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Archive Archive for 2010

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Strategy

How to be in the Right Place at the Right Time

Posted by

Ian Brodie on October 12th, 2010.

Some professionals always seem to be in the right place at the right time to win new clients.

They just happen to call a potential client when they really need help. Or they bump into them in the early stages of decision-making. Or the client remembers their face and calls them first when they need to chat over an issue that ends up turning into a project.

Luck?

Most likely not.

Very many professional services are Demand Driven. Clients only buy them when they have a real, pressing need (unlike, say, a luxury good where potential customers can be persuaded they want something even if there's no deep underlying need).

And nowadays, even if there's discretion over timing, clients are increasingly resistant to sellers' efforts to “push” services at them. They are used to buying on their own terms, if and when they feel the time is right.

So we could say that the secret to selling professional services is in the timing.

If you can engage with a potential client when the time is right for them – then you're in pole position to win the work.

But how on earth do you know in advance – and from “outside” – when the time is right?

Here are a couple of ideas that can help you be “in the right place at the right time”:

1. Spot a Need in Advance

Sometimes it's possible to spot an emerging need even before a client realises they have one. There are sometimes external signs that “something is about to happen” which allow the professional to know when to make contact with a potential client to be there when they need you.

For HR consultants for example, the announcement of a merger or acquisition often signals that a couple of months down the line, the companies involved will need HR support to sort out the “fallout”. Conversely, however, by the time a merger is announced, it's usually too late for an M&A specialist to get involved – they'll have been hired well before the public announcement.

2. Be Easy to Find

When needs sneak up on clients (as is the case with many “distress purchases” like insolvency services or litigation) they don't invest the time in advance to build up relationships with potential service providers. Instead, they wait until the need hits them and then start (quickly) looking around.

Smart professionals know where their clients look for help. Chances are for most clients it's not the Yellow Pages. It's google, and it's referrals from trusted sources.

Find out who those trusted sources are for high potential clients, build a relationship with them where you demonstrate your capabilities and get them to like and trust you – and you're well on your way to getting the lion's share of referrals.

And, of course, make sure you rank well in google for the keywords that clients search for when their need arises.

3. Nurture Relationships

In very many cases, although we don't know exactly when a need will become urgent for a potential client – we do know which type of clients are most likely to need our services – and which will make the best clients.

In these cases, building a relationship with that high potential client in advance of their need becoming urgent is your strongest strategy by far.

Think week-in, week-out: how can I help them? How can I add value? What useful material can I send them? Who can I introduce them to? What can I invite them to?

You won't find something for them every week – but by reviewing their needs every week you'll make sure you're alert to things that would be useful to them. And so you'll find something most weeks.

As you begin your relationship, think: what specifically must they know and feel about me to feel confident hiring me. Make sure that over time you address these factors.

For less high potential clients – automate the nurturing process with an email newsletter.

Doing this means that when their need finally arises, you'll be the first person they think of.

You won't win every piece of work. But you'll win far more than your fair share.

And eveyone else will be thinking “they always seem to be in the right place at the right time”.

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Get Clients Online

How to Get More Clients Online: Part 3 – Make it Easy to Become a Client

Posted by

Ian Brodie on September 26th, 2010.

So far we've talked about how to get visitors to your website and how to nurture relationships with them online so that they build trust and confidence in your capabilities.

But how do we get them to actually buy? To become paying clients?

Well, to a certain degree, our nurturing activities will have built our relationship to the point where we're the first person they think of when they have a need and they're ready to buy.

But we can do more than that.

One of the barriers to clients hiring consultants, coaches and other professionals is that we often don't have an easy, low cost, low risk, entry level service for them.

This applies both offline and on. but it's particularly important online.

The truth is that despite all our efforts to build trust and demonstrate our capabilities, clients will always perceive an initial piece of work with us to be risky.

Yes, we've showcased our expertise in our articles, blog posts and newsletters. And they've perhaps got a sense of who we are from our emails and maybe even some videos.

