branding your knowledge

Branded Knowledge Pty LtdLevel 8, 49-52 York Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000, Australia

Tel: 1300 58 66 44 | Fax: (02) 8079 1129Email: [email protected] Web: www.brandedknowledge.com.au

A Mentor’s Guide To:

Branding Your Branding Your KnowledgeKnowledge

“Systematically sell more professional services …

and barricade yourself from competition”

Phone: 1300 58 66 44 Copyright © Branded Knowledge Pty Ltd www.brandedknowledge.com.au

Topics Inside this GuideTopics Inside this Guide

• Brand Your Knowledge

• Stake Your Claim

• Value Your Knowledge

• Create Treasure Troves

• Unleash Social Marketing

• Know Your Audience

• Earn Permission

• Sell Your Story

• Lead the Way

• Charge For Admission

• Master Your Brand


About this Mentor’s GuideAbout this Mentor’s Guide

Does your firm sell professional services? Are you looking for a coherent marketing strategy that benefits you and your clients?

Are you seeking proven strategies to achieve short & long term success in both tough and good times?Do you put profit before applause?

We can consult with you in person, but you can get a feel for how we can help just by reading on… Read how to erect ethical barriers to hinder competitors from poaching clients and courting prospects.

Discover how sales-savvy marketing can shorten your sales cycle and turn prospects into buyers.

You have already made a wise investment in us – if you read on we will help you to achieve a profitable return on that investment.

This Mentor’s Guide will assist you and your firm to become wealthier~ that is our aim. When you succeed ~ we succeed.


Brand Your KnowledgeBrand Your Knowledge

Your brand is established by your team, reinforced by your clients, shared by marketing and turned into profit by sales.

Knowledge, reputation and relationships are central to any services business. You employ your intellectual capital to turn a profit.

Your clients buy from you because your skills, experience and methodologies are valuable to them.

As you interact with your clients so you establish a brand. Delighted clients spread the word – that is the best marketing you can get.

The art of marketing is to weave a story around your expertise and your successes. Done well, you will evoke desire in your prospects.

Your client's stories about you turn your services into tangible experiences – that your prospects will want to share in.

Do that well and your prospects will seek you out then buy from you.


Stake Your ClaimStake Your Claim

You have earned a deep understanding of your subject matter – how do you become famous for what you know?

As a knowledge brand you must establish an authority on a portfolio of topics that your audience value.

That's not easy but as it is your core business the raw material & motivation should be readily available.

Specialists are easier to brand and sell than generalists. To start with pick a core niche that you know and work with that.

Whatever you wish to communicate or promote, you'll need to define the topics and infuse your conversations with them. Stories, either yours or industry anecdotes work well.

Your top sales and service personnel are already storytellers - they deliver your successes with passion, integrity and personality.


Value Your KnowledgeValue Your Knowledge

Your goal is to take the knowledge of your team, make it a part of your business processes then transfer it to clients for a fee.

You'll turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge so that your firm owns the knowledge not individuals. You have retained the value.

To make it part of your marketing strategy you'll embark upon a structured process of transferring it your prospects and clients.

You'll share what you know to prove you know it and so your clients can benefit from it. You'll charge your clients for it all.

You must trade that which your clients consider valuable to gain their attention. You will trade it to earn the right to sell to your clients. You will trade it to create a yearning, a desire for your services. You will trade it for a fee.

It's the role of your sales force to transact business on that basis. It's the role of marketing to earn permission to sell.


Create Treasure TrovesCreate Treasure Troves

Your competences, products & services are treasure troves of knowledge that you can repeatedly profit from.

Your research results, case studies, reports, methodologies, training courses, databases and software modules that embody your knowledge are your crown jewels.

They are your treasure troves.

The knowledge that is retained in the heads of your colleagues is treasure too. However, this is tacit knowledge - it is not within a trove and cannot, therefore, be branded.

To create a knowledge brand you must capture your knowledge – share some with your clients, share more with your colleagues.

A knowledge organisation converts expertise into a process. That reduces the dependency on superstar performers – so you profit.


Unleash Social MarketingUnleash Social Marketing

Socialising your expertise is a central activity of any successful knowledge marketing campaign.

Creating a white paper, a blog, podcast, a strategic briefing or an original piece of research is a common, and effective, way to brand your firm's expertise – they are types of treasure troves.

By affixing your company name to that research and systematically socialising the association. Your knowledge and your company become intertwined and you have started to establish your brand.

If you can take a new word, phrase or buzz word and add it to the language of your clients and ideally your competitors then you position yourself as the heir to the treasure that it represents.

Stories told by clients (testimonials and case studies) are very compelling. Stories told about you in the press carry the weight of the publication.


Know Your AudienceKnow Your Audience

It is the role of a knowledge brand to connect a topic to an audience that values it.

