0:00:00 - Betsy Jordyn
Hey, are you a consultant or coach and you are ready for more of the right clients and bigger, more transformational engagements? Learn all about strategic positioning for these clients and opportunities and why your vision for your next level of success depends on it, on this episode of the Consulting Matters Podcast. So welcome to the Consulting Matters podcast. This is the show for purpose-driven consultants and coaches who are ready to own the power of what they do and grow a business that reflects the impact and the income that they're here to make. I'm your host, Betsy Jordyn, and I'm a business mentor and I'm a brand positioning and messaging strategist for amazing consultants and coaches and their unique strengths. You can find out more about my personal branding services on my website at wwwbetsyjordyncom.
So let's get into the topic of what we're talking about today. I want you to picture this. You know so you're at this point where you're finally ready to take your consulting or coaching business to the next level. So what this could mean is that you're ready to leave your leadership career and start your own business. Or maybe you've gotten by with referrals and now it's time to build something of your own. Or maybe you want to go after the more strategic, higher paying client work. So the thing is is that you know what got you here is great, but it's just not enough to get you to where you want to go and you feel the gap right, you know you're capable of more, but your brand, your messaging, your offers, your website, even your approach to getting clients they're just not lining up with the level of what you're aiming for. So, if you can relate, if you're nodding your head, this episode is for you. In this episode, I'm gonna share with with you exactly step-by-step, what you need to do to get everything realigned to your next level of success and impact as a consultant, coach and as a business owner. So what we're going to be talking about today is strategic positioning. Now, if you talk to two people, you're going to get three opinions for the word strategic positioning, so I'm going to use my definition. I want to get us grounded and get on the same page.
Strategic positioning is all about taking control over how people see you and use your expertise, so that you're not just landing work. You're landing the right work with the right clients at the right level where you can make the biggest difference. The thing about positioning that's so powerful is we've chosen a profession where we actually have very little direct control over the results that we support, because we have to influence our clients to get those results right. The only thing that we ever have and will ever have control over is how we're positioning ourselves. So this is a really cold hard reality.
I learned very, very early on when I was a brand new OD consultant at Disney. I learned very early on that no one will automatically see or use our expertise the way that we want. It's up to us to position ourselves for the work and the role that we want. So I was very naive at first. You know, when I got out of grad school and I got into OD and I was working with all these senior leaders, like I assume, with all their MBAs and their experience, they totally got OD. They knew the value that I would create as an OD consultant and I could just wait for them to invite me to the strategic tables. But very, very quickly I discovered that they didn't get my field fully really at all and in many cases they didn't even really care to know about it. So it was up to me to shape their thinking about the value that I brought and eventually I wasn't just in the room where it happened. I created those rooms. So the thing about strategic positioning is that was great as an internal consultant, when I had a defined client set that I already was working with. I had to take that strategic positioning perspective, you know, even further when I went out on my own and I started my first consulting business because I had now shaped the market about who I am and the value that I created. But my biggest positioning challenge, which I'll tell you more about on this episode, was when I pivoted from consulting to the brand positioning and messaging work I do now. I had to completely shift the entire market's perception from me being an OD consultant to somebody who supports consultants or coaches. So the thing about positioning is that it's a really powerful way to create a bigger impact which leads to bigger compensation. But it's really challenging because it's all about shaping thinking at a broader level and at the client level.
So what we're going to discuss today and what we're going to go over in this episode is I'm going to give you the five steps in my proven success roadmap that gets you strategically positioned for the client's impact and income that you're ready for. It's proven because I've been developing and honing this for over 10 years. I've worked and applied with this with countless consultants. You'll also see that, why you'll speed up your progress and your profits if you slow down and take a more intentional approach to getting clients. You'll also learn why waiting until you have all the clarity and confidence before you use this roadmap is guaranteed to keep you stuck and spinning. And I'm also going to address the realities of what do you do now about positioning in today's market, and I'm going to talk about why some consultants and coaches thrive during volatile and uncertain times and others not so much. So I'll be giving you some pragmatic tips as we go through the roadmap so that you'll see how do I tweak and adjust so that I could stand out today.
