How the Strategy of Pre-eminence Can Earn You Fortunes
A few consultants and coaches earn incredible fortunes, while the vast majority just get by?
The differences in income can be huge and instructive. Why do we have this disparity in earnings?
Do you think there are “secrets” high performers know that average performers are unaware of? Or, do you think the ultra-successful are merely better at execution?
The reality is that it’s easy to outperform others if you are privy to certain powerful strategies they don’t know about, are not applying, or that they are applying in a suboptimal way.
Why would you settle for less, when you are capable of achieving astonishing results?
Let’s look at a riveting and fitting illustration of the strategy of pre-eminence, as it has been leveraged for generating astonishing results.
Jay Abraham, a marketing and business growth guru, the developer of the strategy of pre-eminence gave an instructive example: While he was making about $5000/hour, the average consultant was making $200-$1000/hour!
While some consultants were charging $2000/$5000 for a seminar, he was charging $25,000, and his seminars were always well attended.
He has helped over 10,000 businesses and has worked in over 400 industries. His consulting has generated over $7 billion for his clients. Some of his clients are billionaires.
Mr. Abraham practices what he preaches; the strategy of pre-eminence is the foundation of all he does and the “secret” to the breakthroughs he’s able to engineer for his clients.
Let’s explore what it entails. Our focus will be on how it can be applied.
What is The Strategy of Pre-eminence?
First, what does pre-eminence mean? It means superiority. It means surpassing others. It’s easy to understand that being preeminent naturally makes you an authority. Consultants and coaches that have authority status are superior to others.
The superiority is in the nature and degree of value they generate. Utilizing the strategy entails surpassing others in delivering the greatest value for clients.
Now, let’s explore actionable ideas that’d help you implement the strategy.
Converting Insights to Fortunes
You could use the strategy “vertically” or “horizontally.” In the first case, this requires concentrating on a niche and excelling therein. It’s about playing in your own “blue ocean.” In the second case, you’re focused on growing across an industry, competing with others.
Do you want to be the professional who sells “everything” and serves “everybody”, or the one that’s known for a specific niche and select clients?
The key to being able to implement the pre-eminence strategy effectively is simple: It is having an in-depth understanding of your client’s industry and business more than they do. This must also include the regulatory framework.
First, you require deep listening, empathy, creativity, and relentless research, so that you can craft products, services, programs, interactions that provide exceptional value. A SWOT analysis is one of the frameworks that’d be invaluable in gaining this understanding.
Let’s assume you have a client you’d like to start with. Where do you begin?
- A dynamic repository
You could have a simple, dedicated website designed, which will be password-protected so that only you and the client can access the section relating to them.
Each section will be for each client, and in it will be an ever-growing repository of all the vital information relating to the client. This repository will be updated on a regular basis.
Each section will have links to the client’s social media channels and websites, and you can use Google alerts to keep track of all the changes relating to the client. By the way, Google alerts are powerful for keeping track of updates.
You can have survey software installed on this website so that you can ask your clients questions on a regular basis. Ideally, the site should be interactive.
Transcripts of your calls with them can also be domiciled on the site. (You’d need their permission). In addition to this, pertinent information relating to the industries in which each client operates will also be available on the site.
The grand goal is to have a rich, dynamic, structured information resource which enables you to capture the insights from “deep listening.” It will enable you to have at your fingertips, the vital information about clients’ business. The repository is a research tool. Since in-depth research is the basis of most business breakthroughs.
It now forms the basis from which you’d be able to design products and services that have the capacity to transform your clients’ businesses. You can harvest tons of insights from it.
It would reveal the major challenges your clients are grappling with, and it could also reveal the areas where they are having the greatest impact and revenue, which you can advise them to optimize.
- Triggering 10x Growth
Based on data drawn from the repository, you could outline 7 key areas of a client’s business, and brainstorm effective ways you can help them experience 10x growth in each. Do you think they’d like that?
Is it realistic to expect that you could facilitate 10x growth? Yes, it is. Why? Consider, for example, the differences in revenue between a small company and a Fortune 500 company, or even a mid-sized company. At the risk of stating the obvious, the big companies were small companies that did certain things right.
