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How Bruce Henderson became an authority

Posted byIan Brodie on May 24th, 2017.

Back in 1963, Bruce Doolin Henderson was asked by the Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company to set up a management consulting division.

It started off as just Bruce, a small office and a phone. Pretty much like all of us started up our business. Though no fancy Apple Macs in those days.

Within a decade, the renamed Boston Consulting Group were the premier strategy consulting firm in the US. And Henderson had become known as the leading strategy consultant of his generation.

When he died in 1992, the Financial Times said he “did more to change the way business is done in the United States than any other man in American business history”.

Now not everyone agrees with Henderson and BCG's ideas on business. And he was reputedly a rather difficult man to get along with.

But there's no doubt he was a pioneer and an Authority. When he spoke, people listened.

But back in 1963 that was far from the case. BCG's billings for their first month were just USD $500.

Henderson faced the same challenge that most small advisory firms have when they start up: they're unknown. 

Even though he had personal connections from his time at AD Little, and even though his parent company had clients they could introduce him to, he was still an unknown quantity to most.

Other consulting firms such as McKinsey had a 45-year head start on him and had an established reputation, a strong client base, and an alumni network of ex-consultants in high places in industry who regularly hired their old firm to work for them.

But what Henderson had was ideas.

Lots of them. New and interesting ideas about how business should be done.

He knew that BCG would struggle to get hired based on track record because they had none. And their relationships would never stack up against McKinsey and the other established firms.

But his ideas could go toe-to-toe against anyone's and win.

So he started publishing his ideas in a little pamphlet called Perspectives. A pocket-sized booklet that senior business executives could carry around with them.

He didn't wait to get a big publishing deal and spend years writing a book.

He didn't wait to get approved by the editors of the top business publications of the day (who all had relationships with his competitors anyway).

He just published his ideas himself and sent them directly to his target clients: senior executives in large corporations.

And he didn't just write about things he thought would be acceptable to those executives. He called his Perspectives a “Punch Between The Eyes” and decreed that:

“Statements that senior executives would find believable are not supported. Only provocative material is argued. the subject matter is chosen to be deliberately provocative, significant in implication, and relevant to the policy decisions of corporate competition.”

The rest is history.

BCG are of course, huge today. And still known for their thought leadership.

But it all started with Henderson making a decision to get his ideas out directly to his target clients.

And today it's never been easier to connect directly with potential clients.

You can still use direct mail. But you can also advertise on Google, Linkedin or Facebook. Each one can get you directly to a potential client depending on your market.

And with email marketing, you can follow-up consistently to deepen your authority. 

My guess is that if Bruce Henderson had been around today he'd be running a hugely successful online consultancy from that tiny little office :)

If you have great ideas it's something you can do too.

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You CAN do this

Posted byIan Brodie on May 21st, 2017.

A lot of my advice on marketing is about sharing your expertise with potential clients to position yourself as an authority. 

Sometimes I hear from people saying that they're worried that they're not “expert enough” or that no one will be interested in what they have to say since they haven't written a best-selling book, run a major corporation or lectured at Harvard. 

If that's something you worry about too, this little story might set your mind at ease.

Back in the 2000s, one of my big hobbies was playing poker. I still have about 50 books packed away in our attic filled with poker theory, tutorials and biographies.

It was difficult for me to find a regular game back then since poker wasn't all that popular in Europe. But when I was down in London for a few days I'd try to grab a game at the Grosvenor Vic and later the Gutshot Cardroom.

When poker took off online I began to get quite interested. Even considered it as a career change from consulting for a while as I was a pretty decent player back then. 

In addition to all the books from well-known experts I read, I followed a few people online through their blogs.

And here's the thing: the poker bloggers I followed and listened to weren't WSOP champions or leading theorists with a string of books to their name.

They were just regular guys who were trying to make it as poker players and were chronicling their exploits in their blogs.

Some of them eventually started producing ebooks and online courses you could buy too and began to make a side income from them.

But what's interesting to me looking back is that I chose to follow the fortunes of people who were just a few steps ahead of me, not those who were already at the top.

Partially, that was because the guys still on their journey were more willing to share what they were doing, warts ‘n all.

But mainly it was because I felt a closer connection to them. They were who I could be with some work. Doing what they were doing didn't seem like some distant, unattainable goal.

So I followed them, fascinated.

When I started my own business, all hobbies went out of the window of course. But looking back I realise now that in some ways I'm doing what those early poker bloggers were doing. And you can too. 

