The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

This business, is coming like a ghost town…

I've moved all my blogging activity over to my site at http://robcuesta.com/rob-cuestas-blog/

The latest post is all about the importance of your physical brand., read it at http://robcuesta.com/marketing-for-coaches/this-business-is-coming-like-a-ghost-town/

 

 

Do you see opportunities or blocks everywhere you go?

It's coming up to 10 years since I finished my MBA (and I'm looking forward to catching up with my old classmates at out reunion in September!).

As I looked back at my old notes I spotted my notes about Gilette launching the safety razor in Malaysia many decades ago.

Gilette's model at the time was simple. Everywhere they had launched, they would give away the razor and then sell you the blades. It's a model that has served them well, and it's still their core business model to this day. (It's also the model underpinning the computer printer industry, the mobile phone industry and quite a few service industries: tie the client into your platform and then sell them the eongoing follow-up. It's a very powerful marketing and sales model, that can work surprisingly well in coaching, consulting and advice businesses, but that's a different post!).

So two sales men were sent from head office to Kuala Lumpur to set up a new sales office.

Within hours of landing the first one was on the phone back home.

Will you discount now or later?

Back in my MBA days I remember being taught about  price skimming.

The idea was simple.

When you launched a new product or service, you launched it at a premium price, let the early adopters pay that premium so you could recover your development costs fast, and then over time, as sales dropped, you dropped the price to the market rate.

On the face of it, it's a really appealing strategy for experts launching innovative services: sell high, get a cash injection, and then let nature (and market forces) do their worst.

There's only one problem.

And it's probably one you can see instantly...

The Money is **NOT** In The List

Have you ever been told that "the money is in the list"?

I hear it everywhere I go. And people fret over how many 10s or 100s of thousands of subscribers they have.

If you've been worrying about how big yours is, then fear not: in the world of professional services marketing, size doesn't matter anywhere much as you think.

There are people with lists of hundreds of thousands who are running out of cash, and people with only a few thousands of subscribers who have a fantastic business.

It's not how big it is that matters, but what you do with it.

And yes, this is starting to sound like a Benny Hill routine :)

But here's the thing.

Are you standing on the shoulders of giants?

It was Isaac Newton who famously declared that he was "standing on the shoulders of giants", referring to the fact that all his knowledge was a development of ideas that other, greater, people had developed before him.

In that sense, it has a role to play in your positioning as an expert--however I think of it in a very different sense when it comes to running and growing your coaching, consulting or training business.

6FBP Brief #37: stop charging for your time

 

As a coach, consultant or trainer, you can't afford to sell your time. Selling your life by the hour for an hourly rate is one of the biggest mistakes I see practitioners make when they market coaching, training or consulting. Think of it this way: if the next hour you work were also the last hour of your life, would it really only be worth whatever you're charging for it? Probably not.

So watch this video to see what to do about it.

Then head over to www.robcuesta.com/6figureblueprint to see me live

6FBP Brief #29: Track your results

  

 

Whether you're selling coaching, consulting or training, it's easy to make expensive mistakes when you are marketing. The secret to making sure you avoid those mistakes is to track the results of everything you do. You need to know exactly how much more you sell every time you do something to promote yourself as a coach, consultant or trainer.

Watch this video for more.

Then head over to www.robcuesta.com/6figureblueprint to see me live

 

Are you a Journeyman, a Guru, or...

The coaching and consulting industry have traditionally been built on two ways of getting clients. And I think BOTH of those models are broken.

How Big is Your Business Card?

Success as a coach, consultant, trainer, or indeed in any profession where you are selling your knowledge, experience and advice, comes from your ability to position yourself at the top of your field.

One of the key ways to do this is by writing. 

Even though society as a whole seems to be leaving the book behind, when it comes to choosing our "experts" we still hold authors in awe. So one of the key things I encourage all my clients to do is to write a book; a physical book, not an ebook.

It doesn't have to be War and Peace.

I see a role for two kinds of books in building your business. I call them your "Expert Manifestos" (or should that be Manifestoes? anyway, I digress!)

UBC11: The new new economy

Unless you've been under a rock for the last few years, you've no doubt heard that we live in the "new economy" and that unless we adapt our marketing to it, we're doomed. Which of course is true.

The only problem is, no-one seems too specific about what exactly this new economy is.