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Micro-influence: This 1 strategy can grow your practice locally, regionally, or nationally

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In case you missed my last post: How to build prospect trust into your marketing. Prospects aren’t experts – that’s why they consider engaging us. And that requires a leap of faith, aka trust. But we can build trust (confidence/competence/ benevolence) into our marketing. One way to do that is with LI recommendations.

On to this week: Most small BVFLS practices are geographically limited. Much of the work these practices do is for clients who are located, say, within a 5- to 25-mile radius if they are situated in or near a large city and maybe a 25- to 100-mile radius as they become less urban.

On the other hand, some BVFLS practices have a regional or even a national scope. For them, geography is less meaningful or not meaningful at all. These practices “travel well.”

Do you want to expand the reach of your practice … locally, regionally, or nationally? You probably do. So how do you do it?

There is a new strategy gaining momentum: micro-influence. And if we want to expand the reach of our practices – locally, regionally, or nationally – we need to embrace it. Micro-influence is created when 4 points converge:

  1. When specific expertise …
  2. Uses a specific medium …
  3. To reach a specific audience …
  4. In a specific geography.

1. Specific expertise = what are we really good at

Most practitioners position themselves to do all the work they could be hired for rather than the work they are best suited for. For example, the other day I saw a LinkedIn profile that listed “15 key competencies.” Really? Would you believe anyone who touted 15 key competencies?

So what work (or practice area) do you enjoy doing? What clients (or industry niche) do you like serving? Make THAT your specific expertise.

2. Specific medium = how do we communicate our expertise

There are many options available for us to communicate our expertise: ads, articles, blogs, books, email, public relations, podcasts, seminars, webinars, websites, and videos.

We can use these options to focus on our strength in writing, speaking, and broadcasting. And if we are consistent and persistent, our efforts gain momentum and our audience grows month over month, year over year. Think of this as compound marketing.

So for you, what are the 2 or 3 or 4 media options that would showcase your expertise … that can feed off of each other … and that if done consistently and persistently would create a compound marketing effect?

3. Specific audience = who wants or needs to hear from us

Based on our specific expertise, who are the people who want or need to hear from us? And also, who are the people who influence those people?

Now, what media will be most likely utilized by that combined and connected audience? Do they read, watch, or listen? For example, the explosive growth of podcasting is partly due to people’s desire to listen to content – of any type – during their work commutes.

So who is the audience that can send work your way? And how do you best reach them?

4. Specific geography = where are those people located

Many practitioners I talk to do not believe they can “major in” a specific expertise because there are not enough clients in their city to support that kind of a practice. But if we have expertise that is needed by local, regional, or national clients, we can be micro-influencers with local, regional, or national practices.

I am not saying you want or need a national presence. But it is possible …

Gary Trugman lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He advertises his divorce expertise in local bar association journals. Over the years, that compounded into word of mouth that gave him a national practice. You could do that.

Jim Hitchner lives outside of Atlantic City, New Jersey and uses webinars to convey his expertise. The webinars reach a national audience. He has a national practice. You could do that.

Russell Parr lives in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He has expertise – intellectual property – that is sought after by national clients. His books on the subject gave him a national practice. You could do that.

So what

If we want to, we can expand our practices – locally, regionally, or nationally. We can make expertise, medium, and audience converge by focusing on our positioning (who we serve), our messaging (what makes us different), and our marketing (where we show up). The geography will be a function of how much – or how far – you want to ramp up.

In real life

It all begins with specific expertise – being known for what you know, advancing your perspective of it, and being recognized for it. I call that Authority, and it allows you to scale your expertise beyond your geographic boundaries. You can’t be everywhere but your ideas can be.

* * *

So that is this post’s practice development message.
Hopefully, you can put it to good use.
How can I help you move in the direction of a micro-influencer?

And if you are looking to grow your BVFLS practice faster and smarter so you can get more time, money, and freedom from it – subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Related posts

20 questions that will help you find your practice niche
Your 3 greatest fears about niching
Industry disruption – time to leave or dig your heels in by niching

Where I will be
If I’m coming to you, let’s meet up!

Mar 06-24: San Antonio, TX
Jun 10-12: Toronto, ON (speaking at CBVI Congress on Jun 11)
Jun 17-20: Philadelphia, PA (speaking at NACVA Conference on Jun 19)

Cheers!

 

 

 

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If you got this from a colleague, subscribe to get your own copy!

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this free Practice Self Assessment.

Is it easy for someone like me to find someone like you?

