Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

marketing

Playing in traffic

There’s a concept I resonate deeply with that will help you generate more activity in your business.

Carl Richards calls it, “playing in traffic”.

It generally means putting yourself out there. Creating content, engaging with people, and interacting with the world.

The more of it you do, the more likely it is that good things will happen.

It can be intimidating or downright terrifying when you’re not used to it. It takes practice. But it’s an essential part of running a successful advisory business. 

If you’re not playing in traffic, you’re all but invisible. And when you’re invisible, nothing happens.

Publish a daily or weekly email. Interview people in your target market. Reach out to past colleagues and contacts. Publish videos of you talking or doing a webinar. Make noise and stand out any way you can.

Good things happen when you “play in traffic”.

How to scope a consulting service

The scope of any consulting service should be determined by the goals of your ideal clients.

If you start with an idea in your head about what people want, you almost always get the specifics wrong. You need real-world input from your ideal clients.

At very least, have conversations with people in your ideal target market. Understand their pains and the context around their goals.

Build backwards from there.

You can do this in your research process, it doesn’t need to be done exclusively during sales conversations.

If you get clear on the goals of your ideal clients using real-world input, the scope and price takes care of itself.

What does a marketing consultant even do?

One of the questions I get from clients and students alike is, “what do you even do if you don’t do execution work?”

This is an important question. You will inevitably be asked some version of it. And when you do, you’ll want to have a response internalized.

This is also important if you’re still wrapping your mind around the value of your brain without doing the actual execution.

The main four things to know is this:

  1. Your job to act in their best business interest at all times.
  2. Your mission is to get a result with whatever tools you have at your disposal (though not your hands if you can avoid it).
  3. You’re a facilitator of outcomes. You’re a guide. You are not the pack mule. You can’t be everything.
  4. Niching makes your expertise rarer and immensely more valuable independent of execution.

Here are 22 ways a marketing advisor adds value without doing execution:

  1. Create an insight- and data-driven marketing strategy
  2. Create a marketing plan that actually gets implemented
  3. Bring a proven process that makes things more efficient
  4. Source outside specialists to perform specific tasks
  5. Help them develop and manage a financial budget
  6. Help them measure results in a non-ambiguous way
  7. Help them limit mistakes they could easily avoid
  8. Hold them accountable to their goals and promises
  9. Coach them on their marketing skills and mindsets
  10. Bring rare subject matter expertise they can’t find elsewhere
  11. Help them achieve their goals faster by knowing what to do
  12. Bring examples, templates, and resources they can use
  13. Help them create lasting habits, systems and processes
  14. Challenge their assumptions about what they can or should do
  15. Provide a neutral, outside perspective on their business
  16. Connect them with others in their industry or niche
  17. Assist with the market research and analysis process
  18. Draft proof-of-concept wireframes, content, and other materials
  19. Help them sell their business, attract investors, or report to stakeholders
  20. Help them hire an in-house marketing manager when the time is right
  21. Guide their marketing from a higher level without getting lost in the weeds
  22. Think strategically on their behalf

When you eliminate the need to use your hands, your time is freed up to work on higher-value things that ultimately help them save time, avoid problems, and get better results.

There’s a lot to unpack in all of these, but the bottom line is this: advice and execution are best sold separately.

Once you and your clients internalize this, it’s hard to see it any other way.

Have a bias for action

When you’re standing still, all you can see is what’s around you. To get new information, you need to move.

But many of us get paralyzed when we’re not sure what to do. We think but don’t act. And then nothing happens.

If you’re willing to take imperfect steps, eventually you’ll find what you need to succeed. No mistake is unfixable.

So when in doubt, just move.

Try something. Create a proof of concept. Put out the feelers. See what happens. Adjust your strategy. Everything can be undone or adjusted.

Having a bias for action creates momentum—and momentum creates progress.

You can harness momentum, but you can’t steer a parked car.

Refuse to phone it in

As your business grows, you’ll get busy. So, you’ll raise your prices.

New clients will pay higher prices and your old clients will likely keep your older rates until they attrition or something happens.

On the one hand, you don’t want to lose the “safe” revenue they represent. You also don’t want to have “the talk” about raising your prices.

So, you accept lower margins with your old clients and make it up with new, higher paying clients.

But that only works for so long. And it’s a slippery slope.

As you get busy, you’ll mentally begin to justify doing less work for them. The busier you get, the more tempted you’ll be to cut corners.