Why it's worth your time to tune in is here's the thing Say bye-bye to hit or miss client attraction, stall dot progress, settling for less in your potential, and say hello to flow, predictable client pipeline filled with the right clients who are not just ready but they're excited to invest in your partnership because they have been looking for you all along. The other thing is I'm going to share with you the biggest game changer of all of this work I'm going to give you all the deets later on the episode, so be excited for that. So, given the podcast format, all I could do is give you the big picture, give you some ideas, share some examples, but not all the specifics on how you could apply it. So I've created a whole bunch of brand new freebies and guides that you can find on my website to support each stage of this roadmap. So go to wwwbetsyjordyncom slash downloads so you can grab the guide that most relates to where you're at right now, or you can get them all. You know whichever works best for you. And, of course, as I go through this roadmap and you think in yourself oh my God, Betsy, I'm so sick and tired. I'm trying to figure this on my own. Help, I got you Check out my strategic brand programs on my website as well.
So, without further ado, let's get into the show and let's get into the success roadmap that I have been developing and honing, as I mentioned. So the thing about roadmaps that I love I don't know if you're like me. You're a step-by-step. I'm a step-by-step person and what I love about step-by-steps is it shows me how to replace like fears of the unknown if I'm doing something different, with sort of like a recipe to follow, like this is the steps that you could take. So it takes away that unknown with more clarity. So I'm excited to show you the roadmap. The other thing about this roadmap is it gives you an opportunity to almost do your own audit where you can consider, like, what do I have in place and what's missing, so you can customize this roadmap to what you need to accelerate your own success.
So now let's get into the first step of the roadmap and I call it listen to your life. Listening to your life is what I believe is the single best way to accelerate your rock solid clarity and confidence in who the right clients are, that you want to attract and why you're the best consultant or coach not for everybody, but for them. Want to attract and why you're the best consultant or coach not for everybody, but for them. So the title for this particular step was inspired by Parker Palmer, who writes all about like the call of vocation and how to really align your work to what you're meant to do, and so I've adapted his quote, but I love this one is he says before you tell your life, I would say before you tell your brand, you know what you intend to do with it. Listen for what it intends to do with you before you tell your life. I would say, before you tell your brand. You know what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you Before you tell your life or your brand. You know what truths and values you've decided to live up to. Let your life or your brand tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent. So the thing is about your brand, and where you need to fit in and stand out in. The market is all around you. This data is all around you, and everything you need to know about it is you just need to mine the data that is already there.
So I've always had some version of the step in the work I do one-on-one with my clients, in part because of my own very, very expensive mistakes that I made when I was first pivoting from consulting to the work I do now. So I told you that I was going to tell you a little bit about how hard it was to reshape the market. You have no idea, and you have no idea how much money I spent on it, because I really wanted to sell this course to teach my OD best practices. I thought all these consultants who want to break into, get the bigger contracts and the larger organizations, they would love this. And so I invested so much money in this venture for very little return.
And the mistake that I made is I was focusing on what I wanted the market to want for me and what I thought was most easily monetizable for me. It was all about me and what I wanted to sell, and then it clicked. I needed to make a shift. So instead of telling and selling, I had to start listening and listening deeply to myself, my story, my own passions and especially what people were saying. When they actually came to me for help, they were never asking me. You know, Betsy, please give me your organizational consulting best practices so I could break into the bigger companies. What they were asking was how do I turn my career into a business? How do I figure out and leverage my strengths? How do I find the words that describe what I do? So the thing that's so surprising and delightful about listening to what people were actually saying is what the market wanted for me is exactly what I wanted to give the market, but I was too afraid because I was clinging too hard onto my identity as a consultant and I had to let that go so that I can embrace the strategic brand positioning and messaging work that I do now.
So the point of this story is the data you need to ground your business focus and your brand is all around you, it's inside your life to date, and that includes the expertise that you've developed formally through your education and formal paid experiences, and also informally, what you've developed along the way of your formal expertise and all the best at strengths that you've honed into a superpower. So one of my favorite, favorite examples of this is Denise. So Denise was a CIO for a large school system and she wanted to start her own consulting business. So her initial thought was is I'll just go to other companies and help them. As a CIO, I will help them especially schools and nonprofits build their technology capabilities? And so when we got into this particular exercise and this whole listen to your life type of thing, what we identified with Denise is that, alongside her ability to be an amazing technology executive was she was doing a lot of work with executive women on the side. She was in charge of a large networking group for executive women and she was doing a lot of work with executive women on the side. She was in charge of a large networking group for executive women and she was always mentoring people, and so what she really developed along the way was an expertise in executive coaching and really helping diverse people get to the top, because Denise is this vibrant Latina woman who broke the barriers and so she knew how to do that and so she got clarity that, yes, even though it made sense from a logical standpoint that she wanted to go into a consulting role, what she really wanted was to be an executive leadership coach, and it made so much sense because it aligned with this informal expertise.
