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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

Strategy + Implementation= Results

If you are ready to kick some serious butt as an entrepreneur of your expertisethis is the program you’ve been looking for.

You’re getting the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way to market your business and generate MORE leads, BETTER prospects, and BIGGER sales.

Why?

Because we don’t start with tactics.

Everyone wants tactics – even you. C’mon, admit it!

Tactics without strategy is busywork.

Random activity leads to random results.

What we’ve found with our most successful clients is that they work REALLY hard on the foundational DECISIONS (strategy) in their business so that their day-to-day CHOICES (tactics) become easy.

There is NO secret sauce, silver bullet, or magic beans.

But if there were, it would consist of two simple ingredients that you need to help you create a steady stream of leads, clients, and cash…

Strategy + Implementation = Results

That is exactly why we created the Expert Profit Formula.

The real difference: we cross the chasm from information to implementation with specific assignments that move you and your business forward in tangible, specific ways.

Using these expert marketing strategies, tactics and tools (these are the same exact strategies I share with my private clients who invest $15,000 to work with me 1-on-1 for 90 days) you’ll dramatically improve your ability to:

  • Generate new and better-qualified leads
  • Close more and bigger deals faster
  • Improve the quality and quantity of your referrals
  • Boost your word of mouth marketing power
  • Charge higher fees regardless of the economy
  • Book more business over competitors who are essentially “invisible” where it counts the most – in front of prospects, clients and influencers
  • Master much smarter marketing, sales and business development tactics that work in a wide variety of businesses – including YOURS!

EPF (as the cool kids call it) is designed around the exact principles, practices, and tools to help you make a dent in the universe, recharge your batteries, and go full steam ahead into the new normal with a high-fee, high-fun expert-based business that you love — and that will refill your bank account with a steady stream of prospects, clients, and cash.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Sales Skills

77 Rules of the Road (for Marketing, Business and Life)

Here are 77 mindsparks to get you back to work with the right mindset and motivation:

  1. Whatever it is you’re working on – it’s NOT what you think it is
  2. And it’s BIGGER than you think it is
  3. Your job is not to work alone – lone wolves starve to death
  4. Your job is to build containers for collaboration
  5. You need three groups of people…
  6. You need your posse (partners, colleagues, team)
  7. You need your tribe (followers, fans, customers, clients)
  8. You need your dream team (advisors, coaches, mentors)
  9. And you must avoid one group at all costs…
  10. Keep away from the herd (sheep, lemmings, goofballs)
  11. “Yes” is almost never a good first answer
  12. Focus like a maniac on what matters most
  13. Turn off email – Yes, really
  14. Live out of your calendar, not your inbox
  15. Be kinder than you need to be
  16. Let go to move faster
  17. Stop letting fear make your decisions for you
  18. Learn to love the verb DECIDE…
  19. Make more decisions
  20. Make faster decisions
  21. 90% of your decisions can always be changed later
  22. The magic word to get most anything you want: ASK!
  23. Charge premium fees…
  24. Good clients will follow
  25. Bad clients will fall away
  26. Stop asking for permission…
  27. Why? Because you already have it
  28. You don’t need to see the whole staircase – just the first step
  29. Action eliminates fear
  30. Overdeliver like crazy
  31. It’s better to have a capacity problem than a sales problem
  32. Customer loyalty goes both ways
  33. The saddest referral is one that was earned but never given (See #22)
  34. If it doesn’t matter to your customer, it doesn’t matter
  35. Forget features and benefits
  36. Focus exclusively on outcomes, results, and payoffs
  37. Learn to speak prospect language about prospect problems
  38. If you want to sell fire extinguishers, first show the fire
  39. If you don’t risk turning some people off, you’ll never turn anybody on
  40. Diversify while still specializing
  41. If you can prove what you do works, you win
  42. People never argue against their own opinions, data, and feelings
  43. When selling an idea, show up with a bucket, not a microphone
  44. There is no “sales gene”… it’s a learned skill for all of us
  45. Everyone can sell once they find their own voice
  46. Marketing comes down to four words: Offer value, Invite engagement
  47. Imagine that it’s easy
  48. Good things come to those who bust their ass and never give up
  49. Your success day in and day out, year in and year out depends on two things…
  50. How fast you’re willing to learn (relearn, unlearn)
  51. How much you’re willing to grow (personally, professionally, emotionally)
  52. Every prospect qualifies – they just might not qualify for YOU
  53. If the first version of your product/service isn’t embarrassing, you waited too long to launch it
  54. Happy people are that way because they want to be
  55. Miserable people are that way because they want to be
  56. Secure your own mask before assisting others
  57. If you’re a great starter, learn to finish
  58. Are you willing to do what you have to do so you get to do what you want to do?
  59. If you ain’t got people skills, I don’t care how smart you are – you’re dead
  60. Stop acting like a numbnutz and your life will improve
  61. Different isn’t better
  62. Better is better
  63. Until you have loved a dog, part of your soul remains unawakened
  64. Get out of the office – yes you – yes now. That’s where life happens
  65. Happiness is to have family that you consider friends and friends that you consider family
  66. Everyone needs allies, advocates, brothers, sisters, and co-conspirators in mischief and merry-making
  67. Getting what you want is easy – Deciding what you want is the hard part
  68. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers gotta write, dancers gotta dance…
  69. So what are you waiting for?
  70. Don’t hand out home-made business cards…
  71. Don’t build a free template website…
  72. Professionals use professional tools
  73. Get serious, get help, or get out
  74. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy – remember that
  75. Once a day, do something brave
  76. Once a day, do something kind
  77. Once a day, do something smart
Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Sales Skills

