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I refused to shake hands

Posted byIan Brodie on October 28th, 2018.

I refused to shake hands.

We'd just finished a big piece of work with a prestigious client.

It had gone well and the senior client sponsor had come over to say goodbye and thank us for our work.

I'd led the project, but I couldn't bring myself to shake her hand. Instead, I skulked around at the back of the group with my head down and briefly nodded acknowledgement.

It was incredibly childish.

But she'd been a nightmare.

Super smart. Ex McKinsey & Harvard. But a nightmare.

She treated her own team like dirt. Shouted at them and called them idiots. 

Consultants were just hired help who were expected to jump when she wanted, any time of day or night.

And she'd change presentations we prepared, mess them up, then blame us for the changes she'd made.

The project ended fine, of course. You do what you need to do to deliver a great result. But we were all drained at the end.

And on my last day before flying back to the UK I thought “you know what, I just can't shake her hand”.

I think she knew because she didn't push the issue.

When you run your own business or you're part of a smaller firm, one of the huge advantages you have is you don't have to take on clients like this.

In the long run, it's never worth it. Your energy and your sanity are worth much more than the fees.

And if you're doing your marketing right, there'll be another, better, client coming along soon.

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Have you let this happen to you

Posted byIan Brodie on October 21st, 2018.

I've been doing some analysis recently on different types of networks and their value as sources of clients (more on that in an upcoming email).

But one thing I did as part of the process that kind of shocked me was to look back at my own networks. Particularly the close contacts I have in business.

Back when I was primarily doing big consulting projects rather than online training I had half a dozen or so very senior contacts in client organisations who I would say I was close to. People I could pick the phone up to any time and ask a favour of (and they'd do the same to me).

Not surprisingly, they were a really strong source of client work for me over the years. Sometimes directly. Sometimes through referrals.

When I think of them now I realise they've all got one thing in common:

I haven't been in touch with them for years.

I've got lots of excuses. I'm really busy. I don't do big consulting projects any more. Blah blah.

The truth is these were friends at the time and I just let them drop off my radar.

Not only is that bad for business, it's bad friendship.

Easy to fall into of course. Especially if you're a bit introverted like me. But not a good habit.

My goal is to reconnect with these folks – primarily just as a friend. But no doubt it will be good for business too.

Have you let the same thing happen to some of your best contacts? People who could give you or refer you business but you haven't worked with for a while so they're slowly drifting out of your attention.

It's worth taking a good look at some of your best older contacts from a few years ago and doing a sanity check to see if you're unthinkingly letting your relationship with them die.

Now might be a good time to give it a boost.

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This is easier than you think – and hugely important

Posted byIan Brodie on October 14th, 2018.

I mentioned last week that you should be pouring most of your brain power into activities that will have the biggest impact on your business.

And one of the very highest impact activities is to make sure you really understand your ideal clients.

Not surface level. Not “I did a survey a few years ago” level. But the kind of deep understanding that comes from regularly stepping back from the day to day work and asking them about their challenges and goals and longer-term ambitions.

Something it's very easy to forget when you're working with them on an urgent project. And even easier to skip if you've moved on and are now working with different clients.

But those regular check-ins keep you grounded in what really matters. And they build strong relationships too.

So even for those of us who'd prefer to sit down with a good book when we get a few minutes spare, reaching out and setting up a call with a client to chat about bigger issues is going to be a much better use of our time.

And it turns out that talking to clients about stuff they care about is a lot easier than you might think.

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Where is your brainpower going?

Posted byIan Brodie on October 7th, 2018.

I've read a few articles recently about how much of your time you should be spending on various marketing activities.

The problem with those types of articles is that inevitably, you're going to spend most of your time on tactics.

Tactics are what you do day in, day out. If you go to one networking event a week for example then over a year you're inevitably going to spend much more time networking than you spent on your marketing strategy. Even though the marketing strategy is by far the more important of the two activities.

So instead of focusing on the amount of time doing various activities, I've started focusing more on how much of my brain power is going into them.

Even though a networker will spend more time on networking than strategy, they should spend much more of their brain power on strategy.

A rough rule of thumb is that you should be spending about a third of your brain power on understanding your clients and what they want. About a third on strategy (ie deciding how to respond to what clients want: who to target, how to position your offers). And about a third on the tactics.