I do well, but I'm not a multi-millionaire consultant. And although my book has sold pretty well, it was my existing following that made the success of the book, not the other way round.

I think many people like hearing my ideas, not because I'm some genius who's at the very top of the pile. But because my success seems within reach. I'm perhaps a step or two ahead in a few areas, but nothing that seems impossibly difficult.

You can be that “one or two steps ahead” leader too.

Don't pretend you're an international superstar if you're not. You don't need to. People are more than willing to follow and pay rapt attention to those just a few steps ahead who share what they know honestly and entertainingly.

You can EASILY do that.

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I scored 12 out of 15 – how will you do?

Posted byIan Brodie on May 18th, 2017.

I've got a little marketing quiz for you today, with perhaps a surprising conclusion.

As you might know, I often split test the subject lines I use in emails to see which get the best open rates (and yes, it's better to test which get the most sales but the numbers are rarely big enough to get a statistically significant result, so open rates is what I work with).

Listed below are some subject lines I've tested in recent emails – see if you can guess which ones got the highest open rates:

1. The tools I use to run my online business vs The question I get emailed about the most
2. The case against thought leadership vs [Podcast] Brent Adamson on how to win business through commercial insight
3. If you're considering creating a premium or “high ticket service” vs Behind the scenes creating a “high ticket program”
4. If you're a serious Linkedin user, you MUST listen to this vs The big upcoming changes in Linkedin (podcast with Mark Williams)
5. “But how do I get them in the first place?” vs How to “kick start” building your audience and clients
6. These three things are all you need vs You probably won't become a Youtube sensation, but you *can* learn from them
7. No personality? vs “But what if I don't have a big personality?”
8. How to avoid going broke with online advertising vs The secret of confident paid traffic
9. Is this holding you back? vs Activity vs Assets
10. The “secret” source of leads most people ignore vs “Re-activate” your old leads
11. Fish in the right ponds for clients vs “Where should I look for new clients?”
12. 3 things you MUST do to attract the right leads vs Most people get this completely wrong
13. Mindset flip = more leads vs Do you fall into this common lead generation trap?
14. Tough clients, try this? vs Which world do you live in?
15. Beat the 57% rule vs Does your content fail this test?

Scroll down for the answers…
…
…

drum roll
…

…

The winner in each case is the first subject line listed – except for numbers 6, 8 and 14.

The reason for the order of the subject lines is that the first one in each pair is the one I thought would win. So I got 12 out of 15 right.

If you look back at some of the tips I've given over the years about email subject lines in these emails, on my blog, or in my book Email Persuasion you'll have a good idea of why I picked the subject lines I did.

And given how many emails I've written and sent over the years and how much I've studied the topic you'd expect me to be pretty good at picking the winner.

Yet still, I got 3 out 0f 15 wrong. That's 20%.

That's a big chunk for a so-called expert.

And I think that's the big learning here. When it comes to something as complex as marketing, even experts will regularly get it wrong.

The answer is not to ignore the experts, of course. They do much better than random.

But test their recommendations to see if they really are correct. 

In the case of email subject lines, I simply tell my system to send one subject line to 10% of my subscribers and the other to another 10%. Then wait a couple of hours and send the winning subject line to the remaining 80%.

That way you don't have to be a genius to make sure the vast majority of your subscribers get your best subject line. You can let the data tell you.

Of course, other things aren't so easy to test. But the principle is an important one. Try to test your marketing whenever you can. 

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Too fast!

Posted byIan Brodie on May 14th, 2017.

Last Sunday my email was about how your number one competitor is most often the status quo: your potential clients deciding not to do anything.

And I made the point that you're often better off focusing on helping those clients see that something needs to change rather than proving you're an expert (if they don't think they need to change it doesn't matter how expert you are, they don't think they need that expertise).

How do you do that?

The answer is to sloooow down.

A big mistake I've made myself  many times is to get too excited when I'm talking to potential clients. 

We start well by talking about problems they might have or goals they're trying to achieve. But what I used to do was that when I heard something I thought I could help with I immediately jumped to talking about what the solution could be.

I felt like I was adding value and proving my expertise by giving them lots of ideas on how they could solve their problems.

The problem for me was that they usually didn't hire me when I did that. 

I'm sure you've figured out why already. I was moving way too fast.

It obviously wasn't a surprise to the people I was talking to that they had a problem. And since they weren't living on a different planet, they were usually aware that there were solutions to that problem even if they didn't know the details.  