But it's still a big risk.

And the more costly and complex an initial engagement with us is, the more risky it seems.

And unfortunately, we often exacerbate this perceived risk by not having an easy, low cost way of doing business with us.

Often the only way to engage with us is to take our $1,000 per month coaching services. Or to hire us for a £20,000 consulting project.

Having such a high initial entry point turns a perceived risk into a huge one. Online especially so as the potential client will have had less direct contact with you.

But what if your potential client had a low cost way of hiring you or using your services? I'm not talking about heavy discounting to get an entry point. I'm talking about crafting a small, but highly valuable service that can be delivered at little cost to yourself but which will give the client more first hand experience of working with you.

This could range from short benchmarking exercises and assessment projects to creating online training courses, private membership sites or even the traditional online ebooks.

Look at it this way: who's most likely to buy your high end coaching or consulting services: someone who you've never worked with before but you've put a lot of effort into selling to, or someone who joined your online training site, then upgraded to a group coaching programme and who then came to one of your weekend retreats?

Creating a “product ladder” – a series of ascending value products and services – like this does three wonderful things for you:

Firstly, it allows a broader range of people to experience working with you and hence qualify themselves for buying your more expensive services.

Secondly, it essentially turns your marketing into a paid activity. You're marketing your higher level services primarily through your lower level services. All you have to focus on is getting people to make the easier step of getting on the first rung of the ladder and from then on they're paying you as you entice them up to the next step. Contrast this with the difficulty of trying to persuade them to jump to the top step right from the bottom.

Finally, because you now have a steady flow of qualified prospects for your higher level services flowing through your “system”, you can create more costly (and more value-added) higher end programmes. You might struggle to sell (say) a $20,000 programme cold, but to clients who've already got tremendous value from your $10,000 coaching group it's not such a big leap.

Now creating this ladder of products and services is not necessarily easy. There are some professions where the range of services you can offer is restricted (law springs to mind). But with a little creative thought you can construct a series of escalating value products in most professions.

It's also worth thinking about how you can introduce services which overcome the traditional geographic and time restrictions which most professionals face.

Offering telephone coaching, for example, frees you up from having to be physically near to your clients. And electronic products – books, videos, private membership sites – free you up from a direct exchange of your time for money. With these services, you can begin to deliver 1 to many and get a much higher return on your time.

Once you've defined the steps in your product ladder, you then focus your online efforts on selling the service at the bottom rung. Since it's low cost it rarely needs a huge sell. Then focus on delighting the customers of that service and market your higher level services to them.

It's a whole lot easier and more effective than trying to sell that huge consulting project cold.

Featured

Get Clients Online

How To Get More Clients Online: Part 2 – Build Relationships

Posted by

Ian Brodie on September 5th, 2010.

This is the second in a series of posts on how to get more clients via online approaches for your professional business. It's written specifically with small and independent consultants and coaches in mind – but the lessons are applicable to other professional businesses.

Relationship Building: The Missing Link

If you've been looking into internet marketing for any time you'll no doubt have heard the “secret formula” for success on the web – traffic x conversions.

It's a statement of the blindingly obvious really: to get business on the web you need to get visitors to your site and convert them into customers. In some ways it's about as insightful as telling an offline retailer that the secret of success is to get customers into their shops and persuade them to buy.

At least it's succinct and it helps to focus your activities.

But for getting consulting, coaching or other professional services clients online – it's not sufficient.

The trouble is that unlike buying a book on amazon or even a TV from an online electronics store, clients aren't going to buy complex, costly, intangible services after just one visit to your site.

Before clients have the confidence to hire you to perform a high value, high impact service for them they need to be convinced you understand their issues, you have the capabilities to help them, and that you'll be a good fit to work with them and their team.

That confidence isn't going to be built in one visit to your site.

You need multiple interactions. And the deeper those interactions are, the more the client's confidence will be built.

