0 How to Find Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand is an amalgam of many things: your story, skills and values.  Of these perhaps most problematic are your values.  Typically, business owners set out with clear values and lose track of them as they experience the pressures of being in business.  And values are crucial if they are to align with your market’s values.

Perhaps the most telling of these pressures is our attitude to money.  Not everyone in business is trying to make tons of money but everyone has, at worst, to break even.  Everyone in business has to make peace with making money.

If you can’t do that the most likely outcome is your business will fail.  Another possibility is you lose sight of your values, consumed by keeping your business going.

These difficulties are usually the result of “heart-centred” business owners lacking an adequate understanding of money.  Many are embarrassed asking for money or find making money becomes an end in itself.

This week I have written a lead magnet that offers a few pointers about how to make money that relflects your true worth.  The main thrust of my argument is business-owners underestimate their worth and so they undercharge.  I’ll post about this when it becomes available.

If your personal brand is value driven, you must sort out your relationship with money.

Station 5: Who?

Who are you?  This question is perhaps one of the most difficult to answer but you must, if you depend on a personal brand.  Your personal brand conveys your integrity as a business owner and you can’t convey integrity if you are not at peace with making money.

Here is what I said in my early draft of my keynote:

You need a degree of empathy?  Who is this you?  Because that is the last question: Who are you?  Now, look at me, do I look like a sales person?  Do I look like the Wolf of Wall Street?  (I haven’t seen the film, I haven’t a clue what the Wolf of Wall Street looks like.)   The important thing is we all need to be in alignment.  We need to be in alignment with our work.  We need to get into the flow.  Are we a champion?  Are we a superhero?  How do we communicate ourselves because very often we are marketing not just our offer but ourselves?

Are you becoming the person you first imagined when you started out?  You need to be self-aware, if you are in business.  You need to know how you come across, how you align.  I believe passionately that marketing is not about corporate business development.  It is about how we bring benefit to the people around us, how we benefit our immediate market, our customers or clients.  But also our neighbourhoods and communities.  And this means that we are profoundly educators.

So, I’m going to pause us here and take us into the next section of this talk, thank you.

Sharpening the Message

This follows on from last week’s section.  There are several pointers in the right direction but ultimately it does not highlight what is at stake.

I talk about alignment but it is not clear what is aligned.  As I mentioned last time, your values aligned along a sequence that embraces your offer, marketing, benefits and outcomes.  You should be able to see your values reflected in all these and especially the last two.

Your attitude to money is implicit.  If your values are solely about profit-making then you are likely to serve an atomised market.  But equally, without a positive relationship with making money you are likely to fail as a business or perhaps worse not see contradictions between your approach to money and your other values.

Business that addresses the vagaries of the human heart helps build a better world.  It creates the spaces where relationships form and ultimately genuine community.

“Heart-centred” business owners can’t afford to ignore money.  So, my new Wednesday sequence of posts, starting next week shall be about money and our attitudes to it.

How do you understand money?

0 Belief in Yourself

In this final post about self-employment, I explore self-belief. Belief in yourself, when no-one else shares that belief.

The truth is, everyone is better than I am.  They are better than I am at one or more things.  I am also better than any person at one or more things.  If I focus on the former, I shall feel under pressure.  When I focus on the latter, perhaps less so.

However, where I am better at something, it depends on who I’m compared with.  This is not a recipe for superiority.  The way I see it, we all have something to contribute on a small or large-scale and this may vary depending on context.

Your Market

Your market is the people who benefit from your unique contribution.  In this sense everyone has a market, even if their market is one person.  A carer may primarily care for one person, for example.

So, your market is those who hear what you’re saying, understand it and want your help.  You need to express your offer clearly and help people connect with you to decide whether working together will be mutually beneficial.

You also need to communicate clearly with people not in your market but may know people who are seeking your service.  Arriving at a clear statement of what you offer takes time.

You need self-belief while you work out your offer to your market.  In the early days, when no-one is interested, it can be difficult.  You know you can do the job and need to believe enough to persuade others.

Your Offer

Remember, if it feels like no-one believes in you, you must not share their belief.  You need the belief of your market only; their understanding of your offer matters and not really anyone else’s.

I find it most difficult handling, often well-intentioned, peer assessments of my offer.  Most of what they tell me is helpful but sometimes I’m not so convinced they are right.

