Selling Your Expertise

CHAPTER 1Eagerly Dedicated

Chapter 1: Eagerly Dedicated

Many of you reading this book are already excited to start selling your expertise and services, but equally as many, if not more, cracked this book open with a skeptic's eye. Why? Because a lot of you, in all honesty, just don't want to sell. You probably believe the costs outweigh the benefits—selling is nebulous, time-consuming, and takes you away from the work you either love or are good at and find easy to do. Bringing in business is more difficult and less straightforward than delivering on engagements. Building a strong book of business requires that you win new clients, which often involves persuading people who don't know you well to hire you to solve their problems. That's not such a simple task, nor one most of us want to tackle.

You're smart. You're talented. For years, you've been honing your craft and taking pride in becoming an expert. The non-technical activities, like entertaining clients or networking, seem unimportant, and better left to people without “hard skills,” or those who have the right personality and enjoy that type of work. Since you mainly deliver work, most of your client interactions are with people who already value your services. It may be easy to think that sales will naturally happen as you continue serving these clients and building up your reputation. Unfortunately, that limited vantage point is also why many people struggle to build their book of business.

To become a rainmaker, you ...