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A Word on Experts
LET’S THINK BACK to what we learned from the hierarchy of buying. To successfully UnMarket your business, your goal should be to get to the point where you are a recognized expert in your field. You can choose to be recognized for a certain discipline, whether it is time management or sales or marketing in general. You can also aim to be recognized as an expert to a specific industry. What you have to realize is that there is an important difference between somebody who is selling something and somebody who is an expert. This is one of the problems when you use advertising or direct mail for your marketing—if your potential customer does not have an immediate need for your product or service, then you are potentially turning them off and losing them for the future. When you position yourself as an expert with useful information for people, your marketplace will always have a need for that information. You have successfully pulled people into your funnel, you have their attention, and now you need to do something great for them.
Contrary to popular belief, I am not opposed to advertisements or direct mail. It is just that in general these methods are executed poorly. They are almost always doomed to fail, and companies put too much focus on them. Advertising or the Yellow Pages or (cough) even a cold call can “work” if whoever is in contact with you at that very moment has that exact need. And therein lies the problem. You have to blast your message to tens, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of people in a spray pattern just to try to grab a few. When you position yourself as an expert in the field, your message is not only in front of people who want to see it, but have asked to learn about it.
One of the mistakes I see new business owners make, especially in the service industry, is that they don’t consider themselves experts. Countless times I’ve talked to new clients who balk at the idea of being known as an expert. They tell me they’re not ready for that yet. They are adamant that they need to do their work longer to call themselves an expert in their field.
Webster’s dictionary defines an expert as “having, involving or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience.” You have to be an expert to run your own business. You’re not going to be an accountant or a nutritionist or even a virtual assistant if you don’t know something about your industry. Sure you may not be the expert in the field, but you can certainly be an expert.
People who claim to be the top expert in a certain field often do it in a way that excludes everyone else. In declaring the top spot, these people claim they know the most and everything there is to know about a certain thing. Really, nobody can claim that. Most industries are ever changing and evolving, as are marketing tools. Of course, customers are always changing, too, as are their needs. A self-proclaimed expert in social media, the one who says that he or she is the expert in social media, in a field that didn’t exist a year or two ago, should best be avoided.
Pause when you consider hiring someone who calls themselves an expert. I understand because I also get uncomfortable sometimes with getting that title of an expert or guru in social media. I am one of the experts in relationship marketing and social media who is a great tool to use for that. But for me to claim that I am the expert would be doing a disservice to everybody who is involved in the field itself.
What is stopping you from calling yourself one of the experts in your field? Being an expert is not an official designation. You don’t get a certificate in the mail, nor do you get a cookie. You are an expert when you say you are one. You know how I became an expert in relationship marketing or UnMarketing? I said I was one! This doesn’t mean you can become an expert in something you know nothing about. An expert has experience or training in a certain field. Once you have that base set, if you don’t have the confidence to call yourself an expert then you really need to look at yourself. You have to ask, “Why would my customer try to hire me if I don’t think I’m great at what I do?”
Once you’ve accepted the fact that becoming a recognized expert in your field is one of the things you need to do to launch your business off to a great start, we now focus on the term “recognized.” It doesn’t do anybody any good to be an expert only in your own mind, although this does happen to many people all the time. You don’t become an expert by just telling people you’re an expert—people tell you and then they tell others. When you are great at what you do, other people will say it for you. So focus on positioning yourself with the knowledge you’ve obtained and set out to help other people unconditionally with it. Use what I lay out in this book to help put you on the right path to not only positioning yourself but staying as a recognized expert in your field for a long, long time.
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