This week in the United Kingdom is National Walk-to-School week, where parents deliberately park a mile or so away from school so that the kids can walk up a real appetite en route to class in the morning. It would be great if it wasn’t immediately after Carruthers’ National Fall-Down-the-Stairs Day, but it does allow one to freely park a metre from the gate without guilt, and without worrying about finding an elusive parking spot in the drizzle!
(This Weekly is typed using a straw between my teeth as both frozen shoulders thawed a little too suddenly this morning in a valiant, but vain attempt to stop all my tootsies from breaking. I would use voice recognition, but it’s having trouble recognising speech between the whimpers.)
What is the biggest business challenge an accountant or an attorney faces? You’ll be amazed to find out that it’s exactly the same as the biggest business challenge you face. Finding more and better clients.
The more clients a professional has, the stronger the business. And the more these clients are prepared to pay (because the professional is adding more value than his/her peers), the stronger the business. The secret to a quality business: finding more and better clients. Bear with me while I roll out a simple, foolproof, marketing system for any business, but especially appropriate for businesses where the owner sells knowledge (accounting, law, medicine, architecture, engineering, consulting, and the ilk).
In the ideal world our hero (the professional) specialises in a field that s/he is intensely interested in. (This makes the job a lot more fun, but one has to wonder why anyone would choose proctology or tax law.) This specialisation also means that our hero can charge a lot more, because any advice offered carries much greater value. (Ask anyone who has ever had a haemorrhoid, or an intense interface with SARS’ collection department: both similar experiences.)
But our professional friend struggles to find clients. Typically these come from referrals from colleagues, but the temptation always exists that the colleague begins to see the revenue stream and gets delusions of grandeur – deciding to specialise in that same line of work, without necessarily taking the time to invest in the appropriate qualification. (I don’t mean that they do this unethically, but I have met many accountants who’re quite happy to take your money for tax advice rather than refer you to an expensive – and far more useful – specialist tax attorney. And I have lost count of the MD’s who have taken far too much interest in my buttocks without referring me on.)
So, what’s the quickest and easiest way to find more clients, and clients prepared to consult with you in your chosen speciality rather than walking in off the street to discuss maritime law, marital law, or martial law – none of which are your core focus, but all of which you will discusss because the bills must be paid, and none of which you can charge a living wage for?
I am glad you asked.
Consult for free! It’s a great concept, eh? But here is the rub: it works better and faster than you can imagine. Except, that almost every professional I know ignores it completely because it goes so against the grain.
A couple of simple examples will illustrate.
Mark Corke (the presenter of the Prepare your Business for Sale Seminar) joined the Warrior community in January this year. He started to hang around in the Warrior forum, offering some advice here and there, and offering a wayward opinion every now and then.
Within a few months we all knew what he did, and we all started referring to him everyone we knew that was trying to buy or sell a business. Heck, his advice was so sharp that I even advertise his seminar – because I trust him. And I trust him because I got to know him online. The same has happened to a few attorneys in the Warrior forum.
Contrast this with an accountant who joined recently, and left after a fortnight because “Two weeks is sufficient time for me to ascertain that it is not for me, and does not value-add anything of significance to me or my practice. As for the Forum, way too much General and non-business stuff, I have far too much of that already cluttering my inbox – certainly not willing to pay for more!”
And this despite having immediate access to thousands of small businesses – and at least one good question to answer each day – and build a reputation online -which leads to more and better clients (both online and offline).
The quickest, least expensive, simplest, and best way to build credibility is to hover in those forums where your prospects and peers hang out. Give away some knowledge free by answering the questions. It’s a bit like a breakfast network meeting – but it’s more effective because every post you make stays online forever, and can be found by someone in 2 years time with that same problem you answer today. Which leads them to you. (And it doesn’t contain nearly as much cholesterol.)
I hang about in a bunch of different forums – because they allow me to build relationships with new folk that can help my community – and because I learn so much from others. The cost? A little bit of time to help someone else today – so that it will come back tenfold next month.
Although I have used the Warrior community as an example, there are a bunch of other forums. I reckon ours is by far the best, but that’s because I know these guys really well – and I cannot imagine a better group of people to know. Your business is only as good as your clients – and mine are the best.