The Client-Attracting Secret For Agency Owners Hiding In Plain Sight

Creating your memorable methodology is a wonderful place to start to become an marketing agency that attracts high-paying clients.

A memorable methodology is the best way to position yourself as a trusted authority to your ideal prospects. The same is true for strategic consultants, business coaches, and others in the business of selling their expertise.

Your book should highlight this methodology as a way of setting you apart from the competition.

Agency owner Scott Cantrell, who says his clients have generated more than $100 million of additional revenues by becoming trusted authorities, believes the answer comes down to three words: “Insight inspires influence.”

To help clients have more influence and insight, Cantrell and his firm Smart Solutions Media work with business owners and professionals who want to attract high-value prospects and acquire more profitable clients by positioning themselves as trusted authorities.

“If you want to have a position of preeminence and become a trusted authority, then you must share your insights, and they must be clear, compelling, and consistent,” says Cantrell. Agency owners who consistently provide insight to the marketplace affirm the need (and desire) to hear from them, follow them, learn from them, and work with them.

Deliver Memorable Methodology

“Not your product, service, or solution, but your methodology is your single most sustainable competitive advantage. Develop and name your own approach. Next, create a short assessment process for potential clients that naturally leads them to two conclusions: they need help and you’re the one to provide that help,” says Cantrell.

What Cantrell calls memorable methodology I call proprietary process. Based on my interviews with successful agency rainmakers it is a game changer.

David C. Baker, Nashville-based business consultant and author, says one of the most common mistakes an agency or consultant can make is not having a defined, proprietary process. Writing in his newsletter Persuading (available through his website, recourses.com), Baker highlights several reasons why a memorable methodology is important.

“Process is differentiating, highlighting the uniqueness of your firm with a process that you own,” says Baker. Other advantages he cites are that a process demonstrates your experience, makes your work less accidental and will even allow you to charge more. “Clients are always willing to pay more for packages than individual hours within a fee structure.”

A great memorable methodology, however, is never a cookie-cutter industry standard lifted from a textbook. Instead, it codifies a firm’s particular method of problem-solving, typically identifying and sequencing multiple steps that often take place in the same, defined order. The process name should be trademarked to show that you value this piece of intellectual property.

Prospects Find Process Comforting

If you want to find new clients, take a cue from a trusted advisor who regularly attracts seven-figure investors.

“Attracting ideal clients is more than a numbers game in today’s world,” says four-time author Brittany Anderson.

Anderson offers a proprietary trademarked planning process that focuses on dreaming to attract million-dollar investors. She says it is the intersection of where money and mindset meet.

“Some may say differentiation and a target niche is the secret to success,” says Anderson. “While those things are important, the best client relationships are built out of impact and helping the person realize possibility for their future with the help of your services.”

Like Anderson, you should create a trademarked way of solving client problems. Give the process a name and take the steps to trademark the process, which communicates this is a key part of your brand. Without a proprietary process, you are just a commodity.

Anderson, partner and president at Sweet Financial Partners, has coached hundreds of business owners and entrepreneurs.

“At face value, high net worth investors may be looking for creative tax planning strategies, investment vehicles that help them advance and preserve their wealth, and an advisor to lean on throughout the process,” says Anderson. “What we have found they are actually searching for is a deeper purpose and meaning for their years of saving and accumulation.”

All the money in the world doesn’t matter when there isn’t a clear intent for what it can do for the person’s life and legacy.

If you have a proprietary process, do tell. What is the name of your process?

(Mine is The Book BluePrint Process.)