So the data is great when you look at your life to date, but the data can get even richer when you start asking better questions to the people who come to you for help. You could do it informally or more formally, like my client, katie, who we did a formal voice of the client inventory. So Katie had lots of experience and tons of testimonials that really look more like recommendations, and so we wanted to get a whole bunch of benefit-driven testimonials for different things that she did, particularly this Japan project that she was calling a study trip because she knew she had so much more value that this particular experience was delivering. And so we got into the data with that particular client or all of our clients and we really turned those, we created these surveys and we turned them into more of this insight, into not just testimonials, but what was the conditions and the opportunities that were leading them to go to Japan or leading them to work with Katie. And even though she knew that she helped, like lean, operational, continuous improvement people, what she really identified is where people were getting to a point where they were investing in different approaches to lean and something was missing. And so then they went to Japan with her and it really was more of a leadership immersion program, it was a total transformation, and so we were able to not just up-level the sales copy for her Japan page and reposition that, but her entire business.
So the benefit of beginning with insight in general listening to your clients is for sure. Like Denise, you will build the right business the first time, unlike what I did when I was pivoting, where I was trying to become like a training business. You'll build it right the first time, which means you're going to save a whole bunch of money and time. But the other thing is you're going to get the confidence that your next level really isn't something that just comes out of thin air. It's really a natural extension of your past and so it's something that you've always done, but it's just in a new package. That's all, and that's what's exciting about it.
The other thing is, when you do this listen to your life type of thing is you're going to get clarity on the words that your clients are actually using. Not the words that you want them to use, but the words that your clients are actually using. Not the words that you want them to use, but the words that they are actually using to describe their pain, the problems that they're struggling with, what they want, what frustrates them about the solutions that they've tried and hasn't worked, and what type of consulting or coaching solution they will pay for. And if you do the voice of the client work, like I did with Katie, you'll have everything that you need for benefit-driven case studies and testimonials and copies that you could swipe and use for your website. That makes visitors say, oh my gosh, you're reading my mind, because literally you are, because you're mirroring back to them their own words.
So I want you to consider for a moment. Let's apply this to you. You know, have you taken the time to do any objective analysis on your past so that you could fast track the creation of your future? And if yes, what have you discovered? What's clear, what's still unclear? And if no, why not? You know, maybe outside of like, maybe nobody else has suggested it until today? And if no, what might hold you back from doing this level of insight? You know, I would say like hello, vulnerability, or that nose to the window pain syndrome, and how can you overcome it.
So that's step one. Let's move on to step two. Step two is all about nailing your brand positioning, then your messaging. So this is the step in the process where you finally untangle your thoughts and bring rock solid clarity to what you do. And you do this by first clarifying your brand position, then messaging. So I want to make sure that we're again clear on terms.
Your brand position is the unique space that you own in your client's minds and in the market. It defines four things who you help, the problems you solve, the value that you create and how you're. Different Positioning is stronger is when there is a connection that is forged in the minds of the market and in the minds of your ideal clients, between who you help, the problems you solve, and you, the value that you create, and how you're different. That is a solid brand position. Messaging is the language that you create and how you're different. That is a solid brand position. Messaging is the language that you use to describe it. So if you want to have the words that gets clients to say, oh my gosh, where have you been? I need you you have to first identify who those right clients are in the context for your help. If you have not identified a clear ideal client and a context for your help, this is a go no go point. This is where you have to do this first. It's first who, then what. You have to get that clear.
