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| 5 Steps for Leveraging Your Expertise Through Writing |
| By Pete Nelson |
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Think about what you do when you meet with prospective clients in an effort to get them to see the value of your service. Whether you’re tying to land a client or keep a client, if you sell a service, the continuing act of educating them on the value of doing business with you is a never-ending process.
Unlike a tangible product, which usually comes with a manual of some sort, a service is intangible and almost never comes with an instruction manual on how to get the most use of it. A service cannot be seen, felt, touched or experienced until the prospect hires you to perform your service. This makes it quite difficult to |
| get others to tangibly experience the depth of your expertise, let alone fully understanding the value of your service. However, getting your prospects to experience and see the value and expertise you have isn’t as hard as it may seem. |
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The process and words you use to educate and influence your target audience can be systemized and productized. All of your persuasive points and the examples you rely on to illustrate the best use of your service can and should be fully leveraged in written form.
So how do you go about leveraging your expertise through the written word to attract, secure and maintain clients? Here are five simple steps for beginning the process.
1. Be Curious: Being curious is one of the fundamental keys to unlocking your creativity. For example, when you go to a bookstore or when you’re searching for something online, if you see something that catches you eye – stop and check it out. If it is something worthwhile and relevant to your business and/or your target audience, you are not wasting your time.
Save it, write it down and place it into a file marked “Ideas For Article” or “Ideas For Book”. I have generated more ideas through this process than I have by doing almost anything else. So be curious. It pays – literally and figuratively.
2. Learn What Your Audience Wants: Find out what your target market is interested in learning more about, specifically as it relates to the product/service you sell. You should already know this since you probably started your business to serve a marketplace that needed what you provide. Write an article or a book that would provide value to the readers and help them improve an area of their life or business. Be sure to frame and anchor this with the service or product you offer.
3. Create a Top 10 List: Tap into your own knowledge on the subjects related to your business. What are the top 10 things your client needs to know about getting the most out of your product/service before they purchase it? What are the 10 most profitable or entertaining ways your client can benefit from using your product/service?
People love articles and books that are centered around lists. The first product I developed based on my knowledge of sales was an eBook titled, The 10 Strategies of Highly Effective Salespeople. It captured a lot of interest and sold very well in large part because of the title.
To get an even better sense of how lists and numbers play a role in books and articles browse a recent magazine you purchased. Visit your local bookstore’s business section or the bookstore's section that best pertains to your business. You’ll find a myriad of titles like: 101 Reasons To… - The Top 10 Ways To… - 20 Ways To Increase Your Business In 90-Days or Less, 7 Steps To A Healthier Body, etc.
The point is that what grabs people's attention is the headline, the title of an article or book. With a list, you immediately capture people's attention because it is perceived as a simple solution and more times than not, articles and books based on a list are usually quick to read.
4. Think Vertically and Horizontally Your Knowledge & Experience: One of our early clients was Adwire & Wireware, two top Web design firms that are targeting two totally distinct markets. The first is Adwire, which solely focuses on large scale, high-end Web projects. The second is Wireware, which utilized an innovative and easy to use turnkey Web design service and focuses on small businesses and non-profit organizations.
Our first task in getting more visibility for Wendy Nield, the CEO of the two companies, and driving in more leads for them was to get Wendy to write an article that could also be turned into a speech and that would be applicable for both of her company’s respective audiences.
A lot of ideas for possible articles were considered but we decided that the one thing every company, no matter their size, needed to understand to be successful online was how to create a positive customer experience when someone visits their Website.
The article and subsequent speech we developed was titled: “Taking Your Business From Good To Great: The 3 Keys To Creating a Positive Customer Experience Online”. It has since been leveraged for seminars, newsletters, several article placements and has generated a lot of interest in both companies, not to mention it is further positioning the company’s CEO as a leading expert in her field.
Remember, any article you write can be used as a topic for a public presentation. At the same time, any speech or article you deliver can be turned into an effective book or even an audio program.
5. Record & Transcribe: I know, I can hear a lot of you saying right now, “I may be able to communicate well with clients but for some reason I just can’t write the way I speak.”
To that I suggest taking an hour or two away from any distractions and record yourself running through the very same information you use to educate your prospective clients on why they should do business with you.
Let’s say you’re a fitness coach. You could pick the top five or ten things a client needs to know about losing weight and keeping it off. Or you could record yourself talking about eating the foods you love and not feeling guilty about it. You could record yourself talking about these topics and then have someone help you transcribe this. Once it’s transcribed you simply edit and refine the piece and voila, you have yourself an article and you didn’t have to spend time writing it.
You can also record your coaching or consulting sessions with clients. Let them know that you are doing research for an article or book and that you would like to record the meeting. Assure them that the recording will not be used in public and you may want to get them to sign a brief release form.
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