The Go To Expert by Heather Townsend & Jon Baker: From building your brand to getting promoted

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About the authors

Heather Townsend is THE global expert in helping professionals make partner in practice. When Heather swopped corporate life for business ownership she was pretty naive when it came to selling and marketing her services. (And, she’s not being modest here either).

When she looked around for books and resources to help her simply win business as someone who sold her time for money, using up-to-date marketing tools without her feeling sleazy or compromising her integrity, she couldn’t find any.

Yes, there were great books written on professional services marketing for in-house marketing experts. There were also great books written for B2B professionals but written before the advent of social media.

Jon Baker is the guy you go to when you want to grow your small firm from 5 to 50 people. He has trained sales teams across Europe, designed and delivered hundreds of workshops for different audiences at every level of a professional practice or business, presented to audiences from the National Indoor arena to lively breakfast meetings and seminars for small businesses.

Click here to buy on The Book Depository

https://www.bookdepository.com/Go-Expert-Heather-Townsend/9781292014913/?a_aid=stephsbookshelf

About the book

The Go-To Expert came about as a result of Heather writing The FT Guide To BusinessNetworking and wondering why some people become really successful at winning business and others plodded along. Even though they all diligently followed the same advice.

What was the missing ingredient? The authors discovered that winning business, particularly by referral or inbound methods such as social media, isn’t about how hard you work or the amount of pressing the flesh you
do, but about how big a fish you are in a small pond.

Yes, it’s not about trying to be all things to all people, it’s actually about focusing on a nicheand tailoring your offering so you become irresistible to your ideal client.

The book that teaches you how to grow your reputation, differentiate yourself, and win new business for your professional practice, firm and small business.

Links

Download chapter one of the book and other resources at https://gotoexpert.co.uk/

BIG IDEA 1 (5:14) – Figure out your niche.

Who are you solving problems for and what problems are you solving for them? This book talks to those who are in professional services or running a small business as professional.

Knowing your niche helps you position and package your services to your market. It helps you say ‘no’ to work or to things that are not helping your target audience or your brand. It also helps your brand because it makes you become the go-to expert in that field.

This book also talks about how figuring out and building your niche helps you build strategic alliances. It helps you find people in your network who you can team up with to do bigger work together.  

It also helps people know what they can get from you and therefore makes it easier to buy from you.

BIG IDEA 2 (8:18) – Get your systems and processes running.

Throughout the book there is an underlying topic of automating or systemising your process. This helps you smooth your days and save time, money and generally improve consistency.

This could include your content plan for social media or website updates. Know who need around you and delegate to keep things going and move in the right direction. Where do you need to outsource some tasks, even if it requires a little bit of initial investment?

The book also talks about being intentional in knowing who goes into your sales funnels. What does your sales funnel look like?

Another part of getting your systems and processes running is networking. What are the best events and who do you want to be hanging out with? What do you want to get out of the experience?

All of these processes should be helping you instead of holding you back.

BIG IDEA 3 (10:40) – Content is Queen.

It’s easy to become shy about sharing your ideas for fear of people stealing them. Or could be fear of people not liking them or sharing them or people not going to your events.

Think about how you are going to be known for what you know. It’s about attracting, finding and retaining clients through your content. It also helps you legitimise yourself, particularly if you get invited to events to talk about what you know.

The books also talks about generating, recycling (aka repurposing) and curating content; you don’t have to create everything from scratch, but you need to have a plan. This links to your processes about planning and scheduling your content.

Ultimately great content helps you build trust, relationships and connection because you can start a conversation with someone about a topic you’re both interested in. People know what you’re the expert in and you become… the go-to expert.

Music By:  Make My Love Your Home - Instrumental Version Song by The Days

Click here to buy on The Book Depository

Let’s Connect

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/steph-clarke

Instagram: @stephsbizbookshelf

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