The reason they hadn't already implemented a solution was that to them, the pain of changing seemed greater than the pain they were experiencing from the problem itself (at least in terms of a gut feeling). So they stuck with what they already had.

By jumping straight to talking about solutions I was giving them details of something they weren't yet convinced they needed. Worse: the more details I gave them the more difficult and painful the solution seemed to be – so I was actually putting them off.

What I should have done instead was spend much more time exploring the impact of the problem. Asking about what effect it had. Using my experience to suggest possible side effects and contingent issues they hadn't realised were happening.

When I started doing that, my results took a big uptick. I was still adding value when I later suggested solutions. But this time I was suggesting solutions to people who now realised they needed them.

Of course, sometimes when you explore the impact of a problem it turns out it's not worth solving after all. In that case, it's your duty to recommend that they stay with the status quo.

But usually, that's not the case. Usually, they mistakenly stay with the status quo because you haven't properly helped them see the true impact of the problem they have.

Don't let that happen to you.

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You’re more interesting than you think

Posted byIan Brodie on May 11th, 2017.

I had an enlightening discussion last night.

I was chatting to a group of speakers, consultants and trainers and we were talking about using stories from your life in your talks.

The enlightening thing was that to a person, we all basically said: “well, I don't really have any interesting stories from my life…but I bet you have some amazing stories to tell”.

In other words, we all looked at our own experiences, and because we'd lived them (and re-lived them many times in our memories) they all seemed a bit dull to us. But to everyone else we mentioned them to, they were really interesting. 

And vice versa, of course. The stories about themselves that everyone else thought were incredibly dull were interesting and new to us. 

The same goes for your content too.

I can't tell you the number of people who tell me that they don't think anyone would find their area of expertise interesting enough to get regular emails about. Yet, of course, they themselves are incredibly interested in the emails they get from other people about topics those other people fear are deathly dull.

Familiarity might not breed contempt, but it certainly causes you to find your own stories and content a lot less interesting than other people do.

So if you're worried that others might not be interested in what you have to say, remember that they're probably thinking the same about their own content.

Try out your stories. Share your ideas and insights. Watch whether people perk up and listen.

If your stories are relevant to them and your content is about problems or issues they have, they'll be interested, I promise you.

It just takes a little bit of courage to start.

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Why don’t clients buy from you (really)

Posted byIan Brodie on May 7th, 2017.

I've found that the exercise of asking yourself why clients don't buy from you is an incredibly useful one (as long as you answer honestly).

Do they hire someone else who's cheaper? Who they say is better qualified than you? Who seems like a safer option for them because they already know them?

Most of the people who I speak to, if they're honest, will admit that the number one reason people don't buy from them isn't that they choose someone else. It's that they just don't buy anything at all.

They decide that they don't really need what you (and your competitors) are offering enough to justify the pain and cost of buying and implementing it.

Usually, it's no surprise to people when we talk about how “doing nothing” is the main reason they don't win a client.

But then when I ask them what their main strategies to market themselves focus on, it turns out they seem to forget why they're not winning all this work.

Their main strategies seem to be about establishing themselves as an expert. About differentiating themselves from the competition.

But these types of strategies don't persuade a client who doesn't think they need to buy that they should. They're focused on why they should choose you after they've decided to buy.

Don't you think more focus should be put on helping clients see that something needs to change, rather than trying to show clients who aren't interested why you're better than other people they're not interested in either?

Where are you putting most of your marketing effort? If it's not in getting clients who are happy with the status quo to see that they shouldn't be, then you've probably got your priorities wrong.

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You don’t have to do this

Posted byIan Brodie on April 30th, 2017.

Here's a problem I often here from my subscribers and clients:

“I just can't find the time for all these different marketing tactics. How can I keep up?”

And the answer, really, is that you can't.

No one – especially us small businesses – can do everything. And you don't need to.

There's a story I heard a while back from James Clear about advice Warren Buffet gave to his pilot who was discussing career goals with him.

Buffet got him to write down his top 25 goals, then circle the absolute top 5.

The pilot told him “great, I'll really prioritise these 5.”

Then Buffet asked him “what about the other 20?”

The pilot replied, “well, these are important too, I'll try to fit them in when I can.”

But Buffet violently disagreed.

“You've got it wrong. Everything you didn't circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you've succeeded with your top 5.”

The point is that every minute you spend on one of those 20 is a minute you're not spending on your top 5.

It's the same with marketing.

