These days, anyone and everyone are calling themselves an “expert” and there are tons of business “coaches” who are promoting the idea that you don’t need experience, education, or training to be an expert. So…what is an expert, anyway?
Let’s start with the dictionary definition:
Expert. noun. a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; authority. adjective. possessing special skill or knowledge; trained by practice; skillful or skilled (often fol. by in or at).
Okay, that gives us a lot to go on.
To be an expert, you must have special skill or knowledge in some particular field.
How do you acquire special skill or knowledge in a particular field? First and foremost, I recommend reading. I’ve read over 3,000 books on small business, marketing, branding, personal growth, success, and profitability. But believe me, it’s not enough just to read. You have to read with a critical mind. You can’t read every single book and think they all contain The Answers. In fact, many books I’ve read contain one or two great thoughts, and the rest of the book simply builds on the theme. Other books have so many gems and wisdom, they tend to look like they’ve been through a war, with all the underlining and dog-eared pages. You have to learn to discern quality and substance, more than anything else.
Second, I recommend training. Take classes and courses in your area of study. I started my career as a web developer and I took tons of classes to acquire the skills I needed to be successful. Later, I taught classes in web development, and believe me, you become an expert very quickly when you teach! When I got carpal tunnel syndrome and had to change careers, I took a ton of training to be a coach. I didn’t take one course and call myself a coach. I took several courses and relied heavily on my Master’s degree in social psychology as well. And when I transitioned in to business consulting, I studied marketing and branding, startup and growth, and worked with mentors who taught me what they knew as well.
And that leads me to the third recommendation: study with the masters. Study with people who have vast amounts of experience in your field. Ask them to mentor you, as I did, and see if they’ll teach you or allow you to apprentice.
To be an expert, you must be trained by practice. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he shares a number that many of us know: 10,000. 10,000 hours is the number of hours it takes to become a master at something, to be truly proficient. So if you’re a chef, it takes 10,000 hours (or 10 years) to become a master chef. If you’re a violinist, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly proficient. Likewise, if you’re a coach, it’ll take you 10,000 hours or 10 years to be a master (not in title, but in practice). I didn’t call myself an expert in small business until I had 10 years under my own belt. You just need time in the field and lots of practice to get beyond theory and to really know what you’re doing.
To be an expert, you must be an authority. You know, there are lots of ways to become an authority. People all over the net are showing you how to become an “authority” or achieve “expert status” by marketing articles and using strategic PR…but you become a true authority when you have studied and trained and practiced, and achieved credibility and legitimacy. Ultimately, you achieve authority status when you achieve the respect of your peers and of those who have less experience and practice than you.
At the end of the day, anybody can call themselves an “expert.” But authentically, are you really one?
Don’t miss The Experts Series today, as I interview Larry Winget, the “Pitbull of Personal Development” about how to make your business REALLY succeed! We’ll talk about the current state of things, the way to achieve true success, the Law of Attraction, and much, much more!
The call is FREE, so visit http://TheExpertsSeries.com to sign up to listen in and ask Larry your own questions!
This afternoon I’m interviewing Jack Trout, the world’s leading branding and marketing specialist. Jack and I will be talking about how to make your small business stand out, how to create a brand on a budget, and why coming up with a catchy name for your business just isn’t enough. We’ll talk marketing strategies, positioning, and more!
Join us at 4 PM Eastern Time by joining The Experts Series!
Welcome to March, the month that comes in like a lion!
For every month in 2010, I’m focusing on a theme that’s critical to small business success and talking about that theme in my e-zine, No Suits Allowed!, here in my blog, and with my experts in The Experts Series. In January, we talked about planning your year and your small business. In February we focused on finding meaning and purpose and gaining authenticity, and I interviewed Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and co-author of The Go-Giver and Go-Givers Sell More in The Experts Series (if you missed that call and want the recording, you can still download it for free here).
This month my attention will turn exclusively to Branding and Positioning. As such, you’ll see articles all month long on branding and positioning your small business, throughout this blog and my No Suits Allowed! e-zine.
I’m also interviewing Jack Trout, author of over thirteen bestsellers about branding, positioning, and marketing. He’s the author of several of my official small business reference books, including Differentiate or Die and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and I consider Jack to be the father of modern branding and positioning.
