More Clients - the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert MiddletonIn This Week's Issue: Want to really master marketing your services? You need to learn how to practice.
Practice for Mastery
Last week I talked about the Marketing Dojo. (martial arts training hall)
In the Marketing Dojo, three dimensions of marketing mastery come into play: The dimension of knowledge, the dimension of practice and the dimension of community.
This week I want to focus more on practice.
Although the three dimensions are interconnected (you really can't have mastery without all three), it's useful to look at them independently.
So we'll assume that you have the knowledge to practice and the community of support to keep you on track with your practicing. But how will you actually practice for optimum results?
For instance, how would you practice for a speaking engagement?
It's really much more than doing an outline of your talk and rehearsing it out loud. That barely scratches the surface and is really not going to get you the results you want.
Practice starts with an action plan. It starts with having the end in mind and a clear idea of every single action step along the way.
What is the Purpose of your talk? Is it to get visibility and exposure or is it to generate immediate prospects for your business? Most of us don't think big enough and we end up just going through the motions.
Create a Purpose that is both inspiring and challenging. It should be something that you can get excited about, lose sleep over, work yourself up about. So Purpose is the beginning of practice.
Next, go deeper and write out a comprehensive list of Intended Results. You might think of these as sub-goals that you want to achieve in addition to your main purpose.
These may include getting more exposure, adding to your email list, and building a reputation in your community that will help with word-of-mouth in the long term.
As your Purpose and Intended Results are fleshed out, your clarity and focus increases. This lays a solid groundwork for practice.
Next, you need to outline your many Action Steps on the way to your speaking engagement. You want to list literally everything you need to do, from researching places to speak to following up with participants after the talk.
These Action Steps define the actual activities you need to practice. Some of them will need only a little practice as they are rather simple, but some need serious work.
Let's just take three action steps you can practice.
1. Contacting an organization to get booked.2. Giving the actual talk
3. Getting participants to take action
Most of the people I've encountered who tried to use speaking as a marketing tool tended to "wing it" when it came to these three areas above.
They just picked up the phone to contact organizations. They did a few power point slides of the talk and used them as a guideline and then fumbled through the call-to-action.
And then they reported things like the following:
"It's sure hard to get booked for talks." and "I think I did an OK job, but what do you expect, it was the first time?" and "I wasn't able to get many cards at the end" and "Maybe speaking isn't the best marketing tool for me after all."
All of these statements came out of not practicing. No plan, purpose or preparation will get you poor results almost every single time. And you're likely to get discouraged and give up.
So what would practicing these three areas look like?
1. Contacting an organization to get booked.
• Write out a contact script based on effective marketing syntax: problem, outcome, value, proof, process, action.• Practice this script many times until you own it.
• Call the organizations using an outline of the script. Never read it.
• Review every call. What worked, what didn't?
2. Giving the actual talk
• Outline or write out the complete talk.• Develop handouts and/or Power Pint slides
• Practice the talk out loud several times. Tape or video yourself.
• Imagine you were going to be in Hamlet and you wanted it to be as good as that.
• Practice an hour here and there right up to the day of the talk until you feel totally confident.
3. Getting participants to take action
• Do the same as the above (this is really just a part of the presentation).• Study various closes or calls-to-action from books on the topic.
• Prepare relevant articles, forms or other tools you will use in the call-to-action.
Does this sound like a lot of work? I have bad news and good news. It is a lot of work. It may take you ten or twenty hours to book, prepare and practice a talk. The good news is that if you practice a talk at this level you'll not only get vastly improved results, you'll have taken the implementation of using talks as a marketing tool to a whole new level.
Now you'll own a lifelong skill that will enable you to book talks easily in the organizations you want. You'll be both confident and effective with the talks you give and you'll get a large number of leads after every talk.
If you want to master marketing, practice is key. If you want to settle for what you've got, avoid practice like the plague.
More on "Practice for Mastery" in Marketing Flashes below.
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Four Resources for "Practicing for Mastery"
All the marketing resources offered by Action Plan Marketing incorporate the three dimensions of marketing mastery, including strategies for practicing your marketing.
Take your pick:
The Action Plan Game
A free 9-session program that delivers the marketing basics you need to know, creates an opportunity to practice what you learn and employs the support of a virtual mastermind group of your peers to keep you on track. Easy and fun to do.
http://www.actionplan.com/actionplan.html
The InfoGuru Marketing Manual
A comprehensive field guide to attracting more clients. Includes dozens of specific action plans to help you implement what you learn and the community of the InfoGuru Support Forum.
http://www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html
Live Marketing Workshops
Workshops that don't just give you information, but include ample opportunities to practice your marketing conversations. After the workshop we facilitate you in forming support groups.
Los Anegles - Sat, March 12
http://www.actionplan.com/wkp/lawkp.htmlSan Francisco - Sat, March 26
http://www.actionplan.com/wkp/sfwkp.html
Marketing Action Groups
These intensive, 6-month programs are held with a small group of people who want direct coaching from me on developing their marketing skills. Next groups start in June. Applications will start being accepted in mid April. Keep posted!
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Marketing Flashes on "Practice for Mastery""
* Schedule your practice. Once you've booked your talk, for instance, don't leave it 'till the last moment when you've run out of time. Your skills will not improve automatically on their own.
* Practice in short bursts of an hour to 90 minutes. You can accomplish a lot in that time if you really focus. Then take a break or pick it up again in a few days.
* Don't over-practice. It's also called perfectionism. The problem with perfectionists is that what gets practiced is never really good enough to actually start implementing.
* Practice with someone or with a small group. Of course, this is adding the dimension of community. This can dramatically improve your practice if you are all on the same wavelength.
* Workshops, seminars and other training can be very valuable - especially if they include a practice component. Avoid programs that just dump a huge amount of information on you.
Until next week, all the best,
Robert Middleton
ACTION PLAN MARKETING
Helping Independent Professionals Attract More Clients~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
210 Riverside Drive
Boulder Creek, CA 95006
831-338-7790© 2004 Robert Middleton, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the More Clients eZine in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:
"By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert's web site at http://www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses."
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