Show Your Expertise

Episode 924: Show Your Expertise, with Drew McLellan

Show your expertise to establish your authority. Learn from Drew McLellan on how you will stand out once you show your expertise.

In this episode, Drew McLellan will discuss the importance of why you need to show your expertise and what it could result in once you do. 

Drew McLellan is a 25-year marketing veteran who helps clients create authentic love affairs with their customers. Drew has run his own agency, the McLellan Marketing Group, for over 20 years and helps the owners of over 250 small to mid-size agencies a year learn how to take their business to the next level through his consultancy, the Agency Management Institute. Drew has appeared in the New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, Businessweek, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal calls Drew one of 10 bloggers that every entrepreneur should read.

What you will learn from this episode about show your expertise:

• How the internet has disrupted buyer behavior and changed the way B2B sales are conducted today
• Why establishing yourself as an authority or needing to show your expertise in a particular niche can be a powerful way to boost your sales
• How being able to show your expertise in a niche opens up a larger geographical area for your sales and can allow you to charge a premium
• Why your unique point of view allows you to stand out from competitors and is what you uniquely bring to your business that your competitors lack
• What steps business owners can take to define their point of view and establish their expertise in a niche
• Why attracting “sweet spot” clients is the key to building a base of loyal clients who spend more money and offer better referrals
• Why you should start with robust, informative “cornerstone content” and how your preference between writing and talking can help determine what content to create
• How cornerstone content can be broken up into “cobblestone content” that can be shared across social media and other locations
• Why it is important to develop a relationship through your content before you try to sell to your prospective clients, and why showing authenticity is key

Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/327hSi3
• Website: https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/drewmclellan
• Twitter: @DrewMcLellan
• Learn how to show your expertise and claim your agency’s position of authority

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Once you show your expertise, it’s time to become a great mentor

 

 

Show Your Expertise: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I am Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built, and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI will. We’ve recently rebuilt, and you know that if you’ve been listening to the show for a while now, back in 2019, as we stepped into last year, our goal was that we were going to double down on being helpful to you Onward Nation that we’re going to add more resources and more assets and more checklists, more ebooks, all of those things in an effort to just share more.

 

Well, I think we accomplish that goal in 2019, but we reaffirm that goal as we step into 2020. So we’re continuing to expand our resource library. So if you haven’t been there in a while, I strongly encourage you to go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources. There is our new e-book on how to create your ideal client avatar, how to land your Dream clients, and even our new B2B podcasting for Profit Secrets eBooks.

 

So in other success strategies, we have compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests. So again, just go to predictive roi.com/resources and whatever your request, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: Drew McLellan’s Introduction

 

So before I welcome today’s to say that today’s guest is a very special guest it really doesn’t do justice to drew. You’ve heard me talk about Drew McLellan many times in many episodes.

 

So whether that’s a solo cast or even just sprinkled in when I’ve been spending time with other guests. Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute. Not only one of my greatest friends, closest friends, but also one of my most influential mentors. And so over the last couple of years, you know, Drew and I often, maybe every year or so, we teach together, we teach workshops to some of the RMI attendees.

 

And so through that process, we decided to take some of that content out of one of those past workshops. And then could we add to it? Could we push back on it? Could we, you know, test it? And could we turn that into a book? And so this is one of those opportunities to have Drew back for an encore.

 

And we’re going to step through some of the key tenants, if you will, in the book. Because that recipe, those ingredients you’re going to be able to take out of this conversation, take and apply directly into your business and be better for it. So I am very, very grateful that Drew has said yes to come back to the show so that we could slice apart the book in a very helpful way to you Onward Nation.

 

So without further ado, welcome back to Onward Nation, Drew. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: The Three Key Ingredients

 

Thanks. It’s good to be back. Well, it is good to have you back. And so I was hoping that for our conversation today, that what we could do is we could step through, in my opinion, one of the most helpful pieces, but also one of the most challenging pieces for business owners as far as one of the early chapters.

 

And that is these three key ingredients to identifying and building your authority position. Being able to sell with authority. As we ended up titling the book on Onward Nation The Three Ingredients. And we’re going to step through each of these and slice them apart. But the three kinds of key ingredients to that authority recipe are niche. And there’s several different ways to think about niche and narrow in your focus.

 

The second is point of view or POV for short, and the third is then creating cornerstone content. So you’re not a one trick pony. So I really love the way that Drew steps through the niche. I think he explains it in a very kind of multifaceted way, which is super, super helpful. So I’m going to ask you to start there.

