More Clients - the Online Marketing Newsletter
for Independent Professionals
from Action Plan Marketing
and Robert MiddletonIn This Week's Issue: Are you differentiating your business so that prospects both notice and remember you? If not, you're in trouble.
Differentiate or Die
In his 2000 book, "Differentiate or Die," Jack Trout, the co-author of "Positioning," makes a strong case for the absolute necessity of standing out from the competition. He states, "If you ignore your uniqueness and try to be everything for everybody, you quickly undermine what makes you different."
Trout's message is primarily focused on big businesses, but his principle holds true for Independent Professionals. If you are seen as a generic carbon copy of every other consultant, coach, trainer, executive recruiter, financial planner, or web designer you are in deep trouble.
When you fail to differentiate, you never get the degree of attention you want for your services. And even if you do get attention, you are easily forgotten in the mass of other professionals scrambling for a piece of the pie.
In my Marketing Action Groups I'm working with a trainer who has fallen on hard times. Previously, business had been booming, but changes in how training is contracted for in large companies has left her out in the cold.
What used to work - quality programs delivered professionally - doesn't seem to have much currency anymore. So now she's trying to compete with larger companies, and nobody is very interested.
But how can she differentiate her services in such a way that she gets noticed? She needs to look beyond professionalism and quality and and discover how to stand out.
Below are some examples of clients I've worked with who have found ways to differentiate themselves, making them both memorable and successful.
Differentiate Your Market
Ann Peckenpaugh has been an executive recruiter for more than twenty years. When she started her own firm she decided to focus on a market that everyone else had ignored. She now does recruiting exclusively for companies wanting top-notch directors on their executive boards.
Her company, Board Search Partners, now "delivers directors with the skills, the passion, and the will to make your board extraordinary." Because no other search firm specializes in this one area, she stands apart from the crowd.
Is is working? Ann informed me last week that she had just landed six new searches!
Differentiate Your Problem
Dike Drummond offers training and consulting services on running more effective meetings. What sets him apart is his problem-oriented message. On the home page of Drummond and Associates you'll read the headline: "Are Poorly Run Meetings Destroying Your Productivity?"
His opening paragraph reads: "Remember the last time you were in an ineffective meeting? You were squirming, frustrated, nothing was getting done; the parading personalities made you want to scream... you could feel the energy and creativity draining out the door. No matter what business you are in, poorly run meetings waste time, money and energy and can destroy your teams' ability to be productive."
The powerful thing about focusing on problems, issues, concerns, and challenges is that they hit a nerve that everyone can immediately relate to.
Dike realized that his clients would respond better to this initial message than to a bland description of his training programs. He took the focus off himself and put it squarely where it belonged: on the client.
Differentiate Your Expertise
Steven Van Yoder was a client of mine years ago and we did a lot of brainstorming to hit on his ideal differentiation. Steve wanted to find the best way to offer writing services to businesses who needed more exposure.
We settled on an area that most small business owners had no experience with - getting them exposure in magazines. Steve developed a service writing articles for clients and getting them printed in industry trade magazines.
Now the author of "Get Slightly Famous," an excellent book on getting your name out their through the written word, Steve has developed a reputation for being a top expert in a very specialized market.
Differentiate Your Results
Stan Russell offered a high end counseling/coaching service designed to help people break through major issues in their lives - from relationship problems to phobias. He used a combination of techniques from visualization and NLP to cognitive and somatic exercises.
Stan used to charge a per-session fee for his services, but wasn't satisfied that people were getting the maximum value. He decided to package his services and promised, "Come to me with any issue that you want to resolve and I will resolve that issue completely in four or five sessions." For this service he charged in the range of $2,500.
Because Stan promised (and delivered) on a specific result, he was able to charge 5 times what other counselors/coaches were charging. Not only that, his clients were very satisfied with his services. He even offered a money-back guarantee.
Differentiate Your Approach
Joe Meissner offer outplacement services in San Francisco in the 1980's when outplacement was psychologically-based. The philosophy was that if you got fired there was something wrong with you. Much of the service was focused on "fixing you" to make you more attractive to the job market.
