Market Through Associations

Industry associations and professional organizations serve as your main springboard for your consulting business. These organizations are a collecting point for your prospects and provide a forum for personal contact marketing (networking).

First, you need to figure out how many associations are in your field. How do you do this? Enter the key word or words from your industry into your favorite Internet search engine. In most cases, with enough surfing, you will find all the associations that exist. While you’re at it, find all the trade magazines in the industry. Also, talk to everyone you meet in the industry to find the top organizations.

For example, when I go to any search engine on the Internet and pull up the key words “self-storage,” usually the first item I see is the Self-storage Association (SSA). Do the same with your target market/industry.

After you find your target associations, make contact with these folks. Volunteer to help out and see if you can get to speak at their events.

Identify Industry Leaders

As you involve yourself in an industry with the goal of selling information products, the first thing you should do is identify the industry leaders. Why? First, you want to do research for your product development. Second, you may want to approach these folks to see if you can get them to endorse your products. Third, if they really like what you have to sell (and like you personally), you may even be able to get them to sell your products for you.

How do you find the industry leaders? Begin by going through the trade publications. Look for names that keep appearing. Who is writing articles on a regular basis? Who is advertising regularly? Ask the association bigwigs to recommend whom you should talk to. When I first got involved in the self-storage industry, I found the gurus pretty easily. I walked around the trade shows and read all the trade publications. I also purchased all the information products I saw advertised in the trade publications. This helped me identify every guru in the industry. Then I contacted them and learned as much as I could.

If you are entering an industry you know very little about, you can run classified ads seeking industry experts. You may be surprised at how many “experts” respond! If I ran one, my ad for self-storage experts would read something like this: “Storage marketing experts sought for lucrative consulting project.” You will get enough responses that you will be able to screen for the ideal interview subject. If you decide not to interview some of the respondents, be careful not to alienate any of them at the beginning because they may be helpful to you later.

Once you collect these names, you need to approach these individuals directly. Call, e-mail, or write to them. Introduce yourself and try to befriend them. You want to try and rally these people to your side. Often, these folks aren’t expert marketers and feel honored just to be asked for their opinion. You want to learn as much information as you possibly can about the industry. Formulate a key set of questions that you want answered before you call them. Ask them about their biggest fears. What are they most concerned about? What keeps them up at night?

Why do you want this information? It will tell you exactly what products you need to develop and give you a blueprint for what you need to produce. You’ll also get an idea whether these folks will make good dealer/affiliates for your products. You may even want to co-produce products with some experts. If they’ve got specific knowledge that you think will sell, consider asking them to help you develop the content in exchange for a piece of the pie. This saves you a lot of time because they’ll do most of the content development for you. All you’ll have to do is pay them a certain percentage of sales for each of the products that they help develop.

Appoint Yourself King or Queen

If you are interested in making the most money in the shortest amount of time as a consultant, you have no time for subtlety. So, assuming you have the knowledge to back it up, do what I did in the self-storage industry. Go in and appoint yourself “king.” This is almost as good as owning your own island and turning it into a country.

Be brash and announce yourself as “the expert.” This will mean that in any of the ads or promotional materials you produce, you will list yourself as the “top” this or that in the field. For example, if you are an engineer, you will become the “top civil engineer in the pipe fitting business.” My very first ad in the self-storage field stated that I was the top marketing expert in that industry. How could I dare do this? Because I was able to support the claim. I was an expert marketer and I had a general knowledge of the self-storage industry. I did my homework and I knew I could back up my claims. Additionally, up till then, no one else had claimed the title, so I won by default.

You may feel funny about going into an industry and wearing the king’s crown without having been born to royal parents. However, keep in mind that many currently accepted experts have done exactly that. If you doubt this is true, find a copy of Robert Ringer’s Winning Through Intimidation. Read his section on something he refers to as the “Leap Frog Principle.”

If you don’t do what I suggest, someone else will. Someone may have already claimed the crown for your niche. Take a close look at the current top consultant in your field and you will probably see that he or she did something similar when they first entered the market. If the top crown is taken, you can either take on the king or queen directly or find a sub-niche and declare yourself king or queen of that province.

Consulting is Not a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme

If you are looking to make a quick buck, consulting isn’t the business for you and my system will not help you. However, if you are looking to build a consulting empire over the long haul, you’ve come to the right place. The reason is that my system requires you to build a solid base of customers. It may take a while, but once built, it will continue to pay you dividends almost indefinitely. It will also become a saleable entity. You and this system will only succeed if you are ethical. You can probably make a little bit of money quickly by taking advantage of people, but you won’t make big money in the long run.

My system requires you to produce great materials that have major value for all of your clients, large or small. This requires a little more work on the front end, but pays off handsomely over time. The reason this works is that people either buy “up the dollar chain” or “down the dollar chain.” Some people will get involved with you by spending $19.95 on your book, but this is only the beginning of your relationship with them. After they are happy with your book, they will then invest in your $99 e-zine. Happy with this, they will purchase your audio tapes from a live seminar for $297, and so on.

It can also work the other way. They will show up at a seminar and spend $297. They will then give you an additional check for $777 for your “big product” package. Then later they buy your book for $19.95. However, it is rare that people spend the big bucks with you before spending some small money first. Thus, you need to have quality material developed all the way down to the $9.95 report. If you screw up and don’t deliver quality content and value at that price point, they will not go any farther. So, don’t blow your opportunity with poorly developed products.

Even when people buy the more expensive products first, they will buy all of your cheaper products if you give them many times more than their money’s worth. The key is to get them into your funnel as a customer at any level, and then trade them up the ladder over time.