Your brand position isn't your methodology, it's not your credentials and it's not even your unique approach. So, for example, I was working with Christy and we were working on her brand positioning and we were working on her brand positioning and we were working on her course and a whole bunch of other things, and when we first got started, her positioning was all about her unique CRM technology and talking about her technology and how you pair it with relationship skills. All great stuff, right, but if you were going to refer Christy to her ideal client, who would you introduce her to? Would you be clear on who you would recommend Christy to? Probably not, because there's a lot of work you'd have to do in order to do that. You'd have to understand what the purpose of a CRM system is and what the value is and how, combined with relationship skills, and who could benefit from it. It's a lot of work.
So let's talk about how we made it easier for Christy to connect the dots between who she helps and the value that she created, so that other people would be able to refer her and she would be able to be more targeted in what she did. So here's the makeover. She now says I help financial services firms outperform the competition by turning their lukewarm clients into raving fans. It's clear, right? You know exactly who to refer Christy to. So your brand position also isn't some sort of intangible outcome your client gets or a pain point. This is always my test on if your brand position is clear is how easy would it be for me or for anybody else to know who to refer that person to? Like if it's like I have no idea, like if somebody is describing what they do and I can't picture who I would refer them to, then I know for sure their brand positioning is unclear.
Example of positioning against an intangible outcome or a pain point is Brenda. So Brenda Reese was just on my show, I think last episode or the time before that, and you could see how we transitioned her from talking about what she did as a forgiveness coach, which wasn't helping her get enough of the right clients from, also to move away from the positioning around a pain point where it was something generic like women not feeling comfortable into their own skin or something along those lines. We got closer to her positioning. I help accomplished women in toxic relationships end the drama, stop the struggle and achieve the same success in their personal relationships as they enjoy in their career. Super clear, like you would know, accomplished woman, toxic relationship. The value is drama ends and now she has the same success in personal relationships as she has in her career. You could see the narrative arc there a lot clearer than I. Help women you know really come on their own, find their voice or experience forgiveness in their lives. Like that's not clear.
So there's so many benefits of what happens when your brand positioning is clear. It gives you focus for your business development, so you get faster results while maximizing your time and money. But also you get better results from your networking. If you do nothing else with this roadmap, the thing about your brand messaging if it's not clear, just make it easier for your network to refer people to you If that is how you want to get clients. You can't make your network work so hard because they don't work for you. They are not your unpaid sales force. You need to make it easier for them. But also, let's talk about the clarity of this value in the context of an uncertain market condition like where we are today.
So the thing is, your brand position should be clear and solid and when you know who that person is, that gives you more insight into how your unique client base might be experiencing challenges in times of uncertainty and what those challenges might be. So let's say you're a consultant to the retail industry, you could easily see the challenges that they might be facing with, let's say, tariffs and the impact to their supply chains and costs and hits to DEI and their diverse front lines. Or if you're an executive leadership coach who helps rising star, diverse talent like Denise, break into more senior ranks. You can anticipate the potential challenges if the glass ceiling is getting reinforced, you know. So the thing is is that, while your positioning is solid, your messaging it's fluid. So you could explain what you do in myriads of ways. So use your messaging to be more adaptive. You could say things like you know, especially times like today you need, or even in today's market or because of today.
So this is an opportunity. Keep your brand position solid, use that insight to anticipate what might be the challenges that your clients might be experiencing right now, and then adapt your messaging to relate to that. So your turn. How clear are you on who you help and the problems that you solve? You know, let's say, lin-manuel Miranda wanted to write the next Hamilton off of the character that is your ideal client. Would he have enough intel to write that character? You know, are you clear and confident in the unique values that your clients get only because they work with you? When you walk into a networking event or run into an old colleague at a grocery store and they say, hey, what have you been up to? Or what do you do, can you describe what you do in a way where they instantly get it and they lean in and want to learn more. And here's another way that you could tell how clear your brand positioning and messaging are how aligned are the clients that your referral network is sending your way? Are they the right ones or not? If they are not, it's time to work on your brand messaging and positioning. So to help you out with this, I mentioned I have some free guides. Please head on over to wwwbetsyjordyncom slash downloads and I have a guide that will help you go from confused to confident in what you do and start working on your messaging. So definitely head on over there. All right.