You'll spend way more time implementing the tactics. But your brainpower needs to focus on building deep understanding of what your potential clients really want, which of them you're going to focus on, what you're going to offer them, and what you're going to emphasise in your marketing.

So many people jump straight to the tactics. But if you get the strategy right the tactics become much more straightforward.

A simple example is Facebook Ads.

They have a ton of targeting options. But if you haven't put deep thought into who you're going to target and what they're focused on then you end up with the same generic targeting that everyone else in your field uses.

Which means you're all bidding for the same interests and your ads all look the same. Up go your ad costs and down go your conversions.

More thought up front lets you target more intelligently and have ads that really resonate. Down go your ad costs and up go your conversions.

Not because you're somehow a Facebook Ads master now. But because you've put your brainpower into strategy.

In fact, if your marketing is becoming a bit of a grind and losing its effectiveness then rather than jump to another tactic it's usually best to go back and examine your strategy. Revisit your understanding of client needs, your targeting and your offer.

It'll have a much bigger impact than just hopping on to a new shiny tactic.

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Why I write like I write

Posted byIan Brodie on September 30th, 2018.

Before you mentally check out thinking “I'm not a writer, this doesn't apply to me” – I'm really talking about creating marketing of any type here.

Could be written content like emails, blog posts or social media posts. But it could be video, audio, anything really.

Anyway, I have a particular “style” of writing emails.

I don't mean a style like a fiction writer would have. Nothing as fancy as that.

But I write emails with a certain frequency and a certain length. They're quite chatty.

And formatted a certain way.

But more importantly, they say something.

My goal in every email is to try to give you a new idea (or at the least, to remind you of an old idea you may have forgotten) that will help move you forward in your business.

It's to build credibility and trust too. So that at some point you might buy one of my products. But I only get to do that if I succeed in giving you something useful to move your business forward.

In my time I've tried lots of different styles of email. I'm sure you've seen them from other people who you've subscribed to too.

Some people email daily. Some do short emails. Others do long ones. Some tell stories. Some are funny. Some talk about themselves and their journey. Some talk about their clients and how well they're doing. Some people rant. Other people try to be nice to everyone.

I chose (actually, it's probably truer to say I evolved) my style of email simply because it was the style I preferred as a consumer.

I like to read emails that give me new ideas and make me think.

So over time, I came to write more and more emails aimed at giving you new ideas and making you think.

All the other stuff about frequency, length, stories or facts. They all became less important than my main goal.

So sometimes I'll do long emails, sometimes short. Sometimes I'll tell a story, often I won't. I'll go through periods of emailing frequently followed by periods of reverting to once a week.

All of those factors can have an impact on how often your emails are opened and read. But none of them are as important as having a clear goal for your emails.

What's your goal?

It's probably different to my goal.

A great start is to think about the emails (or blog posts or videos or whatever format you're thinking about) that you consume and why you value them.

Can you emulate that value in your own content?

You don't have to. But it's a lot easier to do something consistently if you enjoy it yourself and you believe in it.

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The upside down funnel

Posted byIan Brodie on September 23rd, 2018.

The dominant model of marketing over the last number of years has been the “marketing funnel”.

Drop some leads in one end of the funnel, take them through a bunch of steps, and out will pop paying clients.

Lovely analogy.

Except, well, it doesn't work like that.

As the folks at Marketing Experiments pointed out, marketing is more like an upside down funnel.

With a normal physical funnel if you pour liquid in at the top, gravity pulls it through. It's inescapable.

But when you drop leads into a marketing funnel, they don't automatically go through all those lovely steps you've defined for them. 

In fact, it's more likely that those leads will fall out of your funnel than drop through it. There's no natural gravity in a marketing funnel.

So you need to create your own gravity. Pull those leads through your funnel.

In my experience, Value is the force that most effectively pulls leads through your marketing funnel.

The value of a lead magnet gets them to take the first step of signing up and giving you permission to follow up.

The value in your emails or other ongoing communications gets them to look forward to and actively engage with your follow-up.

The value they get from a meeting with you is what motivates them to have one.

And finally, the value they see in working with you is what persuades them to hire you.

Think value at every stage and pull people through your marketing system. Don't expect them to drop through it automatically. 

