Are You Really In Competition?

Welcome to today's edition of the Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter for Women in Consulting. Don't forget that you can get daily updates from Jessica in your LinkedIn news feed by accessing her LinkedIn profile and hitting Follow. She will be sharing insights and discussions through the week that she would love to hear your views on.

When you run your own consulting business, it can seem like suddenly, there are a lot of other people also running consulting businesses. 

You might not have noticed that before. But now, particularly if you are active on social media, you spot them all the time. Perhaps you read their posts and think, ‘that’s good’. Or, ‘I think that too but now they have said it, everyone is going to go to them’. You know you’re an expert, but you wonder if, maybe, they are more of an expert. 

We can spend a lot of time doubting our abilities, even when everyone who knows us professionally would give us a glowing testimony. Often, we never quite feel good enough, and internally we’re always comparing ourselves to others and listing out all the ways that we haven’t met our own standards.

You might be seeing others as competitors, but this is a mindset issue. People who seem like they are in competition with you aren’t directly competing for your same audience. They might have a different service, or a slightly different niche. Or even if you are identical in terms of service and niche - they might attract one type of personality and you might attract another.

I once had a sales call with someone who said, ‘I saw you on a webinar with a lady I’ve been following for a while but I’m reaching out to you because I liked you more’. 

With consulting and coaching, the relationship is integral to the sale. The relationship IS the work. Yes, you can work with someone who rubs you up the wrong way, but the process will always be easier when you’re not having to work around a personality conflict.

When it comes to competitors, one of the best things you can do is build a relationship with that person and identify if there actually IS a conflict. If there isn’t, this might surprise you, but these so-called competitors can actually become your best collaboration partners. I have several great arrangements where we offer similar things but at different stages of the business journey, so a client might finish with one of us and then be a perfect fit for a referral to the other.

This is why we say, ‘collaboration over competition’! It’s a brilliant way to shift from scarcity to abundance, and it is a really simple way to grow your business.

Let me know in the comments, do you work with other consultants in the same field as you?

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To find out more about the work I do, visit jessicafearnley.com or message me here on LinkedIn if you'd like to hear more about private coaching and how I can help you transition from booked up and burned out to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure consulting business.?