This is a big gap for most professionals. Visitors to their site passively consume the content, but there’s nothing to engage them and start up a relationship with them. Nothing for them to interact with – except perhaps a lonely contact form asking visitors to make contact if they need their services.

In fact, there are many ways to build relationships with website visitors. You can encourage comments and feedback on your blog. You can run surveys. You can create a forum for discussion around specific topics. You can encourage them to link up with you via social media. Anything that takes them beyond being passive consumers of the information on your site to being active participants.

Active participation and interaction is the key to taking your relationship to the next level. The more they feel they’re communicating directly with you – not just reading your material like they’d read a book from a distant author – the stronger your relationship will get.

For most professionals, the simplest way to get more interaction and more direct communication is via an email “newsletter”.

I put newsletter in quotes, because although that’s what they’re most often called – in fact their focus shouldn't be on news. Updates from professionals with news on what’s happening in their company, who’s moving departments, which clients they’re working with, and the latest services they’re offering are typically filed straight in the trash by clients.

But newsletters which share useful information about the area in which the consultant is an expert – and which the client needs ideas and support in – are read with enthusiasm and filed where they can be found.

Not by everyone, of course. Not everything you send out will be valued by all your subscribers. But keep producing valuable, insightful material and you’ll find you engage much more with your potential clients.

They’ll start emailing you. Thanking you for your material. Asking you questions. And eventually, contacting you about your services.

And, most importantly, since by signing up they've given you permission to pro-actively contact them – you're not reliant on them remembering to come back to your website and remembering how to find it. You can actively keep in touch and nurture your relationship with them – you're in control.

This was really brought home to me a few months after I started producing my own newsletter.

I noticed the number of emails and contact form submissions I was getting from potential clients had gone up. So I tracked back the communications from a few of the recent enquires which had eventually turned into clients.
Over half of the emails had come within a few hours of the person contacting me reading the latest edition of my newsletter.

It wasn’t the first newsletter they’d had from me. In most cases they’d signed up a few months previously. They’d read a few issues of the newsletter and clicked through to a number of other articles.

But reading the latest issue of the newsletter in each case had “tipped them over the edge”. They’d been convinced I knew what I was talking about and had contacted me with details of a particular issue they wanted me to help with.

And notice – in each case they contacted me. I wasn’t pushing anything at them. Over time the articles on the website and the newsletter had convinced them I was the right person to help them.

As you can imagine – that makes the sales conversations with these potential clients an awful lot easier than if I’m pushing and promoting, or up against other equally well positioned competitors.

There’s a saying in the world of online marketing that “the money is in the list”.

I hate the saying. I hate calling valued potential clients who’ve chosen to receive communications from you a “list”.

But the meaning behind the saying is absolutely true. Your valued subscribers are your greatest asset online.

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Get Clients Online

How To Get More Clients Online: Part 1 – The Power of a Content Rich Website

Posted by

Ian Brodie on August 29th, 2010.

This is the first in a series of posts on how to get more clients via online approaches for your professional business. It's written specifically with small and independent consultants and coaches in mind – but the lessons are applicable to other professional businesses.

The Power of Content: My Story

About three years ago I first started out trying to do more online with my consulting and coaching business. Back then, few consultants or coaches were getting any sort of business online – but I was convinced from my experience wih other service sectors that it could work.

And I knew that if I could make it work for me it would pay huge dividends. It would free me up from having to invest a ton of my time into going out, networking, having meetings, making presentations, schmoozing and other time consuming business development activities.

And I also believed strongly that if I could attract leads for my business via the web, they could be more qualified. Rather than me having to knock on doors to persuade people I was the right person to work with, I wanted people coming to me already predisposed to hire me.

But my early attempts weren't a huge success.

I paid big bucks for a fancy website. It wasn't bad either – it followed what was considered best practice at the time. It talked about who my clients were, the problems I helped them solve and the results they got from working with me. It described my services in benefit oriented terms and showcased testimonials and case studies.