When I was interviewing Bob Burg and mentioned my upcoming interview with Jack Trout, Bob said,
“Jack Trout is one of the seminal masters when it comes to positioning, branding, marketing. This is a guy who is so big and has been for so long, for you to have gotten him to appear on your call says a ton about you. And I hope everybody listening will be on that call next month. This guy is a master and just please, make the time to listen to him.”
I’d like to also announce the launch of my updated six-week teleseminar class, 7-Figure Branding Secrets, where I’ll take you through the exact process that I use with my one-on-one clients to create memorable brands with serious moneymaking potential. I’ll include a Q&A during every single class so I can walk you through your own branding process. More details, including dates and specifics, to come later this week!
In preparation for my recent interview with Bob Burg (if you missed it, download the recording here), I invited subscribers to share with me their top business challenges. I wasn’t surprised by the answers:
“sales,” “communicating with potential customers,” “sales,” “the telephone,” “sales,” “how do I increase my lead pipeline?” “how to market my business,” “where will I find my next client?” “growing my business,” “sales,”
90% of the questions I got were about sales and marketing, and the reason is that folks believe that sales and marketing are where you actually make the money. Well…you’re wrong.
If your top small business concerns are sales and marketing, you’re focusing on the wrong stuff.
“But…but how can that be true, when there’s an entire industry just build around sales and marketing???”
Ah, there’s the rub. Well, I’m not saying sales and marketing aren’t important. I’m saying that sales and marketing shouldn’t actually be your biggest “challenges.” And yes, I’m prepared to back that up. Here goes:
1) You should know your target market inside-out.
I’ll bet if you’re struggling with sales and marketing in your small business, you don’t know your target market well enough. If you did, you’d know everything from what their likely objections are to where to find them to what kind of marketing they’ll respond to. And when you know that, you really don’t have to wonder if your branding appeals to them or if you’re meeting their needs. You’ll know.
How do you get to know them? Well, first, you have to choose them. Narrow down the people you serve into a clear, definable subset of the population. It’s okay to do this, I promise. It doesn’t mean that you can’t work with people outside your target market. My target market is primarily female entrepreneurs in their 30s and 40s, but I work with women and men, and I have clients in their 60s. Your target market is who you work best with, who you understand the most, and who you like working with, combined with who wants what you have to offer.
Second, once you’ve narrowed down who your target market is, if you want to get to know them, ask them. Survey your list and if you don’t have a big list yet, look for places to find your peeps and invite them to take your survey. It’s not rocket science, but I do have a few recommendations: 1) Offer a high-quality freebie as a gift for taking the survey, 2) Limit your survey to 20-25 questions and only about 25% of those questions should be open-ended, 3) Ask them what you need to know as well as what you want to know. Get basic demographics, but also ask what keeps them up at night.
When your survey is over and you tabulate you responses, you should know a lot more about your target market, where to find them, and what they need and want. Everything else flows from there.
2) Once you know your target market inside out, you can focus on meeting their needs and providing value.
The people you serve are people. I’ve been saying that for a long time. They’re real people with real worries and real fears that keep them up at night. How can you serve them? How can you help address those worries and fears so that they can rest easy and get some sleep? If you’re addressing those needs and bringing enough value, not just in your products and services, but in how you’re showing up in the world, sales won’t really be a challenge anymore.
And remember, bringing value comes in many forms, too. This isn’t necessarily about giving your services away for free (although there may be times when that makes sense). As Bob and John talk about in Go-Givers Sell More, you can bring value in several ways. Bob and John mention five key ways to bring value that I really love: excellence, consistency, attention, empathy, and appreciation. And sometimes, just listening brings value. Who knew?
3) If you focus on bringing real value to people’s lives, sales will follow as a natural consequence.
One of the great things I picked up in my interview with Bob is that the top 10% of successful people in the world understand that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin. They’re a part of the same thing – as Bob put it, they’re like inhaling and exhaling.