33 Ways to Improve Your Year

1. Fewer resolutions. More resolve.

2. Increase your daily level of optimism. AMAZING things will start to happen!

3. Be a lamp. Or a lifeboat. Or a ladder.

4. Mean people suck. Don’t become one of them. Not even for a second.

5. Write more. Journaling, blogging, morning pages, notes to friends, and loved ones.

6. Feature and leverage other people.

7. Be more gracious and more grateful.

8. Less excitement. More execution.

9. Let it go. Yes, you know EXACTLY what I mean. (Thanks again, Joe Calloway!)

10. Create a mastermind alliance or partnership. It will make all the difference.

11. Write your damn book already.

12. Drink more water.

13. In case of emergency, oxygen masks will drop from the overhead compartment. Secure your own mask before assisting others.

14. Clean up. De-clutter. De-pile.

15. Make more lists and use them wisely.

16. When it comes to social media: Post value (not ego); Retweet generously; Shout-out loudly; Thank abundantly.

17. Carry a notebook everywhere. Got an idea? Write it down. With today’s date. And a “next action” step. Repeat.

18. Get more sleep.

19. Do more of what makes you happy.

20. If you speak or present regularly, your ideas deserve beautiful slides. This might help.

21. If you DON’T speak or present regularly, you are missing out on the #1 way to boost your career, grow your business, and magnify your impact on the world.

22. Nobody buys your products, services, or ideas “sight unseen.” So go get seen!

23. “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” ~ Mario Andretti

24. Read Getting Things Done by David Allen.

25. Master your inbox once and for all. Massive freedom will follow.

26. Tap into trends to generate more and better ideas for both your business and your life. Start here or here. (Read this to see how Harvard Business Review connects trend hunting with sales success, too.)

27. Stop worrying about the HOW. Focus on your bigass WHY and a small set of very specific WHATs. The rest will take care of itself. Honest.

28. Become more in tune with the time/space continuum. Seriously. Rather than wanting everything to happen “Now, now, and now” (which only causes overwhelm and frustration) focus more consistently on what you need to do “Next, next, and next.”

29. The three factors to your long-term success: 1. Your Authenticity 2. Your Expertise 3. Your Enthusiasm.

30. Replace “Who’s going to let me?” with “Who’s going to stop me?” (Hint: Maybe no one?)

31. Reflect on the shortness of life. And pack as much goodness as you possibly can (for you and for others) into every single day.

32. Always pick up the check and leave a big tip.

33. You’re pumped… You’re peaked… It’s game time… Bring it!

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

8 Powerful Book Marketing Lessons

1. Aim higher. Are you writing the book to just “have a book” or are you writing the book that your fans, subscribers, followers, clients, prospects, customers, and influencers want to read? The second one takes more careful thought and strategic action. But it will also skyrocket your book’s influence, impact, and income.