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Hey you!

Posted byIan Brodie on September 16th, 2018.

90% of marketing – or at least 90% of marketing education – is about grabbing people's attention.

Elevator pitches, Facebook Ads, Linkedin profiles…all the advice is about how to grab the attention of your potential clients.

It's the marketing equivalent of shouting “hey you!” to someone across the street.

But what happens next?

After the person you've shouted at turns their head? After you've got their attention?

That's the important bit.

Although it often doesn't seem like it, getting someone's attention is relatively easy. What's difficult is keeping their attention.

You can't do that just by shouting or making a noise. You have to give something valuable. Something that engages them beyond a knee-jerk response to stimulus.

That's where value-added follow-up is so powerful in marketing.

Whether it's in-person, over the phone, via email marketing or the latest new-fangled messaging tool: follow-up that your potential clients find useful and interesting is the difference between a lifetime client and fleeting attention.

How are you following up? How are you making sure you get more than just that initial spark of attention but instead begin to build a real long-term relationship?

If you don't have a plan in place for how you do it, it's time you did.

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Just do this one thing every day

Posted byIan Brodie on September 9th, 2018.

When it comes to marketing, most of us are looking for “one big thing” that's going to have an amazing impact on our results.

Because if we can find that one thing, we won't have to worry about all the other stuff we're doing. We'll be able to get all the clients we need without working hard or worrying all the time.

In my experience that one big thing is an illusion.

Sure, some people (<0.01%) find something amazing that just happens to click for them. But it’s never reproducible.

So the search for the one big thing becomes a never-ending quest that wastes your time and saps your energy.

There is one thing that can make a big difference though.

Not one big thing. One little thing.

One little thing you repeat over and over and over.

That thing is follow-up. Keeping in touch. Nurturing.

Only a tiny fraction of your potential clients are ready to buy when you first meet them (or you generate a “lead” as the marketing pros love to call it).

They need to learn just how big an issue that problem you could help with really is.

And you need to build credibility and trust before they'd be willing to let you loose on their business or life.

All that comes with follow-up.

Not one follow-up. Not two. But usually dozens.

Follow-up can be the tiniest of things. Sending an article you think they might like. Grabbing a coffee every now and then to swap industry news. A card on their birthday (not a post on their Facebook wall).

Little things, done again and again. Compound interest.

Make it a habit to do something useful or nice for one of your contacts every day.

It's a fun habit to get into because it makes you feel good to do good.

And repeated again and again, it has such a powerful impact. 

Just one thing every day makes all the difference.

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How easy is it to recommend you?

Posted byIan Brodie on September 2nd, 2018.

Kathy and I ate at a new restaurant recently (well, new to us) and had such a good meal we can't wait to bring our friends to it.

It's easy to recommend a restaurant. You know which of your friends eat out regularly, so you're helping them with a “need” they have. And it's pretty low-risk for them to try the restaurant out. 

That's very different to most of our services.

Firstly, most of the stuff we do isn't needed by our clients all the time. Clients might revisit their strategy or start a new leadership development program or rework their marketing every 3-5 years.

So if you've had a good experience with a consultant or coach and you want to recommend them, your first problem is that most of the people you know just won't need them for the foreseeable future. And even if they are thinking of doing something, you probably wouldn't know about it.

Secondly, recommending a consultant or coach is risky.

If you recommend a restaurant and it turns out your friends don’t have such a good time as you, it's hardly the end of the world.

Recommend someone to hire for a six-figure sum to work on a key issue like strategy or leadership and if they mess up it's a huge deal.

That's why recommending people like us isn't a no-brainer like recommending a restaurant.

But you can make it a lot easier.

If you had something that potential clients would value most of the time and that was low risk, then it would be a lot easier for people who knew you to recommend it instead of having to recommend your full service.

That something could be a free report you have, a book you've written, a presentation you do on industry trends. Anything that builds your credibility and begins to establish a relationship with your potential client – but that's easy for them to say yes to and is something they'll value even if they're not quite ready to hire you yet.

Have something like that?

If not, create one.

If you do have one, make sure your current clients and contacts know about it, know how valuable it is, and know that they can recommend your “thing” to their contacts who will get a lot of value from it immediately.

It'll make a big difference to the number of times you get recommended.