Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

Marketing Consultants

Are your prices negotiable?

I had a window installer come by recently to quote new windows on my house.

When I asked how the process works, he told me he’d educate me on the products, size the windows, give me a quote, then I’d “beat him up” on price, and then we’d make a deal when we figured out the details.

The throwaway line about haggling over price had me feeling uneasy. I don’t know anything about windows let alone how to haggle over their prices.

There are lots of lessons here to unpack. Should you negotiate? If so, when and how? What do you do when price is a factor?

We’ll get into that and more.

[Listen here]

Innovate on top

I’m a big believer in modelling what works.

I also believe innovation—which can’t be modelled—is how you build a lasting business.

Model what works, yes. But don’t forget to innovate on top.

How to publish more consistently

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is that when I don’t have a fixed publishing schedule, it’s easy to push it off for long periods without publishing anything.

Just like exercising, the longer you don’t publish content, the harder it is to get going again.

I noticed this recently with Mindshare Radio, too. I used to publish episodes 3 times per week—every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Then, I decided to record something once per week. But, I didn’t set a strict publishing date or really commit to anything publicly.

And that resulted in inconsistent publishing—and worse, some over-thinking and even occasional anxiety about what to create.

In this episode, I talk about why committing publicly to your publishing schedule can not only make you more consistent, it can reduce the anxiety you face each time you stare at a blank page.

Give this a listen and let me know if you can relate.

Would you use an axe or a baseball bat?

Imagine you were going to cut down a tree.

Would you use an axe or a baseball bat?

Picking a niche is like using an axe. It takes less effort to cut through the noise and you’ll ultimately get better results for you and your clients.

Choices and trade-offs

One of my absolute favourite books on business strategy is Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t by Kevin Maney and Jim Collins.

I was re-reading it yesterday and this quote from the intro struck me:

If business leaders fail to make choices—fanatical, obsessive, focused, disciplined choices—to build for the long term, and succumb instead to grasping as much as they can in the short term, they will build mediocre companies.

The reality is, we make trade-offs in our businesses whether we’re intentional about them or not. If we don’t make them, they happen to us.

There’s no right answer for everyone—it just depends on what you want to build and whether you’re willing to make the necessary trade-offs to get there.

How to stand out in a sea of competitors

Do you feel like it’s hard to stand out among the sea of other marketing consultants?

One of your available secret weapons for standing out is going smaller either in what you do or who you do it for.

My preferred approach is picking a smaller target audience and going deeper on serving their few core needs.

You can pick a smaller pond and make a bigger splash—which makes standing out a lot easier.

Once you get traction, you can begin to broaden again if and when the time feels right. Or, you could do smaller again.

It’s counter-intuitive, but standing out more often means going smaller, not broader.

The idea disease

I came across this Steve Jobs quote today and thought it was interesting from an advisory perspective:

JOBS: You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.

And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make. There are just certain things you can’t make electrons do. There are certain things you can’t make plastic do. Or glass do. Or factories do. Or robots do.

Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic.

One of the biggest criticisms consultants face is that they have ideas, waive their hands, and then leave the execution part for the client to figure out.

To me, that couldn’t be further from the truth. At least, it’s not how I work. And it’s probably not how you work, either.

When I’m consulting, I’m also facilitating the execution.

I bring things like research, examples, partners, training, oversight, and will even execute parts of the strategy with the client on our calls.

Just because we advise, doesn’t mean the follow-through isn’t on us. An idea or strategy is only as good as the execution.

You’re responsible execution, even if you’re not the one actually executing it with your hands. 

Time for yourself

Could you take one day off client work per week to work on your business (and yourself)?

I’ve been doing that for the past five weeks and it’s been incredible.

In this Mindshare Radio episode, I talk about how and why it might just be the best thing for you, too.

Listen on the web or subscribe on your favourite podcast player.

Have a great weekend!

Mindshare Radio is now public

I decided to make all 170 episodes of Mindshare Radio available for public consumption.

Over the last two years, I’ve covered a wide range of topics centred around the idea of helping marketing strategists, fractional CMOs, and advisors sell their expertise, not just their hands.

Each episode is around five to twenty five minutes long where I break down a specific topic—usually on the business of marketing but sometimes also the practice of it.

Topics include things like when and how to create a membership program, up-sells and down-sells, handling value conversations, ethical nuances of advisory work, free vs. paid content, niching and specialization, knowledge products, productized services, and a lot more.

If you’d like to subscribe, the easiest way is to go here and click the appropriate icon to bring you to the app of your choice on your mobile device.

Otherwise, you should be able to look up Mindshare Radio on most platforms and find it without issue.

Thanks for your continued support and let me know if you have a topic or question I should cover!

My take on “Start With Why”

I’ve always been mildly skeptical of Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” thinking when it comes to customer attraction.

I don’t really care why Jeff Bezos started Amazon. Or why my dentist chose his profession. Or why my accountant does her work.

And then one day I saw this sign. Even though this little pathway “store” was “closed”, it definitely made me feel warmer about the idea of buying from them had they been open.

Does sharing your “why” matter? I’m not sure. But it probably doesn’t hurt.

The real question is, do you have a good why for the work you do?

And if not, are you doing what you should be doing?

sign with a reason for buying from them