 

And then we will continue to build on this, you know, conversation so that at the end Onward Nation business owners are going to have a pretty clear view of these three ingredients that they need in this authority recipe. So can you take us through how you wrote about that piece in the book about niche? Yeah. You know, so the premise of the book, so the book that you and I wrote together, so it authority is specifically written for agencies, but one of the truths of it is it’s really a B2B sales book.

 

And so while the examples that we use are agency specific, anyone who sells to a B2B audience can absolutely wrap their arms around everything that we wrote about and adopt it for their sales strategy. And the book is born out of this idea that sales have changed. So you know, back in the, you know, Mad Men days back in, when we had three channels, we had television, radio and newspaper and magazines, I guess, or print, sales was pretty much a monologue, and that was how we sold.

 

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Show Your Expertise: How To Sell in the 21st Century

 

And so there were a lot of door to door salesmen. There were a lot of events on the B2B side, sort of dropping in and doing demos and all of those sorts of sales tactics, trade shows. Not that these things don’t happen today, but with the advent of the internet and everything else, the reality is the way buyers behave has changed.

 

So while we certainly can use those channels to reach them, they’re much further along in the sales process by the time we have the opportunity to do that. So, you know, I think the research shows that about 70% of the B2B buying decision is made by the buyer before we, the seller, even know they’re out there. So they are doing their research, they’re reading ratings and reviews.

 

They are searching on the internet. And so they are much further down the path. And so we’ve got to change the way we sell. We have to be findable. You know, before the internet, we didn’t have to be findable. We had to be findable in the Yellow Pages. That was really. Yeah. Right. But today we have to be findable.

 

And even more so, the premise that you and I sort of both operate our businesses on, which you just talked about in your introduction, is we have to be helpful. We have to be helpful from the get go. We have to demonstrate our subject matter expertise. We have to step into our authority position and really help our prospects.

 

Before we even know who they are. We have to help them be better at their job each and every day by teaching generously what we know, by giving away our secret sauce, by giving them things that we think we should sell. But really, we’re going to peel it back and we’re going to give it away for free. Just like I can give somebody a recipe, doesn’t mean that they don’t go to the restaurant.

 

Right? So that’s the 21st century selling in our opinion. And that was really the premise of the book. And so if we’re going to talk about selling from an authority position or a position of expertise, no one can be an expert in everything. So the first tenant in being an authority or an expert is you have to be an authority or an expert in something.

 

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Show Your Expertise: Using Your Expertise to Help Others

 

And so you can certainly and for many of your listeners, probably, this is what makes the most sense. You can certainly be an expert in a specific niche or industry. So you can serve a vertical, if you will. That’s one you could have a depth of knowledge and expertise in an audience. And typically that’s going to be in your customer’s customer.

 

Right. So you’re going to help them sell to their customers, or you are going to be an expert. You’re going to be an expert in a geographic region. So, you may really know the Pacific Northwest. And so you are going to be able to serve clients best that either live in the Pacific Northwest and sort of have that sensibility about them.

 

Or if you have a client that wants to break into the Pacific Northwest, then you can help them understand that region so that they are accepted by the people who live there. And then the fourth one is that you can have a depth of expertise in what you do, but that’s harder to maintain for a longer period of time.

 

So for example, if you’re a law firm or you are a real estate investor and you have a really unique way of resolving a client’s divorce or investing in commercial real estate, and you have sort of your own secret sauce around that. The reality is, other people are going to learn that, and they too are going to start selling the way you sell.

 

So the only challenge with sort of the methodology niche is that whatever you do today that’s unique will not be unique forever. So you have to know that that’s got sort of a limited shelf. But those are sort of the core ways to look at how to narrow your focus and be an expert in something, because no one will believe that you’re an expert in everything.

 

So what would you say to, as I think about, you know, our Onward Nation business owners who are listening, to you right now, what would you say to them who are thinking, yeah, I get that, but that feels like a whole lot of loss of opportunity when the reality is that niching actually presents some additional opportunities.

 

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Show Your Expertise: Niching Down Can Open Up an Opportunity

 

So take us through that piece because I want to make sure that the blinders are off, that there, that Onward Nation business owners see the niching as more opportunity. Well, I think the easiest analogy that I can use is, real medical doctors. So, you know, there are in any town, in any country, there are 20 or 30 or 50 general practitioners.