So many of us think that “it’s better to give than to receive,” but actually, being a “go-giver” means you’re focused on giving value, but you’re open to receiving. And as such, if you’re focused on the other person and bringing real value, the natural consequence is that you’ll be rewarded. One of my favorite lines from Go-Givers Sell More is, “The task here is not to create value in order to create a sale or in order to anything. It’s to create value, period…Right now, your total job is to focus on one thing and one thing only: providing value to other people. If you do that well, sales—and money—will find you.”
The bottom line is that sales isn’t about sales. It isn’t even about the thing you sell. And marketing isn’t about the thing you sell, either. They’re both all about value. What value do you bring to the lives of other people? That should be your biggest challenge. Once you master that, sales and marketing shouldn’t be an issue.
Integrate: I’ll also be hosting a Q&A call the following evening. I’ll briefly review the interview with Bob, then I’ll open up the lines so you can ask me your business questions and get live business mentoring and coaching. Don’t miss this call!
Here are the details for this month’s calls:
DATES AND TIMES: Interview with Bob Burg: February 24, 2010, 8 PM Eastern/7 PM Central/6 PM Mountain/5PM Pacific
Integrate Q&A with Susan: February 25, 2010, 8 PM Eastern/7 PM Central/6 PM Mountain/5PM Pacific
If you’ve been reading my blog, my e-zine, following me on Facebook, or watching my Tweets, it would be impossible for you not to have noticed my new program, The Experts Series. This series is a yearlong, interview-and-integrate series. Each month, I’ll interview a top name in small business. The current lineup includes several bestselling authors, power players in marketing and PR, and heavy hitters from the real world, and all year long, we’ll be talking about ways for you to grow your small business.
So why should you join the series? Here are my top five reasons:
You’ll learn from the best. I’ve invited some of the world’s most well-known experts in small business, marketing, public relations, and branding to participate in this series. The lineup includes:
Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and co-author of The Go-Giver and Go-Givers Sell More
Jay Conrad Levinson,author of Guerilla Marketing, the best-known small business marketing book series of all time.
Jack Trout, author of Differentiate or Die and Positioning, among other bestsellers, and the guy I learned a ton about branding from.
Larry Winget, author of It’s Called Work For A Reason and You’re Broke Because You Want to Be and the guy I turn to for “get real, and get off your butt” advice.
David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Eyeball Wars, and Cashing In with Content, among others, and one of the guys I’ve learned the most about marketing and PR from.
(I’ve actually got several more incredible people signed on to participate, but I agreed not to reveal their names or promote that they’re appearing in the series until we get a couple of months closer to their dates. I have to admit that it’s kind of killing me not to tell you who they are, because these are huge names, and I honestly can’t even believe they agreed to let me interview them. But you’ll see the announcements coming up as soon as I’m allowed to share them, I promise!)
You’ll figure out what’s missing in your business that’s keeping you from taking that next step forward.
I don’t plan to just ask these folks what’s in their books or what they always talk about. Sure, we’ll cover that stuff, but I want to go deeper and find out what you can’t learn from their books. What are their best-kept secrets for growing your brand, getting the word out, drawing in clients, getting booked for speaking gigs, and heck, just making money? Was there one thing that they did that took their business to the next level? Was there something that “clicked” in their business? What’s the one thing they think you can do to grow your business and achieve success? I’ll be asking them more in-depth questions than you’ve heard in other interviews, to get to the heart of what these true small business masters can teach us.
You’ll have a chance to get up-close and personal with the top names in small business and ask them your questions. When I’m done grilling these experts, I’ll give you a chance to ask your own questions. You’ll be able to talk to the biggest names in small business and ask them whatever’s been burning in your mind about their books or your business. How often do you have a chance to ask someone of this caliber for a little turbo-coaching?
You’ll be working directly with me to integrate everything we learn during the interviews into your own business. The evening after every interview, I’m hosting a second call. I’ll do a brief recap of the expert call, and then I’ll take your questions. We’ll cover integrating the material we learned the day before, or you can ask me other questions about your business. Point is, I’ll be coaching you live and giving you my best business advice on the spot. This is absolutely the most affordable way to get some real, authentic business mentoring from a seasoned pro. Plus, just like any other Mastermind (I call this my “mastermind lite”), you’ll learn from the other folks on the calls. Remember, we’re all in this together. Whatever you’re going through in your business, I’ve probably been there…and you’ll discover other people who are in the same boat as you, so you can learn together.
