New Book Available: Chapter 7 Excerpt

So this time around we are up to Chapter 7 of BYOB- Build Your Own Business, Don't Be Your Own Boss 2nd Ed.

This chapter is all about PR and marketing principals that are extremely important for technology consulting companies. Whether you are a VAR, break fix computer specialist, networking specialist, MSP or an engineering consultant.

There are a lot of "marketing gurus" out there and I'm not claiming to be one but I have been in your shoes as a technology business owner and did figure out a thing or 2 in my day that brought me a million in sales revenue. So I will say I'm pretty good and I know your business/SMB clients pretty well.

So let's get into it.




Chapter 7
Marketing Principles: Positioning Your Business as the Leader to Your Niche Audience

Let’s get to work on the subject of marketing systems. In a nutshell, this consists of
• Positioning your business as the “go to” people
• Determining your business niche or niches
• Laser focusing on the best prospects possible, known as your target audience, and
• Marketing to them to put them into your sales funnel.

What we are going to focus on is ways to find your target audience and the most effective ways for a consulting or service business to pursue this audience.

Positioning Vs. Prospecting

Let’s start this out with a very important statement. The top reason for a long sale cycle is lack of positioning.

Let me explain positioning with a quick example. How often do you get mail at home or at your office from a lawyer? Let me take that back. You do get letters from lawyers advertising themselves sometimes. They are called ambulance chasers. Let’s continue with our example.

Say you need a litigation lawyer. You don’t know him and he doesn’t know you. Do you trust someone you found in the phone book? Some people do and many get burned and don’t do it again. Normally, you would look up someone a colleague has used/recommended or go ask a trusted resource like your accountant. Now you have yourself a top notch litigation lawyer.

Since you don’t know him, why should you trust him? You trust him because he has positioned himself as a leader in his industry. And that’s not by any accident either. He is perceived as the expert because he knows something you don’t and he put it out there that he’s got that expertise.

He may not even be the best of the best but either you or your referral resource has been informed that he’s the “go to” guy. You needed a specialist, he’s the one whose name came up in your research and he’s the one you’re going to listen to.

Since you sought him out, you will most likely pay whatever price he throws at you to get rid of your pain. As a matter of fact, if he charges too little, you might take a step back and question his position as an expert.

Are you starting to see the picture I’m painting?

****

The chapter continues on to talk about:
More on positioning
PR and Lead Generation Tactics
Audience Selection
The Perfect Client
List Selection
Marketing Funnels

****

This is a fairly long chapter with no fluff and a lot of items to put into practice in a true marketing system. Like the chapter on Client Management states, when you properly set up client management systems, marketing becomes much easier.

The book will be shipping in the next week or so. Be sure to pick it up right here
http://consultantscoach.com/byobbook.php


To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant's Coach