For example, it has become clearer that my offer is primarily for coaches or consultants; people in business because they have something they believe will benefit others.  So why, they say, do I continue to bang on about community and the local economy?

I don’t talk like other marketers and there are at least two reasons for this:

We all need to find the language that will be heard by our market.

Belief in Yourself

I’m largely self-taught.  I’ve followed many courses and worked on various projects and built a portfolio of experience.

I don’t have fixed views on what is viable.  My experience informs my views.  I may ask a client whether they have considered an alternative approach or thought about their offer in a different way.

I have my views on what works and the pattern of support I offer is to some degree predictable.  But the real value is in the ways we adjust the approach to the client’s needs.  We do that by exploring the client’s business at a depth they have not experienced.  They describe their business in detail and I respond to that description.

Am I right?  I am the right choice for my clients, so far.  I am not a good choice for the business-person who knows exactly what help they need.  They may be better off with a specialist.  Most people who freelance rarely find opportunities to share about their business in depth.

So, yes I believe in my business.  I need that belief to keep going.  If my self-belief falters, I could go under.  Self-belief matters to me and to you.

How do you hold onto belief in yourself?

0 More Target Market Demographics

Last time, I discussed market demographics and covered the first three characteristic demographics, primarily the involuntary ones: sex, age and location. Today here are four more characteristics, which might be described as voluntary.  Voluntary because they are to some degree choices made by your market.

Seven Demographics, 4 – 7

Common Interests

Common interests are interests shared by your clients.  Stamp collecting is an interest some people have.  It is unlikely to be relevant unless you are offering something directly interesting to stamp collectors.

There may be interests your target clients are likely to have in common.  For example, are sportspeople interested in diet?  If not, perhaps they should be and you may wish to use marketing to convince them of that.

So, a common interest is not something everyone in your target market necessarily knows about.  There may be value in raising awareness of an issue, like diet for sports people.

This may be the main value of common interests; identifying issues that should interest your target market.  This could be a move from level 0 to 1 on the awareness ladder.  But it could equally feature between levels 2 and 3, where sports people are seeking solutions to low energy and have not considered diet.

Sports people are likely to be aware of diet.  So, if your offer is diet related, sports people may share a common interest.  Running a Facebook advert, you could target it to people with a declared interest in sport.

Start with your offer and ask the question: what is likely to interest my potential clients?

Career

I’ve given this next section the heading career because it is worth considering not only the type of job your prospects do but how they perceive it relates to their career.  Some people may see their role as primary, they are managers with aspirations to more senior posts.  Alternatively, they may be specialists seeking opportunities to build on their experience.

Sometimes the issue for people in work is some problem they encounter and so need help.  A problem can be short-term and immediate or long-term and chronic.  If it is a common problem, you can offer to help solve or manage it.

Hopes and dreams are perhaps career orientated.  Many people come to a point in their working life, where they consider moving on to something else.  They may be seeking a new job or to freelance.  They may be a parent who has taken time out to care for small children and want to return to work.  Use these insights to narrow your market and focus on specific issues.

And of course, many people experience frustrations in their working life.  This may be general dissatisfaction with their working life to specific issues in the workplace they are unable to resolve unaided.  Some people wish to stay in their current position and overcome some frustration, others want to find a way out.

Culture

Ethnicity may be relevant where businesses appeal to people of a particular culture; it is not necessarily a problem.  People will self-select.  I am aware of many shops close by where I live that serve particular ethnic groups.  It works for them.

Perhaps the main drawback for such businesses is they may limit their market unnecessarily.  A shop that sell fashions that appeal primarily to people of one particular ethnicity may have found a specialist market.

However, cafes and restaurants are another matter and an ethnic based appeal might cut both ways.  It can bring something new into the marketplace that would not be available otherwise but it can be effectively exclusive.  Some businesses find this is a problem and others seem happy for it to be so.

Language and Religion

Language is another way businesses can be exclusive.  Staff who speak languages spoken locally, are an obvious advantage.  Their role is little different from staff in any shop, who explain and educate their customers.

I have eaten in restaurants where there is no English spoken.  My main problem is explaining I’m vegetarian.  What actually appears on your plate can be something of a lottery.  The question for the business is, how can they survive with mostly customers who speak their language?