 

Right? They are the doctors you go to for your annual physical and to get your flu shot and all that sort of stuff. And in fact, not only are there doctors, but there’s docs in a box, you know, today you can go to heck, I got my flu shot at a grocery store, right? So because I got $0.20 off my gas.

 

So I’m like, yes, I’m getting the flu shot there. But the point is that if you are a general practitioner, meaning you serve everyone in a wide range of services, you have a lot of competition, and there’s somebody in every town that does what you do. So if you want to be that, that’s certainly a choice. If you want to be that, then you have to recognize that you are going to mostly serve clients in a local geography, because no one’s driving two hours to get to a different general practitioner.

 

But man, if we get a diagnosis that we don’t like, we will gladly drive or fly to the Mayo Clinic or to a renowned brain surgeon or someone like that who has a depth of expertise in specifically solving our problem. Geography now becomes a non-issue. Oh, and by the way, we will pay a premium price for that Mayo Clinic doctor visit or the brain surgeon, which we will not do for a general practitioner to get a flu shot.

 

Right. So what it does is it opens up the geography for your business. So now all of a sudden you can become regional, national or international depending on the depth of your expertise. And it creates a scarcity opportunity for you in terms of pricing. When you are one of a few, you are by default worth more, and so you can charge more.

 

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Show Your Expertise: Building Authority Around Your Niche

 

Great explanation. And so as you’re stepping through that, I think the way that you presented that was that this is about choices and intervention. If you want to be a general practitioner on vacation, fine. But having to realize that there are opportunities and then consequences that come with that decision up and down the level of specialty that you go and so I would encourage you to to listen to an upcoming episode that is going to be airing actually on May 13th.

 

So a few weeks from start listening to this episode with Drew, but where we had the opportunity to sit down with, Brandon and Heather Credeur, and they’re both functional medicine doctors, and they walk through an example that’s going to really that really aligns with Drew’s, doctor example because they’re doctors and how they started out as, being trained as chiropractors, build a chiropractic practice for two years and felt the slog of that because there are lots of chiropractors to choose from.

 

And then it’s as if they took Drew’s advice and said, wait a minute. We’ve always felt this pulled a functional medicine. What if we really niche down into functional medicine? This was 20 years ago. No one was doing functional medicine. 20 years ago. And so there are true pioneers. And so they decided that there were no mentors where it was not like there was a coaching program or a mastermind group that they could join.

 

And so they decided to rip the Band-Aid off and become a functional medicine specialist. And they grew double digits month over month for years. And now they’ve been running that practice for 20 years and then built a coaching and consulting business alongside their practice to teach other functional medicine doctors, because they’ve done what Drew said, that they niche down and then built some authority around that as well.

 

So now they’re sought out by other doctors who want to do the same thing. That’s a business model that I’d like to be able to have. Could you teach me to do that too? Which is amazing. So thank you, Drew for that. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: Understanding the Point of View

 

So take us into the next piece, which is point of view and in, not only, you know, peeling back the layers so that Onward Nation business owners can understand point of view and so forth.

 

But then also the piece of how that’s where the imposter syndrome, that’s where the fear can really step into thinking that we’re not worthy. Are we truly that unique? Yeah. So, the beautiful thing about Niching is that it eliminates a lot of the competition. Right? So in your example, I’m not one of 25 chiropractors in my town, but now I am one of a few.

 

Right. And that is this special kind of medicine. But if I am competing against them. So back probably 20 years ago, they didn’t have this problem. But now, they now have other people who are sort of narrowing their niche the same way they are. And so for most businesses, you know, again, if you are, if you are an investor in commercial real estate, you have other people who do that as well.

 

Who are your competitors? Right? So one another way to sort of eliminate more competitors and to make yourself even more unique in the marketplace, which is ultimately the goal in the goal is that when somebody decides that they want to buy what you sell, that you get into the consideration set and the more unique you are and the more noticeable you are, the more findable you are, the more likely you are to get on the list of 3 or 5, because no one’s going to talk to more than five, three, or five potential partners.

 

Well, a point of view and every business has one. The point of view is, let’s say you’re amongst five people who do exactly what you do for the same audience. So they also have niched down exactly the way your point of view makes you stand out from the other four points of view is what you uniquely bring to the business in terms of how you think about your work.

