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?

“You can trust me.”

Famous last words from every con artist I’ve ever met, and a sure-fire way to lose my trust, and most anyone else’s.

Trust is so important and so misunderstood that there are over a half-million books on the subject on Amazon, over 300 million sites listed on Google, and the one-rhetorical phrase used by that con artist.

Okay, I think it’s about time I said something about newsletters.

Now, I’m not talking about email newsletters here. Those are important, but as a practitioner concentrating on your local market, I feel that you will be a lot more competitive if you do the majority of your prospecting using traditional offline methods. Print methods.

What does it take to be a successful practice builder?

After you have established your goals and laid out your plan of action for reaching your goals, one of your next steps is to take control of yourself.

Remember all those guys in school who were so proud of their imagination, and were so quick to deprecate the plodders and the planners? Well, let me bring you back to reality with a corollary to the story of the tortoise and the hare. Consistency trumps all.

I learned a very valuable lesson from my mentor the other day about repurposing content, one of her favorite habits.

Now, I’ve heard lots of chit-chat on the internet about repurposing content, and I have consistently thought of it as rewriting the same old article or report in forty or fifty different ways. Sort of what the online bunch call “spinning” an article.

There are clubs and organizations in your community who actively seek speakers for their meetings and community activities. Organizations like community colleges, the local SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and chambers of commerce all seek outside speakers to fill their programs.

If you can give a good presentation, then your time as a volunteer speaker to these clubs and organizations will return practice development dividends far in excess of any other marketing activity you do, with the possible exception of writing articles and books and getting published.

What are clients looking for? Determine what a prospects needs are, supply it and you’ll be successful, right? It’s what every sales manual you’ll ever see, that doesn’t cover the basics of Rainmaking skills, will try to tell you. Find a need and fill it. But, you’re in a profession, licensed or not, and what [...]