How, for example, can you ensure a highly dramatic increase in revenue for a client’s company? You could help them focus on and improve five things:
- Generating more customers (clients) for them
- Getting their customers buying more quantities of their products and services
- Getting their customers to buy more times in a year.
- Getting more leads
- Improving their conversion rates
Each point above, when realized, through digital marketing, for example, can have an astonishing effect on the revenue of the companies concerned.
Word press can be used for the aforementioned repository, or, you could actually have software designed for it. To do this effectively, you’d need to have a detailed software specifications document drawn up and great programmers.
Of course, like most software, it’d have to go through several iterations. It’d help you have a rich, data-driven basis for generating business solutions.
When it has been “perfected” the software can also be licensed (for a recurring fee) to other consultants and coaches. This innovation by your firm will naturally position you as pre-eminent.
- The Power of Automation and Outsourcing
As you study a client’s business on a deep, granular basis, you’d start seeing the inefficiencies and opportunities, in their offerings, systems, and processes, especially as you compare them with better-managed companies in the same industry, or even in a different industry.
You’d be able to borrow systems and processes that can help accelerate growth, or you’d devise some specifically for your clients. You could focus on two areas: automation and outsourcing.
Let’s assume you’re exploring a particular process in a client’s business. The first step is to brainstorm better ways of performing the processes, the interdependencies in the system, the potential challenges, and the gains.
And to compare what is to what obtains in the best-in-class companies. Then, automation can now be applied when better processes have been devised.
The reality is that virtually any process can be improved.
A great example of the above is in the accounting industry. It’s an industry that’s indispensable to modern business and is regularly undergoing changes, like others.
At a point, accountants relied on calculators and ledgers (actual physical books) for bookkeeping and financial reporting. They graduated to using spreadsheets on computers. This was like magic.
But then, some smart companies devised accounting software which made the work a breeze and eliminated the need for having a huge staff in the accounts department.
We are now in an era where analytics software is available which can provide more robust and useful data.
You can see the trail of improvements: old ledgers --- spreadsheets ---- accounting software ------ analytics... Soon, AI would be able to generate all pertinent information in seconds, with little or no human intervention.
Your clients’ main challenge may be their huge payroll, which is negatively impacting their bottom line.
After studying their business and that of better-performing competitors in-depth, you may realize what they need is to outsource some of their tasks to other companies whose core competency lies in this facet and who only charge a fraction of what your client is currently spending on the same.
Or, you may also realize that a better approach would be to ensure that the tasks are automated, such that instead of relying on human input, customized software can be leveraged.
The impact can be huge. It can improve performance, increase revenue, increase employee engagement, and lower costs.
- Comprehensive audit and surveys
Even before you have the repository in place, conducting a comprehensive audit is one of the best ways to start implementing the strategy, because the first step is a proper diagnosis of the client’s business.
The prescription stage can then follow, and it can be highly enriched by the data available. The aim is the same as we had with the repository. Surveys can be designed which will elicit the most critical challenges being faced by your clients and prospects.
And you could conduct a detailed audit of their business or lives to truly have an in-depth understanding.
This does not need to be a complicated process. You could have a dedicated landing page with a lead magnet and opt-in-page, and survey software installed.
The lead magnet could be an eBook, software, meditation music...whatever you know can offer them immense value, a gift they’d resonate with, and in exchange, they fill the survey, which should not be too detailed.
The one for prospects should naturally differ from the one for clients, and both can be graduated, such that only a particular facet need be filled at a time, so that respondents are not overwhelmed.
The audit would naturally depend on the type of business. The more detailed the better. Both, the audit and the survey can be likened to the diagnosis stage.
Once this stage is effectively conducted, what you’d need to transform their business or lives, in most cases, is already being revealed by the data generated. You need only apply the skills you already have as a consultant or coach to devise breakthrough solutions.
Conclusion
The above are examples of how to use the pre-eminence strategy, which in a nutshell, is about providing exceptional value. There are many ways, which you can easily come up with, once you have an in-depth understanding of the client, their business, industry, and competitive landscape, and are being creative.
It’s natural that you’d be charging premium fees for the exceptional services you’re providing. And that as tangible proofs of the value you’re providing becomes available, clients would rave about your brand, and your client acquisition costs would plummet. Gradually, you’d start making out like bandits!
Michael Newman