 

So point of view is the thing that we teach or talk about all the time. So most business owners have stories that they tell over and over, or they approach the work they do from a certain lens or perspective. So for example, one of the things that your listeners probably know about Predictive ROI is that your point of view is that most business owners go about sales in a way that is more difficult and less cost effective and efficient than they could be.

 

Right. So you think that they do sales wrong and that there’s a better way to do sales, right? Yes. And so when you combine the audience that you serve with this unique point of view of how you sort of see the world of your client or how you think your clients could do something different or better, or what you know about their market place, then all of a sudden you differentiate yourself, even amongst the subset of people who serve the same audience.

 

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Show Your Expertise: The Fundamentals of Running Your Business

 

So in the Agency Management Institute, our unique point of view is that most agency owners are accidental business owners. They’re really good at the client-facing stuff. Where they really need help is on the business of running their business, and so we stay super focused on that. There’s a lot of agency consultants out there. But no one talks about the fact that they are accidental business owners.

 

And let us teach you the fundamentals of running your business better so you can scale it so you can sustain it. And so you can make our money. Right. And so that becomes our unique point of view. And so you’re right. What’s interesting about the point of view exercise is that as business owners work their way through the book, what we found is that they get stuck on point of view and, and it is imposter syndrome, sneaking in and saying, well, I don’t have a unique point of view or everybody believes what I believe, which is absolutely a fallacy.

 

Every business owner and every business through the business owner does have a unique point of view. It is something that you bring to all of your clients, is something you bring to your work, and it’s really just about sort of discovering. And it’s not about making it up. It’s not about creating something in a brainstorming session. It really is about kind of peeling back the layers of how you work and getting to sort of that central nugget that is at the start of all of the work that you do, that it is a belief that you take into every project and every new client that colors or shades or directs the way you approach the work that you do. 

 

Really smart. And as you were describing that here again, I was thinking about this conversation I just had yesterday, literally with Brandon and Heather Credeur. And because their mission, their purpose, their whole reason for being doctors and building the shifts to change the face of health care.

 

And so they believe that one of the ways that they’re changing the face of health care is helping people become better functional medicine doctors and building better practices in and but even early on in that process, there was the do we really have something special here? Like people started other doctors and other markets started saying, hey, could you teach me how you’re doing that?

 

And they resisted the temptation. A little bit of imposter syndrome there really wanted to make sure that they were going to go about it in the right way. So they did a beta test, and so they worked with 4 to 5 first to see, did we really have something that not only gave them a chance to deliver some value, but it also then proved to them, hey, we really do have something unique.

 

This mission that we’re going about is really a unique point of view of how we’re trying to change the industry. And they’re able to build some momentum after that. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: How The Point of View Differs For Everyone

 

So is there from your perspective, in your opinion, is there some experimentation or does somebody just get it right from the beginning as far as point of view, like distilling that down, is there a process to it?

 

I think it depends. I think for some business owners, they’ve been sort of preaching it for a really long time. And so when all we’re doing is labeling something that we’re already doing and talking about. Right. So I think for some of them, it’s going to be pretty blatant and for others, and you know, you were an example of this for others.

 

They start out kind of wide, and then they realize they have to keep getting more and more narrow and really specific in their point of view. And so for some, it’s a process, and I would argue that you’ll know you’re there when you know that most of your competitors wouldn’t or couldn’t say what you’re going to say.

 

In most cases, I wouldn’t say it. Right, because it is typically a point of view that is very bold. A point of view is kind of like a brand, a little bit like a brand. It is not a brand. So don’t differentiate that. I want to differentiate between the two. But like a brand, it will attract people who are the right fit for your business and repel people who are the wrong fit for your business.

 

So for example, at AMI, if somebody has an NBA and decides it wasn’t an agency person, didn’t grow up in agencies, but is like buying agencies as a business. Odds are we’re not going to be as helpful to them because they understand business fundamentals and they understand how to run their business. They didn’t grow up as a copywriter or an account manager or whatever growing up in the agency business.

 

So my point of view says to some people, you have found your home, and for other people it’s like, well, this is probably going to be helpful, but maybe this is not a permanent help, right? 

 

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Show Your Expertise: Attracting Right Fit Clients

 

Okay. Great lesson there because there are several great lessons there. One, you’ve built the business that you want to be able to be, that you want to run, that is rewarding for you and all of that.

