Getting Started in Consulting, 4th Edition

Chapter 3 Becoming a Marketer

Marketing to me is the creation and accentuation of need for your ideal customers, which allows you do provide products and services for them that fulfill such need. There is strategic marketing (Ford advertising about the quality of its trucks nationally) and tactical marketing (a local Ford dealer promoting a special sale on the coming weekend). The former builds the brand; the latter focuses on the actual sale.

Creating an Accelerant Curve

I’ve created a dynamic called the “accelerant curve,” which will help you from the outset determine the products and services to provide for your ideal clients. (See Figure 1.2 in Chapter 1 for a reminder.) The purpose is to create a marketing sequence that attracts prospects, prompts them to move into various buying options, and continues to move them into unique, high-fee, low-labor relationships with you.

By building your accelerant curve early (and it’s always a work in progress) you can save enormous amounts of time and energy by focusing on the key products and services to best develop for your ideal buyers (who may change over time, which is why this is an organic work in progress).

Let’s examine what this might look like for you.

Alanism

Your value proposition, identification of your ideal buyer, creation of marketing gravity options, and the development of your accelerant curve constitute your ...