The professional service business is a challenging one, and agencies face many struggles. Why is positioning so important in overcoming them? Why are many agency owners so afraid to take a position in the marketplace? Is implementation a barrier to profitability, value-based pricing or being unique in the marketplace? How do you begin to be more discriminating about which clients are a fit?
On this episode, I’m joined by David Baker, the author of one of the best books on building successful agencies, Business of Expertise. David shares on creating demand for your expertise, why implementation is a self-fulfilling hamster wheel and how to step off that wheel.
"There’s billions worth of implementation work in the market, but there isn’t a price-premium for it." -David Baker
Agencies don’t want to position themselves for fear of limiting their knowledge
Many agencies don’t want to position themselves because they don’t want to limit their scope of influence. Not positioning themselves is their license to learn and add to their knowledge, but very often they end up with broad knowledge, not deep knowledge.
The real problem with implementation is how much you can charge
It’s not that there’s a shortage of implementation of implementation work, it’s that you won’t be able to charge a premium for it. As execution and implementation becomes more common, you won’t be able to get price premium for not doing strategy work.
The connection between process and pattern recognition
The expertise that someone can sell comes from pattern recognition, which comes through repetition. When you start experiencing the same challenges, the learning gets deeper and faster and that’s where you command control or maintain a position of power during the sales process and the client engagement process.
Too many sales leaders are ignoring the fact that the buying process has completely changed, and it’s causing their salespeople not to be as effective in the marketplace as they could be. Even the deepest B2B buying environments are being influenced by the ease and convenience of Amazon, and our sales platforms should meet this demand. It’s critical to stop looking at how things used to work in the past, and start to look at what the best people are doing today and replicating it.
Guest Bio-
David is a speaker, advisor to entrepreneurial experts and author of 5 books including, The Business of Expertise. He speaks regularly at various TEDx events, Harvard, Adobe, and major international conferences to audiences looking for accessibly refreshing insight into how experts shape their world. Go to https://www.expertise.is/ for more information.