How To Make Sure Your Services Business Is Doing Things Right In The Client Acquisition Department

I have spent a lot of time reading and writing on both LinkedIn & beBee. There are many  smart people here with no shortage of intelligent things to say.
Having said that, one of the key things I have noticed is that these many of people are, by and large, nowhere near as organized in their approach to the market as they need to be.

Invoking the good old 80/20 Differential you can see that many service providers or consultants are trying, albeit in a very earnest way, to be as many things to as many people as possible.

The Wide Net VS The Spear Gun

The popular thinking behind this is that casting as wide a net as possible will open a service business or consultancy up to a larger number of prospects, therefore guaranteeing them more business.
I would take serious issue with this.

Because it is the nature of a wide net to be non-specific. To someone with a specific need, (which represents a lot of smarter businesses), this can be seen as a limiting factor, not to mention a bit confusing and definitely time consuming for them to wade through.
The online world, or at least your little part of it, should be a place where businesses with a specific need can easily understand what specifically you can do for them, without their having to waste a lot of time getting to that info.
The 20% or so of people who actually make it very easy for clients to discover them and find out exactly what they are all about may end up with fewer relationships but those relationships will be based on providing a specific type of solution and therefore be pretty solid.
This does not only work to the benefit of companies searching for resources. It also helps other service providers expand their networks without fear of redundancy or eyestrain from reading overly generalized profiles. It’s kind of a win win.

How You Pull This Off

The methodology is simple. The execution, not so much.

Job #1: Defining Your Business

Think through and write a proper strategic plan for your business, the stages of which are as follows:
1. Developing a mission statement for your business that defines your specific niche(s).
2. Identifying your target audiences (direct and or/indirect).
3. Creating a brand positioning that will sum up your business in a way that will appeal to prospects in your niche(s).
4. Defining a Unique Selling Proposition for your business, which will, over time and with diligence, give you ownership of the niche(s) you have chosen.
5. Prioritizing the product or service features that you will use to reinforce your selling argument, and further differentiate you from any competitors.
6. Deciding on and sticking to the tone and manner in which you communicate with your target audiences.
Job # 2 Building Your Team
After you have completed the strategic part of your process, you will have a much clearer picture of your business, your niche(s), and the kinds of resources you will need to deliver a first class product without question.
So your second task is to build your team by locating and developing supplier relationships/associations with the people you need to deliver your services professionally.
And if you are intent on doing things right, these people will become extremely important to you, so choose them carefully based on a combination of skills, experience and compatibility with your mission.
Job #3: Pushing Your Brand
Now that you have a strategy that works, know who you are talking to and what to say to them, you need to find them and reach them. This is a 3 step process.
1. Identify the best media for you to employ in order to reach your audience effectively.
2. Create the appropriate communications materials, to reach your targets and to optimize the use of the media you have chosen.
3. Stay within your team for this activity, because a) they are the people who have a vested interest in your success and b) creating this communication helps them learn more about your business, which makes the work they do more effective.

Whew…That’s A Lot Of Work

Doing what you need to do to move your business forward is always going to be a lot of work.
The choice you always have in front of you is whether you do it the hard way or the easy way. Believe it or not, the method I have described here, is the easy way.
The hard way involves way more work on your part, and the added extra of the sore head you get from repeatedly banging it against one wall or another.
Now to seasoned marketers, I’m sure this all sounds pretty basic. But to a lot of people out there in the services industry, especially those just getting started, it’s not something they have ever really thought about in any organized way.
I know this because whenever I offer to send people the communications strategy form I have developed for my own clients, I get literally dozens of requests.
To my way of thinking, the better organized the services industry is, the better it is for everyone.
Competition becomes more challenging and fun.
Prospective clients become better educated and more likely to access the resources your business offers.
And the state-of-the-art of everything generally improves.

If you liked this post, let me know. If you liked it enough to share it, please feel free.

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
Download my free ebook Small Business Communication For The Real Worlhere:
 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/
All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page



All content Copyright 2017 Jim Murray 

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