It had pretty much everything.

Well, everything except clients.

Almost no one came to my site (despite paying for some search engine optimisation work). And those that did come didn't hang around for long.

Now being a bit of a geek at heart, this annoyed me.

I wanted to know why not. I wanted to know why some websites could get thousands of visitors and could convert many of those visitors into paying clients when mine couldn't.

My first clue came when I created this blog.

I started it for fun really, and as a creative outlet for my ideas on business development. But within a few months it was getting more traffic than my official “corporate” website.

And people were emailing me. Leaving comments on the blog telling me how helpful the articles were. I emailed them back and we began to build relationships. That had never happened with my “corporate” site.

Soon, other bloggers were linking to my blog and recommending it.

As more and more sites linked to my articles and blog posts, my blog rose up the search engine rankings. It got more and more traffic – both directly, and via searches. Visitors kept engaging. When I started a newsletter they engaged even more.

And then I started getting emails from people asking me about how I could help them in their business. In other words, clients were coming to me. Not because of my fancy corporate website. But because of my simple, content-rich blog.

And that's the lesson here: the most important factor in the success of a website for a consultant, coach or other professional is the quality and depth of the content on that website.

Now most professionals' websites are simply “brochure sites”. They describe what the professional does, who they work for, the benefits they bring to clients, etc. And that's fine – if the potential client is coming to your website explicitly to check you out and see whether you're a good fit for them.

But the truth is that the vast majority of people aren't out on the web looking for us specifically. They're out looking for ideas, solutions and resources. In other words: content.

High quality content helps us get clients in three key ways.

Content drives traffic. Other sites are more than happy to link to high quality content on your site as it adds value to their readers. Whereas they have no motivation to link to your site if all it has is descriptions of you and your services – no matter how well written.

Content drives engagement. Visitors to your site stick around and explore if they find useful content. If all there is is a sales pitch for your services they click away pretty quickly.

And content drives credibility. As a professional, clients need to know you have the expertise and experience to help them before they'll consider hiring you. Sharing valuable content which gives them insight and helps them improve their business proves your capabilities infinitely more than any claims you make or even any testimonials you might have.

In short, having the passion and energy to consistently create valuable content for your website is THE biggest driver of online success for professionals.

Featured

Strategy

How to Nurture Business Development Capabilities

Posted by

Ian Brodie on August 13th, 2010.

I'm currently on vacation in France, sipping on Stella Artois and musing on why the French always seem so much more sophisticated than we Brits.

For holiday reading I'm skimming through Malcolm Gladwell's latest book – “What the Dog Saw” – a collection of some of his New Yorker essays.

I like Gladwell. Sometimes his research is a little sloppy, but he's always thought provoking, challenging and often very insightful. Great for holiday reading: not too heavy.

On of his essays is on the challenge of hiring people for jobs that are different from what they're currently doing now. He uses the example of trying to select quarterbacks for the NFL.

Apparently, quarterback performance in college football is a notoriously poor predictor of success in the NFL. Because the opposition is shorter, smaller and slower than you'd find in the NFL, quarterbacks have much more time and options. They can just stand and pick out passes to any of their receivers.

In the NFL they have far less time. Huge linebacks descend on them, they have to move before throwing, anticipate where the defence is going, and have fewer open options.

As a result, quarterbacks that excel at college level aren't necessarily equipped to do well in the NFL. The same isn't true for other positions where the skills are similar – just at a higher level.

Similarly, it turns out that qualifiactions and courses are incredibly poor predictors of how good teachers will be in practice. Being able to engage with children, to “command” their attention and spark their interest in learning has very little to do with the academic qualifictions teachers pursue in college.

So what does all this have with business development in professional service firms?

Well, the challenge many firms have in trying to find and grow effective business developers is that the early careers of most professionals don't involve much business development, or the practice of the skills needed to win work.