It is worth asking if your offer is likely to appeal to people with particular religious affiliations.  If so, you may need to be sensitive to their expectations.  Certainly, most shops, including the chains, sell halal food in a Muslim area.  They do this because it sells not just the halal food but everything else these customers buy.

Divisions between religious groups can be overemphasised.  Generally, religious people find common ground.  Many Muslim parents prefer Christian schools to state schools because Christians can be more sensitive to their requirements as fellow religious.

Education

Education is not about discriminating against people who are more or less educated.  It is about considering what people with specialist education may need.  If you sell to people with education, you don’t ask to see evidence of their ability, you set out your stall and see who turns up!

Similarly, your market may be people who have had an experience and so have a consequential interest in your offer.  People who buy need not all share the experience but if a significant proportion of your customers have had it, then this is another opportunity to target your market.

Habits are perhaps little understood.  I suppose cigarettes and alcohol are examples of bad habits.  They are obvious examples of sales opportunities to supply the habit or sell ways to overcome it.  However, not all habits are bad and some are simply routines.  I walk certain routes and I’m less likely to go out of my way to make a purchase.

Finally, life story may be a factor.  These would be people with some common thread to their life story, eg living as a carer, long-term illness or immigration.

Can you think of other factors to consider when you describe your market?

0 Knowing Your Market and Its Values

This is the fourth post of five about a keynote talk I am preparing for a major business event later this year.  Last time I wrote about your business niche and today the focus moves to your market and its values.

In conversation this week, someone suggested values were missing from my keynote.  It is important to align your marketing with your offer.  This implies alignment with values because what I have in mind was the role of a coach or consultant.

Most coaches and consultants have a strong set of values that informs their work and so should inform their marketing.  I have experimented, since the conversation, by explicitly referring to values and it seems to be favourably received.  Indeed, I think there is a need for alignment of at least five elements: your

The wider outcomes may be through your clients’ clients or the wider impact of your work on communities.  If you know these wider outcomes, you can use them in your marketing but ideally you should see your values reflected in them.

Station 4: Why?

Knowing your market is essential to defining your niche. It is important you understand your market and its values as well as their problem your offer solves.

Here is what I wrote a few weeks ago:

So, Why? Is the third station.  You could ask the question: Why am I doing it?  Because I have this fantastic passion for doing x y and z.  OK.  But actually, the why is to do with your market; it is the people that you provide this service for.

Do you really know them?  Do you know who they are?  How do you understand their problem, the problem that you solve?  And you need to understand it in at least two ways.  You need to understand their problem as it is because very often people come to you with a solution when actually they don’t know what their problem is.  Or else they have a superficial way of describing their problem and haven’t really understood what it’s about.

There’s also the problem as they see it.  So, you see these two interact with one another.  So you need a degree of empathy when you work with your clients.

Sharpening the Message

Perhaps the biggest issue I have with this station is I have not yet found a clear lesson to teach about it.  However, I believe adding values into the mix helps get some clarity.

Their problem is only a part of what you need to know about your market.  You can further narrow your niche by defining your market’s values.  Let’s say you are a business coach and you help women business leaders turn around their businesses.  You might have feminist values and so may find you are most effective coaching clients who share these same values.  It is possible, if you coach clients who have the problem but don’t share the values, you will be less effective.

This may be over-simplistic.  There are other values that may equally impact the coaching relationship.  The client’s work ethic may be more important, for example.  There are likely to be several value systems at play in any client-coach relationship and any particular set of values may be more or less important to the success of the relationship.

A Dilemma?

Clarity about key values may be more important in marketing than it is in the coaching relationship.  This opens up something of a dilemma for the coach.  Does the coach market their business, referring to their feminist values upfront?  This may turn away valuable clients, who would be perfectly happy with this value system, even if they don’t fully share it.  However, if feminist values are important to the coach and they want to specialise in particular approaches to business that embody these values, then it may be helpful to market using them.

Your values may be non-negotiable and so use them to narrow your market because this can be a good thing.  Your prospects are looking for a coach who shares their values and so will be very enthusiastic.  Alternatively, you may choose not to insist on these values in your market and so do not use them to narrow your niche.

Do you use values to narrow your niche?  Have you consciously chosen not to insist on certain shared values?  Whatever your choice, how is it working out for you?

