All Audiences

Getting paid on time is just one of the hundreds of things we need to worry about as marketers.

Personally, I get paid in advance every month for all of my services. My invoices go out automatically and my clients typically auto-pay via credit card or bank transfer.

But it’s not as simple as having software to automate this process. It begins at the very first invoice. That’s where expectations are firmly set.

And frankly, I seldom have an issue when I set these expectations upfront.

If getting paid consistently on time isn’t happening for you, and you don’t want to nag your clients about overdue invoices, I created a video breaking down exactly how I handle that.

Check it out over on YouTube (and subscribe to the channel!).

—Kevin

P.S. Doors are still open for the membership.

It’s not just group learning.

It’s not just the dozens of hours of training and supplementary templates.

It’s the best place I know that you can get experienced feedback and advice on your business.

Learn more: https://howtoselladvice.com/membership/

If you’re just starting out, please hear this:

It takes time to build up your client roster. But it does get easier the longer you’re doing this.

You might be able to fast-track your initial progress by reaching out to people or having a stacked network.

Publishing daily on LinkedIn and other platforms will definitely help your chances. Publish even more than you feel comfortable with.

You might even be able to sub-contract work from more established agencies and consultants. Let them know you’re available.

But more likely than not, if you’re starting anything from scratch, it will take time to build.

Sell whatever you can to the people you speak with. Double down on offering more of what sells. It’s a signal that the market needs more of that.

Lower your prices if you have to. Do whatever work people are asking for. Nothing is beneath you.

Eventually, you’ll build up a roster of repeat and ongoing clients who will stick around.

And by then, won’t need to get so many new clients to keep the lights on. You can afford to be picky.

But until then: get busy, then get picky.

—kevin

A better way to frame value-based pricing:

Business case-based selling.

Value pricing, to the client, sort of feels like price discrimination.

Like a person saying, “What’s this worth to you?” and then trying to charge as much as they can get away with.

To me, making a valid business case for an engagement feels more reasonable, collaborative, and aligned.

You’re a co-buyer seeking to help the client find the right solution that meets their business objectives. Not too much, not too little.

You help them make a business case for your scope and price based on reasonable performance expectations.

Just my random thought of the day. More mindset and semantics than definitions.

Agree or disagree?

—kw

Strategists are example seekers.

We find things that work and store them in our mental and digital databases to borrow inspiration from later on.

The examples we find inform our unique combinations of tactics and strategies to be used in our client work.

Whether it’s landing page structure, pre-selling methods, or design inspiration, great strategists constantly source, gather, and reference the best materials in their work.

That’s why swipe files are so important. We can borrow inspiration from a variety of sources in a few short minutes—without having to go hunting every time we need good ideas.

The goal is never to copy but instead to combine inspiration into something new that fits our client’s specific needs.

We are curators and combiners. Our taste matters (a lot). So does our ability to combine concepts in unique ways to solve problems for our clients.

If you’re into the strategy world, whether as a marketing strategist, freelancer, or consultant, keep a place to store your best finds. I like Trello and Apple Notes for this (they’re easy to save from on my phone).

Use it in your client work. Share what you find and teach what inspired you as your marketing.

Heck, you can even sell access to your swipe file later on if it’s good enough.

No need to reinvent the wheel every time. Be the example seeker. The archeologist. The observer. The combiner.

Then share what you find as part of your own marketing. Teach what makes your discoveries interesting. People will seek out your “in-the-know” curation style and strategic thinking.

Create your own well of inspiration and insight.

Your clients (and you) will benefit greatly.

—kw

P.S. My Swipe File for marketing consultants is included in the membership. It includes things like landing pages, websites, emails, ads, strategies, manifestos, About pages, service pages, and more. If you want to get notified when doors open, be sure to get on the waiting list here: https://howtoselladvice.com/membership/

 

As I wrote about yesterday, getting a new business off the ground requires a lot of work in the content department.

Or at least, that’s the best way to enhance and de-risk the process while you do other things like outreach and networking.

