Challenges, no matter how great, can be overcome (Photo by Darcy McCarty)
“Nothing is easy.”
That is the mantra for several people I know. They sigh, shake their heads, and mumble those words whenever something doesn’t go smoothly or fails to succeed. Life seems to be one long struggle for them.
I don’t believe that nothing is easy. Many people have a natural ability to do things very well, whether it’s engineering, accounting, writing, or speaking in front of people. Those people aren’t without challenges, however, especially if they’re trying to sell their services.
For many service professionals, the challenge is in marketing and selling their services and growing their firms. Add to that the inability to think creatively to tackle that challenge, and they end up with the same old tired solutions that do little to help them. They are usually the ones saying, “Nothing is easy.” But it doesn’t have to be that way.
To break out of that rut, Mark Levy, author of Accidental Genius, suggests using freewriting to open your mind and explore ideas you might never come up with using traditional methods. You essentially approach a problem by writing as fast as you can about the topic or ideas that spring forth from that writing. You write constantly even if the writing turns to random thoughts. But you have to write fast enough that your internal editor doesn’t stop you. Let the ideas flow.
“With free writing you not only come up with new ideas, but you come up with the ability to share the information with other people in a way that they can follow what it is that you’re saying and can act on your words,” says Levy in his podcast interview, How to Solve Business Problems Using Freewriting. “Freewriting is probably the single most valuable productivity tool I’ve ever learned in my life.”
Not only will freewriting help you solve business problems, Levy says, but it can help you with writing blog posts and articles and with preparing for speaking engagements such as webinars.
Creating a great presentation for a webinar is just one aspect of running a successful webinar, writes Aaron Joslow in his article, Stop Producing Bad Webinars: 3 Tactics to Make Webinars Shine. You can create the best PowerPoint presentation in the world, but if you don’t deliver it well all will be for naught.
Speakers are “talking to attendees who, for the most part, are listening alone at their desks. While a webinar may have 50-200 attendees listening, the speaker is having 50-200 one-on-one conversations,” writes Joslow.
How do you get such speaking engagements? Vickie K. Sullivan says one avenue is social media, particularly organizers’ online efforts. In her article, How to Use Social Media to Generate Speaking Opportunities, Sullivan says there are many ways to participate in organizations to make yourself known. You can produce video samples of your speeches to share, interact with organizations in public social networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter, and get involved in their private communities.
CPA firm Hughes Pittman & Gupton recognized the importance of social media networks and became an active participant on Twitter and LinkedIn. They use them to attract prospects and to maintain current client relationships. By going on the offense with social media and other digital marketing tactics, it has been able to keep growing while many competitors have lost revenue and struggle to stay afloat.
“We’re cost-conscious, but we also believe that marketing means going on the offensive. We need to remind prospective clients about us and close that business. If these marketing efforts weren’t working for us, we would drop them,” says partner Brooks Malone in the case study, CPA Firm Goes on the Offense with Digital Marketing and Grows Business.
If you’re selling services to law firms, you must also go on the offensive, says Allan Colman.
“This market is uniquely idiosyncratic, resistant, and challenging, and it requires special insight, strategies, and training to successfully penetrate,” Colman writes in his article, Selling Services to Law Firms: Are You Up to the Challenge?
It is possible to break through, however. Colman says it requires making a concerted effort to understand their markets and challenges and to develop trust. And it means understanding the behaviors of lawyers and law firms, which are unique. Fail to do so, and you can destroy a relationship. But if you follow Colman’s strategies, you will as a result experience extraordinary professional reward.
