If you are a service based business where your clients choose to work with you (trick statement, most businesses reading this are in that same boat), you have to figure out why they would choose you over your competitors.
Even if you don’t have any obvious competitors, you still must be so desirable that your customers feel that it’s better to give you their money, than to hold on to it and miss out on what you have. Otherwise there are a million other things that we can all be spending our money on, isn’t there?
Have you examined what your Competitive Advantage is? This is what makes you so exclusive and unique that you are the obvious choice because your customer can’t get your same kind of help anywhere else – or else they would. Your competitive advantage also has other names, such as your Value Added Proposition (what value does your customer get when working with you), or your Unique Selling Proposition (what is it that you do, that is so unique that no one else can match you?).
I like calling your competitive advantage your Secret Sauce, a term I heard recently from Michael Walsh of Kaizen Consulting (I grew up in the ’80′s and ’90′s where secret sauces were the rage in TV commercials).
Your secret sauce is that thing that you do that solves your clients problems better than anyone else and they know that it’s a better deal for them to give you their money, than to hold onto it.
How can you tell if a company’s secret sauce is working for them? In the best case scenario, the company would have good economics with great margins, and carries low debt, paying everything off with cash (i.e. a successful business).
In reality however, few coaches and consultants have good economics. While some may have that secret sauce, it’s commonly the case that they don’t have the marketing and business skills to sell it, to sustain their company.vAs a result, most coaches and consultants are under-earning today.
The solution seems obvious, if your company doesn’t have business and marketing expertise, isn’t bringing in the revenue that you want, and is having trouble figuring out what your secret sauce is, then you need to get help.
Is it time for you to get outside assistance?
Regards,
Ronald Lee
Elevated Marketing
info@elevatedmarketing.ca
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