0 How to Practice Self-Motivation

Life as a freelance can be isolated.  This can be an advantage, with fewer distractions and freedom to get on with the work in your own time.  But it can be hard over the long haul and so today, I share some thoughts about three dimensions of self-motivation.

I live alone and I know that makes a big difference.  I find it hard to imagine the detailed practical issues someone faces working from home in a family setting.

Boundaries in those circumstances are likely to be harder to put in place and to maintain.  I can imagine opening my office door and finding three cats, a dog, a toddler and spouse, all waiting for my attention.  It would soon drive me crackers!

But even so, perhaps there are aspects of my experience, other freelancers may find helpful.

Self-Motivation

I know many people have problems with motivation and so it perhaps doesn’t help for me to claim I don’t share this problem.

One key to this is routine.  I know any time of the day or week what I should be doing.  This is not compulsive behaviour, I can vary it when I need to.  The value of routine is I don’t have to think about what I need to do next.

I divide the day into three parts.  Mornings when I follow-up desk work, afternoons when I walk and meet people informally and evenings are for more desk work and meetings.

I find walking really helpful and so I walk every day.  This is for health reasons but also it is an effective way to tackle complex problems.  Away from my desk, perspective can lead to a breakthrough for some problem or other.

I am enthusiastic about what I am doing.  Most days I can’t wait to set to work on whatever I am preparing.  If bored or uninspired by what you are doing, perhaps you need a change in direction?

Self-Validation

This is a tough issue because I depend on others’ validation.  When someone takes me on as a coach, they validate my work.  When they write a testimonial, they validate my work.

However, self-validation is also important.  One reason is I believe my chosen work is unique and as such it is my responsibility.  The hardest thing is explaining my vision.  This is a challenge all businesses face when marketing, finding the language that makes sense to their market.  It also needs to make sense to those who might refer you to prospects.

People are always keen to show you the error of your ways, to point to practitioners who are highly successful because they’re not using your approach.  It may take forever to prove your approach and no-one will do that for you.

Of course you can’t fully articulate it from the outset; it takes time to find the right keynote.  You need to validate your own results.  You need to decide whether you are still confident in your own approach.

Self-Reinforcement

So, it is important to be able to hold your position.  Not because you are necessarily right but you know your underlying perspective is not being heard.

I know that my developmental approach to marketing works.  I understand how it differs from other approaches to marketing.  The challenge I have is finding the words that make sense to others and so I need their reaction.  It has taken me a long time to get this far and I hope I have almost completed my journey.

During that journey I have received a lot of advice, some of it impatient.  I have heard all of it and noted it.  Some of it I will use at a later date.  Some I have concluded is not for me.  Use it or not, I am grateful because all of it helps me know what is essential and what I need to change.

How do you motivate, validate and reinforce your work as a freelance?

1 Your Target Market Demographics

Any business-owner must find and get to know their target market.  In the last two posts, I explained how to assess your target market’s awareness of their problem and how to move them to consider solutions.  In a future post, I shall discuss their worldview.  This time my topic is your market demographics; mostly uncontroversial facts about your target market.

Awareness, worldview and demographics are three dimensions you can use to describe your market.  Later in this sequence, I shall discuss how to create an Avatar you can use to target your marketing copy.  This is not something you make public but use it to inform your writing or speaking, so it feels warmer to those you wish to contact.

What Are Demographics?

Selecting which characteristics to measure is a judgement.  Your measurements may be accurate but you have still decided to measure that particular thing.

The circuit questionnaire goes beyond the usual list of sex, age and race.  Perhaps some are not strictly demographics.  They are all characteristics your market would declare to be true about themselves.  You can find them and tailor your marketing to them.

Your copy will always be for people with particular characteristics.  Being able to describe them in these terms helps make them more real to you.  These are the people you help, so you need to know and understand them.  A personalised message done well, means your copy may appeal to people outside your target market.  If they are potential customers, this is not a problem.

Do be careful about what you publish.  You may be aiming to work with a particular group but this should inform your copy, not rule out those who, attracted by your copy, do not fall within your ideal.  Remember there are laws about discrimination and so it is important your copy is inclusive.

If your offer is for one sex or one ethnic group, for example, make sure you can justify it and that you conform to the law.  Get legal advice if you are in doubt.