But when you have been in business for a while, you might find you don’t need to work as hard to stay booked. If you’re like me, many of your clients stay with you for 1-2+ years, which means you don’t need a huge pipeline to keep busy.

Over time, you naturally build up word of mouth, referrals, and inbound opportunities without having to work as hard.

That’s why I’m able to spend so much time helping marketing consultants (like you) while my own consulting practice thrives. I have a stable group of clients and only need to do minimal marketing to stay fully booked.

With that said, you do want to keep marketing yourself as much as you can, even when your capacity is limited. Especially when your capacity is limited.

If you have ever bought a home and had a competing offer on your bid, you know it can drive up your price by a lot knowing there’s a second bidder on the table. Especially on a unique home.

All you need is a little more demand than supply to drive up prices.

When you’ve done the hard work of becoming non-interchangeable combined with having more demand (prospects) than supply (you), you get to find out what prices you can really command for your services.

When you have a surplus of opportunities, you can keep raising your prices until the market resists. And that can add significant profit to your business that you might otherwise be leaving on the table.

So – no matter how busy you get, try not to coast with your marketing.

You might just find your business explodes in profitability if you keep demand for your expertise higher than supply.

Food for thought…

—kevin

Picking up the thread from yesterday, the takeaway was that the best content—the kind that drives leads to your services—enters the existing conversation going on in the minds of the buyer.

It’s not even the specific topics on their mind that you have to join in on—although that helps. It’s really about the level of conversation.

Intro topics vs. advanced topics. Business problems vs. marketing topics. What to do (ingredients) vs. how to do it (recipes).

It’s tricky because you can be directionally right about your topics, but if it speaks just above or below your ideal buyer’s level, you won’t get any inbound opportunities from it.

Here are a few tricks you can use to make your content more resonant with actual buyers—without guessing or making up topics on the fly.

• Look at past sales calls to see what people are saying, asking, and wanting
• Write down questions your current clients ask you and answer them in your content
• Think about the projects you work on and what parts interest your buyers most
• Write with a real person in mind (an ideal buyer) to make it easier to connect at their level
• Share more of the kind of content that has driven people to hire you in the past
• Research communities where buyers are talking and see what they’re talking about

It’s almost impossible to get it right without some real data—ideally conversations with your target market.

It’s so easy to miss the mark by a sliver when you think you know what your ideal clients want to hear—only to say it at a level that doesn’t connect with their thinking.

I’ll leave you with this quote by psychologist Carl Rogers:

“What is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.”

Collect real conversations, transcripts, topics, questions, and stated goals directly out of the mouths of your ideal buyers.

What is relevant and important to a real ideal buyer is also relevant to many more like them.

That’s the secret.

—kevin

Here’s a mindset for you.

What if your emails (or social media posts) were designed not just to educate, but to build a relationship with people in your audience?

How would it change your writing style? How would it change your tone? How would it change the content of your emails?

My guess is you’d introduce more of yourself into your content. You’d tell more stories. You might even feel like you could relax a little.

You’d probably try to speak the language of your ideal audience. You’d probably write in your own tone of voice. You might even introduce a little personality in your writing.

A scary thing in B2B, I know.

Most importantly, though, you’d begin to think of yourself as an advocate for your audience—looking out for the people you genuinely care to serve.

For those wanting a deeper insight or execution of your ideas, you’d show them how they could pay you for those things. But that’s never the main point.

The main point would be to make people feel something. A connection with you—the real person behind the computer screen.

Yes, you want to give away your best ideas. Yes, you have to flex your expertise from time to time and not skim the surface.

But you want to do that in a way that people can consume: one small bite at a time with occasional deep dives to mix it up.

It’s not the only way, but it’s a good way if you plan to publish semi-often and don’t want to overwhelm your reader.

So what if everything you did was to further the relationship (not just the transaction)?

A little mindset consideration for you as we wrap up this week.

Safe travels,

—kevin

An interesting question came up today on a Mindshare group coaching call.

