How to Sell Advice

Join this episode's conversation in the community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/80-how-to-make-your-products-or-service-more-compelling

. . . .

Lately, I've been paying attention to the factors that convince me to buy things—especially when I'm not super familiar with the product or creator who made it.

By far, the most compelling factor in my decision to puchase was the positioning.

What does it do, how is it unique, and is it for me?

And assuming the product or service is well-positioned, I really analyzed what else made me more likely to want to buy things.

And after a lot of analysis, the second most significant factor was social proof.

Things like:

1. Unsolicited recommendations
2. Reviews and testimonials
3. Case studies and work samples
4. Client and media logos
5. Statistics and numbers
6. Group affiliations

The main crux of this is selling people on two points:

1. Does this work in general?
2. Does it work for people like me?
3. Will it actually work for me?

The last part is the trickiest, which is why you can never have too much social proof. 

So there you have it. Are your/your clients' products and services well-positioned?

And if they are, how much social proof surrounds the places where people make buying decisions? My guess is there's always room to improve and add more.

Got any good tricks up your sleeves? Let us know in the comments below!

—kw

P.S. I'd love to hear your feedback on this group. Want to leave a testimonial or review? DM me or email [email protected] and I'd be delighted to hear from you. 🙏

Join the conversation around this episode here: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/79-how-to-come-up-with-interesting-topics-for-your-content-marketing

. . . .

I had a great question come in about whether to interview clients for content ideas or not.

In general, I'm not against asking clients what topics they might be interested in, but like a lot of things, people don't know what they don't know.

Especially if you ask them out of the blue.

It's better to spot things "in the wild" in the course of your conversations and through research.

In this episode I will cover my top three sources for content ideas:

1. Imaging my best clients and intuiting what they would want
2. Taking notes throughout the day and noticing key questions/challenges/desires/things I teach often
3. Researching online, such as on Twitter, in communities, book reviews, podcast topics, conference topics and more. 

There are a lot of ways to find new topics, but these work best for me. I go into a lot more depth on why in this podcast.

The main thing to remember: with everything you write, ask yourself, would my ideal client want to read this? If not, go back to the drawing board. 

—kw

P.S. Know someone who would be interested in this group? Ask them to join! I might just hook you up with a free month or two if you do. 

Every client engagement comes to an end, eventually.

And when it does, I'm a big believer in having an "off-boarding" call.

In my opinion, these are critical. It can sometimes be a little uncomfortable—even when things end on a good note.

But they are extremely valuable to both you and the client. I'll explain why.

In this episode, I talk about: 

1. Why you want to have off-boarding calls with your clients (and not let things phase out into oblivion).
2. What to talk about during those calls, including accomplishments, results, things still to be done, feedback for you (good and bad), as well as an offer to stick around to ensure a smooth transition.
3. How to use that process as the basis for case studies, testimonials, and improvements to the way you do your work, and much more.

Do you hold off-boarding calls? Will you start now if not?

I'd love to hear what else you do at the end of your client engagements.

Link to episode in community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/78-the-right-way-to-wrap-up-your-client-engagements

—kw

It's late on a Friday night and I'm sharing this quick audio with you.

It's about consistency. The value of showing up even when you're tired and don't want to.

Writing and publishing content consistently has been the sole driver of most of my businesses since I started.

If I didn't create lots of content over the years, I wouldn't be in business today. It's that simple.

And while I've gone through phases of creating lots of content and letting the habit slide, the best results have always come from being consistent.

In this episode, I talk more about:

1. Strategies for writing content daily
2. Coming up with content ideas
3. Focusing on topics related to your methodology
4. Discovering your own big ideas
5. Infrequent vs. frequent content
6. Recency and frequency biases

And a few other ideas.

I hope this resonates with you. 

Have a great weekend!

Link to episode in the community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/77-the-value-of-consistent-publishing

—k

When you get paid to do implementation work, you're ultimately being paid to solve a problem.

Maybe it's anything website or content-related. Or maybe it's more broad, like anything marketing-related. Anything within that purview becomes your problem. 

In other words, you own the entire problem of X for your clients.

The challenge when switching to advisory work is that you end up facilitating the solution instead of actually doing it for your client. That means someone still has to actually do the implementation.

But as an advisor, whatever your scope is, it's still your problem to solve. Regardless of the roadblock that comes up, you will move mountains if you have to.  

That might mean finding new freelancers or agencies to implement, doing wireframes or proof-of-concepts yourself, training people do to things in-house, teaching people how things work, or anything else that needs to happen to get the problem solved.

After all, what you're selling is a solution to their problem. Nobody pays for half a solution.

Personally, I charge a fixed price for what I do. I don't want problems to get more expensive for my clients than anticipated. That just adds a problem to a problem.

If it means I need to put in overtime to get the problem solved, that's the risk I take. I own it and find solutions. 

From the client's perspective, they get the assurance that for a fixed price, the problem of X is solved (marketing, design, strategy, leads, whatever).

The feeling of buying all-in services is very reassuring.

But if you throw your hands in the air and make any part of the problem your client's problem, you're providing an incomplete service.

"That's not my job" won't cut it if it's part of the problem you promised to own. 

People pay a lot of money to make their problems someone else's. The more you do that, and the bigger the "problem", the more you’ll get paid.

Listen in for some more specifics. 

Link to this topic in the community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/76-own-the-entire-problem

—kw

Positioning yourself effectively kinda hurts.

It should feel like you're leaving a LOT on the table. And the reality is, you are. You're leaving MOST of your opportunities on the table.

