Be the Red Crayon

As a coach, I work with all kinds of already successful people looking for help to bring their businesses, careers, and lives to the next level. Most are selling professional services of one kind or another, for their own business or practice or for someone else. Their next level is getting more clients (or patients), getting better clients, or simply keeping the clients they have already.

Many of them come to me with an idea-a paradigm-that the only way they can grow is to do something they dread: marketing, "prospecting," and (horror of horrors) selling.

"But I'm an engineer," my client Bob protested a few years ago, "not a SALESMAN."

The picture Bob had in his mind of someone who sells his services is the pushy salesman on the used car lot with the loud plaid sports jacket, the phony smile and the bad toupee. Who wants to be that guy?

Like most of my clients, Bob couldn't fill his day with work for quality clients for two reasons:

1. He didn't know how to attract more business; and
2. He was afraid of cold calling, making presentations and other "sales" things he was sure I'd be making him do.

"What if instead of marketing, prospecting and selling, you just positioned yourself to attract the clients you want?" I asked Bob.

"I don't know what you mean," he responded, "but that sounds a lot better than selling."

If you're just another financial advisor, cleaning service operator or dentist, you're faced with competition from dozens-or hundreds-of people doing the same work. You're another "white crayon." You will get business, but your ability to get more and better clients and patients will be limited. Sending out mailings and refrigerator magnets, making cold calls and other marketing and sales activities might pull in the occasional new client, but what will work faster and better is having a way to distinguish yourself from all of the other white crayons.

Instead of struggling to sell your services, position yourself as a provider who can fulfill a specific need for a specific type of client.

Every day I speak to professionals and salespeople who are telling people they are brokers, or lawyers, or coaches, web designers, or IT professionals, without differentiating themselves from all of the other people who do "the same thing." Each of them is just one more white crayon in a box of white crayons.

The point they miss is that clients are more attracted to experts and specialists-or someone unique, than to general practitioners who look like all the other general practitioners in any field. Your prospective clients and patients are looking for the red crayon. Start attracting them by giving them what they're looking for.

I recently spoke with a chiropractor who protested that he couldn't be a red crayon. He was "just another chiropractor." When I "Googled" him before our call, I found an article in which he was quoted in an interview about cold laser applications for relief of pain.

His expertise in this field was already a way he could attract patients. But as we spoke, he mentioned a recent experience with Reiki healing that had made him feel that he had become better with his hands, doing chiropractic manipulation, than he had ever been.

These were two powerful differences that made this professional a red crayon, which could, if properly used, attract many more new patients to him than any "sales" effort he could ever mount.

Why wasn't his practice as full as he would like it to be? He chose to be "just another chiropractor.

"Why did he choose to be "just another chiropractor"? Like many of us, he was afraid to be the red crayon.

If you recognize that what holds you back is fear, try overcoming that fear. Be the red crayon. It will bring you more clients and more job offers with less selling.


Be the Red Crayon - To learn more about this author, visit Sandy Schussel's Website.

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