The topic was essentially why someone’s long-form educational content via email wasn’t converting any leads—even though the list was big enough to think it would.

If you tend to teach hard with your content, this might be for you.

You’re writing for the wrong audience

If you’re consulting, the people hiring you are in a leadership role—i.e. CEOs or other executives.

Those people don’t want to get deep down in the technical weeds. They want to know if the problem affects them, and if so, how to approach solving it.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to sell to people who do the execution work, then you can give away parts of the solution as a deep-dive technical article or email. Implementers like step-by-step instruction.

Most consultants are trying to reach leaders, not implementers. Thus we need to focus on the former kind of content.

Problem identification vs. solution instruction

To sell to executives, you want to help people identify the problems that may exist and then tell them what to do, not necessarily all the details on how to do it.

It’s not that you’re trying to withhold anything to make them hire you. It’s simply that they’re too busy and/or disinterested in learning the technical solution.

They’ll tune you out if you try.

That’s because the implementation part is not their job. Their job is uncovering problems and getting them solved in the best way possible.

People will generally trust you can help if you can help solve the problem if you can clearly identify and articulate it.

It’s just like how I don’t want to learn what steps to take to file my tax return or reconcile my books each month. I’d prefer to delegate that to my tax professional.

The people you want to speak to also don’t want to learn all the technical details of what you do. They just need to understand the problem so someone like you can fix it for them.

But first, they have to be aware of the problem. It’s your job to educate them about it at the leadership level.

The key mindset here is to operate like a peer, not a contractor.

If you’re trying to overly teach the implementation side, your content will resonate with people who implement. And those people aren’t likely to hire you.

But if you can articulate a problem people have better than they can—and explain how it affects their business in terms they care about—you are much more likely to resonate with the buyer.

And if you resonate with the buyer, you’re more likely to have them consume your ideas and eventually hire you.

In closing…

Speak the language of your buyer and guide them at their level of thinking. The leadership and strategy level.

You do that by writing as a peer, not a contractor.

That’s how you get hired as a peer, not just a contractor.

—kw

As a marketing consultant, designing your business model can be a tricky process.

Do you do some form of execution work? Advisory retainers? Managed marketing (CMO)? Strategy calls? Education products? A hybrid approach?

The truth is, you may want to do some… or all of it! The question then is how to package, sell, and deliver those things.

But fret not, for I have something you will love.

Whether you are a freelancer or agency owner looking to create more leverage and profit, or a consultant trying to diversify your revenue streams, these trainings will have plenty to offer.

What You Get

The Business Model Design Bundle gives you lifetime access to the following workshops:

• How to Package, Price, and Sell Custom Consulting Engagements (1.5 hours)
• How to Design Productized Advisory Services (2 hours)
• How to Sell and Deliver Single Strategy Calls (1.25 hours)
• The Right Way to Sell Fractional CMO Services (1.5 hours)
• How to Create Your First Education Product (Coaching Call – 1 hour)

In total, it’s over 7 hours of comprehensive training and supporting templates, examples, and resources for the five core ways to package your expertise as a marketing consultant.

It’s based on my experience as a consultant after selling over US$1M of these products and services since I began this type of work in 2017.

You own these trainings for life. And if I update any of these trainings in the future, you’ll get newer versions, too.

No subscription. No upselling. No funny business.

You can get the entire bundle for only $297 $197 from now until Tuesday at midnight using promo code BF100.

You’ll ALSO be invited to the private Slack community for marketing consultants.

But here’s the catch

I’m limiting the sale of this product to 15 purchases. After that, the bundle goes away.

If you think your business model could use a little juice, this bundle is for you.

This product has been moved here.

—kw

 

Are you mildly terrified of niching your marketing practice?

Fear not, for I have a solution for you.

One that lets you go deep on a niche while de-risking the process and removing some of the fear you might feel at the same time.

This one is in a video format. If you recall, I’m dabbling with YouTube.

So check it out over there and be sure to like, comment, and subscribe—or whatever the kids are doing these days.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE →

—k