And yet, counter-intuitively, by saying no to most, you say yes to more.

In the episode I talk about how and why you should tightly narrow your positioning.

It shout hurt a little bit, which is why I recommend doing things in a very particular way (i.e. having a broad AND narrow position until you get traction, phasing into it, focusing who and HOW you serve, etc.).

If you are struggling at all with your positioning, give this a listen and let me know in the comments where the pain is. I promise the pain is where the opportunity is in so many cases.

We all need a little coaching to get through it (I did), and there are a lot of considerations when making a choice, so don't be shy about where you are in the process.

Here's a link to the post in the community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/74-how-to-and-why-you-should-tightly-narrow-your-positioning

—kw

We’ve been talking a lot about business models and positioning lately but not enough on how to generate leads for your consultancy.

In this episode, I break down the way I've been able to get a consistent flow of clients in my consulting work, resulting in me being booked solid for most of this year.

Here's an overview of what I talk about:

• Positioning 
  • Choose something you have an existing advantage in
  • Go two levels deep
    • Industry
    • Problem you solve
    • How you solve it
• Deep research
  • Communities
  • Podcasts
    • Guests and hosts
  • Conferences
    • Presenters and sponsors
  • Books
    • Read the reviews
  • Consultants
    • Who else is offering what you do?
  • Other service/software providers
  • Products they buy
  • Pains/problems/questions
• Content marketing
  • Write daily or as often as you can
  • Publish on LinkedIn, anywhere else you can
  • Send to email list
• All roads lead to email list
  • Create a "super signature" to do the selling for you
• Be everywhere
  • Webinars
  • Associations
  • Conferences
  • Software companies
  • Groups
  • Invite your subscribers to free webinars
  • Community participation/eBombs
  • Build relationships
  • Podcasts
    • Remember: send everyone to your email list
• Have a productized services ladder that maps to your ideal clients' situation
• Plus many more ideas you could get into, including ads, video, podcast, and so many other tactical things that could work for you. 

This is just the beginning of exploring the topic of lead gen. for your consultancy and it's by no means the only way to do things. 

Do you do anything differently? What works for you?

Leave a comment in the community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/74-how-to-attract-more-leads-to-your-consultancy

As a marketing advisor, I’m biased towards done-with-you services.

While I see the merits in done-for-you work (freelance/agency style) or do-it-yourself (one-off strategy sessions and/or info products), the thing thay works best for me is clearly the done-with-you offering.

In this episode, I talk about the three ingredients required to make done-with-you work into a high-profit and low labour engagement.

The three ingredients include:

1. Having a process for every engamenent  
2. Having pre-made training resources to help clients learn and do some things independently 
3. Working with a team of highly specialized partners to do the implementation for the client (and the benefits to everyone of doing so as a fiduciary advisor)

If you’re serious about selling advisory work, this is the trifecta that has worked extremely well for me and my clients, creating leverage and some degree of scale in my business.

Of course, all of this works best if you focus on a niche industry. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be a horizontal specialist, i.e. an SEO, designer, or even a copywriter.

Do you prefer one of the other forms of offerings in your business? A blend of everything? Feel strongly about an entirely different approach?

Let me know! My word isn’t gospel so let's share the nuances in the comments below.

Link to post: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/73-how-to-use-done-with-you-offerings-to-create-efficiency-and-leverage-around-your-expertise

—k

There are lots of ways to price your consulting engagements. 

You could be the low-cost consultant, the high-price consultant, or anywhere in between.

Usually, I recommend companies focus on being either one of the lower cost, convenience providers (and do it at scale) OR create a world-class experience and charge high rates. 

This idea came from a book called Trade-Off by Kevin Maney. I highly recommend you read this.

But oddly enough, I price my consulting services at what I consider to be a very reasonable cost. And yet, I am able to generate multiple six figures without breaking a sweat.

Why? Because advisory work is pretty leveraged. There aren't too many deliverables. 

But following my pricing isn't a strategy.

In this episode, I walk through my mindset when it comes to picking prices for my services so you can see if any of it resonates with you. 

I also talk about recurring revenue and how it helps create stable, predictable revenue and a calm business.

There are many ways to package your services, so you should do what works for you. 

Here's how I think about it in case it helps.

Link to post in the community: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/72-should-you-price-your-consulting-services-on-the-high-middle-or-low-end-of-the-spectrum 

—k

P.S. Got a question? Reply to this (or any post) or DM me if you'd like to keep it anonymous/private.

Hello friendly people!

Oren had some questions about my coworking consultancy's membership program, whether people upgrade to the 1:1 premium "inner circle coaching" option, and whether it's the same things my Propeller Program.

In this episode, I break down:

• How many people are in those groups
• Whether people upgrade to the premium 1:1 coaching
• The surprising benefits of memberships outside of the money it generates
• How the small group coaching works and why it's a good idea to try
• And how being in a niche (or having a clearly defined market) is key if you plan to sell a program like any of these

I also mention a past recording of a situation where a client was considering as downgrade into the 1:1 inner circle coaching. Here's a link to that recording (episode #65).

The bottom line is this: 
If you're going to do group stuff, it helps to be in a niche or serve a very specific group of people, otherwise it's just too hard to coach or teach a group of people who are in completely different situations. You end up broadening and generalizing your info to the point of it losing most of it's value.

Think small to think big!

Join the conversation here: https://society.mindshare.fm/c/mentorship/71-selling-membership-group-coaching-and-low-ticket-1-1-coaching