Are you an entrepreneur, professor, accountant or medical doctor? Regardless of your profession or career, where do you spend most of your effort? What choices are you making to create marketing presence?
One of the choices you can’t run away from is being a #WayofTheGuerrilla for your personal branding and marketing. You must be able to market your skills, value offering and or products in an innovative way despite the limitations your profession puts you in.You must be able to innovatively market. To do so, you need:
Time
You don’t just wake up and begin marketing and selling. You take time to understand your prospects. If you are a lawyer, what is the area of your legal focus? Are you going to offer transactional, advisory,and legal due diligence, litigation, or land issues or all services? If these are areas of your focus, who are the other players in the same field? Who are the potential buyers for these legal services? The same thing applies to medical doctors and accountants as well. You must identify the area of your practice focus where you think there is a gap in the market. Take time to think about certain things.
This is why for lawyers globally there are emerging issues where a lot of money is being made. One of them is legal due diligence, oil & gas, cyber security etc. These are huge opportunities but only available to those who have prepared to tap into them. What time are you taking to understand your market and optimize the opportunities?
Energy
Health is the best resource. If you don’t have energy and vigor to do the donkey work, it becomes very difficult to market. I understand you must work smart. It is good. But to really succeed, you need to put in some effort. Those who work smart but put in the most effort and personal energy go further. The choice is yours.
You can’t operate things in remote and expect to perform. You need the energy to move around and study the market. Invest your energy and it will pay off. Most people who talk of working smart, first worked hard. You know as you start, no one is yet interested in your vision. You lead by example. As the business picks up and folks start joining, then working smart is one of the other ways to scale and grow. First put in your energy.
Imagination
Think and say for me to provide a compelling service, what will it look at like? How do I impress the prospect? A story is told of a given lawyer who had a friend with many networks. He used the friend in a political connection to make appointments for at least top five ministers. The appointments were scheduled in a way that there was a lapse of 10 minutes in between. This was intended that the ministers would find themselves at the reception waiting to see the same lawyer. So, they would feel that he is the lawyer for ministers. It worked. He made appointments and ministers actually found themselves at the same reception. This was a breakthrough idea. That is the imagination we are talking about. This idea of having a friend politician, invite his peers to meet at your office was used by somebody and succeeded. What idea are you going to use? You see, you need to have imagination and execute.
Aggressiveness
Today’s business is not for the weak. You must get out there and push. You can’t take a no for an answer. Remember, this is about life or death. You don’t put money on the table, your children will not go to school and subsequently you find yourself in the village digging. Many of you have been in Kampala and can’t afford handling a hoe for more than four hours.
Look at marketing your business or services like pushing a heavy wheelbarrow uphill. If you just release, the wheelbarrow will hit you down the hill and that could be your end. You must push and never give up until the hill is conquered.
That is how you should market as well as follow up. You should follow-up constantly, persistently. Clients respond to the requests of those who are in their faces most of the time.