Now we are on step three strategically framing pricing and pitching your offers. So this step is all about shifting how you monetize what you do from time-based service provider to strategic partner with comprehensive, solution-based offers. So I used to have this step at the end of my roadmap and I decided I needed to move it up. Like it needs to come right after brand positioning and messaging, because people do need clarity on how in the world am I going to monetize this, you know? So that gives you that confidence and that insight. It helps you be more effective in creating your website and everything else, but also your positioning, really leads up to this moment of truth. Because if you have the best positioning out there, where it's all about generating leads, but you don't know how you're gonna position yourself with those leads to turn them into strategic partnerships, then all of that will not come to the fruition to the level that you could. You know it's because what you pitch and what you price and what you sell defines your impact and income potential period. So, to illustrate this, let me show you what this means.
So let me tell you about Sari. So she's an educational leader turned parent coach and, like most coaches, starting out she was selling coaching hours. She might have bundled them in different packages, like maybe a four-hour package or eight-hour package, but it was still by the hour, and so there were things that she was doing that would create a whole lot of value that she was undervaluing and didn't even really see it as part of the program, like the upfront assessment that she did or the advice that she gave for free between paid coaching sessions. So what we did is we got rid of the hours and we created a signature program that provided incredible value and a comprehensive solution when you think about her clients who are dual income, busy, professional parents who have have great aspirations for the type of family that they want to create, but they are dealing with children who are K to 12, who are struggling, and that those challenges are not just showing up at home but they're showing up at the school, which is perfect because Siri has background in the school system as a former principal.
So what she provides now is an entire upfront assessment. It could vary for different kinds of clients, which creates different kind of value, but there's an upfront assessment of the situation Objective. She provides it Virtual and in-person. She could do either or both. She can include as part of the assessment the parents and the effective child or the entire family and in some cases, the school, and then using all of of that data that instead of looking at that by paid by the hour, this is an incredible value to her clients because she's gonna provide her objective point of view and give them insight into their strategy and then, to facilitate, a strategy session with the parents, regular ongoing coaching. And then the biggest value for the program imagine if you have a, you are a parent and you're dealing with children who are challenged. The most valuable thing is having on-call support where you could have somebody, like in the moment, like your bat phone, to say, okay, I'm at, I'm dealing with this. And so she was undervaluing that when that was a huge part. So her program started, I think at least 5K. Not because she's just like shamelessly promoting herself and just you know, randomly raising fees. It's because she has a huge ROI that she's creating, because now she has an offer and she's delivering better results for her clients.
Working less, making more that's the power of strategic positioning. When it comes to how you land work, so that's a coach. Now let's talk about a consultant working with an organization. So let me how you land work. So that's a coach. Now let's talk about a consultant working with an organization. So let me introduce you to Lisa. So Lisa came to me when she needed help landing a client for a conflict resolution training and she wanted to get her fee up to $10,000 for this particular training, which is interesting because of where she wound up. But what we worked on is I showed her how to pivot her client from this request to their real challenge, which was conflicts on the production floor that were leading to product defects and their biggest client, threatening to get rid of their you know, like their contract with them, which would have put the entire business at risk. So she created a proposal to solve this much bigger problem for $275,000. So she 30X her fees and 2X her annual revenue. So this type of impacted income shifts comes not just from strategically positioning yourself on the market, but with your specific clients and ensuring that you're creating a collaborative relationship with them that maximizes their results and then, therefore, your compensation.
So the key moments of positioning truth is how you frame and describe your offers on your website, focusing on features and benefits versus methodology. It takes place in how you take charge of the discovery meeting and you pivot your clients away from their asks and get away from sales. Like even in the discovery meeting, you know you're not about selling them on your solution or your prepacket solution. You're having a partnership discussion. If you want to get more insight into what do you need to do to do this pivot, I'm giving you my exact script on that page that I have my new freebies on, so head on over to that downloads page and grab it.
The other place it shows up is in your proposals. Your proposals should not be statements of work. That's something that you did as an internal consultant. That's not something that you do as an external consultant. You don't wanna have a list of tasks in the exchange for time, but you do as an external consultant. You don't want to have a list of tasks in the exchange for time, but you want to have an offer for working together that demonstrates a powerful ROI that your clients will get from working with you and gets you paid for the value that you create, not your time. So, real quick, before we leave this step, I promised that I wanted to give you insight into how you can flex in terms of the market conditions. So the thing about this with your offers is you could always create a limited time offer or a special that relates to the specific opportunities that are going on right now.