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In case you missed the last post: 1 simple year-end tidying up task that will make you look your best. Here it is: synchronize the look and feel and messaging across all of your online and offline marketing platforms. If those platforms don’t deliver a consistent message about your practice, your leads and prospects may get confused. Confused minds don’t buy.

On to this post: Is it easy for someone like me to find someone like you? When I say “someone like me,” I mean a potential client. When I say “someone like you,” I mean a practitioner who says they can do what you can do. Being easier to find will make you easier to hire. Make being easier to find one of your top goals for this month.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

Welcome to the first newsletter of the New Year. During the holiday break, I thought about my newsletter schedule. And given what other writing projects I want to tackle this year (e.g., my first book), I have decided to go from weekly to bi-monthly. It will be the same great content … but delivered half as often.

And please join me this Friday at 1pm ET on Practice Development INSIDER for my interview with Mark Zyla. Mark has been an incredible thought leader in the fair value arena. If you want to become a thought leader in your practice area or industry niche, you should understand how someone like Mark did it. Here’s your chance to do that.

A top goal for me writing about practice development strategies and tactics is to make it easy (or easier) for your audience of leads and prospects to find you and, ultimately, hire you. So let’s talk about getting found, being understood, and getting contacted.

Are you easy to find?

Clients and referral sources who know you now were once leads and prospects who didn’t know you then. So when a new prospect searches for someone like you on LI (and today, most searches for professionals like us start on LI), does someone else (regardless of their profession) with your exact first and last name pop up in the results?

If so, do you make yourself stand out with a headline that shouts “Business valuation expert specializing in X”? Or do you blend further into the search results with a headline that equivocates “Owner at XYZ, LLC”? My headline says exactly what I do … BVFLS Practice Development Coach: I help practitioners in 1-3 person firms who want to grow faster & smarter. Yours should, too.

Or let’s say someone met you in person at an event and wants to research you more – again, on LI. Do you have a current profile picture or one from years ago that doesn’t resemble how you look now? Mea culpa: I was guilty of this … I had a profile picture from 2004(!) that I was using until I had new headshots taken in May 2019.

Switching gears, if someone searches for your firm/practice name on Google, does it come up first in the results? This is usually not a problem if your name is part of your firm name. For example, I am Burkert Valuation Advisors … I am the only Burkert with this firm name … and so I am at the top of this Google search.

But if you have a “generic” name that involves a common keyword for your practice area, your firm name may not be popping up at the top of a Google search. In that case, you can hire an SEO expert to set up your website so it is strong for the keyword(s) in your company name.

Are you easy to understand?

Ok. “You” have been found. But now you need to decide what you want to be found for. So is it easy to understand what you do? And what makes you different? What makes you better?

Scrolling down through LI, is your profile up to date? I have a calendar appointment to review my profile quarterly. And I make frequent changes to make sure it is always optimized.

Do you have recommendations that prove you’ve done what you say you can do? Do you have endorsements for the skills you want to be known for? If not, ask for them! I know that seems obtrusive … but ever heard of the saying, “You don’t get what you don’t ask for?”. I have 25 recommendations, and I asked for every one of them. I even told people what I wanted to be recommended for to make the recommendation easier to write.

On your website, do you have case studies and testimonials that provide credibility? Or do you have an information dump about general BVFLS work that almost everyone else has on their website and that does nothing to distinguish you? On my About page, I come right out and say: “I am the person you should be working with because I am the only practice development coach serving only the BVFLS profession.” Then I include testimonials throughout my web pages from satisfied clients who have worked with me.

Are you easy to contact?

Ok. You’ve been found.
And prospects understand what you do.
Next step … can they easily contact you?

Some people don’t put their contact information on their LI profile. Or, more likely, they enable a privacy setting that only allows 1st level connections to see their contact information. (They might not even know this privacy setting is enabled.)

Let me ask, how many leads and prospects are 1st level connections with you? Probably few or none. So even if I decide you are someone I want to talk to, I can’t because I can’t see how to reach you.

Your contact information (phone number and email address) should be included throughout your LI profile (my details are in my Contact Info, About, and Experience sections) … on every web page (mine are in the page footers) … and on every email you send (that’s what email trailers are for).

So what

Don’t complicate things. Before you start investing in expensive practice-building pursuits (including my coaching), tackle the simple stuff first. Making sure you are easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to contact is the simple stuff.

Related posts

Make it easy for prospects & clients to work with you

Cheers!

 

 

 

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If you got this from a colleague, subscribe to get your own copy!

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this free Practice Self Assessment.

Do you need a lead magnet? Do you know what it is or what it does for you?