2. Act faster. How long have you been noodling on your book idea? According to surveys, 81% of people say they want to write a book but only a tiny fraction of a percentage take action on it. If you’re tired of years and years of wishing and you’re ready to start doing – now is your time.

3. Your book needs to FLOP. FLOP is an acronym for “Feature and Leverage Other People.” And you specifically need 3 groups of people to help propel your book’s sales – your endorsement posse, your contributor tribe, and your launch partners. Nothing great is ever achieved alone.

4. Books don’t sell themselves. Just like “good work should speak for itself” is a complete myth, good books don’t speak for themselves, either. You need to promote, market, catalyze, tease, tempt, help, and serve your readers in lots of ways – and your book is just one of those primary ways.

5. Offer value, invite engagement. Nobody likes to be talked at. But we all love to be talked with and listened to. Make your book marketing and promotion campaign more like a conversation and less like a data dump. Interact, interview, be radically generous, be radically helpful, seek to converse, and not to convince… and the sales will come flooding in.

6. Marketing your book = Marketing YOU. Don’t think about marketing your book as a one-off project. If you’ve written the right kind of book, it will serve and support your business for years to come and vice versa. In fact, the activities that you need to be doing to market the book are the same activities that you need to be doing to market your business!

7. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t fall into the trap of short-term thinking. Your book launch is the beginning – not the end – of your book marketing journey.

8. Focus is everything. If you make your book the focal point of your business, it will become the central driver of your high-payoff marketing, sales, and business development activities. Put massive goals in place and then create a game plan to take baby steps every single day. Rain or shine. Happy or sad. Feel like it or not. That’s the fast path to results.

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Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

Book Marketing Truths

Here are 13 rookie mistakes that kill your book sales:

1. Self-publish your book and wait by the phone – Ugh, been there, done that, it doesn’t work.

2. Traditionally publish your book and wait by the phone – also not recommended. Books don’t sell themselves no matter which publishing route you take.

3. Not establishing your platform sooner – you need reach and visibility to sell books (and anything else for that matter!)

4. No book proposal – Even if you plan to self-publish, creating a proposal serves as a blueprint and roadmap for your book marketing success.

5. Having only books in your arsenal – A book is a “gateway” into all your other investable opportunities. Make sure your high-fee offerings align with the content of your book.

6. Going it alone. You need book endorsers, launch partners, possibly even contributors to help you build a community of promoters around your book.

7. Using expensive PR firms – almost every single author regrets doing this for the simple reason that their campaigns do NOT generate book sales.

8. Paying for “Amazon #1 bestseller” campaigns. As you may know, a dirty sock became an Amazon #1 bestseller and there are a ton of scammers and goofballs promising “guaranteed” bestseller status. We’ll reveal why that’s not the point — and how to hit your goals regardless of this phony metric.

9. Not branding the book. Your book is your brand and you should be able to build your business around that book and its ideas for the next 3-5 years.

10. Being afraid of sales. Don’t worry about hawking your books. Focus instead on selling your ideas, value, impact, results, outcomes, and gifts – and selling everything (including your book) becomes much easier!

11. Buy into an anthology. For most authors, this is a shortcut that seems very appealing until you realize it’s a money-making ploy for the so-called “publisher” and you get very little juice from being in a book with 20 other authors who couldn’t cut the mustard on their own, either. Sigh.

12. Marketing overwhelm. Having no idea what to do – when to do it – how to get it done – and thus ending up frustrated, confused, and doing next to nothing to market your book. Lack of marketing leads to a lack of sales leads to a lack of monetization. That’s called a doom loop.

13. Mistake size for value. If you’re writing your first (or next) book, don’t give in to the false assumption that you have to write a 300-page tome. Many of the highest-grossing and bestselling business books of the past 20 years weigh in at less than 125 small-format pages.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Skills

6 Self-Limiting Habits

Here’s a checklist of attitudes, traits, behaviors, and beliefs that the Top 1% of consultants, coaches, and experts wrestled with – but then STOPPED so they could become the Top 1%.

How many of these have been problematic for YOU?

It’s time to ASSERT your rights.

Because you DESERVE success.

And you must STOP getting in your own way with these 6 self-limiting, revenue-killing, success-preventing BAD habits.

