What Is Your Pain?

What is your marketing pain? Please comment or send an email.

If you are like many salespeople or business executives, trying to find new customers or clients can be frustrating. Maybe you are struggling with your marketing message. Or maybe referrals aren’t paying off like they used to. Maybe you are concerned about wasting time and money on unproductive efforts. If marketing seems like a lot of hard work with little or sporadic payoffs, you are not alone.

How would you like to attract more clients than you can possibly handle, without breaking the bank? The good news is the American Dream of creating a professional service or consulting business that provides a high six figure income is alive and doing well. That is, if you take the time to get the knowledge how to do it. Best of all, these techniques require a minimal investment.

Face facts. Other successful professionals and consultants have found the way. How can you model their success? To attract new clients, the best approach is the Educating Expert Model that demonstrates your expertise by giving away valuable information through writing and speaking. In addition, you can increase closing rates up to 50% to 100% by discovering and rehearsing the right questions to ask prospective clients.

Here are the five ways prospects judge you (Aaker, 1995, Strategic Market Management) and my views of how the Educating Expert Model is the perfect fit:
1. Competence. Knowledge and skill of the professional or consultant and their ability to convey trust and confidence (you demonstrate and prove your expert knowledge by speaking and writing)
2. Tangibles. Appearance of physical facilities, communication materials, equipment and personnel (you do this by the appearance of your Web site and how-to handouts)
3. Empathy. Caring, individualized attention that a firm provides its clients (educating people to solve problems before they hire you proves you care)
4. Responsiveness. Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service (when you promise to give people things like special reports and white papers, do it promptly)
5. Reliability. Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately (prospective clients will judge you on how organized your seminars, speeches and Web site are)


Here’s how to determine if this is a good fit for you. Do you specialize in performing professional, scientific, and technical activities for others? If you are like most of our clients, your activities require a high degree of expertise and training. Do you provide any of the following? Legal advice and representation; accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll services; architectural, engineering, and specialized design services; IT and computer services; consulting and mentoring services; research services; public relations and advertising services; HR and recruiting services; translation and interpretation services; and other professional, scientific, and technical services.

If you fit this profile and have struggled with marketing, it is no wonder. Maybe you tried to emulate the marketing of big companies, a common problem for professionals and consultants. According to one Harvard Business School researcher, typical marketing not only doesn’t work for professionals and consultants it is actually harmful. Instead become an educator and attract all the clients you need.
Want to discover more strategies on how to create a high six figure income?