Are you a strong business leader?
A glimmer of hope is starting to shine through the dark economic clouds. Different markets are beginning to see improvement, including professional services firms, says Wellesley Hills Group President Mike Schultz. And that means leaders of those firms need to get out from behind their bunkers and stop thinking about merely surviving. “It’s time to start playing offense and stop playing defense,” Schultz says in his podcast interview, Economy Recovering: What Firms Must Do Now.
Leaders must first change their mindset and then change their behaviors and give their staff a vision of success, Schultz says. When they understand what drives revenue growth and implement those changes, they can make that vision a reality.
Part of understanding what drives revenue growth involves understanding what your clients and prospects really want and need and giving clients and prospects a reason to care about your services, writes Patrick Malone in his article, Why Clients Don’t Buy Your New Services. It’s essential to make sure they understand how they will benefit from your services—the final outcome. At the same time, show that you are interested in them and their success, not just be interesting yourself.
However, being interesting certainly helps and plays a key role in attracting clients, as Vickie K. Sullivan points out in her article, How to Use Your Bio to Bring in Buyers. The trick is to make your bio attractive—give people an idea of what it’s like to work with you. You don’t want to merely list your accomplishments, she says. Use what you are and your contributions “to create a vivid, visceral connection to what you can do better than anyone else.”
The items included in your bio can help establish you as a thought leader, as many services professionals have already realized. Published articles, books written, speaking engagements, and blogs all help with this. As R.L. Polk discovered, those things can also help with client perception and brand development.
In Stephanie Tilton’s case study, Company Creates Knowledge Center to Shift Brand Perception and Improve Client Relations, Polk explains how it built a knowledge center filled with articles written by the company’s leaders, analysis, and commentary on industry topics as a tool for its sales force. It is able to demonstrate the higher level of value its consultants could deliver.
As many firms have also discovered, social media networks can have a strong influence on establishing thought leadership. According to a recent survey conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 79% of the fastest-growing US businesses consider social media to be very or somewhat important to their business and marketing strategy. You must let people know about your expertise; otherwise you might as well be writing personal journal entries.