 

But one of the big golden nuggets in there is that having clarity around the point of view does both attract as well as propel. And that is awesome, because then you have a greater opportunity for the right fit clients. And we’ve all been in those instances where somebody walks in and gives you a project, you know, you shouldn’t say yes, but we do anyway because payroll or whatever the situation is.

 

And and so by being able to attract the right fit clients, hopefully those will be fewer and far between, right? Yeah. I mean, it’s really about when we align with what we call sweet spot clients or clients that sort of check all the boxes for who’s going to be an amazing client or customer for us. When we find those customers, our clients, they stay longer, they spend more money, they’re more loyal.

 

They are a better referral source. There’s a litany of reasons why they are more valuable to our business. And so the more we can attract them from the very get go, and the more we can recognize them when they walk in the door, the better it is for our business. So, you know, we all know regardless of what business you have, we all know that the ROI on an existing client or customer is far better than the ROI of having to go after and get a new customer, and then sell them their first thing.

 

Whatever it is that we sell. So part of what point of view does is it does, you know, niche narrows the lane. So instead of every business out there being a prospect, now we’re down to a much narrower lane. We’re down to a four lane highway. What point of view is it takes a four lane highway and turns it into a two lane highway, right?

 

So now fewer people are going to come down that road. But the ones that do really want to get to the destination. And so what it does is it shortens the sales cycle, it elongates the relationship, it elongates the profitability of that relationship. It increases that. So there’s nothing but good things that come out of this narrowing of the lanes, even though, as you said earlier in our conversation, even though it sounds scary because I’m creating a more scarce opportunity, what I’m really doing is creating instead of wide.

 

I’m going deep. And so I’m, it’s really nowhere near it’s not about scarcity at all. It is about depth. And it is about really honing in on the people that we can delight over and over and over again, which works well for them and for us. So let’s put these two ingredients together. Well, you’ve already put the two ingredients together, niche and point of view and tied them together.

 

But now comes the critical step of, okay, if we’ve narrowed and we’re now two lane highways because of the point of view. I love that analogy. By the way, I’ve never heard you say that before. That’s pretty good. Just made it up as we were talking. Brilliant on the spot. Brilliance. I’m done for the day. That’s all for now.

 

Thanks for having me on the show. Bye bye. And we’re done. Now it’s about having. Or now it’s about creating what you and I like to call consistent cornerstone content where you can be helpful to an audience and build an audience and slice and dice that content into multiple channels so that you now have a strategy of communicating point of view to the right niche.

 

And cornerstone content can be that vehicle, as well as the cobblestones that hang off of that. The smaller pieces. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: The Definition of Cornerstone Content

 

So let’s talk about that for a little while. And because I do love your definition of cornerstone content in chapter six that shows how you went through it’s meaty and all of that. So let’s step through that piece like defining cornerstone content, and then we’ll get into the slicing and dicing in the cobblestones.

 

Yeah. So having, serving a niche and having a point of view are all awesome. But if no one knows you’re there and you’re not actually helping anyone, then you can’t attract the customers or clients that you want. And so the third element of being an authority is that when someone is an expert or an authority, they can’t help themselves.

 

They want to share that expertise. They want to teach. It’s not about preaching, it’s about teaching, right? It is about me, I know things that I know will be useful and helpful to others, and I feel an obligation to be helpful and useful. And so I am going to create a platform by which I can share what I know to make the path for other people easier.

 

That’s really what an expert does. When we think about an expert, they write books, they teach courses, they do whatever it is they do. And absolutely they monetize it. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that, but they do it because they want to be helpful. And that’s really the core premise of this sort of selling methodology.

 

And so what we’ve developed is this idea of cornerstones and cobblestones, and we outline it in the book and a cornerstone. And our goal is, you know, there are so many channels out there today for businesses to spread their message. It’s, you know, it’s everything from you can write a book to you can be on a radio interview show, you could be on a podcast, you can have a podcast, all the social channels, all the traditional channels and what happens is most business owners get overwhelmed.

 

It’s like, I don’t know what channel. I don’t know what to say. I can’t. I don’t have a small staff or I might not have enough money to pay an agency to do everything. How in the world do I do it all? And the good news is you don’t have to do it all. And in fact, you shouldn’t do it all.

 

But what you do need to do, and the way to sort of minimize the effort is to start with something big and meaty, which we call cornerstone content. So cornerstone content is something that is so robust. So think of it as a boulder that is so mean. There’s so much information in this boulder that I can hit it with a sledge hammer, and I can shatter it into a ton of little pieces that I can then scatter around.