So, for example, you know, if I were still a consultant, I would definitely be creating a contingency planning strategic facilitation offer. You know, for my clients. You know because they're really struggling with how do you plan ahead in a very uncertain market, because markets need certainty for planning. So I would offer a special, for I wouldn't do it for free, you know, unless I was like I was already in a client system and if I just kind of threw a bonus to them and I could get into more work, I probably would do that, but a special. I would frame it up to say like let's get ahead of the recession, you know, and sidestep something along those lines. Or let's say you're a career coach and you're worried about companies not bringing you in because they're tightening up their leadership investments. Well, if you're thinking that these leaders might get laid off, you know you could be thinking about well, what kind of offer can I do to grab these leaders as private clients and help them figure out their next step? You know, one of the things that I've been working on is a 2025 special for maybe a single page website to get you positioned faster, you know, and stand out in these complex times. So the thing is about your offers. Is you always want to be strategically framing, pricing and pitching your offers in general, and then you can create special offers for the interim time periods. So, with all of that in mind, I want you to really evaluate, take a look at how you are framing up the work, pitching it, pricing it, and see if it really aligns with where you want to go.
Okay, step four. So now we're at the part of the episode where we're hitting the total limits of audio, because I would love to show you my before and after pictures, but I can't so, given that I just want to address some of the big time myths that consultants and coaches often have about websites. So number one this is the big one. I'm sure you felt it at some point in time. The myth is I don't need a need, or I just need something that shows I'm in business, because most of my clients come from referrals. That is so not true. Your website is not an online resume that simply shows like I'm officially in business. It's the hub of your marketing engine and one, done right, works 24 seven, representing your brand positioning and creating a personal connection with your potential clients and establishing your credibility.
I want you to hear this and hear this loud All clients, all clients, even those who come to you via a referral, will absolutely check out your website. There are referrals that might be coming to your website and you're never seeing them again because it's not impressed. They're not impressed. You know it's not impressive to them. They're not impressed Even if the referral is strong, and they may overlook your absent or poorly designed website. Your website quality will shape their thinking of who you are, how they want to work with you and what they think you're worth.
So let me give you a cautionary tale with Scott. So Scott is a fractional CFO and he came to me for help after this experience. So he typically grew his business by referral, so referrals are very important to him and he really underestimated the value of his website. He constructed, I'll just say, not the greatest website using a template over the weekend and he had a very lucrative potential client on the line who came to him from a very highly respected referral and this potential client took a look at his website and said, oh my gosh, your website is so bad, no way I can hire you. So he wanted to turn this around, obviously, but it was something along the lines all as well as, like his website, shame. It was like, oh my gosh. He took it down immediately and he really didn't know. He didn't even really know or appreciate how much his website was actually working against him. So then we got to work on his custom website and in the middle of that whole process he got a lead who was on the fence, and he saw the power of this when he was like they're like, well, do you have a website? And he's like, well, no. And then he's like, well, I have one that's like in construction. And he showed the client even the incomplete website and he's like, let's do it. And that's how he landed his first $20,000, or $200,000 to be honest. $200,000 engagement, so huge value.
Another myth is that you can't attract clients with your website. I'm just going to say not true. For over 15 years as an entrepreneur, my number one source for clients is always my content and how it draws people to my website. I'll tell you a little bit more about content in the next step. But that is definitely a myth. But let's move away from myth to miss. But let's move away from myth to miss.
One of the biggest misses about website and investing in a high quality one with professional photos and compelling copy isn't necessarily just about how it changes the market perception, but how you see yourself, your own perception. So one of the examples was Jason. So Jason was making great money, he was adding on great clients, but his web presence was definitely not matching the quality of work that he delivered to his clients. So we worked on his website and it was great and he felt immediately that his authority and his market increased substantially. He wasn't getting substantially different clients, but how he was positioning himself with those clients changed. He started to see himself not as a transactional consultant but an industry leader. So he was landing C-suite clients that he thought had alluded to him because of how his website was showing up. So it's not like his services like fundamentally changed, but how he strategically positioned them did, because of how he saw himself through the work of doing his website.
