I had an interesting conversation with a very successful professional recently.

In fact he was doing so well the reason he was speaking to me was to find a way of moving more of his business over to online products. He was simply overloaded with all the client work and new business coming in and could no longer hope to do it all face to face.

The interesting thing was that he'd only been in his current sector for about 2 or 3 years. And yet he was now one of the most successful businesses in that field nationally.

How he did it is very instructional (though for obvious reasons I can't name him or the sector he works in).

Basically, when he first started looking to build a business in this area all the advice he got was that the only thing that worked to win business was word of mouth. Personal referrals or people seeing your work.

But without a track record he just didn't have an established base to work from. Instead he was forced to try some methods no one else was using.

In essence, he implemented a systematic and thorough targeting process.

He did in-depth research to identify potential clients and then to identify decision makers within those organisations.

Then he researched the individuals on the web and social media to figure out what made them tick and what they cared about.

Then he followed them on social media and began to interact in ways that added value to them.

Then after this initial nurturing, he'd email them to offer them something free. Of the ones who responded, he'd follow-up by email and phone. And he'd often send them something free (like his book) in the post.

Nothing particularly rcoket sciencey about it. But it worked. He turned prospects who didn't know him into warm leads in a matter of months.

Preety soon he found he was easily winning work from the established people in the sector who'd told him word of mouth was the only thing that worked.

Turn out that while recommendations are good, the sheer weight of the valuable content and relationship building this guy was doing was outweighing those recommendations by a large margin.

And because no one else was being anywhere near as thorough as him, he was picking up work very easily indeed.

These days he employs people to do all the social media, emailing and calling he initially did himself; freeing him to focus on the content and client work. He can pick and choose when and where he works.

Now it's not that the prevailing wisdom he'd heard about word of mouth being the only thing that worked was completely wrong. That was the way the industry veterans saw it.

But because no one had implemented a systematic marketing process like him, they just had no idea how effective it could be.

The truth is that many sectors aren't that well developed when it comes to marketing. So if you listen to what's working now – but then try something different – it can can pay huge dividends.

Of course you've got to be prepared to work at it. My friend worked very long hours and did all the “donkey work” himself in the early days.

And that's one reason he was so successful: no one else was prepared to put in that hard work. They were content to go along with accepted wisdom and play the “word of mouth” game.

Now it may be that the accepted wisdom in your sector is 100% right. It may be that what everyone else is doing is the only way to succeed.

Frankly, I doubt it.

Take a long hard look at that accepted wisdom and challenge it. Think about whether you could achieve the same results as my friend by doing something different.