Seven Demographics, 1 to 3

Remember, your answers to the questions in the Circuit Questionnaire will inform your thinking about your market.  Think carefully before you publish your answers to these questions.  An explicit statement may alienate some of your market.

Gender

Some products and services are designed for one sex and so it can be legitimate to target that sex.  Usually, however, your offer is attractive to both sexes and it is not in your interests to discriminate.

Consider your prejudices, in the sense that if you expect your clients to be one sex, you may unconsciously discriminate against the other.  Your avatar could be made to be like the sex you think least likely to be interested.

Your aim is to build an avatar you can address with warmth and so appeals to anyone reading or hearing your copy.  You could write copy, as if to a real person, beginning “Dear Jane …”.  If you remove these words from the beginning, the copy would not necessarily give away its written with a woman in mind and so could appeal to men too.

Finally, you may need to be aware that we no longer live in a world with a binary split between men and women.  You may need to consider sexuality and transsexuality as well as people who live to some degree between the two traditional sexes.

For most businesses this is not important because an avatar of either sex can produce copy that appeals to everyone.  It is important if your product appeals to one of these specialised groups.

Localised or Global

Many businesses that market locally, may have a global market if they operate online.  Similarly, some global businesses find there is a local dimension to their market.

For coaches and consultants, it’s usually worth targeting your local market from the start.  If you have no reputation, you may find your first clients are local because they can meet you and so decide they trust you.

Mostly, though coaches find they are working with a mix of local and online clients.

There are businesses that draw most or all their customers from a particular locality.  Shop-front businesses find this, even if they have a specialist dimension to their work, that draws interest from outside  their area, they are likely to draw most customers from their local neighbourhood.

Age Range

Age can make a big difference to the way you think about your market.  Older people have more experience and perhaps more wisdom.  On the other hand the generation that grew up before the Internet is perhaps less able to compete online.

Younger people may have more energy, work harder and are perhaps more idealistic.

Some of these may be prejudices and my message is be aware of your prejudices and don’t assume they are wrong!  Even 10 years can make a massive difference.

I’ll cover the rest of these characteristics next time.

How do you find the characteristics I’ve covered so far help define your marketing?

0 What is Your Business Niche?

Last Friday, I posted the second in this sequence, following the development of a keynote I am preparing for the end of March.  I asked the question: Where is your business location?  This led me to think about the idea of a business niche.

The idea of the niche comes from ecology.  An animal or plant will create a niche in the environment where it can thrive.  Contrary to popular belief, competition is not the main influence on evolution.  A niche is some part of the environment species adapt to, usually working with other species to create an environment where every species thrives.

Note the species work together to create their environment, it is not a pre-determined space.  The same applies to businesses.  It may be possible to find a niche but usually, businesses need to create their own niche through collaboration.  A competitive minded business is likely to fail because it will miss opportunities to create a niche with other businesses.  This is why location or context is so important.

Station 2: What?

The big mistake many business-owners make is to believe their offer is the same as their niche. It is a part of their niche but without considering the other 4 stations, they will be at an adaptive disadvantage.

This is what I said in my earlier draft:

The second question is: what?  What are you doing?  Now, you may find this the easiest question of the four to answer.  You have an offer and you know your offer.  You know it backwards, inside out.  You are an expert in what you provide.  But my question to you is: what makes it irresistible?

What makes an irresistible offer?  Clearly the thing itself is important.  If you deliver something that your clients or customers value, in time they will pass on the message to others.

But it’s also important to remember how you package what you offer; how you describe it because people outside don’t know the detail of what it’s like on the inside.  You need to find some way of describing it.  And that is the packaging of it, you don’t necessarily need to put it in a literal packet with writing on it but you need some way of describing it.

And the third layer in this is your marketing.  Once you have an offer and it’s packaged, how do you get it out there in front of people?  And this takes me to the middle point here.

Sharpening the Message

So, you’re a life coach and agonise over your competition?  Of course you have competition!  If you don’t have competition, you have no market.  You can’t compete head to head with more experienced life coaches but you can specialise in a niche.  Your business location is a part of that niche and we’ll look at other aspects over the next two weeks.