There are literally hundreds of different things you could be doing. And there are people out there telling you that you should be engaging on Twitter, advertising on Facebook, connecting on Linkedin, doing live talks, webinars, video, SEOing your site, ad infinitum. 

And all of these things can work. The problem is that every minute you spend on them is a minute you're not spending on your “top 5”.

You don't need to do everything. You can't do everything. You can't even do more than about 5 things – so don't try. It will just distract you.

Whatever your top 5 is, stick to it. Maybe test out one new thing at a time and switch that in to your top 5 if it works really well.

But don't listen to all the folks telling you about the latest, greatest techniques they're succeeding with.

Usually they're biased: they want to sell you some training on how to do it. And often they're an unusual case. it worked for them but it won't work for you.

But even if it will work for you, the question is “will it work so extraordinarily well that it's worth stopping one of the other things you're doing?”

Usually not.

Stick to your Top 5, get great at them, and reap the rewards.

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How to lose a sale

Posted byIan Brodie on April 23rd, 2017.

I needed to get some new photos done in a hurry recently for an external publication I was going to appear in.

I was heading in to Manchester later in the week, so made an enquiry with a photographer there.  I picked a high end one who worked with a lot of actors as I wanted some good headshots with “character”.

When I got an email reply to my enquiry about availability I noticed that the photographer was actually based way outside the city centre and I wasn't going to be able to fit in a visit.

The photographer was really good, so I decided I would just get a few quick ones done on the day with an alternative, and then go for a full shoot with him later on. So I emailed the photographer to tell him my plans.

My email must have hit something of a raw nerve as I got a snarky email back about how I was using the wrong criteria, how it would hurt my website and let down my image not to use him. How he was one of the last few classically trained photographers.

But apparently I should “fill my boots” if I could find someone as good as him.

I was quite taken aback. And naturally I decided on the spot that I wouldn't be using him for my full shoot after all.

I couldn't fathom what had prompted him to write such a snarky email that had lost him a certain sale.

Then I realised. I often do the same thing myself.

We all like to see ourselves as the lords of our own domain really. And when our expertise is challenged or ignored, even indirectly, we react.

I saw the fact that I was going to use someone else for the quick shoot for the magazine as a simple necessity due to a shortage of time. He saw it as a slight on his capabilities and proof that I didn't know what I was doing.

And I must admit, when someone ignores my advice or disagrees with it (especially in an area where I think I really know what I'm doing) I tend to see it as a bit of a slight too. 

It's usually not. There are a whole bunch of reasons why people might not choose to follow your advice that have nothing to do with you.

Take a deep breath. Don't immediately email back if you feel yourself reacting.

Treat people well, even if you disagree with them, and they may well come back to you. Lose your cool and send a snarky email and they're gone for life.

It's something I'm going to be more aware of in future.

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Good news for those who give a damn

Posted byIan Brodie on April 19th, 2017.

Yesterday's email had quite a tough message I guess.

It said, in essence, that if you want to get productive meetings with high potential clients, you've got to put some work in to create something valuable they'd be interested in discussing.

Some people work hard in the wrong way. They kill themselves playing a numbers game hammering the phones or sending out a zillion emails to people they don't know, trying to get a meeting.

And it does (sort of) work if you don't have anything better.

Make enough calls and eventually, you'll find some people willing to have a meeting with you. And some of them may indeed be good potential clients.

And you can use modern robo-calling technology to only connect you when someone picks up – so you don't waste quite as much time as you used to.

But it's the wrong kind of hard work (and frankly, I dislike the ethics of disturbing tons of people and wasting their time just so you can get through to a small number who might say yes. Very selfish.).

A much better form of hard work is hard thinking to create something valuable that many more people will want to meet you to discuss. Insightful case studies, a contrarian point of view, a benchmarking report.

You only have to do that hard thinking once and you can reap the benefits time and time again.

But instead, most people choose to do the “easy” hard work of networking, calling, chatting on social media.

There's a famous quote often attributed to Lincoln (but almost certainly not his) that says “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend four hours sharpening the axe.”

Rather than chopping away with a blunt axe, sharpen your axe by investing in creating something valuable that people will want to talk to you to discuss. Or download from your website. Or attend a webinar on.

Not the same old stuff they can hear from everyone else. But something sharp and new.

Give a damn about the content you create and the clients you serve by doing that hard thinking.

The good news…no…the great news is that so few others are willing to do it that you'll stand out like a beacon.