In fact, in many professional firms, because of the obsession with billable hourse, all activity other than fee earning client delivery gets crowded out. “High performers” have often sacrificed all non-billable activities like building fledgeling client relationships on the altar of billing more time. So when they're eventually called upon to win work for the firm, those “high performers” often stumble.

Other firms try to identify “selling skills” by looking for extroverts and people with the “gift of the gab”. They're essentially using the stereotype many people have of a “typical salesperson” to try to identify those in their own team with potential to succeed at business development. In reality, however, there's no evidence to suggest that extroverts are any better at selling than their more introverted colleagues.

So what's the secret? How do you identify people who will make good business developers?

There's only one way to find out: test.

Give all your associates the opportunity to practice selling skills. To go out and form relationships with potential clients. To actively nurture those relationships over time. To convert those relationships into sales.

Give them training and mentoring. Monitor their progress. Then select based on actual performance at business development – not on technical performance or what you think the characteristics of good business developers are. Select on actual performance.

Far too many firms select too early, based on the wriong criteria. They think they know who's got “the right stuff”. But they don't.

Casting the net much wider in your search for rainmakers seems like an expensive strategy. Wouldn't it be better to focus training, mentoring and experience on the ones most likely to succeed?

Well, it would. But the truth is that you just can't tell from a professionals early career just who is likely to succeed at business development. Very often it's not the high flyers or superstars. Sometimes it's the people you'd least expect. So you must cast the net wide.

But the returns from this approach can be huge. Excellent business developers can bring in an order of magnitude more business than the average: sales of 5x, 10x or more that of their peers isn't unheard of. And that's certainly worth expending a bit more early on to get.

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Marketing

How To Build Yourself As The Authority Figure In Your Industry

Posted by

Ian Brodie on August 7th, 2010.

Today's article is a guest post from Travis Petelle of Breakthrough Business Solutions. Travis has picked up on my ideas on Authority Marketing and shares some excellent tips on how to build an authority position in your business.

Building yourself as an authority figure in your niche could possibly be the best thing you could do for your business. It promises easier sales, more prospects knocking at your door, and overall a much simpler time getting what you want. Expecting this respect to just fall in your lap is foolish at best. You must take action to build yourself as the authority and that's what I wanted to cover in this article.

As Ian stated in his article, Authority Marketing: The Essentials, becoming the authority is more than just having the expertise. There are plenty of professionals with expertise in your industry available. Each one of them probably has about the same amount of knowledge and expertise in the subject. What's going to make you different? What's going to allow you to stand out from the rest of the crowd and have people begging to hear more from you. Building you as an authority will.

There are a number of ways to do this. You could add simple things to your website, create masterpieces that help your audience, or get hosted in several locations. Allow me to show you some great tactics that could easily increase your credibility and authority in your industry.

Instant Authority Builder – Become An Author

Writing a book and getting it published in your industry is one of my favorite ways to build authority. I often work with doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, and one of the main projects we focus on is making them a published author. When the public sees this, they instantly think of you as a higher authority. You are instantly seen as knowing more then others in the subject. It also opens the door to media coverage which I will get into later.

Becoming a published author isn't as difficult as you might think. If you aren't much of a writer, you can always hire a ghostwriter to help you get what you know down on paper.

Depending on your industry, you might find it difficult to get a book published by major publishers. There's an easy fix to this as well. Get your own book published. Amazon offers an easy to use service that will publish your book for a relatively cheap price. Just having that physical product with your name on it is what builds the authority.

Don't Be Afraid To Speak In Public

Public speaking is a great method to build your credibility and the influence you have on prospects as well. The reason it's such a powerful method is because you are helping the audience. Public speaking is all about informing others. In a consultant's example, once you show one member of the audience how to double his business by contacting his database, he will start talking to his friends about what your speech did for him. The power of referrals is tremendous and public speaking is a key step to fast referral building.

