The Recognized Expert
by Torstein Erdal
With the methods I have described in this course, you can make good money from the
clients you get.
When you have gotten enough clients through using my methods, and you are being
paid very well for your services, you can go even further. I will tell you how to do this.
Getting recognized as an expert
Make a more visible profile as an expert, by positioning yourself better. You can do this
in a strategic way.
I wrote about positioning yourself as an expert in The Direct Mail Method. If you want to
go further as an expert, and getting paid more, there are some things you can do to
show a lot more people that you're an expert.
Read through all the questions below. Spend some time to think about them, and
answer them for yourself.
- Do you have a unique perspective? What have you researched? What results
have you gotten? How much of your industry have you seen?
- Do you have a lot of experience, which gives you a different viewpoint than
others? What kind of experience do you have which are good reasons to why
people should listen to you?
- Are you able to communicate your journey? Where you have been, what your
struggles were, how you overcame your struggles by figuring out the solutions?
And can the story about your journey help others avoid the struggles you faced?
- What is your role? Are you a founder, creator, director, writer, author, vice-
president, or CEO of something?
- How popular are you, or something you have created? Do you have a video on
YouTube s top list of most viewed videos in a specific category? Have you
created a popular podcast on iTunes? Do you have a lot of fans on Facebook, or
followers on twitter? Do you have something you have created and because of it,
you can say  this number shows how many people who are listening to my
advice ?
- Have you had partnerships with anyone? Have you worked with a big company
or another great person in your industry, or someone famous? Have you been
sponsored by someone? Can you in any way borrow someone else s credibility?
- How have you progressed, or how have you helped others progress? Did you
help a struggling company to become great? Did you help someone going from
bankruptcy to rich?
- Have you been praised by others? How have others gotten help from you, and
what do they think about it, or about you? Can you get any testimonials from
someone?
- Have you ever been in the media?
- Do people pay you for your advices?
- Do you have any books, eBooks, reports, courses, audio-recordings,
presentations, or some product available for people to buy from you?
After you have read through and thought about these points, and answered the
questions, look at what you have, and what you don't have.
The more information/answers you can fill in under each of these points, the better you
can show others that you are an expert.
How your answers to these questions will help you:
If you can communicate this information in your bios, websites, marketing, public
speaking, videos, articles, etc. it will position you very well. It s also great if others can
communicate this information about you as well.
The BEST way to sell
Through direct mailing, referrals and cold calling, you can get your first clients. They are
good ways to get new clients, but it's not the BEST way.
When a prospect receives a letter or a call from a consultant/expert, some prospects
might think «who is this person? Why is this person contacting me? If this person is so
smart, why waste time on calling me?
The prospects are tired of cold calls and selling techniques. They have voice mails, and
are more relationship oriented.
The prospects want to do business with someone they know. So get known in your
industry.
So what is the best way to sell, if the prospect wants a relationship? It's simply to
build a relationship.
And there are better ways to build a relationship than doing it through direct mail and
cold calls.
The best way to build relationship is to meet people face-to-face.
The prospects can now see you and hear you at the same time. The reason it's more
powerful, is because the prospect can get to like you faster, and know you faster. The
more they like you, the more will they buy from you. People don't like to be sold, but
they love to buy. And they want to buy from people they know.
So the next time you network, build relationships with people, which lead to
appointments, which lead to sales.
A good way to meet people face-to-face is to go to business conferences/conventions.
Hold lectures or presentations about something relevant to your services. Get the
person who is introducing you to make you seem like a big expert in your industry.
When introducing you, they can share some of the results you have earlier experienced,
talk about who you've worked with, your role, your experience, your products, or any of
the points that was written above.
Make sure your lecture/presentation contains amazing content. Near the end of your
talk, just inform the whole audience that if they need more information, help, explanation
or resources, they can come and talk to you later.
After the lecture or presentation is over, you have already built some sort of relation,
and it's a big opportunity to build relationships with a lot of people.
Business card
If you network with people, and you have a unique business card, people will pay
attention to it and remember it. It's a good way to give a good impression for you. Make
your card communicate what services you offer and what it can do for them, in a way
that is fully understandable to anyone who looks at it.