Ready? Here they are…

  1. Lack of time, focus, and a game plan to build a serious “speaker/ expert” platform that could be generating an additional $10K-$15K per month on speaking/training fees alone AND helping you reach more high-probability buyers with your impactful programs
  2. Small potatoes thinking and doing: Settling for local chambers, libraries, and business organizations with no overall game plan to target high-fee niche groups on a national level and build a revenue-generating machine for ALL your investable opportunities, including speaking, training, coaching, consulting, and online products.
  3. Generic sounding programs and No target market that is hamstringing the efforts that you ARE making with your limited time. What needs to happen here is a way more effective and efficient approach. (Targeting specific decision-makers with a value prop they’re already seeking.) Transforming your generic-sounding programs into 2-3 well-branded ones in your “integrated product suite” and dropping the Chinese menu approach that is commoditizing you to death!
  4. Gaps in the sales process, sales execution, and sales follow-through with little proactive selling – too much distraction and thus, falling back on reactive “catch as catch can” marketing and taking on random low-fee opportunities as they fall in your lap. Replace with a buyer-centric DAILY dose of high-touch, high-relevance outreach.
  5. Lots of good ideas but too little activation and too many “spinning plates” which you can no longer afford. It’s high time you started making more money – in other words, it’s time to STOP paying your dues, and start paying your bills! Even seasoned experts are often OVERDUE in raising their fees because they’ve gotten complacent or wrongly believe that clients won’t or can’t pay more. There’s always a bigger fish – and if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind.
  6. Mindset, self-esteem, self-worth, and the impostor syndrome. Nobody will value your programs, services, and solutions higher than you do. Stop being your own worst enemy and get out of your own way. Sales, significance, and happiness will follow.

Ready to assert these rights?

Ready to BUILD or REBUILD or PIVOT into the high-fee expert business you’ve always wanted?

Ready to start down the path of doing so quickly, with all the steps laid out so that you get a reliable, repeatable process that brings you the clients, the impact, and the freedom you deserve?

We can help you: https://www.expertprofitformula.com/

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Skills

17 Tips to Create Audio That Rocks

I’ve done a lot of homebrew audio – on my laptop – with a Zoom H1 digital recorder – and with my trusty Blue Snowball microphone and Audacity on my Mac. And I’ve also done a fair amount of studio recording in studios ranging from the scary to the awesome.

Here are 17 tips for speakers, authors, consultants, and independent professionals who want to create better sounding, more professional audios for their podcast, radio show, audio products, or voiceovers.

1. Stand up when you record – it makes a HUGE difference to the way your voice sounds. For example, I recorded the entire 12 hours of the Do It! Marketing audiobook standing up. (Wear comfortable shoes!)

2. Speak close to the microphone – you want to get right up in that bad boy’s face. Somewhere between 4 to 8 inches from the microphone. If you’re doing this at home, test different distances and use the one that sounds the richest, warmest, and most clear.

3. Use a pop filter. You will totally thank me later. It’s going to be the best money you spend if you’re serious about creating great audio.

4. Don’t overinvest in equipment. You don’t need a lot of fancy gear to sound great. A good USB microphone, a mic stand, a pop filter, and some basic recording and editing software like Audacity (free at this link) will go a long way.

5. Don’t skimp on studio time, either. If it’s an important project where production quality counts, find a great local recording studio near where you live. Top-notch studio time is surprisingly affordable these days. Expect to pay between $75 and $125 an hour for a top-notch facility and technical staff who can help you produce top-notch work.

6. Don’t over-prepare. If it’s a big project especially – it doesn’t make sense to over-prepare. You should be familiar with the material (if you wrote it, you will be!) and that’s about it.

7. Don’t under prepare. If you’ve never done an audio recording before, paid studio time is not the place to learn the ropes. Invest a few hours with “practice recording” at home. Your studio time will go that much more smoothly and quickly.

8. Read – but don’t “read.” In other words, don’t make it SOUND like you’re reading. Speak naturally. Pretend you’re talking to a friend so it’s not boring.

9. Mix it up. Use vocal variety – just as professional speakers and seasoned storytellers know how to vary their pace, tone, pitch, and volume to keep an audience engaged in what they’re saying… YOU should use the full range of your vocal variety to emphasize keywords, transitions between points, and to underscore important ideas.

