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Positioning Your Business, Episode 96

with Philip Morgan on March 31st, 2016

Philip Morgan
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Ever feel like you’re competing against every other WordPress developer, designer, or consultant out there? The reality is you’re not competing – you have a unique value proposition you bring to the table.

There’re so many folks that don’t realize that. They keep lowering their prices, offering a wider variety of services, and doing their best to appeal to the masses. The sad result is that a lot of what you and I do for a living is viewed as a commodity. How can you charge what you’re actually worth when someone is offering (what looks to be) the same service on Fiverr.

Meet Philip Morgan, a consultant to consultants. He literally wrote the book on how technical firms should position themselves.

If you’re feeling like a little fish in a big sea and want to know how to stand out (swim out?), this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

 

Watch this episode

Show Notes

Your value proposition is where your skills overlap their pain. – Philip Morgan

  • Create a narrow market focus for your business.
  • Use Evergreen content marketing to attract leads and keep in touch with clients through e-mail to show your expertise.
  • Working for yourself can be very difficult.
  • When you narrow your focus your business can be easier to run.
  • You need to have a reliable and repeatable process in place for getting new clients.
  • Writing is an input to a process.
  • Writing can become a commodity to your service.
  • There is job security when you show that you are adaptable and flexible.
  • You do not need to say yes to every client.
  • Freelancers can start out by having conversations with strangers in different vertical markets to help position their services.
  • You can narrow your focus to a marketing vertical.

 

Value

  • Discover what is valuable to the client and what is valuable to you.
  • A value proposition can be developed around addressing a client’s pain.
  • WordPress membership sites can be focused on solving a problem.
  • Your market position can be in the area where you can deliver the most value to a client.
  • “Why?” questions are valuable.
  • Subscription pricing is great for people who manage scope well.
  • Weekly rates are great for pricing in a software shop that may not have a marketing funnel in place.

Risk

  • The risk needs to be shared with the client.
  • Freelancers can break the work down into smaller pieces when starting out.
  • Don’t take on too much when starting out.
  • There are technical risks that show up that freelancers may see right away when starting with a new client.
  • Does the project create the results you wanted?
  • Bring up perceived risks while preparing your proposal and discuss them right away with a potential client.
  • It is difficult to have more than one brand and to manage content for more than one site.

Links for this episode:

Gravity flow
Pantheon
Philip Morgan Consulting
Start With Why
My Content Sherpa
The Consulting Pipeline Podcast
Getdrip
DripSherpa