There is more you can do to make your offer distinctive at this station.  Think about your packaging.  Location: Sheffield’s Only life coach is probably not true but can you refine it further?  Sheffield’s only life coach who works with people aged 80 or over, with people who have experienced an industrial accident and so on.  We’ll explore this in more detail next time.

You have your offer and you have your packaging.  The next question is how to market your offer.

Station 3: How?

This will be the focus of the second part of my talk, of which more in a few weeks time.  It appears at this stage in the 5 questions sequence.

I mention this now because it’s part of the sequence.  Marketing is important.  For me it is the keystone; it is in the roof of the business, of the building that we are building here.  We’re dealing with the four foundations now, so I’m going to move swiftly onto the others and I will come back and talk at much greater length about this later on.

Marketing drives any business, hence its central position but there are two more foundation stones, then we’ll return to this topic in much more depth.  Your marketing is where you consciously design your offer using the four foundation stones.

How do you package your offer?

2 Repeated Failure and How to Keep Going

Repeated failure is most peoples’ experience, especially in business.  Some people claim the secret to business success is repeated attempts in the teeth of repeated failure.  Sooner or later you will try something that works!

Complacency

However, this is no reason for complacency.  There may be more you can do to find out where you are going wrong and taking steps to tackle it.

Think about your failures and try to discern if there is a pattern to them.  You may be lacking some skill or knowledge.  There are several ways you can address a problem like this.  You may be able to train or pay someone to provide the skill.

Many self-employed people are excellent at implementing their offer but lack the skills they need to run their business.  Failures may be a good learning environment, so long as you seek help and make sure you learn from them.

Organisational Culture

It is important to understand organisations develop a culture that is difficult to change.  Even though the culture may negative, it becomes hard to change because everyone has invested in it.

So, if you are part of an organisation, consider the possibility you need to make deep changes if it is to be a viable player in the marketplace.

Patterns of Behaviour

Most of us practice patterns of behaviour we find difficult to change.  If you use a common personality test such as Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, you will find out more about your own strengths and weaknesses.

These tests are not determinative in the sense they are saying you cannot change your behaviour.  What they do is show you how you work effectively.  You can achieve anything you wish; what is important is how you set about it.  A method that works for a different personality type, may not work for you.

Learning from Failure

Of course, it is important to learn from failure.  You can’t avoid failure, it’s built into what you do.  Use it as a learning opportunity.

Above all, ask how you can monetise your failures or the lessons you learn from them.  Your prospects may struggle with similar issues and your experience could be helpful.

This is particularly true for recurring problems, deeply embedded in the behaviour of a person or organisation.  Sometimes it takes time to understand the nature of a problem and how to approach it.

If you can hold a mirror to someone’s behaviour, help them to see a new way forward, then you are acting as a coach or consultant.  This role is crucial to many businesses and may be a possibility for yours.

How have you managed repeated failure?

0 The Scale of Your Prospects’ Shift in Thinking

Once you know your target market’s level of awareness, the next question is: how do you move them up the awareness ladder?  What is the scale of your prospect’s shift in thinking?

This question suggests a point I’ve made several times before.  Marketing is primarily education!  If you are going to move prospects up the awareness ladder, you must offer them information.  At early stages, you may explain the problem and its various solutions.  At later levels, the focus will be on your own offer.

In general, the lower you are on the awareness ladder, the more work you must do to move people to the next level.  So, if people are aware of solutions (level 2) they are more likely to listen to your solution than someone at level 1, who is not actively seeking a solution.

However, higher levels can be more difficult.  For example, it may be harder to get to level 3 if a competitor at level 2 dominates the market.

So, let’s look at two costs associated with moving prospects: information and time.

Information Needs

The more explanation you need to offer, the greater the costs of your marketing and you will have more difficulty retaining your prospects’ attention. You will need different amounts of information and different approaches at each level.

It is possible to use one approach throughout.  For example, a sales funnel on a website moves prospects from their current level to level 5.  You must bring them in at the right level; too low you will lose their attention and too high you will confuse them.  Sometimes you can do it on a single page, while some funnels put each level on a different page.