10. Use your body. Since you’re standing, you’ll have the ability to do more physical movement. Use it! It’s amazing how the voice and the body are connected. Have you ever seen actors like Robin Williams or Whoopi Goldberg or Tom Hanks in those “Making of” special features on the Disney movies that they do voice acting for? They are gesturing wildly with their hands, bouncing on the balls of their feet, making silly faces, leaning into the microphone, sometimes even jumping up and down. And it’s for a VOICEOVER. That’s because your vocal energy is tied to your physical energy. Use it – and your voiceover range and variety will improve dramatically.

11. Remember the art of the pause. Listeners need a pause to comprehend the last thing you said. Think of pauses – some short, and some not so short (for dramatic effect) – as the punctuation in your audio. If you never pause, you exhaust your listeners who lose the thread of your long sentences or complex ideas. If you use pauses to insert “natural phrasing” into your script, it makes it much easier for your listeners to understand, absorb, and they WANT to keep listening!

12. Take it one page at a time. For the Do It! Marketing audiobook, I had to get through 60,000 words and 280 pages. If I had thought about it that way during the recording sessions, I might never have made it! I took on the task one page at a time. Do longer recordings with this mindset, and you’ll sail right through faster than you ever imagined. I cruised through 150 pages on Day 1 (6.5 hours) and 130 pages on Day 2 (5.5 hours). And it was fun!

13. Have a “keep going” mindset. Voiceover professionals know that their main task is to “get the job done” – and that momentum is their friend. Don’t think about stopping. Don’t take too many breaks. You’re in the studio (yes, even your home studio) to crank out the work, not to obsess over minor details or do endless retakes. Keep going!

14. Flaws are good. Good professional audio editors will take out every inhale, smooth over every rough patch, edit out every vocal aberration. GREAT editors will leave in just enough of those same aberrations to make the voiceover pro sound human. When we chat in coffee shops, over breakfast or lunch with friends, or in front of prospects or clients in meetings, our vocal and verbal delivery is never 100% perfect. There’s a difference between sounding professional and sounding sterile and robotic. So leave a few “personality flaws” in your audio. Maybe 5-10%. It makes all the difference and you’ll sound like a REAL human.

15. Pause whenever you need to. Ah, the magic of editing. Whenever you screw up a line, swallow a word, stop to fix a typo in your script, or for any other reason (sneeze, cough, get a drink of water) – keep the audio rolling and pause. Then pick up where you left off. Most professional audio engineers will mark the script at that point to help the editor, but you just pause as long as you need and jump right back in when you’re ready. You don’t need to ask permission, you don’t need to apologize, you don’t need to get flustered. Pause so you can GO!

16. Eat! And drink tea, bring lozenges, avoid dairy and coffee, and bring water. Don’t forget to eat breakfast on the day you’re recording. Why? Because stomach grumbling is audible on good audio equipment. Yes, really. Avoid coffee – it dehydrates you. Drink tea – especially lemon tea or ginger tea that has a little bit of acid to clear and soothe your throat. Bring lozenges with you in case you need a midday vocal recharge – I like the Ricola classic Swiss herb cough drops. Avoid dairy products like milk or yogurt which tend to generate phlegm and block up your throat. Also, bring a water bottle so you have plenty of water available in the booth as you record. Water is your friend!

17. Personality not included. No matter how great your script, it doesn’t have any personality until you pick up the script and put YOUR personality into the words you’ve written. Don’t be shy – in fact, if you don’t bring your full personality to the recording, you’ll miss out on the biggest opportunity that audio programs and products present – the opportunity to connect and build rapport with your listeners and have them experience what it’s like to have a warm and personal conversation with you! If you’re loud, be loud. If you’re a little edgy, sound edgy. Don’t hide your personality for the sake of a “professional sounding” recording. There’s no such animal – the whole point of recording audio is so that you CAN marry your content with your personality.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Skills

Erase It

You should have been here – in my office – 5 minutes ago.

This whiteboard was FULL – and I mean jam-packed – with ideas, notes, bullets, to-dos, action items, brainstorms, and some jottings about the “next big thing” for our professional speaking and inbound marketing firm.

Perhaps you have a similar whiteboard in your office. Or a wall filled with post-it notes. Or plaques and awards on your bookcase. Or other visual reminders of where your company has been and all that you have accomplished.

