Lets spend a little time talking about the Marketing Funnel. Some of you might have heard the term but are a little confused on the specific tiers of the “funnel”, others might be scratching your heads thinking what in the Sam Hill is he talking about? A marketing funnel is a visualization of the sales […]

I have a friend. No really. I know what you’re thinking, but I really do have one. He’s known me for over twenty years now and he still talks to me. Which is more than I can say about some of my ex-wives.

My friends name is Gary. Gary Pernice.

During the years I’ve known Gary, he’s met and counseled with some of the top leaders, the movers and shakers, of the world. Notice I said world, not just country, not just state, but

And my speech was a doozey. Or so I thought. But, when I finished, there were only two people awake in the room. The chairman of the activities committee, and me.

Writing a speech takes a special skill. And, there are very few guides to writing your own. It’s such a hard skill, over at Instant Practice Builder I have one person dedicated to speechwriting the free speeches that members get. I wouldn’t even think of doing it myself.

If you haven’t read yesterday’s post What Do You Write About? Part #1, then click here and read it first. We’ll be continuing from the point where that post ended.

Meaning, you’ll now have a listing of results that show all the blogs Google thinks you want to know about, who have recently written on the subject you entered in the search box. Your next step is to start going through them one by one and scanning them to see what is being written on your topic.

Article, report and whitepaper writing continue to lead the pack as things you can write to generate interest in your practice and establish your credentials as an authority figure. What is always hard is developing a list of topics to write on developing those ideas into a topic.

In either an earlier post or an email to the members of the Instant Practice Builder (http://instantpracticebuilder.com), I mentioned that one of the best ways to develop subject matter is to make a note of the question a client has when they call you and find an angle to turn that question and your answer into an article or report.

As most of my regular readers know, I’m an old, tired and ugly retired accountant. This internet blogging thing is sort of new to me, so I wander around looking for the wisdom of the gurus and try to distill some of it every now and then into something that will make me look brilliant and worthy of being listened to.

So, earlier today I was checking out the competition … you know, all the other blogs on how to market bookkeeping, accounting and tax services that I could find, and I stumbled across Ric Willmot’s blog ( http://www.ricwillmot.com/ ) and was struck by his quote from Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo who said that he expected to find 6,000 people crazy enough to buy a Ferrari in 2009.

Have you ever stopped to think about where you make your money? Do you sell consulting services, or are you in the product business? Do you really know?

Of course you can look at your sales register and identify the categories your revenues are allocated to … X% here, Y% there, and so on. But stop for a moment and think about a couple of things. what does the man with the hot dog cart need? He needs a horde of hungry hot dog aficionados. What does the guy who goes into the store looking for a shovel want? He wants a hole. Have you ever thought that maybe there should be a way to categorize your sales by needs fulfilled rather than item or service?