Are You A Trusted Professional Advisor?
Topics: coach, advisor, successful coach, successful advisor
Do your clients trust you explicitly or do they often say, “We’ll have to think it over” when you propose a solution or plan of action? Do your prospects trust you the very first time they meet you, or do you often hear “We want to check with some other…” before they are willing to commit to engaging your services?
Today everybody has a professional looking web site with important testimonials and links to important sounding organizations. Since you can’t tell anything from that, none of it matters.
We all know that being the top listing on a search engine, other than the listings you pay for, only means that you have the top listing. That’s all it means. You have the top listing, so what? Does than mean you are better at what you do than the folks on page 1,123?
I guess it does if you buy into the absurd notion that you are going to connect with people who will become profitable life long clients because they saw your link first when they did an Internet search. That’s possible of course - so is winning the lottery.
Over the years it has become clear to me that professional solution providers who use the SEO post and hope approach to attracting clients do it because they are afraid to simply ask a satisfied client for a recommendation. If each satisfied client refers you along to another person like them you can use your web site for other more profitable things and invest the time and energy you now spend on web site related stuff - in front of paying clients.
To be a trusted professional advisor, the sole source provider of the services you offer, you first have to earn it. You have to walk the talk, demonstrating to your existing clients that you really are there for their benefit, knowing that when you focus on their best interests you will get paid. You will actually be the sort of person they feel confident telling their friends and colleagues about.
Trusted advisors know that up to twenty five percent of their time must be spent marketing and selling in order to have the revenues to deliver more than they promise to their clients along with paying the overhead. They must be efficient in their marketing activities using the greatest leverage at their command. When someone is considered a trusted professional advisor virtually everything they do when it comes to marketing, works. It does not have to be clever, sophisticated or costly. If you are trusted by the people whose opinions are important to you, they will use their credibility with their contemporaries and do the marketing for you.
Trusted advisors are always looking for ways to over-deliver. They understand that consistently delivering on, or above, their value proposition will keep loyal clients loyal. By always projecting a “clients first” attitude and perhaps more importantly than anything else, always doing what they say they are going to do, their clients will be on the lookout for people who need what they have on offer. In fact their clients will regularly qualify and disqualify prospective clients for them, without them knowing anything about it.
Let’s face it, there are only two ways to add revenues from your personal services to your organization. One way is to consistently get repeat sales or new engagements and projects from your existing clients. The other way is for them to enthusiastically promote the benefits of your services. Naturally your online presence will add to your overall revenue stream, but a web site and all the search engine marketing and pay per click ads in the world will never replace a client’s word in the ear of their friend. Be trusted by your clients and they will take care of you.
Historically, being the trusted sole source provider of products and services meant keeping your word. If your client felt that you had their best interest at heart and your products and services we OK, you were in for life. That was then, now you have to ALSO demonstrate that you are keeping up with or are ahead of the times. You have to be seen as innovative, as a life long student who regularly invests their time, energy, and money sharpening their ax.
When your actions earn the trust of your most valued clients you are in position to attract and receive their prestige recommendations. I use that expression to make it clear that you and I do not want simply a referral. We do not want a list of our clients friends or data dump from their Outlook.
We want our clients to send us to specific people, people who will see us because of the prestige of our clients. Our clients will only lend their credibility to us when we’re earned it and only for as long as we honor their gift.
If you are determined to realize your organization’s optimum potential, join our free email monthly announcement series at www.iBizResources.com and receive “The Dana Measure of Financial Cost of Conflict” calculator at no charge.
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