 

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Show Your Expertise: Figuring Out Your Cornerstone Content

 

So the first thing you have to think about when you think about cornerstone content is do I prefer to talk or do I prefer to write? So if I prefer to talk, then maybe I should have a podcast, or maybe I should be a frequent guest on other people’s podcasts. Or maybe I should be a keynote speaker. Or maybe I should do a video series, or we should do monthly webinars.

 

Those are sort of the talking kinds of cornerstones, and we list a ton of them in the book. If you prefer to write, maybe you write a book or you are a frequent contributor to Forbes and Inc, an entrepreneur and places like that with articles that are useful. Or maybe you’re a really prolific blogger, or you are going to do some research and then write, executive summary and a lot of other tools off of the research.

 

So once you figure that out, the good news is you only need to do one, one cornerstone. So pick one. So let’s say you’re going to do a video series, which means that you’re probably going to do a video once a week or once every two weeks, or on the flip side of that, let’s say you’re going to do research, but then you only have to probably do one research project a year, either of those.

 

So a weekly video. So 50 to let’s call them two minute videos or one big research project. Either of those will give me enough fodder to create what we call cobblestone. So again, I’ve shattered the boulder. I’ve broken it up into all these pebbles. And I’m going to lay these pebbles out. I scatter them out on social media, on other people’s blogs and other people’s podcasts, wherever that may be.

 

I’m going to scatter them out. And the beautiful thing about it is, some people will find your cornerstone first. So they might, they might be searching on iTunes for podcasts around your niche and they may discover your cornerstone, your podcast, or they might one of their friends might have seen or shared or liked something that you shared on Instagram.

 

That’s one of your cobblestones. So maybe it’s a quote from your video series, or it’s a factoid from your research and you’ve created a graphic around it and they’ve shared it on you shared it on Instagram, somebody else shared it or liked it. And so now they’ve found a cobblestone and they’re like, oh, that’s really interesting. I’ve never heard of this person.

 

So for this business. So I’m going to, I’m going to start checking them out and then they follow these cobblestones because you’re going to lay them kind of close together. So you’re creating a path. So either way the cornerstone is going to lead to the cobblestones. The cobblestones lead to the cornerstone. And all along the way, regardless of how they find you, what entry point they have, they now are getting smarter every time they interact with you.

 

And that’s the cobblestone and cornerstone. And so you really have to go to the effort of creating this one big thing. And then after that it really is about how do I take that and repackage and repurpose it. So, you know, one of the things you do with your podcast is you’ll pull the sort of nuggets that some of your guests have taught, and then you create an ebook out of it.

 

So that would be a cobblestone off of your copper stone. So that’s the concept of cornerstones and cobblestones. I think you’ve done that in a really, really smart way with, with much of your content. And to give a really tangible example to the blueprint that you just gave. I love how you and Susan, am I research partner Susan Baier, in how you’ve created this annual research report?

 

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Show Your Expertise: Benefits of Establishing Your Cornerstone Content

 

And so now I think you’re, what, about five years in or is it six? This was six in 2019. So, okay, we are now in the field with our seventh year. Okay. And so you have this, you know, audience that knows and expects and depends upon this research series, you know, coming out at about the same time every year.

 

And then you guys do some really, really great ways of taking this cornerstone content and then creating the cobblestones. So you’ll teach from edit content marketing World, you teach special webinars and you’ll share that with your network members. And then there’s little, cobble cobblestones out in social media and blogs and video series and so forth that then lead up to the AMI website, where you can get the full report.

 

And so you get such great use out of that annual report. It gives it, like you said, it gives you annual use of or annual supply of content. But it also comes from answering a key question every single year, which makes me indispensable for agency owners. It’s really, really smart how you structured that.

 

Yeah. So, you know, like you said, six years ago, we partnered with Audience Audit and its owner Susan Baier, and we share an audience, which is she does segmentation research for agencies. And obviously we serve agencies. And we were talking at a conference about how there are sort of these burning common questions that agency owners have.

 

And wouldn’t it be interesting if we started a research series where every year we sort of dug into one of those questions, and then sort of became this annual resource for agencies. And so that’s how the Agency Edge research series was born. And you’re right, what it has led to is all of these cobblestones.