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Greetings from Forest City, Iowa. The RV is parked just outside of the Winnebago factory where we will be getting some R&M done and taking part in Winnebago’s 50th Grand National Rally.

I hope you found our last conversation about ideal clients (can I have more than one) gives you more clarity around the topic of ideal clients. Bottom line: we all want to be served by someone whom we believe specializes in solving our problem; our prospects want the same thing from us.

On to this week. I’ve written previously about how I grew my email list. My list is what makes reaching you with this newsletter possible, which in turn gives me a platform to build Authority about my coaching services. You can do the same with your BVFLS services. But first, you need a list. And to build a list, it helps immensely if you have a lead magnet.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

Here are three things I am happy to report:

#1 – This week is the 19th anniversary of me starting Burkert Valuation Advisors.

#2 – This week is the 4th anniversary of me writing this newsletter.

#3 – And last week, my first Practice Development INSIDER webinar (with Chris Mercer) launched.

Top webinar complaint: The time allocated to the webinar was not appropriate. (I believe people wanted more than 1 hour of Chris’s insights.)

Top webinar compliment: Absolutely brilliant! Best $100 I’ve spent all year. This was interesting, insightful, and valuable no matter how new or tenured to BVFLS the practitioner is.

First things first … our Outlook contacts and LinkedIn connections are not an email list. But they are a great starting point for one. And if we have a good relationship with those people, there should be little friction in getting them to subscribe. Hint: you personally invite them to subscribe – and if they see the value in the content you are sharing, they will subscribe.

But eventually, we will run out of people we know and who will subscribe just because we ask them to. So this newsletter is about grabbing those strangers … people who stumble across our website, see us speak, or read something else we published. How do we capture them?

The answer is a lead magnet

A lead magnet is an ethical bribe. In exchange for strangers giving up their name and email address, we offer something of value to them in return. You’ve seen lead magnets, but maybe you didn’t know what they were called. And you may not remember, but you likely subscribed to this newsletter through my File Autopsy lead magnet.

Recently, I created a new lead magnet, How to Vet Your Prospects, which I am sharing with you today (even though you are already a newsletter subscriber). But I wanted you to see another example so you could start thinking about creating a lead magnet of your own.

How to create a lead magnet

A lead magnet could be a whitepaper, checklist, how-to guide, cheat sheet, or infographic. Some people will use the first chapter of a new book they wrote as a lead magnet. So what information do you have that could be easily packaged as a lead magnet?

As you can see, the File Autopsy is a checklist and Vet Your Prospects is a how-to guide. In both cases, they have a very similar layout – on purpose – because it makes them easier for me to produce. And if you recognize the content of each lead magnet it is because they are repurposed newsletters.

I created both lead magnets in Keynote, Apple’s equivalent of PowerPoint. And I get my images from DepositPhotos.com, which runs a special every now and then – 100 images for $100.

Best practices of a lead magnet

An effective lead magnet is SAGE.

S – Short: Consumable in less than 10 minutes so that it encourages the people you want to attract to actually read it.

A – Actionable: Loaded with practical content related to the business of the people you want to attract.

G – Goal Oriented: It solves a particular problem of the people you want to attract.

E – Easy: For the information to be used or implemented so the people you want to attract get results with no advanced prep or training required.

Where does a lead magnet go

Technically, a lead magnet doesn’t go anywhere. It resides on your website or in a cloud-based storage application like Google Drive or Dropbox so that it can be downloaded on demand.

But the language you use to tell your audience about the lead magnet – well, that can go anywhere … an email trailer or any of your marketing materials. You’ll see the opt-in for my lead magnet on the home page and sidebars of my website.

So what

Growing your email list is the secret sauce behind a 1:many product-based practice that I have written about many times before. But an email list is still critical to growing a 1:1 client service based practice as well.

And the goal of a lead magnet is to “pre-suade” (a term coined by Robert Cialdini) the people you want to attract, for whatever reason, that you possess the skills, knowledge, and experience necessary to solve their problem.

In real life

The Practice Development INSIDER webinar series I created was made possible by the strength of the email list I have, which I have been growing over time with a lead magnet.

Related posts

How I built my email list from scratch

Cheers!

 

 

 

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this Practice Self Assessment.

What you need to know about the latest LI profile changes

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Just because we’ve always done it this way doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way. I hope our last conversation about having all of your eggs in one valuation basket inspires you to strategize how you can augment your 1:1 BVFLS clients with a 1:many BVFLS product. It is the most scalable form of leverage we can implement in our practices.