Make Good Friends With The Press

When you generate attention from the press, your authority will quickly build in your industry. Even just a simple newspaper article about your business or a guest spot on a radio show can and will get customers knocking on your door. There are always new stories developing that are related to every industry. The key to grabbing the attention of a reporter or radio producer is creating a captivating angle on these stories. Once you offer them something their readers will enjoy, they will keep an eye out for your name and what's going on with your business. Having a book and doing speaking events really helps put you in the press's spotlight as well.

Building Authority From Your Website

You all know how important your website is in today's market. It's where 9 out of 10 customers of any service or industry research before they buy. This is why it's so important to begin the process of building you as an authority from your website. It's the first place they are going to look to learn more about you. Here are some simple things you can do to help start building that authority:

Add Association Logos – BBB, BNI, Local Chamber of Commerce, etc.
Adding logos of places like FedEx, UPS, and USPS helps. These companies spend a lot of money to market themselves and just having their logo can cause credibility to rub off on you.
Have methods of payment accepted logos such as credit card logos. Shows you have been approved by 3rd party vendors who have spent millions building their credibility and they have approved you. You could also add PayPal or other online checkout logos if you accept internet payments.
Offering a powerful guarantee and make it a logo.
List a local phone number and a toll free number if marketing out of your area.
Post icons that show as seen on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Bing, etc…
Include any awards you have earned even if it's not directly associated with your work. Charities often award these type of certificates, etc.
Any press release or news story featuring you or your business should be on your website.
Splashing testimonials across your website in random locations shows that what you do works.
Celebrity endorsements will rock your credibility even if they are just industry specific celebrities. Having pictures of you shaking hands with the celebrity etc.
Contact page including a picture of your office or building, Google Map, Fax , etc.
Link to Secretary of States office with YOUR business listing
A video of you speaking about your industry will boost your authority as well.

Becoming an authority in your industry is key to creating a highly successful business. As the authority, people come searching for you…not the other way around. You get the opportunity to start turning down clients instead of wondering where the next one will come from. So, get out there and start learning how to influence people.

This was a guest post by Travis Petelle. He is the president of the consulting firm, Breakthrough Business Solutions.

Thanks Travis!

Featured

Mindset

How Not To Keep In Touch – IBM Style

Posted by

Ian Brodie on August 4th, 2010.

It's important that you keep the contact details of your prospects and customers up to date. But here's an example of the wrong way to do it…

I got a phone call a couple of days ago from IBM – or rather from one of their offshore call centres.

Is that Mr Brodie?

Yeah, that's me.

Can I confirm your address please?

Hang on, who is this calling?

I'm calling from IBM. [Now sounding quite annoyed]Can you confirm your address please?

Er, no.

I'm sorry. Can I confirm your address please so that IBM can contact you?

Actually, no. I don't think I want IBM to contact me. Bye.

Now there are many things wrong with they way they handled that call. But the biggest thing it brought to mind for me is the huge shift in my (and most other people's) willingness to put up with these sorts of calls over the last 5 years.

5 years ago I'd have been most obliging. I'd have given my details over so that IBM could get their stuff to me.

Today, not only do I not particularly want to give over my details in case I get sent junk – but I even feel resentful that they're wasting my time with the call.

Today, if you want to get anything from me on a call – even answering a few quick questions, I'm going to have to feel I'm getting something of value in return. In fact, I need to know that within the first few seconds of the call or I'm already tuning out and thinking of ways to get rid of you.

I don't think it's just me. We're all incredibly short of time these days, incredibly cynical about why people want our details, and incredibly intolerant of being “sold to”.

So next time you or your team need to make a call to get some information from a client or prospect; think how you can actually make the call valuable to the person you're calling rather just a drain on their time and energy.

If you want to confirm their address, for example – offer to send them a free report in a subject area of interest to them. That way they get something in return and it's logical that you need their address to be up to date.

Want to carry out a client survey to get feedback on where your firm can improve its performance? Offer to create an individual action plan as a result showing how you'll improve your performance for them.

Anything you need from them: give them something back in return.