 

So, speaking on big, big stages like the inbound and content marketing world, introductions and opportunities to be on all kinds of different podcasts, articles in Agency Edge and other places where our audience lives. You know, all these factoids that we can share through social media throughout the year and now we’ve built this library. So on both of our websites, you can go to a section of the website, and you can download the executive summary for all of the different years of research.

 

So it just has this great cumulative effect. That’s one of the benefits of research as your cornerstone. But I think the benefit of a podcast or a video series is that you build this library of resources that just becomes more valuable over time. Well, there really is the the compounding to that right is we as we think about the building of whether we’re thinking about that from a search perspective or website content or whatever, that when you have decided to plant that flag in your building, all of this content around it, that it really does compound over time.

 

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Show Your Expertise: Establishing Yourself as An Authority

 

So let’s set some expectations because, you know, as you and I, we’re going back and forth and proofing the book and so forth. One of the things that I really loved that you wrote about was setting expectations for time, becoming a thought leader, becoming an expert doesn’t happen in 90 days and the like.

 

If I have to see one more Facebook, you know an ad about downloading my swipe file and being an expert in your niche in like three weeks or less. I think I’m just going to pull any remaining stumbles of hair out of my head. Because I think we’ve got. Are there any? Well, occasionally, like, okay, thanks for that.

 

Yeah. But I think we’ve gotten into such a get rich quick sort of mentality that everything has to be in such a short period of time. Isn’t that this takes time and it’s not just months and months and months, but it’s years to really establish yourself as an authority. So let’s chat about that a little bit.

 

I’d love to get your perspective on that. Just to set expectations that this is and I’m going to launch whatever my cornerstone is going to be. And three weeks from now I’m going to be loaded with speaking engagements because that doesn’t happen like that. Yeah. So it’s not that you won’t be an expert in three weeks or 90 days, whatever your odds are, your art of an expert.

 

You know, when you really do the homework to figure out what your niche is or what your point of view is you’re going to find that you’ve had an expertise, you just haven’t merchandised it. But it is about earning the confidence of the audience. That takes time. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: Just Keep on Helping and Don’t Rush in Making a Sale

 

So we live in this world where everyone declares they are an influencer or a thought leader, whatever the word is.

 

And so people are like, are you really? Are you sure? So what they want to see is they want to see this consistent presence where you are, demonstrate ING by being helpful without selling, because that’s what they think. They think it’s a bait and switch. Like, I’m going to get you to download my swipe file and then the very next thing you’re going to get for me is an offer to sell you something.

 

So because lots of business owners do that right, what is uncommon and what is true about experts is they just keep helping and that they don’t rush to the sale. And so that takes time. And so the analogy that we use in the book is to imagine that you live in your house but up against a wooded area and you want to have deer come into your yard and feed from a feeder, right by your deck.

 

So what you’re going to do is you’re going to sprinkle some corn for deer food, whatever deers eat at the edge of the forest, and they’re going to start eating that. And you’re going to slowly start moving the food into the point where, ideally, in my scenario, you could put kernels of corn in your hand and the deer would come eat from it.

 

And what happens there is that it only works if when the deer is halfway in your yard, you don’t go running at the deer to hug the deer. Right? Because that just scares the crap out of the deer. Right? So but that’s what we do. So it sounds ludicrous in that example. But that’s exactly what we do.

 

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Show Your Expertise: An Analogy of Being Helpful

 

In our effort to use content to attract prospects is the minute they walk into our yard, the minute they give us their email address or something else, we rush at them with a sale and they go, oh, I get I totally get what this is. That was a trap. That was not you wanting to feed me because you want me to be healthy.

 

That was a trap where you got me into the cage, and now you’re going to try and sell me something. Well, and some people even call that in funnel structures. They call those tripwires. I’m like, right tripwires, right? Right. So you can blow someone up, right? Right. So imagine my analogy now. So we are not blowing up any deer.

 

No, no deer are exploding. Are we shooting the deer? We are not shooting the deer. We are loving the deer. We are feeding the deer. So what happens though is if we really genuinely and here’s the deal. Here’s what every customer I don’t care what you sell, what every customer wants to know is that you actually genuinely, authentically want them to be successful, right?

 

That’s what they want to know. So when you say to the deer, I just want you to have food all winter long, I want you to survive the winter. I want to help you stay healthy. I want to give you food. Then pretty soon the deer show up all the time. And that’s what happens with prospects too, when we genuinely, authentically want them to be successful.