You can reach your audience in many ways – face-to-face, at seminars, online, advertising, social media and traditional media.

Each client has a different agenda, priorities, goals and objectives. A CEO has a different perspective and different needs to a CFO or an office manager. You must understand your audience.

The closer your expertise relates to your clients own view of the world - the stronger your knowledge brand will become.

Many clients say they don't “do marketing”. I tell them that networking is relationship marketing – they do it instinctively therefore they don't realise.

Using marketing techniques you nurture clients until they are ready to work with you. It takes time & no technique works for all clients.


Sell Your BrandSell Your Brand

Sales is about helping a client understand what they need then helping them to acquire it. Sales is valuable, ethical & rewarding.

In many professional services firms salesmanship is seen as the seedy side of business. In reality, without salesmanship then a business is on a shaky foundation.

Your marketing messages must align your specialty with your client's needs. When you relate your core competencies to your target audience they start to get interested.

Without focused alignment your brand will not be sturdy enough to withstand due diligence never mind increasingly competitive challengers.

If you have enjoyed sustained commercial success then it follows that salesmanship has been artfully applied.


Earn PermissionEarn Permission

Once you have your treasure trove, you must tell your audience about it. First - you've got to earn their attention.

A client's attention is valuable, that is their down payment. They deserve something of value in return. How valuable is your client?

You don't give away the jewels but you can let visitors look from a safe distance. The closer they get, the higher the fees.

Next you want permission to interrupt them. Then consume their time in person. Ultimately, you want to invoice them. You must earn the right to proceed - every step of the way. Do you have enough capital?

Think of it another way – seek sincerity. You don't want to waste time on window shoppers. Ask for an email address, invite to your blog or an event. Ask for something of value (their time) for your knowledge.

At this stage they are no longer a stranger – and you have the start of a relationship. Now you need to nurture it.


Relationship SellingRelationship Selling

Selling to people that know you is a lot easier than selling to strangers. Professional sales people build relationships.

They develop trust. They manage conversations to discover what is important. They work hard to prove their competence and yours.

They gain commitment and earn the right to engage in a mutually beneficial transaction. That is professional selling.

A corporate sales professional is a far cry from the cheesy used-car salesman. That negative image hinders engineers, lawyers and consultants from learning the craft that will win new business.

A top seller must be a consultant, mentor, coach, a trusted advisor. Your clients are sophisticated, savvy & skeptical. If you don't invest in a systematic, structured sales process – your competitors will.

In truth, your best performing consultants do this already but hesitate to call it selling - what else would you call it?


Lead the WayLead the Way

To protect your brand you'll need to shield it from competitive forces. When copycats arise – take the compliment and the lead.

You must establish provenance - an awareness and perception of ownership. That means you have to fearlessly excite, provoke and challenge. The status quo is your enemy – not your competitors

Invest time to craft memorable anecdotes that demonstrate the difference that your services make. Share them.

Learn to listen then artfully steer conversations in person, at conferences, on the web, in books and in the press. Weave your knowledge into the social fabric.

You will make it easier for others to picture themselves as the recipient of your benefits if they connect emotionally.

By telling emotive stories that showcase your competence, you strengthen your leadership.

Even better, invite clients to do it for you.


Mastering Your BrandMastering Your Brand

You have achieved mastery of your marketing. You have erected barriers that your competitors will struggle to climb.

When your target audience thinks about the problems, solutions and benefits that your knowledge embodies – they will think of you.

Your competitors appear as followers not leaders. They lack your firm's prestige – and you can command higher fees.

They'll fall back to competing on price. In the process they will erode their own value proposition, making it harder for them to win lucrative new clients. Of course, you can always hire their best talent.

You have linked your expertise, your market, the embodiment and the means of distribution in such a way that makes it very difficult for a competitor to stake a rival claim.

You have erected barriers to entry that are expensive and time consuming to erode. Well done.


About Branded KnowledgeAbout Branded Knowledge

We are Business Development specialists. We use the power of

Sales, Marketing & Discrete Technology to grow your business.

We founded our business when after a long search, failed to find a sales & marketing firm that put our sales first.

We run a consulting practice so understand many of your challenges. We must invest in our clients before hoping to help them. Our time, expertise and relationships become aligned to your goals.

We threw away the corporate mission statement and adopted a motto instead: “Sales Is Everything”. We hope you appreciate our focus.

Our motto aligns our team with what we must do for our clients and the difference that we must make to be successful.

Branded Knowledge Pty LtdLevel 8, 49-52 York Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000, Australia

Tel: 1300 58 66 44 | Fax: (02) 8079 1129Email: [email protected] Web: www.brandedknowledge.com.au

A Mentor’s Guide To:

Branding Your Branding Your KnowledgeKnowledge

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