On to this week. LinkedIn is messing with rolling out changes to our profiles again. You may not have seen the changes to your profile layout yet, but it won’t be long. This week’s conversation will let you in on three significant changes LI is making and how to react to them.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

Read on Twitter last week: If you constantly brag about how busy you are or how little sleep you get, I’m not entirely sure you understand how bragging is supposed to work.

Ripped from this week’s headlines: “All You Need to Know About the New LinkedIn Profile Changes” was posted by Wayne Breitbarth this past Sunday.

Wayne Breitbarth is a significant LI influencer and someone I recommend that all of my coaching clients follow, if for no other reason than to get advance warning of what is happening in the LI world … like the changes highlighted in his article.

All of the changes will occur “above the fold,” i.e., the part LI searchers see when they first land on our profiles before they begin scrolling down (if they scroll down) … which makes that first piece of profile real estate really valuable if we want those searchers to read more about us.

#1 – Headline

What used to be our Summary section will now be called the About section, and that section will now be below the fold. That means the only information LI searchers will initially see about who we are, what we do, and how we can help them will be in our headlines. Because time and attention spans are short, searchers will skip to the next profile if our headlines are not compelling.

What’s compelling? If your headline starts with anything like Partner/Shareholder/ Director/Associate and ends with your firm’s name, it’s not. It will not grab any searcher’s attention because the headline is too focused on you and not who you work with.

Remember, the people who know you and what you do will call or email you directly when they need you. And they already know you are a Partner/Shareholder/ Director/Associate at your firm. Thus, your profile needs to be prepared for the people who don’t know you … and distinguish you from the others who came up in the searchers’ results when they looked for BVFLS professionals like you.

We’ve got 120 cws (characters with spaces) to nail this. You may want to try different versions of your headline and monitor which one gives you the most profile views over some period of time.

#2 – Contact information

Our contact information is moving from the right side of the profile box to the bottom left. Not a big change, but it should be a reminder that all of our contact information needs to be current and professional. Because if people like what they see in your headline, they may head directly to your contact information to get in touch.

I do a lot of LI searches, and it amazes me how many times I open up someone’s contact information and see personal phone numbers and email addresses. How do I know it’s a personal phone number? Because that is the field you completed and LI tells me the number is “(personal).” How do I know it’s a personal email address? Because if the @domain name says gmail, hotmail, or any other name that does not match your firm name, I assume it’s a personal email address.

Worse, sometimes I see NO phone number or email address. So someone has gone through all the trouble of searching for someone like you and finding you, but now there is no way to contact you except via LI messaging. Which may not a bad thing IF you monitor your LI massages AND timely reply to them with the same gravity as you would a business call or email.

#3 – Profile and background photos

So much has been written about using a professionally prepared headshot that I won’t write more about it here … other than to say if you don’t have any photo or a casual one, fix it. As soon as possible. (I spent 2-1/2 hours of this past Saturday with a professional photographer shooting a whole new set of headshots. Cost – under $500.)

But what is often neglected is the rather large rectangular real estate on the “background” image behind the profile picture. When you see a blue background with random lines connecting silly dots that is the LI default setting; it is not captivating.

My background image is a photo I took on my RV travels. And I’ve seen other people use this space as a billboard for the books they’ve written, the clients they’ve served, or the media outlets where their stuff has appeared – all of which is designed to attract a specific target audience.

If you want to see what other people (not just BVFLS practitioners) are doing with this space, do some random LI searches. A graphic designer can create your attention-grabbing image for $50 or less.

So what

For those of you who believe a social media platform like LinkedIn is not important in attracting new clients, you are only hearing from the people who find you despite your lack of presence on that platform.

Imagine what you might be doing with a more robust presence.

In real life

First, I recommend that you perform a LI search so you know what the results of one looks like. In the search box, type “business valuation.” Depending on your LI account, different filters may pop up, e.g., connection level, location, and companies. As you will see, there is a very limited amount of information that will induce a searcher to click on anyone. But the profile picture and headline are the two most important pieces.

Second, test everything you do to your profile to see how it looks on the LI app since almost 60% of LI users are surfing LI on a mobile device.

Related posts

This is why you are not generating leads for BVFLS services on LinkedIn
Does your LinkedIn profile suffer from these 2 fatal flaws?

Cheers!

 

 

 

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this Practice Self Assessment.

How you can beat cheap: 4 ways to compete against low-cost BV providers

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Greetings from the Cumberland Gap. The RV is parked at the tri-state intersection of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia where we will be exploring the passage blazed by Daniel Boone back in 1775.

I hope you found our last conversation about creating Authority-building videos to be useful and that it inspires you to start using video to market your expertise. Remember the stats from a previous newsletter: the average person spends 6 hours per day watching video of some kind vs. 19 minutes per day reading text of all kinds.

