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Marketing Your Expertise To Get More New Clients

Written by: Mark Satterfield

Article Overview: If you’re a consultant, coach and advisor, or make your living by sharing your expertise, keeping your business pipeline full is an ongoing challenge. Consultants and experts face business development challenges that others do not. Which is one of the key reasons why most traditional forms of marketing do not yield the results that we as advisors and coaches need.

Marketing Your Expertise To Get More New Clients

If you’re a consultant, coach and advisor, or make your living by sharing your expertise, keeping your business pipeline full is an ongoing challenge. Consultants and experts face business development challenges that others do not. Which is one of the key reasons why most traditional forms of marketing do not yield the results that we as advisors and coaches need.

Part of the challenge has to do with the unique nature of our work. For example, if you are a solo-consultant you are responsible not only for obtaining the work but also delivering it. Not surprisingly, this puts extreme pressure on the time that is available for marketing. But why is this unique? Don't all businesses face a shortage of available time?

The reason this is a particular challenge for people who earn their living by offering their expertise is because of an over reliance on traditional methods for getting new clients. This was further highlighted in a recent survey of 625 advisors and experts in which we asked them what methods they used to get more new clients.

The most common response? Word of mouth marketing and referrals. When we drilled down and asked how the referrals were obtained, the number one answer was through networking events and even cold calling. What these methods have in common is that they are extremely labor intensive. Yes, they do work but in order for them to become a consistent method by which new business is obtained, one must have the time necessary to commit to these activities.

This is where the problems occur. Labor-intensive methods such as networking, presenting, or cold calling may be fine when business is slow. But what happens when business finally picks up? Now the consultant has a new primary objective- servicing the needs of the client. What doesn't get done? The labor-intensive marketing. The ultimate result? Feast or famine business cycles.

So what’s the solution? Instead of using your personal labor to acquire new clients, the emphasis should be on leveraging your expertise in a manner that magnetically attracts new prospects to you. The good news is that virtually all consultants, coaches and advisors have a wealth of knowledge that can be used as a means of getting prospects to raise their hands and self-identify themselves about being interested in your services. By putting in place an automated and integrated system that first attracts prospects and then builds trust and credibility, those who make their living by offering their expertise can avoid relying on their labor to attract new clients.

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Article Tags: business development, business grwthsharing your expertise, marketing, new business, sales prospecting



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