 

So we’re just helpful to be helpful. They will eventually raise their hand and say, I want to buy what you sell every time. They will say this, but we have to be patient enough to let it happen. So that’s the time thing that you’re talking about. It’s not the time to be an expert. It is the time to prove that you are not going to just trap them and try and sell them, that you really do know what you’re talking about, and that you genuinely want to be helpful, that it is not a trick.

 

That’s what takes time. So for some people, you might put out your very first blog post or research project or whatever, and get a speaking gig or get a client. Sometimes it just happens. Somebody is in the right place at the right time and you strike a chord with them. But for others, it’s going to take months.

 

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Show Your Expertise: It’s About Proving to Prospects That You’re Worthy

 

And so the vernacular that that we use in the book and that we talk about when we speak on this topic, is people can sort of be in that stage of testing your expertise, testing your authority position, what, not quite sure yet or just not be in a position to buy for a day or a decade. And your job is to be helpful for that entire period of time, because sooner or later they will step deeper into your yard and buy what you have to sell in Onward Nation.

 

I have seen this in action in person, in Drew’s events and with events that we’ve attended for Chris Prefontaine, who’s been a guest multiple times in other of our, Predictive ROI clients that are really doing with intentionality what Drew has just described. And so being an attendee at those events, seeing people walk up to Drew, who he hasn’t met before, they’ve been in his audience for a day or a decade.

 

And they walk up to him and again, meeting him in person for the first time, say, you’re exactly the person who I expected you to be. Every time I felt like I had to be here, because every time I had a problem, every time I had a question, every time I turned around there, you were just being helpful.

 

So I felt like I had to be here at this workshop. And that’s what you want Onward Nation. And it doesn’t happen by accident. It takes work, but it also takes following the three ingredients in this recipe that Drew just shared with you. Yeah, I think it’s about proving to them that you’re worthy and, you know, I think that’s I think that’s for most B2B buyers, we aren’t going to get them to buy it from us until they’re ready.

 

And so we have to be ready when they’re ready. And the way to increase the speed of their readiness is to increase the level of trust that they have in us. And the way we do that is by being helpful and being consistent in that helpfulness. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: Final Advice from Drew

 

Awesome conversation. Thanks for taking the time. I know that work is quickly coming to an end.

 

So underneath you, you can find the book that Drew and I just wrote. It’s entitled Sell with Authority. It’s out on Amazon. He and I are working through the process of potentially having a Kindle version, maybe an audio version at some point right now, it’s paperback. Sell with Authority on Amazon. So, Drew, before we go, before we close out and say goodbye and any final advice you’d like to share?

 

Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell our audience the best way to reach out and connect with you. I think we have to embrace the idea that the old way of selling is inefficient, and that we do look in the mirror and recognize that we do have a depth of expertise, and there is a subset of people that we can be Uber helpful to.

 

And by the way, those are the clients or the customers that are the most fun for us to serve because we do exceed their expectations. We delight them over and over and for all of us, that’s gratifying. To really be able to help our customers or clients, you know, knock it out of the park. That’s we want to help them get to their goals in the work that we do.

 

So we also bring a unique point of view to that. And so really, all we’re suggesting is that you share it, that you generously share what you know, that you generously reach out and connect with and create a community with the people that you are best suited to sell to and to serve. And it will make your business stronger, bigger, better, more profitable.

 

And it just feels right and good. So, I strongly invite you to give it a try. We have seen it and in the book we give you tons of examples of how it’s working. We’re seeing it working over and over. And, you know, Stephen just talked about some of the Predictive clients where he’s seeing it working, and we’re seeing it in all kinds of industries.

 

It doesn’t matter what you sell specifically. It’s really about how you help. And so, I just hope you give it a try. 

 

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Show Your Expertise: How to Connect with Drew

 

Best way to connect with you. AgencyManagementInstitute.com, probably on social media pretty much everywhere. I’m Drew McLellan, and that’s McLellan. And so happy to connect with folks on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or wherever you are, happy to answer your questions and be helpful.

 

If I can be. Thanks my friend. So Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Drew’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. He literally gave you the blueprint of how to identify your authority, position. But the key is to not only just relisten to this episode and take lots of notes, but it’s to then take action on the ideas that he so generously shared with you.

 

And we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, Drew, and I am grateful that you took time out of your compressed schedule to come onto the show yet again. To be our mentor, to be our guide, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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