Tremendously exciting. Truly.

The only problem: it was tremendously exciting in your past. Every day, every week, every month – hell, every hour – that you do not ACT on those ideas, they start to turn on you.

They are no longer motivators – they are pacifiers that remind you how great you WERE. What you imagined would BE. And what – for better or worse – didn’t quite turn out the way you envisioned last week, last month or last year.

In my case, my office whiteboard was holding onto ideas and initiatives from 6 months ago. Yikes! Totally useless to me today. EXCEPT it made me feel good about how gosh darn smart I am and what big plans I have/had (NOT!)

When Steve Jobs came back as interim CEO of Apple in 1997, he had every award, plaque, and completed project plan removed from the walls and hallways of Apple. He did not want any visual reminders of the past. All he wanted his teams to see was their future.

NEW plans, CURRENT prototypes, and UPCOMING projects were all over Apple’s hallways, offices, and conference rooms. Everything was future-focused and kept rigorously up to date.

What do you need to erase from your whiteboard? Which awards should you put away? Which of your accolades are keeping you stuck in the past?

Put that stuff away.

Look to your CURRENT future. In the words of Steve Jobs – it will help you “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” And it will help you achieve your NEXT level of “insanely great.”

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

Pie

As one of the few experts who only preaches what I practice – and what has worked for hundreds of our clients – here’s the real deal on the 7 key strategies that need to be firing on all cylinders for your business to grow.

It’s about pie – more on that in a minute…

Questions I get from smart cookies like you all the time:

  • David, what does it take to gain pre-eminence in my market?
  • How can I become the go-to person in my topic/niche?
  • Why am I still wrestling with the feast-or-famine revenue roller coaster?
  • How can I set and get premium fees when clients are tight with budgets?
  • How can I expand my reach, grow my list & build my platform?
  • How can I recession-proof my business so that I make money regardless of the economy and industry ups and downs?
  • I’m plenty busy – why aren’t I making more money?

All these questions have their answers hidden in one of 7 key areas of your thought-leadership pie as a consultant, speaker, coach, author or independent professional…

No alt text provided for this image

Let’s explore each one – and see how you can tune, tweak, and improve anything that’s missing, not performing, or could use a major overhaul in YOUR business…

1. Speaking – obviously, this is our area of expertise. Having a solid speaker marketing strategy is vital to help you gain visibility in front of audiences who matter (aka buyers and decision-makers); generate leads for your back-end professional services; and generate significant revenue in paid professional speaking fees for your workshops, seminars, keynotes, trainings, workshops, and private events. Speaking is one of the most powerful lead-generators and revenue-generators in your expertise-driven business.

But how do you scale this above and beyond the audiences you can reach through live speaking? The next pie slice has your answer…

2. Online Courses – The most successful experts, speakers, consultants, and coaches are embracing the power of online courses, e-learning, and digital distribution methods for their expertise. The first benefit here is pure scalability – your business can reach thousands (or tens of thousands) of ideal customers, prospects, and buyers through the power of online courses. As a source of revenue, online courses are hard to beat because you create it once – and get paid over and over and over. This allows you to create a freedom-based business where your value is no longer tied to your personal time, attention, and presence. Jackpot!!

But now how do you reach those thousands of eager prospects, buyers, and decision-makers?

Let’s look at the next piece of the pie…

3. Webinars – The day I fully embraced webinar marketing back in 2012, my entire business – heck, my entire life – changed dramatically. We are living in an “Attention Economy” – meaning, when it comes to getting clients, you first need to earn their attention and only then do you get the chance to earn their money :o) The #1 best way to deliver massive value to your subscribers, fans, followers, prospects, and buyers is with content-rich webinars that teach actionable strategies, tactics, and tools. You need to be radically helpful and radically generous. This is what converts strangers to friends and friends to prospects and prospects to paying customers who love you, buy, repeat, recommend, and refer like crazy.