Otherwise each non-valuable communication is one step further to them becoming an ex-client.

———-
What do you think?

Are we all less tolerant these days of communications that don't add value to us?

Or is it just me getting grumpy in my old age?

I'd love to hear your views – drop me a comment in the comments box below.

Thanks!

Featured

Strategy

Reducing Switching Costs: A Key Strategy for Accounting and Other "Ongoing Service" Providers

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 28th, 2010.

I exchanged a few emails last week with Direct marketing legend Drayton Bird (how's that for a name drop!).

I helped Drayton out with a little bit of advice when he wrote his huge book on Direct Marketing for Lawyers, and we were discussing the differences in business development for lawyers vs accountants.

Apart from the differences in stereotypical personalities (words vs numbers, for example) one of the key differences is that typically legal services are purchased as a one-off whereas accountants are hired as an ongoing service.

The typical challenge for accountants (or anyone providing these sorts of ongoing service like outsourcers, secretarial or managed services) when trying to win new business is that of unseating the incumbent.

It's often felt to be so difficult that many accountants focus their efforts on identifying “new blood”. New companies without an existing accountant, or companies who've outgrown their current service provider.

While there are some strategies to unseat an incumbent – such as entering in an uncovered niche and expanding, or leveraging a change in management – there's one aspect of this competitive situation that's often overlooked: that of the switching costs.

The sad truth is that most people stick with their current service provider not because they're delivering a fantastic service – but because the thought of switching seems so painful and risky.

It's actually quite difficult to be hugely different or better when providing basic accountancy services, for example. So often, even though an alternative provider might be a bit better than the incumbent, clients are unwilling to switch because the benefit is outweighed by the potential pain. They'd have to teach the new provider all about their business – all the little nuances their current provider has learned over the years. And if they get things wrong, the costs of incorrect tax submissions or an inaccurate report on the state of cashflow, for example, could be very costly.

So we generally stick with our current provider – even if we can see better alternatives.

The typical strategy in these situations is to try to persuade the potential client of just how wonderful and just how much better your services would be.

But in many ways, that's the wrong way to come at it.

A better strategy is often not to try to increase the perception of benefit (which is difficult to prove anyway) – but to decrease the perception of the costs and risks of switching.

Offer a dedicated switching team to take over the account and make sure everything happens smoothly. Show the client your detailed process for the switch which will make sure nothing goes wrong. Offer a guarantee to meet the costs of any errors caused by the switch. And show testimonials – not just of how great your services are – but of how easy and painless it was to switch to you.

That will usually have a far bigger impact that trying to make yet more claims about how great you are.

What could you do in your business to decreease the fear of switching? Drop me your comments below.

Featured

News

Social Media vs the Lawyers: The Case of Chris Cardell

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 22nd, 2010.

Please Note I have had to remove a number of comments from this blog post. The comments were reports from readers about their experiences with Chris Cardell's products and services. Mr Cardell has threatened me with legal action if these were not removed (ironic on a post chastising him for trying to gag bloggers with legal action, I know). I have removed them until I can confirm the veracity of the claims against him.

There's an interesting little storm brewing over here in the UK.

There's a fairly well known business guru here called Chris Cardell. He does seminars for small business owners and has online membership clubs etc.. I can't comment on the quality of his work as I've never bought any of his stuff – however you can get a general idea of feedback by googling his name.

Earlier this year Cardell ran a direct mail campaign where the piece being mailed was made to look like a newspaper clipping with an article singing his praises with a post-it note attached in handwritten script saying “Ian, I saw this and thought of you. This guy is brilliant. Have a look at his website” and is signed “J”. The Advertising Standards Authority in the UK ruled the ad to be misleading and the claims in it unsubstantiated and told him not to repeat it.

He also came in for criticism that the “free gifts” he advertisised in the piece came with an expensive monthly subscription plan attached that many people found it difficult to unsubscribe from.

Recently he ran the piece again in slightly modified form (I got one myself and it fooled me for a minute or so).

