Get Clients to Do Your Hard Work

If you've been reading my articles, you know I talk about how important (and hard) it is to get your positioning right.

But this superpower, that you possess as an independent consultant, to help exactly the people you are best suited to help, is very important.

All too often, we go too broad, and we dilute the power of our magic.

Our clients are not on an airplane, desperate for any doctor. They want the doctor that specializes on exactly the kind of knee surgery we need.

And when it comes to our clients, we want to be that doctor for the folks who not only need the surgery, but are willing and eager to pay for it. (And that's where the convoluted nature of medical payments ruins the analogy.)

"But I love helping struggling entrepreneurs with no budget," you say. You might even like certain aspects of those projects more than helping the corporate execs who pay the bills.

In this situation, it's even more important to get clear on who you ideal client is-- the corporate execs, in this case-- so you focus on them, and free up your time to do other things, like teach pro bono workshops for struggling entrepreneurs.

Delete, Distill, Decide

If your Ideal Client Profile has ANDs ("executives and solopreneurs") or ORs ("VPs of HR or CEOs"), you have a problem-- you don't have focus. So you need to Delete, Distill, or Decide.

In the executives and struggling solopreneurs situation, maybe you realize you need to Delete the struggling solopreneurs from your Ideal Client Profile (and help them in other ways).

Sometimes you can Distill 2 or more seemingly disparate categories into 1. For example, perhaps "executives and solopreneurs" becomes "public speakers".

And sometimes, after you delete and distill as much as you can, you still have different categories, and you just have to Decide on 1. For example, you might do financial planning for doctors and attorneys. You have clients in each category. But you'll probably do better if you pick one. Note that you don't have to do this all at once. You can test messaging with LinkedIn, ads, conversations, landing pages, lead magnets, etc.

All this is easy to discuss in the abstract, but very hard to actually do. We hate feeling like we're giving something up.

So remember that we're not trying to go for a smaller market, we're trying to go for easier sales and marketing.

The better we define our niche, the easier business development gets, including referrals, which will not only be higher quality, but more numerous.

This is still a tough exercise, so get a friend, peer, colleague, etc, to help. It's almost impossible to see the forest through the trees when we are standing right in front of a tree.

Get Help from Your Best Client(s)

And who can provide the best insight? Our best clients.

The words they use to describe their challenges, why they turned to you, how you helped them, and what that gave them are the best way to understand and hone your positioning.

So let them do this very hard work for you. At least most of it. ;-)

They will be happy to help. (Just make sure you actually talk to them-- don't just send an email. You never know what will bubble up in conversation.)