So real quick on 2025, you know, if it's not done, get it done. I would rather have you have a high quality single page website than a poorly designed multiple page website. You know you want to definitely get it done and create that image because you want to be able to stand out. There are going to be more consultants and coaches entering our space. You know you want to definitely get it done and create that image because you want to be able to stand out. There are going to be more consultants and coaches entering our space. You know, with this time period, but you can still stand out by at least having that.
But, as I mentioned, with the offers and this might be a little bit too much technical detail for this podcast, but I'll just share you this Make sure your main website pages are more static and, if you do follow what I suggested on those special offers, like, do them in landing pages or somewhere different. So what I would love for you to do is number one. I want you to imagine that you're your ideal client. I want you to explore your website from their perspective and I want you to think about, like, what are you conveying to them about the depth of the value of what you do? And I want you to think about, like, what are you conveying to them about the depth of the value of what you do? So I want you to look at it and I want you to see what is the perception you are projecting out to them. And now I want you to do the same exercise, but as you, the seasoned professional that you are, with a wealth of experience, even if you're brand new to consulting and coaching business ownership, even if you're brand new to consulting and coaching business ownership and I want you to think about how well does your website reflect the truth that you are a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience? And if not, what are you going to do about it?
So, in terms of the freebie that I have for you to help you with, that is, I created an expert website launch planner. So this is going to help you with a step-by-step project plan, especially if you're DIYing your website and you're not quite sure, like, how do I get this done, because a website project can seem overwhelming. So my goal is is to give you that planner to take the mystery out of it. All right, so we're at step five. Step five is to build your marketing system, preferably using content. So you might be still wondering, like, well, how do I get a consistent pipeline? You know, and here's the other question you might have is, how do I get a consistent client pipeline, especially if I'm not really a total fan of marketing? So here's how you intentionally, strategically and consistently implement visibility tactics you actually enjoy.
You have to pick things that you don't hate, because you're not going to do them and you're not going to sustain them, and if you don't want to be the world's best cup secret, you can't act like one. So the actions here is number one. You've got to reframe marketing. Marketing is not in the way of the consulting or coaching that you love, but an integral part of serving the clients that you love. You are listening to my podcast and I'm giving you a ton of value for free because I love my clients, I love my consultants and coaches and I want to give you everything I possibly can to help empower your success. So I have struggled to try to figure out how do I share this roadmap with you, you know, in the best way possible, because I want you to get the value that you need. I am doing this as part of my mission to empower purpose-driven consultants and coaches, so you have to think about marketing as simply a way of serving people you just haven't met yet.
The second action is reframing what it means to stand out. You're not here to stand above the noise and the market in general. You're here to stand out only to the clients you're meant to serve. That's it. You don't have to look at what all the other consultants and coaches are doing or all of the craziness that could be construed as digital marketing or even referral marketing or everything else. You're not here to do what everybody else is doing. You're here only to what will make the difference for the clients that you're meant to serve.
And then the action three is consistent marketing equals consistent pipeline, and I have to say, as much as we think that positive word of mouth is the ultimate, positive word of mouth is not a marketing strategy. It's the consequence of the entire brand positioning strategy that we're talking about, and more marketing plays a role, but it's an outcome. Like yes, you want positive word of mouth, like that's the net promoter score, like you want that, but that's not a strategy, that's just an evidence of a strategy that's working. You know. So why I would recommend content marketing. You definitely can do referrals, but if you're going to do referrals, be intentional about it, be strategic about it. You know always be thinking about like here's the 10 people I'm going to call every day, who I know in my network. I might get on LinkedIn and start looking for. You know, working my network to find the secondary and third degree connections. I'm looking all the time of where all the networking events are, where my ideal clients can show up. You know I'm working my Rolodex on the regular, like that's strategic, like I'm doing something every single day towards that end.
But I also think content marketing is really important because we're in everything that we do. Content is going to play a role, you know, and the thing is for our businesses. It's kind of like you go to Costco and they're trying to get you to buy things you know by giving you a little taste of things. That's what our content does, is it gives people a taste of what we do. But it also establishes our credibility. Like I'll never forget the time that I landed a client in Canada who I never met before and I was actually competing for work. It was an org design project. It was when I was still a consultant and I was. I didn't know this at the time, but I was actually competing against an author of a book. That really influenced how I did org design, really influenced my thinking about it, and why they chose to go with me over this person who had the book is because I had videos on my website that talked about it and I had the credibility where they did not, even though that company wrote that book. That was really influential to me. So they had content but it wasn't consumable in a way that made a difference for that particular executive team. So that's really great.
