are able to build a position of trust and reduce the feel of the ‘pressure sale’ that leads to sales resistance.
In this week’s episode we talk about a challenge that effects all professional services firms from start-ups right through to established, long term suppliers – how do we stand out from the crowd and ensure that our voice is the one that gets heard?
The rise of the solo or micro business consultant has created far more noise in the professional services space than ever before. And reputation alone is no longer enough.
We share our best tips on how to get in front of our ideal customers, how to stand out as a niche consulting firm and break through the noise barrier.
When was the last time you looked at your sales pipeline from your client’s perspective? Have you given them an easy, non-demanding entry point? And once they’re there, is it easy for them to move through it, gaining trust as they go?
We discuss the strategy behind successful sales pipelines and what you can do to improve yours.
This week’s topic is one we’ve been asked about numerous times – when some consultancy firms do social media so successfully, while others get little result for their efforts, what’s going wrong? What are the biggest mistakes consulting firms make on social media and how can you avoid them?
Welcome to episode 20 of The Accepted Authority – Winning Clients on LinkedIn Using Authority Positioning
This episode is a recording of our first ever LIVE episode, originally broadcast via LinkedIn on Wednesday October 19.
We shared the practical tips that we’ve found have helped us get the most out of LinkedIn, while also answering the questions you posted for us. Thankyou to everyone who attended, it was great to have you along for the ride!
Welcome to episode 19 of The Accepted Authority – Creating and Executing A Professional Services Marketing Plan. In today’s episode we’re moving beyond the theory of marketing strategy to discussing what goes into a successful marketing plan. We discuss at the difference between marketing and advertising and when each should be used.
Then, having discussed the essential elements of a marketing plan, we look what how best to create and execute it.
Welcome to episode 18 of The Accepted Authority – Positioning For Success: Lessons from leading consultancy firms. Today we take a look at some of the most successful consulting firms and how they position and promote themselves digitally. We also look at some of the common mistakes firms make that either hinder, or outright damage their positioning. Finally, we look at how to adapt those strategies to your own consulting firm, regardless of your size, target market or intended outcome.
Welcome to episode 17 of The Accepted Authority – How to Escalate Trust Before Selling. Today we discuss some techniques for ‘warming up’ potential clients, especially when they haven’t come to you via a referral. Greg introduces us to his ‘sales escalator’ and why he uses it instead of a ‘sales funnel’ and Andy shares his awareness equation.
Welcome to episode 16 of The Accepted Authority – The Power of a Compelling Customer Story.
A great customer story can help break down customer hesitation, increase trust, build your authority and increase your chances of a positive outcome. In today’s episode we discuss crafting great customer stories.
Welcome to episode 15 of The Accepted Authority – Creating an Impactful Pricing Model.
How do we charge what we’re worth? This is a common challenge for consultants, with many relying on the old staple of Time and Materials (T&M) calculations. But rather than structuring our services with T&M, in this episode we discuss the concept of employing a fixed fee approach.
Moving away from T&M allows you to focus your services more on the results and outcomes provided, rather than how long it takes to complete the necessary tasks. Remember, people don’t by your services, they buy your outcomes – don’t let your pricing structure undermine that.
Welcome to episode 14 of The Accepted Authority – Simplify your short form content without losing its impact. In our increasingly digital landscape, succinct targeted message is critically important. In this episode we discuss how consultants can distil their message down into succinct content that still gets your key message across.
Welcome to episode 13 of The Accepted Authority – Growing Customer Value. In this episode we are examine a common weakness in consulting businesses, that being that we focus so hard on finding new business from new clients that we forget to explore the value of our existing clients.
Our existing clients often don’t know what we do for them beyond the services they have already experienced. If you set up the expectation in the buyer journey that there will be an ongoing working relationship then you can (and should) take them through that buyer journey multiple times as you extend your relationship with them.
Welcome to episode 12 of The Accepted Authority –