Give Away Your Secret Sauce
Consultants often struggle to find a balance of proving they can provide value before they are hired and keeping their most valuable insights to themselves until they are officially working with a client. I am not going to pretend that finding that balance is easy when talking to a client. What I will argue, however, is that when it comes to content or thought leadership, don’t be afraid to give away your secret sauce.
I’m not suggesting that you create materials to take your process and do it without you. Still, I would argue that in many cases, the secret to your success and insights isn’t a secret - it’s googleable. The value you provide is far beyond your general insights. Creating insightful thought leadership can have a huge impact on selling your product or services. In fact, 54% of B2B decision makers purchased a new product or service from the organization that they had not previously considered buying because of thoughts leadership.
Most of my content gives away my insights on making LinkedIn work for you. Want to improve your profile, create excellent thought leadership, or get a job. I lay all that out in my blogs on my website. I can tell you right now how to plan for a successful strategy. It’s the first slide in all my trainings: goal, audience, strategy. What are you trying to accomplish? Who do you need to convince to accomplish it? What do you need to do to convince them? There they are, my secrets - take them and succeed without me!
The truth is, if that is all someone needed, they could have googled that. I am not the only one who knows how to use LinkedIn. The value I provide isn’t my generic insights. It is the holistic understanding of LinkedIn, content marketing, and defining a path specifically for you to accomplish your goals. Most of the time I spend on coaching calls, my client is the one doing the talking. I am guiding the conversation, but the missing piece for that puzzle wasn’t some secret I keep in my back pocket on how LinkedIn works. It’s optimizing all the different possible ways to use LinkedIn in a way that will work for you.
LinkedIn can do a lot of things. You can approach your profile and content in many different ways. Bringing all my experience and insights together to suggest a plan built for you with your goal, budget, and experience in mind is where the value I bring comes in. Most of the consultants I know have the same experience. Business management and strategy aren’t secret, and creating processes isn’t a secret. Finance, google ads, data analytics, and best practices for bookkeeping aren’t secrets.
The value you add goes far beyond what any piece of thought leadership could layout, so give it away. If someone could search for an answer and find it somewhere on the internet, you want them to find it from you. If there is a tool you use for SEO or building dashboards, tell people about it. If you have noticed a trend, can see your industry’s direction, then write an article about why. If you see an easy solution to a common problem, explain it and how to solve it. If people go to your articles and blogs for answers to their general questions, they will trust you and come back when they want help with their specific issues.
Ready to create next-level thought leadership but don’t have the time? Set up some time to chat today to get started growing your professional brand. Book an Appointment
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