If you're an introvert, content is great because this really leverages like our zone of just kind of like getting or putting our name out there without having to be like so extroverted. But for extroverts, go speak, go out, find speaking opportunities. Your content will help open tons of doors for you. And then, real quick on 2025, make sure your content speaks to your clients where they are now. So, in general, for content marketing to really work for you, you really wanna narrow down who you're talking to. So instead of just saying I help people who run businesses or I help entrepreneurs, you know, just narrow it down. Maybe your clients are family owned business owners. So don't write a generic post on like how do you grow a business. Make it specific. You know how to grow a family-owned business that even the most conflicted family members can get behind. You know that could be an article that you could write. You're more narrow, but let's say you're dealing with times like today. You would make it more specific to say something like you know how to set up a thriving family-owned business that engages employees and customers even in 2025. So now it's really specific to the audience that you're working with If you want to use the power of your ideas to consistently attract the right clients and get them warmed up and excited to work with you and you don't know exactly where to start.
This guide will help you. So that's the roadmap. So there's five steps to positioning your consulting or coaching for the right clients and bigger opportunities. Step one is to mine the data by listening to your life. Step two nail your positioning, then your messaging. Step three strategically frame price and pitch your offers, not your time your messaging. Step three strategically frame price and pitch your offers, not your time your offers. Step four is all about building a website that is credible and establishes a personal connection and converts your clients. And then number five is strategically and intentionally build a marketing system, preferably using content, and fill it with tactics that you actually enjoy. Don't do stuff that you hate. This path, this is the path to attracting more of the right clients with greater ease, getting better results from your network and referrals, focus and prioritization for your business development, increasing your compensation, your credibility and consistency, sustainable and scalable success and impact. These are the tangible results.
But I promised you at the beginning of this podcast that I would tell you what the real game changer is in all of this, and this I see time and time again when I work with my clients. You know we go in to this work like we're. In this very vulnerable profession, we are the product, we are the brand. It is easy for us to play small. You know there's so many reasons why we don't like marketing and it's because it's not like we're. Just if we were marketing like, you know, a studio, or even like a professional services firm, like a law firm or a tax firm, you know we would have more to hide behind, because people actually, you know, absolutely need those services. So we're sort of optional. So playing small is a really big challenge for all of us, because in order for us to get out there, we have to show up in bigger ways. So it's more than just risking from a business standpoint. It's risking from a visibility standpoint.
So the real game changer in all of this is that when you go through this effort, you will really get to a place where your belief in the value of what you do drops from your head into your heart all the way down to your feet. You really own the power of what you do, and when you do that, everything else changes. That is what my clients will tell you time and time again, like when they finally see everything come together, their website that reflects their messaging, their mission. They see themselves in a different way. That is the game changer, because when you do that, then you will market yourself without fear, you'll ask clients to work with you without hesitation and you'll charge fees that reflect your worth, without apology. That's the game changer in all of this. So, in terms of your next steps, identify what do you have in place and what's missing. And as you go through the roadmap, like, identify, like what's the first missing item, because this roadmap goes in order. So plug that hole first before you move on, Be sure to go to my website at wwwbetsyjordyncom, slash downloads and get all the free guides that I mentioned to help you move from insight to action.
And if you want my help to accelerate your progress and deepen your confidence, let's talk. Head on over to my website as well. You'll see a big pink button that says Request a Discovery Meeting and let's chat. I want to be clear that my first meeting is really just a gift to you. I use my framing skills to help you clarify what your next level of success and impact looks like and what achieving it will create for you. You know in your business, your career, your life and if, and only if, we both decide you know what we're a fit, then we'll move on to co-creating your solution. If we decide we're a fit, then we'll move on to co-creating a solution, but not before that. So that was a lot right. So that's it for today's episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit subscribe wherever you're tuning in. Pass it on to your friends and colleagues. I'd love it if you could take a minute, especially since I've repositioned my podcast. I'd love for you to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. It will help more people find the show and I really, really, really would appreciate it. And until next time. Thanks so much for listening.