If they signed up today, they’d be on a much lower plan or paying significantly more, you reason. So you do less without telling them.

And that’s the problem.

Your clients deserve better. They deserve your best work. And if you can’t do it at that price, they deserve an honest discussion about what you’re willing to do (or not do) today.

Your prices should make you slightly nervous and excited to do great work. Those nerves will keep you on top of your game. And that’s what your clients are paying you for.

Refuse to phone it in—even with your old clients. Either find a new service to offer, raise your prices, or refer them to someone else.

Be a co-buyer with your prospects

The late Zig Ziglar—a renowned author, motivational speaker, and salesman—had many valuable lessons about sales.

One of his lessons that still stands out to me was to be a “co-buyer” with your prospects during the sales process.

That means sitting on their side of the table. To think about all the angles from their perspective. And ultimately, to help them make a purchase only if it’s right for them.

When you act as a co-buyer, it shows prospects you’re already acting in their best interest, not yours. And that’s what a fiduciary advisor does.

Your clients feel this intention when you genuinely have it. It sets a precedent of trust that lasts throughout the entire engagement.

Be your clients biggest advocate—before, during, and after the sale.

That’s the kind of advisor you want to be.

Put in the grunt work

Being able to sell advisory services is usually a product of doing execution work for a long time.

You’ve done it so long that it no longer makes sense for you to use your hands. You’ll be too expensive.

Which means your value is in knowing what and how things should be done, and then facilitating the execution with your clients.

If you’re struggling to fill your roster with advisory clients, go back to the basics. Put in the reps doing execution work. Phase into advisory services.

Sell grunt work until you can sell your head instead.

P.S. I talk a lot about phasing into advisory work. Join the Mindshare Community to listen to a private podcast episode where I talk about this and similar topics.

What is your universal value proposition?

My core value proposition to help marketing consultants build and run a profitable advisory practice.

My coaching, membership, training, community, and even this email list are designed to help you do just that.

In other words, it’s all unified. One universal promise. All touch-points designed to help you do the same thing.

Sure, there’s lots of nuance in what I offer. I talk about creating leverage, specialization, designing your business model, marketing—all the tools you need to increase the success and profitability of your marketing practice.

Sometimes, I even talk about mindset, or soft skills, or even unrelated topics entirely. We’re not all logical and one-dimensional.

The point is, with everything I do, my goal and promise is to help you achieve that single outcome. That’s my universal value proposition.

Do you have a universal value proposition? Hit reply and let me know.

Why I don’t love the term “Fractional CMO”

I’m not actually against the term ‘Fractional CMO’. I just don’t love it.

You may or may not recall, but there’s been a lot of terms for what we as marketing experts do—especially since the digital era.

Digital strategists, e-marketing specialists, growth hackers… the list goes on and on.

As one new term rises, another inevitably takes its place, making the former one look outdated.

‘Fractional CMO’ feels a little like one of those terms to me.

But here’s the thing: the fractional CMO positioning works right now. People get it when you say, “I’m like hiring a part time chief marketing officer”.

And that’s important when you only have a minute to explain what the hell you even do.

There’s another reason I don’t love the term:

It positions you like an employee. And employees are in many ways to take orders.

Not really, but kind of. As a fractional CMO, there’s the expectation that you’re hired to do what the client wants.

And while that’s true to some degree, I’d argue you’re hired to get a result a client wants, not to do what they want you to do.

Because what they want to do is often not entirely the thing they should do to get the result they really want.

Above all else that you’re a consultant.

You’re paid for your expertise, not to take orders and execute them.

And because even ‘consultants’ are sometimes used as a fancy term for a freelancer who executes hard things, I prefer the term ‘advisor’.

It’s timeless and says what it is you do: you sell advice.

So I’m not saying don’t position yourself as a fractional CMO. I just don’t want my content and positioning to use that term too much because it reminds me of all the other buzzwords that came before it.

It works today, so use it if you want. You can always change it later.

Just know the risks and constraints of fractional CMO positioning.

Fish at your feet first

“Fish at your feet first.”

I quote this sentence a lot, yet I can’t find a reference for it.

I think I spun it off in my head from the original quote, “fish where the fish are”.

Why fish at your feet first? Because that’s where you’re standing.

There’s no point in casting deep into the ocean looking for new opportunities if you haven’t looked immediately around you first.

There’s a good chance you’ll find plenty of fish nearby if you look.