If you don't already have one, you can get them. Here are websites you can get some
inspiration from:
http://www.freshbusinesscards.com/
http://graphicriver.net/category/print-templates/business-cards
Don't spend too much time creating the perfect business card. You can always get new
ones later. Just get one that is nice-looking, and gives an impression that you're
professional.
You want to also make them have a personal feeling, like you're not just throwing
business cards around, but only giving them to people you want to get in contact with,
do business with, and build a relationship with.
Of course, if you have someone talking to you at a business conference, and they are
very interested in your services, DON'T just hand out your card and ask them to contact
you. Try to get an appointment!
I've heard these sites are good to buy business cards from: (I have no experiences with
them)
http://www.overnightprints.com/businesscards
http://www.gotprint.com
Cool trick:
Here's a cool trick you can do, to get a very noticeable business card. If you are offering
SEO as your service, then take a look at this picture:
What if this was the back side of your business card? It would get so much attention
from anyone who looks at it. Everyone recognizes Google, and that's why this is so
powerful. If you choose to have this on the back of your card, please edit it with better
text. This was just a quick example.
Many business cards are just blank or white on the back side, or have a logo covering it,
and on the front is the information. I hope this gives you some inspiration. Whatever
your service is, try figure out if you could do something similar to this.
Here's how I made that picture in a few minutes:
1. You head over to Google, search for a phrase
2. Then you paste this script into the URL-bar of your browser:
javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on';
void 0
3. You can now edit the text on that page
4. When you re done editing, just hit «print-screen, and paste it into a simple
photo-editing software. I used paint
5. Just cut/paste/edit it to get it like you want it to be. I wanted it to be small, so it
could fit on the back side of a business card. When you're done, just save the
image and upload it to a business card website
Understanding your market
When you get more experienced in selling or having customers/clients, you'll see that
people are very different as customers, and segmented into different groups. When you
know what kind of person you're dealing with, it will be easier to sell, and you will know
when you're wasting your time with the wrong person.
Here are the different groups of people:
Technology-innovation enthusiasts like unproven products and services. They like
the role of being the first customers and often have clear and distinct visions of how
they want the product or service to be. They have high tolerance for immature solutions
and defects. They don't really care about references or reviews.
Visionaries will explore new products and services, and may take risks to gain
competitive advantage. They are happy with 80% solutions, and are willing to contribute
to make the solution work better.
Pragmatists are only concerned with business value. They want a 100% perfect
solution today. They can; respond to defects with breach of contract, want money back,
and might threaten with legal action if they don't get it. They want other companies in
the same industry to have tested the solution, and they will contact these companies to
be sure that they really have been satisfied.
Conservatives will buy the solution when it has become cheap and easy enough. This
means that it no longer has any defects, and there are already a lot of reference
customers in the same industry buying this solution already.
Skeptics do not buy products, services or solutions... They don't care about how many
others who are using it, or the benefits. Don't waste your time with these people. They
rarely buy.
In general, a newly founded company that's developing a product will first have to sell to
technology-innovation enthusiasts and visionaries, which will be their early market.
When they have developed the product further, and perfected it, they must learn to sell
to the mass market, which consist of pragmatists and conservatives.
How much do you want to earn?
Figure out how much money you want to earn from your clients.
Example: Is it $125,000 a year? $125,000 a year is $10,417 a month. If you get an
average client paying you $1,500 a month, you only need 7 clients!
And if you want to earn more, you can increase the number of clients you have, or you
can keep the same number, but get bigger clients who pay you more.
Whatever the amount of money that you want is, reverse engineer it, and focus on
achieving your goal and delivering the best service.
Afterword
Analyze yourself. Where can you improve to get more clients? Do you get a good
response rate on your direct mail letters, but never get a sale after the meetings? Then
focus on improving your meetings.
Don't worry about going to a meeting because you are afraid of losing a sale. You
wouldn't worry about losing a client you never had.
Now you can start implementing what you have learnt from this course. You can use
The Direct Mail Method, The Referral Method and the information in this report to get
your first client, your tenth, or your hundredth client.