On to this week. I am frequently asked about how to compete against low-cost BV providers. And, parenthetically, low-cost BV providers are not just the online services of our world. They are also found amongst traditional practices that, lacking differentiation, compete on the basis of price.

And if you’re new here, welcome aboard. This is what we do!

The year is 25% over. Are you 25% of the way toward reaching your 2019 practice building goals? What habit do you need to add or drop to get there? Email me and I’ll try to help … my inbox is always open!

The BV industry is becoming more competitive every day … more professionals doing the work and better informed prospects getting fee quotes. There’s tremendous pressure to lower prices and conform to the demands of “the market” as online firms like BizEquity gain traction. And this pressure is not limited to my coaching niche of 1-3 person BV practices because I hear even some big valuation shops are feeling the burn.

If you’re trying to build a profitable, sustainable practice, pricing can be daunting. But here’s the good news: you can compete if you are willing to do some things differently. I am not saying these things are easy … if they were, everyone would be doing them.

#1 – Narrow your focus and become the expert

You’ve tried the generalist route, and it isn’t working. The key to differentiating your practice from the low-cost options is to narrow your focus and build a brand as a leading expert in a standalone practice area or industry niche or a group of related areas or niches.

Then – like the Beatons, Dietrichs, Fannons, Grabowskis, Hitchners, Mercers, and other titans in our profession – work to build your reputation as the go-to expert for that specific area or niche. Write a newsletter. Publish articles. Launch a podcast. Speak at conferences. Write a book. Pick something, get started, and the rest will fall into place.

#2 – Build and maintain your referral network

For many of us, our referral sources are our clients. So you must build a network of referral sources who know, like, and trust you, believe in your expertise, and understand the value you provide. They’ll send you prospects who are a good fit and have already been prepped to pay your fees.

Thus, a major focus of your marketing should be maintaining relationships with your referral network and frequently reminding them of what you do, why they can trust you with their clients, and what makes a good referral. This activity is a large component of my 2019 BVFLS Practice Development Marketing Plan.

#3 – Demonstrate the cost of low-cost alternatives

It’s important to alert prospects of the hidden costs that may accompany a low-cost service as it relates to that prospect’s reason for wanting/needing a valuation. Hey, there are some reasons for which a low-cost valuation may be “good enough.” But it’s easy to point out why business owners who built companies over their lifetime and are now ready to exit shouldn’t rely on a $500 valuation to tell them what the selling price is.

And I think it’s important to have a script ready so that when you need to explain the hidden costs to a prospect it comes off as a thoughtful rejoinder and not a disparaging rant against all low-cost providers.

#4 – Eliminate the competition

Not by tilting at their windmills but by transforming your practice. If there’s too much competition in your market, create a new segment for yourself. If you can accomplish this, you’ll be selling in a vacuum and there will be nobody your prospects can price-shop you against. How can you enhance, combine, or structure your services to create something that nobody else offers? Read Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant for some ideas and examples.

What can you do to place yourself in the Blue Ocean category of one? What resources do you have … what relationships can you leverage … what unique value can you create … how can you mix, match, or restructure your current services? It requires innovation and a willingness to pivot. And if you haven’t thought about this before, it’s worth blocking off some time to consider the possibilities.

So what

Competing successfully in these conditions requires us to accept that many prospects will choose the low-cost provider every time … no matter how much it offends our sensibilities. So don’t chase those clients.

Instead, focus your business development efforts on a practice area or industry niche where you can stand out for an audience who will pay premium fees because they recognize the superior value you provide.

In real life

In many industries, there are insanely profitable businesses that charge premium fees and still win business despite the availability of free alternatives. Look at water.

Even though experts say we have high-quality potable tap water, millions of people buy bottled water every day … and bottlers position themselves to charge premium prices within this category (think Fiji).

If an entire industry can thrive by selling water – readily available for free – at high prices, there’s no reason for you to panic when you hear about low-cost competitors. But you must have a strategy to attract the right prospects who have the means to pay your fees and see the value in doing so. Because that is what you do when you hire a professional service provider.

Related Posts

Big Data Valuations: What we BV experts are up against
Big Data Valuations: What you said about them
Our fees are determined by the market. Which market?
Has anyone noticed that we are being disrupted? (a must-read)

Cheers!

 

 

 

Action Items:

– If you like what I write about, tell a colleague.

– If something resonates and you want to reach out directly, email me.

– If you think we share common interests, connect with me on LinkedIn.

– If you want a sense of how well your practice is working for you, take this Practice Self Assessment.