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Quickstart - Create Your Niche Attraction Pie
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Quickstart
Grow a Profitable Consultancy and Still Have Time for a Life
In this issue
Note from Beverley - Thanks and scary opportunities
One Step Further - Create Your Niche Attraction Pie
Personal Reflections - Business Paradoxes
Note from Beverley
Thanks to everyone who sympathised and empathised with my BT saga - it continues. My letter to the Customer Service Director and CEO is currently at 3 pages. If I ever get everything sorted and manage to get any kind of reply or compensation from BT, I will let you know. Although like me you may have lost the will to live by then.
Still this week has been a good one with great client sessions, new insights and learning for me and a new business challenge that has been in the making for nearly a year, scares the living daylights out of me and at the same time is fantastically exciting. You can check it out at www.totalflow.co.uk and www.totalflowblog.com
My role is Group Business Development and my learning curve is stepper than a very steep thing! As I learn about lean enterprise (see the personal reflection reading for more) However, it also gives me an opportunity to use talents I didn't realise I had - those of creative marketing, outrageous proposition development and an ability to push others beyond their current level of thinking and capability - I guess that's where One Step Further principles kick in.
Please note the new One Step Further landline telephone number below.
Have a good week.
Beverley
bev@onestepfurther.co.uk
www.onestepfurther.co.uk
+44 (0)1258 817647
One Step Further
Getting more clients. Finding new ways to attract clients. Improving my marketing and getting the right type of clients. These are all answers I get when I ask - What is your single biggest question about being a successful consultant?
So this week, I'm going to share with you the concept of a marketing pie or as I call it, The Attraction Pie.
You'll know by now that I prefer attracting clients rather than selling to clients - semantics maybe but it does require a different mindset.
So what is The Attraction Pie?
Simply it's a range of channels that you can use to attract people to you and your business so that they come to you. Some people might call it "pull marketing". Whichever way you look at it the basic principle are
1. Focus on messages that wow and woo your ideal clients.
2. Focus on specific problems or opportunities that will grab your ideal clients' attention making them think, "you really get me!" or "that's my situation"
3. Focus on solutions to your ideal clients' problems (the "what" not the "how". If the what grabs them they'll be attracted enough to contact you for the how)
4. Spread your messages widely but keep the message narrow
5. Consistently and constantly "put your message out there"
Your clients have different ways of taking in information, different ways of learning and different ways that they view the world. This means you have to acknowledge these differences and cater for them in the messages you present and how and where you present them.
Attraction is about communication and communication is a 2 way process.
That 2 way process can be active or passive, conscious or subconscious direct or indirect. You have to plan for and cater for whatever methods your ideal clients prefer. You cannot assume one way is the right way or the only way. The same core message can be interpreted or picked up through many mediums and channels and you need to cover as many as you can.
As a starting point you may like to consider some of these 13 different channels to get your messages out there. These are just some of the options open to you. Try ones you haven't used, try ones you might NOT prefer yourself, try using a channel in a way you haven't before.
1. Newsletter
2. Blog
3. Website
4. Public Speaking
5. Seminars/workshops
6. Direct, targeted letters
7. Business card (is yours a true business card or a piece of card with your name and contact details on?)
8. Radio
9. Teleseminars - workshops over the web/phone
10. Posting articles or comments on online networking forums
11. Commenting on sector and industry forums and blogs
12. Writing articles
13. Active referrals - preparing an approach for close contacts to use to promote you
Attraction can happen when you least expect it to, so take your attraction efforts One Step Further and "put it out there"
BIG POINT TO NOTE - Monitor and review where, how and on what you are focusing your efforts, let the results you get inform your future efforts. If it isn't working, try it again (ad hoc marketing doesn't work so "I tried it once" is not a good enough measure), if it still doesn't give you a good return on effort, Stop it.
Do, Monitor, Check, Review, Continue or Change
SPECIAL OFFER:
If you want help to create your own marketing pie, I am offering a special one to one 60 minute phone call to
1. Assess your clarity of your niche market
2. Create a marketing pie targeted at that market
3. Create some core messages to attract
This offer is only available to Quickstart readers and is valid up until the end of May.
For your indivdual session the investment is only £95+vat/$177, please contact me at
bev@onestepfurther.co.uk
to take advantage of this offer now.
Personal Reflections
Each month I spend 3 or 4 days down on the South coast working with a team of senior leaders on both team effectiveness and one to one development. As the evenings are my own I take the opportunity to catch up on some reading.
In February I read, for the 2nd time, First Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman - a must read for any manager/business owner who wants to recruit people that are the best fit for their organisation and then get the best out of their individual members of staff and create an environment where each employee can come to work, do work that they enjoy most and are good at and add value to their organisation. It basically outlines what great managers do that other managers don't and why those differences make the difference
In March I read Toyota Production System: Beyond Large scale Production by Taiicho Ohno - This is my main learning focus at the moment. I am digesting as much as I can about lean enterprise and some of the principles of lean production system design, manufacturing and supply chains and some would say Ohno's book is the bible for such topics.
This month my tome is The Three Tensions by Dominic Dodd and Ken Favarro. This book caught my eye because the 3 tensions are 3 business paradoxes (is that the plural of paradox??) namely profitability or growth; results today or results tomorrow (short term or long term planning and focus) and better synergy between organisational departments/groups or better standalone performance (whole v parts)
The authors research has determined that most businesses struggle to address both sides of the paradox at once and this leads to peaks and troughs of effort, focus and revenue and can lead to initiative overload and/or confusion. I'm looking forward to reading how they suggest organisations can address each side of the paradox successfully.
It has also led me to reflect that we have many paradoxes in business that can create frustration, confusion, uncertainty and random flapping!
In my own business a constant battle I have is input of time v return on value for me and my clients. I enjoy one to one sessions with my clients immensely and especially enjoy moments of "that was another life and business changing session" as happened with one client last week and yet, I know that in order for me to generate enough profit to live the life I aspire to, my earning capacity is limited by a majority focus on a one to one model/approach; because there are only so many hours in a day and so many hours in a week i.e. time is finite.
I also know that one way to get around that challenge is to offer value in different ways and through different channels so that clients still get what they want, need and desire and yet the amount of physical time I need to give is reduced.
My decision changes from week to week as my personal and professional interests are challenged by new opportunities and learning.
So what to do?
Short term wait and see – or is that a cop out?
I could test the water with some workshops or teleseminars - same great value from me only seen and heard by more people at once. Or I could change my business model completely and move to a programme based business where the content/strategies approach I take with my 1 to 1 clients now, is transferred into a total programme package that deals with all of that and adds more value through offering a group scenario therefore enabling more ideas, more interaction and more learning.
It seems a no brainer looked at logically and a few people have said "I'd sign up" but as we all know change is scary and yet the paradox remains.
So what should I do?
Best Regards
Bev
bev@onestepfurther.co.uk
www.onestepfurther.co.uk
+44 (0)1258 817647 |
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