Who I work with: Solo trusted advisors and small advisory practices
You might call yourself a business coach, consultant, advisor - perhaps you have a specific specialty like HR, leadership, sales, marketing, M&A
Your work has substance and you want your marketing to be as smart as you are
You have deep expertise and a wealth of experience.
You dig into root causes. You may have breadth AND depth.
You may have your own way of doing things that can be turned into a unique proprietary process
Your work and results are profound and transformational.
You want to convey the depth of what you offer. You want to share your wisdom with the world.
You suspect (or know) that you have a book inside you. Maybe more than one.
If you've hired marketers in the past, you were likely frustrated or disappointed that they didn't "get" you. They may have over-simplified or misrepresented your work - or crammed you into a cookie-cutter formula that didn't fit.
Helping experts get their genius out of their heads and into the world is the essence of my work.
You're established, successful, and busy
You are established and deliver great results to your clients
You are already busy and successful.
Your practice may even be bursting at the seams. Your calendar is full.
You're not looking for an instant flood of leads.
You want to reclaim the time you currently spend on marketing, shorten your sales cycle, become more efficient in the sales process, get better quality ready-to-buy prospects to meetings.
Or get some marketing in place to smooth out feast and famine cycles.
Or maybe you'd like to raise your profile so you can land bigger clients or book great speaking engagements.
My point-of-view: trusted advisors need a different approach to marketing
What works for the pizza joint isn't going to work for you
Coaching, consulting and advisory services are challenging to market and sell.
If your business has any of the following attributes, sales and marketing are more involved:
- Longer decision making cycle – this often happens when a project or service will have a significant and far-reaching impact
- Higher price – most people take more time and require more information when buying bigger ticket items
- Higher risk – could something go wrong? Is there a chance this won’t work?
- More complex or complicated – is your proposed service a “non-trivial undertaking”?
- Harder to explain – sometimes clients aren’t immediately familiar with the services you provide (or worse: they have incorrect beliefs about them!)
And when you sell coaching or consulting services? All this…and more…
- You usually can’t deliver the result instantly
- The service isn’t inherently enjoyable (transformational change can be hard work, painful)
- The work often brings up vulnerability and shame (simply admitting to a problem or being unable to do something can be hard for some people)
- Progress takes time and may not be immediately obvious
- Because your clients aren't deeply familiar with your industry, it's hard for them to understand how you are different or better than “that other guy”
- Deep work often addresses root causes that clients may not be aware of
Marketing that works for "easier to understand" businesses (like your local pizza joint) isn't sufficient for a expertise-based business.
You need to develop a thought leadership platform to demonstrate the value of your advice and to build know/like/trust with your prospective clients.
The e-book below offers an in-depth explanation.
Free E-Book: the Trusted Advisor Marketing Machine
Modern marketing is complex. It requires a solid strategy, clear and impactful messaging and the right technical pieces - pulled together into a well-oiled machine.
Trusted Advisors need a specific approach to marketing. Discover:
- What makes a trusted advisor marketing machine work (hint: it's not technology)
- How to incorporate story into your messaging (most coaches get this wrong)
- How to use thought leadership as the core of your marketing strategy so that you become known and hired for the substance of your work
