How To Stand Out In A Crowded Market
When you run a business providing a service or advice to another person, or a number of people, you know first hand the importance of relationships.
That’s why it’s highly likely that you spend a lot of your working day trying to strengthen relationships between your business and your clients. And maybe even more of it trying to establish new relationships with potential clients you’d love to work with!
Which is smart because you understand what it really takes to be successful. You know that without that relationship, there’s no trust.
And without trust, there’s no clients.
But if you’ve been at this for a few years or more, you know it’s not always easy to get a foot in the door to START a relationship, let alone build it to the level required for this trust to exist.
It’s hard to do because of the way most of us who work with clients, go about marketing and selling.
In my experience, most Professional Service Providers and Advisors get clients by being mostly reactive. Mainly because they’re so busy serving the clients they do have!
So other than the odd bit of networking here and there, they mostly wait and hope that clients will “jump in to their net”…
Which is essentially waiting for them to come via word of mouth and referrals.
Will someone jump in to your net this month?
Who knows. It’s not exactly predictable!
Or if they do invest in some form of proactive outreach or marketing, it’s mainly cold tactics like cold calling or emailing. Which is hard to scale effectively, hugely time consuming and no one really enjoys!
Or they might try “buying” leads from a lead gen company. The kind where the same individual leads are sold to a number of other businesses, so it becomes a mad dash to be the first to talk to that person, before they get so fed up with all the calls they stop answering the phone…
Finally, the brave ones go down the advertising route, either offline or online. Which is usually very hit and miss, as they’ve either had to figure it all out themselves, or hired someone else to do it. Effectively becoming dependant on them to grow their business.
I’m not saying any of these are necessarily bad. They can (and do) work to a varying degree of success. There’s just a problem with them…
They’re the same thing everyone else is doing, which is how something becomes “average”.
And very few people want to work with average…
That’s a challenge. Especially as most of the time your prospects are sceptical. Not about you per se, but of the type of business you represent. They have preconceived ideas about your industry or profession.
So a lot of the time when you go looking for new clients, unless you get lucky by showing up “right place, right time”, or unless they already know you, most will pretty much dismiss you out of habit more than anything else!
Which means your value isn’t seen, as you’re not positioned as being any different to anyone else in your line of work.
So if you want to be in demand…
Stop chasing opportunities, and instead start curating them.
You need to be willing to try something new, and “put yourself out there” in a unique and different way.
Because when you stop relying on the same tactics everyone else is using, you can build a growth “ecosystem” that’s entirely your own.
And that’s important. REALLY important. As Einstein said…
So right now you may be thinking…
“Ok, makes sense… I’m curious. But how do I do things differently in a way that actually works to bring in clients?”
First by remembering at a fundamental level, we all deep down want the same thing. We all want genuine relationships with people who offer us value, make us feel good and make our lives better than before.
Business relationships are no different.
Meaning if you want to stand out in a crowded marketplace and stop having to hustle to get a reliable flow of clients for your business, you need to change your approach to how you go about marketing and selling what you do.
You need to focus on relationships, not outcomes.
The outcome is impossible to control, which is why it’s foolhardy to focus on it.
But you can create genuine relationships with practically anyone at a moment’s notice, especially in business, by showing up to potential clients very differently to everyone else.
Instead of trying to sell them stuff right out of the gate (focusing on the outcome), you offer them something valuable first.
Something that pretty much every human being on the planet would love to be given more of…
Recognition and acknowledgement.
- How does this open doors to new relationships with practically anyone at a moment’s notice that could lead to client opportunities you never thought possible?
- What does that look like in a practical sense?
- What do I need for this to work and how do I do it?
That’s exactly what I show you in a free, on demand, Masterclass training I’ve put together called…
THE 3 GROWTH ACCELERATORS THAT CAN ADD £100K+ OF NEW REVENUE TO YOUR BUSINESS IN 6 TO 12 MONTHS
Here you’ll discover the complete “growth ecosystem” for selling professional services without spending more on advertising or working longer hours.