Others find they need something more complex.  Here’s an example:

1. A workshop open to a range of likely prospects, where you describe the problem and explain common solutions. Perhaps a taster of how you approach solving the problem.  (Levels 0-2)
2. A brochure (printed or online) that describes your method and provides more information. Includes an invitation to book a 1 to 1.  (Levels 2-4)
3. A 1 to 1 meeting where you aim to close the deal (levels 4-5)

Altogether, you may have passed on an immense amount of information over these 3 stages.  It is likely, if you set something up like this, only a small proportion of your clients will experience all of it.  Some will hop on board at higher levels and you need to be aware of when and how that happens.

Time Needs

You can see an elaborate approach, like the one above, is likely to take a lot of time.  This is one of the issues coaches have to face.  They usually find they must offer an introductory coaching session.  Maybe coaches with a good reputation can charge for these sessions but most coaches don’t and can underestimate the amount of time it takes.

People selling products may find they need less 1 to 1 time but may still find moving prospects from levels 3 – 5 takes a big chunk out of their working day.

So, the issue for any business is how to schedule their marketing efforts.  A coach might, for example, set aside 1 – 2 days per week for marketing and the rest for coaching.  Note this limits your coaching service’s capacity but without marketing, the coach has lots of time when they are not earning!

This brings us back to knowing your target market.  If you do, your marketing will be better targeted and you will get more in return for your effort.

How do you manage your marketing time?

0 Where is Your Business Location?

Last Friday, I published the first part of my new keynote address, on the theme: What is a Coach?  Refer back to this post to find out more about the aim of this sequence.  Today, the focus moves to business location.

Before I do that, some more thoughts about last week’s introduction to the keynote. It seeks to engage a varied audience in appreciating the educational or coaching credentials of a range of businesses.  Since last week, I have given more thought to it.

Why Run a Business?

Many business people enjoy running their business.  They aim to generate income for themselves and their families.  Their business offers freedom and an opportunity to live their dream.

For others, their primary aim is to share some skill or insight with the rest of the world.  They enjoy their coaching or whatever service they offer.  Running a business is secondary albeit essential to the success of their enterprise.

I’ve commented on this from time to time.  Mostly I think these two approaches tend to converge.  Business is more successful where it takes pleasure offering a service and a service-oriented enterprise must be supported by excellent marketing.

For some purposes, it is possible to help businesses choose their best approach to marketing, choose some short cuts and help the business owner carry out their chosen approach.  It’s even better if the business can align its marketing and its offer.  I shall pick this up in the next draft of my keynote.

Station 1: Where?

So, here is the next section of my keynote:

So, I’m going to begin in perhaps a very unexpected place, by asking the question: where?  Are you aware of the neighbourhood in which you are based?  Whether you work from the front room in your own home or from rented office space or workshop space, whatever it is: are you aware of your neighbourhood?  Are you able to access the support of people who live and work nearby?  Do you know where your nearest accountant is?  Not necessarily the same as the one that you use.

Focusing on the neighbourhood is a great way to build your business.  It may be that there are a number of people that you can work very closely with in your area on a number of things, because some of you are good at some things and some at others.

But also don’t forget that if you simply focus on the immediate neighbourhood you may miss other opportunities, for example Sheffield is situated on the border of the Peak District.  How many of you use the Peak District in your business?  It might be part of your offer, it might be part of your marketing.  Whatever it is how many of you use that?  (I know there’s at least one!)  This is about paying attention.

Sharpening the Message

There are four stations in this part of the keynote talk and I’ll cover the others in future weeks.  The aim is to point to good value ideas for each station.  All four in this early version of the talk need to be sharpened.

I’m thinking for each station I should point to something a business can do to improve their performance, as well as show how the business owner’s state of being can help or hinder their development.

Perhaps the most useful thing any business owner can do is be aware of the assets of their chosen place.  I have touched on Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) in some depth elsewhere (follow the link and scroll down to “Community Assets”).

I suspect many businesses end up in some location because the premises there are most economic.  Pre-eminent among these will be those who work from home.  Are they actually in the best place for their business?

Perhaps more important though, are local assets and the extent to which businesses make use of them.  To see an opportunity and take advantage of it is one crucial role for business people.

So, paying attention is an essential disposition for the business owner.  This is crucial when they are choosing a business location and then over the years, as they take advantage and build networks of collaboration in the neighbourhood.

Businesses need not always support a particular neighbourhood; after all, the benefits of business activity may be felt across a city or even further afield.  The point is though, your business has to be somewhere and serendipity should never be ruled out.

How has your location influenced your business development?