Joe had a different model. He believed that in the environment of mergers, acquisitions and downsizing, people got fired through no fault of their own. The approach he felt made more sense was a marketing one. He called his company Power Marketing - The Outplacement Alternative. In head-to-head competition with the psychologically-oriented firms, he won contracts left and right.
Now outplacement firms widely use this marketing model. By being ahead of the curve, Joe grew Power Marketing into a million dollar plus business in a few short years.
These are just of the few ways you can differentiate your business. Exactly what approach we settle on for my trainer client, I don't know, but it will be something that sets her apart from the pack and makes clients take notice.
More on "Differentiate or Die" in Marketing Flashes below.
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Fourteen Good Reasons
If you've been reading More Clients for awhile, you know about the InfoGuru Marketing Manual. If you've got it, read it and used it, you also know the value of it's hands-on guidance in attracting more clients to your business.
If you don't yet have it, here are fourteen good reasons to check it out today.
- It was developed exclusively for Independent Professionals such as consultants, coaches, trainers and other service professionals who are great at what they do, but have a hard time consistently attracting clients to their businesses.
- The manual is based on a few powerful marketing principles that, once you understand them will transform your marketing. These essential principles are missed by almost everyone (and implemented by even fewer).
- The marketing principles contained in the manual will help you increase interest in your services, build trust and credibility with prospects, get prospects wanting to learn more about what you do, and create a steady stream of word-of-mouth business.
- It goes way beyond theory, vague generalizations or concepts, and contains hundreds of hands-on marketing strategies and action plans that are easy to implement, even if you have no marketing experience.
- It includes foundational marketing information on things like creating an attention-getting marketing message, and then goes into depth on the most recent marketing techniques of web marketing and eZines.
- You can read it like a book -- you can go through it slowly and do the exercises like a home-study course -- or you can refer to it whenever you have a question about marketing your business.
- It comes with over 11 hours of audio files with teleclasses and interviews on the finer points of marketing your services. These audio files alone are work the price of the manual.
- I've included a boatload of extras, including 150 pages of articles, dozens of resources and, most importantly, the InfoGuru Support Forum, where you can get any question about marketing your services answered for free.
- The Support Forum can be used to answer questions, provide resources, and get "peer-review" of marketing materials, web sites, proposals and sales letters, as well as explore the more complex and confusing aspects of attracting clients to your business.
- It will help remove the mystery and struggle about marketing and selling that so many Independent Professionals experience, and will help you realize that marketing can actually be fun.
- It comes with my unconditional guarantee. Get it and try it. If you don't think it's worth much more than what you paid, tell me and I'll refund 100% of your purchase price.
- Unlike most marketing information sold on the web, the manual is available in both digital format (.pdf file) for immediate download, and for just a few dollars more, you can get a printed manual as well.
- The InfoGuru Marketing Manual was published in February of 2001, and it's just as relevant today, because I add to it regularly with updates of the manual that can be downloaded repeatedly at no additional cost.
- If you are looking for one tool that will help you attract clients with an approach and methodology that is highly effective but doesn't compromise your integrity, you've found it!
For complete details and to order online go to:
www.actionplan.com/infoguru.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marketing Flashes on "Differentiate or Die"
How do you start to differentiate yourself? Kick your creativity into high gear by using the five approaches outlined in today's More Clients.
* Differentiate Your Market - Can you specialize in a very specific market segment? What industry do you know the best? What networking opportunities does it offer? Can you write and do talks for this industry and stand out as an insider?
* Differentiate Your Problem - Do you solve a sticky problem that everyone else has ignored? Can you hit a nerve with this issue or challenge? Perhaps your competitors are missing this problem altogether. What cries to be solved?
* Differentiate Your Expertise - What do you know more than anyone else? What can you do better, faster, more elegantly? Again, speaking, publishing and writing an eZine or newsletter to highlight your expertise will make you stand out.
* Differentiate Your Results - Can you promise to produce results that others would be reluctant to? What can you guarantee? How can you remove the risk of using your services by taking on the risk yourself?
* Differentiate Your Approach - Do have a model, approach or methodology that makes you more credible, more valuable? Can you back it up with research and results? If so, get the word out at conferences and in industry journals.
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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