By Elizabeth J. Howell Hanano, CFA
Expertise: Financial Consultant
Introduction: Differentiating Yourself in a Crowded Market
Consultants often face challenges in finding new and reliable clients. Steve Blank, known for founding the Lean Startup movement, shares advice on how consultants can attract clients, emphasizing methods that might seem unconventional. According to Steve Blank, you should focus on creating a brand for yourself and your ideas. Thanks to the internet, consultants can disseminate their ideas easier than ever. Share your work as much as possible and don’t be afraid to give away your insights for free.
Make Your Clients Smarter: The Key to Standing Out
According to Steve Blank, the best way to stand out is by making your clients smarter. Great consultants make their clients smarter by sharing their expertise. By teaching potential clients how to do certain tasks, consultants can demonstrate their value and create a unique positioning. Steve suggests telling potential clients, “Let me teach you how to do X and Y. I’ll do it for you, but you know what? I’m happy to share with you my expertise and make you smarter at the same time you’re paying me.’ Even if they don’t want to know that, that’s a pretty unique positioning: You’ll make me smarter as well as get the job done? Wow”.
Engage in Client Discovery: Understanding Client Needs
Becoming a true partner with your client is essential for differentiation. Steve Blank advises that no consultant is smarter than the collective intelligence of their potential customer. Remote consulting requires understanding the client’s context and the underlying problem. Utilize customer discovery to understand the client’s objectives, even if the task seems straightforward. In the Customer Discovery process, which is part of Lean, you need to cover basic blocking and tackling.
Create a Repeatable, Successful Process: Implementing Best Practices
Steve Blank describes himself as the master of the obvious, putting together best practices in a way that’s understandable and repeatable so other people can learn from them. Consultants need to create a repeatable process through the use of best practices. By creating a process that is understandable, consultants can better serve their clients.
Give Your Thoughts Away for Free: Building Your Brand
Creating a brand is the most important part of your marketing strategy. The fastest way to do this is to put your work out there as much as possible for free. Steve Blank says, “There’s plenty of intellectual property to go around. Why don’t you use it to create a brand and then use it to drive the brand to you?”.
Amalgamate Past Learnings: Utilizing Various Mediums
To get clients to see your differentiation, you must share your expertise through various mediums. Potential mediums include slide decks or blog posts. By sharing past learnings, you can attract potential clients.
Customization is Key: Tailoring Solutions for Specific Issues
While giving away insights for free might seem counterintuitive, the value lies in customization. Every client has a unique problem that requires a tailored solution. According to Steve Blank, hearing information directly from the source and understanding the nuances makes a significant difference.
SEO for Consultants: Writing Content That Attracts Clients
To optimize content and attract consulting clients, consider the following SEO keyword research checklist:
- Expertise Do you have genuine expertise on the topic?
- Volume Is the global search volume more than 100?
- Difficulty Is the keyword difficulty less than 20?
- Excitement Are you excited about writing the best article on the internet on this topic?
- Connection Does the keyword connect to one of the services you offer?
Crafting an Outline: Structuring Your Content
Before writing, determine what you want your article to accomplish. Steve Blank says, “Could somebody get everything I know from stuff I’ve read and written? Sure, but it’s certainly a lot better to hear it from the source and more importantly, to understand the nuances. I hear all the time after I give talks or I’m in giving a workshop, ‘Yeah, we read it but it makes a lot more sense when you’re here.’”. When someone searches for a topic, they often desire to learn and understand it better. Aim to teach, provide clarity, solve problems, and eliminate pain through your content.
Writing Process: Sharing What You Know
Share what you know, rather than focusing on writing. To guide your writing, set a word count goal. The average article that ranks in the top three has around 1500 to 2200 words.
A possible outline could include:
- Introduction
- What is sales consulting?
- The benefits of sales consulting
- How sales consulting works
- Sales consulting case study
- When to invest in sales consulting
- Action step
Validating Assumptions and Delivering Value
Validate your assumptions about your product, market, and business model with real customers. Customer development involves testing hypotheses with customers and measuring the results. By following Steve Blank’s strategies, consultants can differentiate themselves, attract clients, and build a strong brand.
