Are You Asking Yourself the Right Questions to Differentiate Your Business?
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I hope that by now I’ve shown you how building your thought leadership has the ability to positively impact your community and your business, but let’s unpack this a little bit more so you can create a crystallized vision for the way this could change your life.
Being a thought leader means, well, being a leader. It means impacting people in a way that makes them want to follow you.
And not through force, coercion, or, hell, even charisma. Instead, it should be for your thoughts, your ideas, your perspective. All you’ve experienced throughout your life and career. Your hard-won insights uncovered, and lessons learned.
Your impact doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen because of luck. It happens because you’ve put the work in and shared its outcome with the world.
We’re not talking about developing a following similar to teenage girls screaming for a boy band. We’re talking about helping people think of things in a new way. Opening their eyes to a perspective or concept that hadn’t occurred to them before. Helping them see new possibilities. It’s about inspiring positive change in others. And let me tell you, when you see that you can have such an impact on others, it can feel overwhelmingly good.
Hopefully, you can feel the possibility, the tingle on your skin as you imagine the impact you can make on others, simply for being you. But let’s get down to brass tack, shall we?
You care about your business and your bottom line. How can building your thought leadership help those?
We all know that the buying process has changed in the last decade. Business buyers are much further along in their buyer’s journey before they ever speak to a salesperson or representative from a potential vendor. They do their research online. They speak to colleagues and friends. They know what they want and need.
This means that even if you have an incredible product/service, and you’re a stellar salesperson if your ideal prospect doesn’t know who you are and have a positive view of what you do -- enough to include you in their original buying research -- you’re out of luck. You won’t even get a chance to make your case.
Regularly contributing thought leadership content and being viewed as an influencer in your particular industry could make the difference between being considered and being overlooked.
What’s more, if you’ve done enough to be included in a prospect’s buying decision, what information have you provided that lets them know if your solution is for them? If you’re only providing information about the features of your product or the results of your service, that might not be enough.
Though we are rarely willing to admit it, our solution (be it a product or service) is not unique. If I asked what made your company or solution better than their competitors, nine out of ten of you would tell me some mix of the speed, the price, the features, and maybe the people. And guess what? So would your competitors.
These days, differentiation lies in your customer experience, not your product or even its results.
How does working with you make your customers feel?
This is where your brand can play an impactful role in how you acquire customers. You see, a prospect’s first interaction with your brand is the very start of their experience as a customer.
If they hear about your company or your services, and they look you up online, what are they going to see?
If they see you post on social media, read a blog post you’ve written, or listen to a podcast interview you’ve given, what will be their takeaway about who you are and what you stand for?
Are they going to see language that sounds like every other company in your industry?
Or will they see content and copy that gives them insight into who you really are as a person, a leader, and a company?
Building your thought leadership gives your ideal prospects a better understanding of who you are and what you’re really about.
What makes you different from your competitors?
What makes your customers different from their peers in the industry?
Before I worked in marketing and then strategy, consulting, and coaching, I was a salesperson. I’ve sold everything from ultra-luxurious client hosting packages to the Masters, Google Ads for Realtors, analytics software to other tech leaders, and phone systems to IT managers. And there’s something you learn as a sales professional. You learn what separates the truly excellent salespeople from everyone else. Yes, they’re good talkers and even better listeners, but what really makes the difference is that they are much better at qualifying out bad opportunities. They simply do not waste a moment of time on prospects that won’t buy from them anyway.
They know that their job isn’t to convince someone to buy their product, it’s to find the person for whom the product is a perfect match. And there is something beautiful, downright magical, about having that level of confidence, in knowing that what you have to offer is perfect for the perfect prospect and being willing to walk away from anything or anyone else.
This is the power of building a well-defined brand. It lets you serve as a magnet to your ideal prospects and opportunities. You attract the perfect prospects because they can truly see who you are, what you’re about, and why they would want to work with you. It amplifies your differentiating factor so that you’re not wasting time with prospects that aren’t the right fit for your product, your business, or you.
As you build your thought leadership and become respected in your niche as an expert to follow, your ideal audience will begin to form. Not only will they start to know who you are, but they will start to trust you for your wise words or entertaining stories. They will get to know you and even though you’ve never actually met them, they will begin to build a relationship with you.
This means that when they have a challenge that they know you can solve, you will be at the top of their list of who to call. Yes, this is the long game. This work doesn’t yield massive results overnight, but it builds a movement and momentum that can sustain your business and help it scale in ways that right now you can’t quite imagine.
But the trick is to become known for something. Something unique only to you. Something that accounts for your one in 7 billion blends of skills, passions, experiences, and perspective. (And yes, I know that sounds intimidating, but I promise you can do it, and I’ll show you how...just keep reading)
And yes, I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to alienate people that might want to work with you. You want to keep things broad enough, cast a wide net, so to speak, so that you can maximize your revenues and new business opportunities.
But when you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
By laying your cards out on the table and making it clear who you are and whom you serve, you stand a far greater chance of truly connecting with them and absolutely dominating your niche. And it is always a far smarter strategy to be the big fish in a small pond than a small fish in an ocean.