But webinars presented here and there sporadically and without a clear strategy are not going to do the trick. So you need…

4. Funnels – A marketing funnel is simply a fancy word for a programmatic sequence of touchpoints – emails, videos, blog posts, webinars, PDFs, and other helpful communications – delivered in a specific sequence to a specific subset of people specifically interested in a certain one of your products, services, or programs. A marketing funnel is your lifeline that keeps you connected to prospects who are at various phases of the buying cycle – from merely interested in the topic (browsers) all the way to committed to investing in your solutions/services (buyers). A well-designed marketing funnel will take a cold lead from initial contact to signed contract in a predetermined sequence designed to both add value, and extend offers and invitations to your relevant investable opportunities. Without a marketing funnel in place, you will never get off the “feast or famine” revenue roller coaster. And worse, you risk alienating people who are NOT interested in buying today while completely missing out on sales to the hot prospects who are ready to buy right now.

But what about long-term stability and predictable revenue? The best way to share your expertise and gain this benefit is…

5. Consulting/Coaching – Having longer-term engagements on your service menu – such as 90-day coaching packages or year-long consulting programs or monthly facilitated mastermind roundtables – is a great way to increase your impact on client results. Remember, people don’t really value transactions – but they VERY much value programs and services that deliver transformation. And delivering results over a sustained period of time is the best way to guarantee your clients’ success. Because of the greater depth, breadth, and duration of these engagements, it is much easier to get premium fees from premium clients who are deeply committed to the transformation you offer that will get them the results they truly want. These longer-term engagements also provide the foundation of your financial stability because the income is significant and ongoing.

But then how do you capture “lightning in a bottle” to let all the folks who can’t afford your consulting or coaching know you are the real-deal resource who can help them when they’re ready to transform?

6. Publishing – One of the best ways to do this is with publishing a nonfiction business book based on the expertise you already have. Writing, publishing, and promoting a business book that captures your methodology, training, and tools is an outstanding way to build your platform, expand your reach, and establish your authority as the “go-to” expert in your specific topic, niche, or industry. After all, you “wrote the book” on it so you must be a highly credible expert. And – some tough love coming up here – your book needs to be excellent. Not just good or very good, but truly great. It does NOT need to belong – in fact, the bestselling business books of all time are less than 120 pages in a small 5×7 trade publishing format. But just writing a book for the sake of having a book (and a crappy one at that) is definitely not going to help promote your expertise. That’s why the book needs to be marketed, launched, and sold for the long-term impact it can have on your professional success.

And what makes all of these components really take off? It’s about how you articulate and distinguish them with your messaging and packaging, which means you need to master…

7. Copywriting – Copywriting has nothing to do with patents, trademarks, and copyright notices ;o) “Copy” is written content conveyed through online media and print materials. Copywriting is one of the most essential elements of effective marketing and successful selling. It is the art and science of strategically delivering words (whether written or spoken) that get people to take some form of action. Good copy resonates with the reader and is relevant, valuable, attractive, and effective in communicating the value, impact, results, outcomes, and emotional payoffs tied to investing in and benefitting from your products, services, or programs. The better you are at copywriting, the more prospects, leads, and sales you will generate because you’ll be able to quickly get your prospects to “get it, need it, and want it” when considering buying from you.

Bam!! There you go.

If you want some guidance on how to put these exact pie slices together for YOUR business, check out https://www.expertprofitformula.com/

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Skills

11 Questions to Spark Your Success

Ready for some major motivation to kick butt, take names, and chew gum?

Here are the 11 questions you need to answer:

  1. There’s no good time. Now is the time. What are you waiting for?
  2. Put out your best material. For free. Do you want to be SHARED or SCARED? 
  3. YOU may be your biggest obstacle. What would happen if you got out of the way? 
  4. Stop STARTING things and get more into DOING. What can you DO today – right now?
  5. A few may wish to see you fail. A lot more are rooting for your success. Where is your attention?
  6. Forget the word vision. Better: What do you SEE in your future?
  7. You’re aiming too low. How can you elevate your sights, your fees, and your value?
  8. Stop blaming others. It’s ALL your fault. Move on – what’s next?
  9. A bend in the road is never the end – unless you fail to turn. Where do you need to turn? 
  10. It’s not what you think it is. And it’s bigger than you think it is. Why not embrace that?
  11.  There are no silver bullets, secret sauces, or magic beans. Now, what’s your plan? 

What you need is a healthy dose of reality from those 11 answers – and we’re here to help.

So let us help you launch – or grow – your expertise-based business as a consultant, trainer, coach, speaker, information marketer, or course creator: https://www.expertprofitformula.com/