Each month you’ll get closer to achieving true business mastery, and building more freedom, flexibility and purpose into your life. Listen…let me be candid. Just listening to the interviews and Q&A calls probably won’t change your business too much. But if you act on what you learn in the series, your business could completely transform. Just imagine if you knew what to do and how to structure your time so you really did achieve small business mastery? Can you imagine if you actually had all of the freedom and flexibility that small business ownership promises? Can you imagine what would happen if you were able to create a vision for your business and then achieve it? The best way to achieve all of that is to learn from authentic leaders who have mastered it themselves, and know how to teach what they learned. And that’s what The Expert Series is all about.
Bonus Reason: These are real experts. They’re authentic people. And they’re interested in helping you. When I invited these folks, here’s how I describe the series: “a new teleseminar series for my subscribers and clients to help them learn and grow in areas they may miss on their own.” And you know, what really amazed me about the responses I received is how generous these people were. I mean, maybe it’s my own jaded perspective, but I never, in a million years, expected anyone as famous as some of these folks are to thank me for reaching out to them and to be enthusiastic about participating in the series. But they’ve all been so generous with their time and they’re excited to join in this series, because this is all about casting off the formality and the suits and rolling up our sleeves and getting real about small business growth today.
This afternoon I had a pleasant chat with none other than Jack Trout, the man, the legend. And I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming, because he agreed to do the interview for the series, and he’ll be featured in March.
I have to say that it is just weird to see e-mails in my inbox from these guys. I mean, I see their names on my bookshelf all day long — these are the guys whose books sit next to me for easy reference. So it’s fairly surreal to see my Inbox with an e-mail from Jay Conrad Levinson (telling me he’s a notoriously late sleeper, so please don’t call him too early) sitting next to an e-mail from my dad, asking if we’re coming by for Sunday dinner.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you a bit more about how this series is going to work. You can sign up to join in for a month, or you can sign up for all 11 months. I recommend that you participate in all of the months, because you’ll only get access to the calls you pay for. So, if you join in June, you won’t get access to any of the calls before June.
As a member of The Experts Series, you’ll also get access to a second call during that month, which will be a Q&A teleseminar call with me. We’ll operate the call a first-come, first-serve basis, and I’ll answer your business questions one by one and get to as many as I can during the call. It’s a great way to get access to my advice in a very affordable way.
I’d planned a really fun series for you guys called the Wednesday Wine & Business Series, in which I planned to interview some of my favorite experts and mentors…I’d thought it would be fun to talk a bit about our favorite wines and then discuss business.
Then something BIG happened. I happened to be wishing my Facebook buddy, Bob Burg, a happy birthday, when I just decided to invite Bob to come and talk to you guys about his new book, called Go-Givers Sell More. Well, knock me over with a feather, Bob said yes!
So I took another leap and e-mailed my buddy Larry Winget, author of You’re Broke Because You Want to Be, and asked him if he’d like to come and talk to you, and…he said, “Sure…glad to do it.”
Then I started thinking…”I can’t have Bob Burg and Larry Winget come and talk to a Wine and Business Series. I can’t be sipping wine while I’m interviewing dudes of this caliber!”
And that’s when a new idea, a bigger and better idea, started forming in my head. What if this was something much bigger? What if this series became a lot more substantial and meaningful?
So I started contacting more of my favorite authors and mentors, and…guys, this is big. It’s bigger than big. Now, I’ve still got a few folks reporting back in, so I don’t have the full lineup yet, but…here’s what I can tell you:
Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and The Go-Giver
Larry Winget, author of You’re Broke Because You Want to Be and It’s Called Work For A Reason
Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerilla Marketing and Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green
John Rowley, author of Climb Your Ladder of Success Without Running Out of Gas
David Meerman Scott,author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave
I’ve got several more on the list but I can’t mention their names until we get the dates solidified. Suffice to say, though, it’s going to be absolute freaking extraordinary.
You will want to be there. Period. And, you will definitely want to tell your friends.
. Bob and I will be talking about how to make sales feel less awkward and uncomfortable and how you can bring more value to your clients. I’ll open up the call for a Q&A so you can ask Bob your own questions, too!