I guess what he hadn't counted on was the uproar this approach would create in the social media world. Dozens and dozens of bloggers wrote posts on it. Some credited it with being clever – but most decried it as being deceptive and unethical.

The end impact was that if you google his name you get an awful lot of negative vibes. So much so that the first additional word suggested by google when you type in “Chris Cardell” is the word “scam”. That can't be good for business.

Update: He's tried to counter (or maybe even take advantage of) the scam association by running an adwords campaign targeting “Chris Cardell Scam”. he appears at the top of the paid listings, and directs people to a page where he calls traditional advertising a scam. So maybe he's hoping people will think that “Chris Cardell Scam” really means his views on advertising being a scam – rather than the original meaning of people thinking his direct mail was a scam.

So what's Cardell's answer been? Has it been to go back and review his campaign and whether he should be running it? Has he realised that in todays social media dominated world you just can't get away with some of the things you used to get away with?

No.

He's hired a bunch of lawyers to send threatening Cease and Desist letters to bloggers to get them to take down their blog posts.

I'm not sure if they've sent similar letters to google to get them to remove the blog posts from their cache, or the Internet Archive to wipe them from the Wayback Machine!

Will his bully-boy tactics work?

Personally I think not. It's one of the great things to have come out of social media that you just can't get away with things or bury them under the carpet any more.

In even the recent past you could succeed with brilliant marketing and a mediocre product because it was relatively difficult for buyers (especially via mail order) to get any real feedback on what your product was really like. Nowadays you can. The truth is out there, and thanks to google it's a doddle to find it on blogs or via social media channels.

Now it may well be that I end up getting a Cease and Desist notice for this innoccuous blog post. But rather like the little Ants in Pixar's Bugs Life standing up to the big mean old grasshoppers – every time one of us gets knocked down, another will stand up to take their place, then another, then another. I believe that even big bad grasshoppery gurus and law firms can't take on so many of us blogger ants forever.

In fact, a number of posts just like mine have started appearing reporting on his attempts to legally gag bloggers. Here's one from popular IT commentary blog The Register.

I'll keep you updated if I get the big bad old letter…

What's your view? Is Cardell doing the right thing? Will it work – can he silence criticism from so many bloggers? Will it backfire? Drop you comments in the box below – I'd love to hear them.

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Marketing

Authority Marketing: The Essentials

Posted by

Ian Brodie on July 10th, 2010.

In recent posts I’ve been musing over the concept of Authority Marketing. After my last post where I talked about the benefits of establishing authority, one reader rightly posed the question: “what’s the difference between authority and expertise?”

It’s a good question. We all feel intuitively that authority implies something more than expertise – but it’s sometimes difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is. Is authority just the upper echelons of expertise? Or is there something more to it?

Authority is Expertise + Influence

For me, the key is that while an expert is defined by what they know; an authority is defined by who listens to them.

In other words, you can be an expert by knowing a lot. But to be an authority, people have to listen to your expertise and act upon it.

An authority is the expert people turn to for guidance. When they speak, people listen.

So to become an authority, you must not only build your expertise, you must build your influence.

I’m very tempted to do a 2×2 matrix here with expertise on one axis and influence on the other. But I’ll refrain from consulting cliches on this occasion.

To be influential, you must communicate, and you must be persuasive.

And this is where many professionals fall down. They have a high degree of expertise, but they're unable to communicate it in a persuasive manner to their target clients.

Some don't communicate at all. They're either uncomfortable marketing – or they've fallen into that terrible psychological trap of believeing they're entitled to be respected and listened to because they're experts.

Others communicate badly – they stumble, or confuse and complicate.

Others communicate, but don't persuade. Their communication is informative – but it doesn't guide listeners to action.

Authorities simplify (without oversimplifying) the complex. They give clear recommendations and courses of action to take. They communicate frequently and effectively. And they're listened to.

What will it take for you to become an authority in your field?

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