When a client checks for your expertise, they aren't wrong for doing so per se. After all if they're paying for a specific service, they need to be confident that you have experience doing whatever it is they're really paying for. Obviously we know by now, that with expertise comes freedom to give advice you know the right kind of prospect will take because they trust you. But, I believe it's disingenuous to leverage 'how many clients you have' as expertise if you're not considering the relationship those projects have with each other.
The lack of rules and structure around what is considered expertise is what's wrong with the use of the word expertise in Trinidad. Someone says expertise and it means the number of years you've been doing X, and that they're going to work you like a horse to compensate for what they're paying you. So expertise has become this arbitrarily used word. But you logically can't equate years of random designing, with specific focus in package design for a food division if the latter is what you need. And you certainly can't justify a bogus job title merged with the responsibilities of all the positions you wish to fill but can't afford as expertise either.
So, what should a prospect focus on if they want to target prospects who have a certain need? That's the readjusment I had to make for the HR manager of my newest client.
“How many clients have you had similar to our company?" she said.
My reply? “You’ll be my first, but the final decision isn’t and shouldn’t be based on the amount of insurance clients I’ve had, but the kind of projects I’ve done; I’ve successfully helped past clients find what they need to say to attract the type of people they want to work with”. I then followed up with examples of clients who had the problems she has, to validate what I was saying.
Smiling, she said, “I understand, I understand! and, I like what I’m hearing!”
So what is expertise?
"An exceptionally high level of performance on a particular task."
How is expertise defined?
I tweaked Forbes definition of expertise to; the vast amount of knowledge you have on a subject over the average person, and what you're able to proficiently teach others not just because of your education, but more so because of your body of work in that space solving specific problems, because I feel that it forecasts perfectly (for the prospect), the evolution of expertise that isn't just about their education but also their unique experiences. Something they always miss.
What is the goal of specializing?
"To become great at doing something hyper-specific so your services are easy to self-identify with."
The most reliable way to accomplish this (when you have no advertising budget) is to focus on the problems you solve, and the people in those situations will automatically self-identify with whatever your services are.
Identifying The Problem You (The Prospect) Have
One of the biggest problems with local prospects is their inability to recognize what they truly need help with. What they’re good at doing is recognizing what I call ‘decoy problems'. Which is fine when you’re familiar with those types of projects. But for the prospect, that’s where the trouble starts.
If you have the wrong understanding of the help you need, you'll miss when the right help is staring you right in the face and by extension, logically go down the wrong path.
For example, someone may acknowledge "too many opinions" as having them stuck on who to work with. Yet when presented with the guidelines on how to make that decision without wavering, they likely follow their initial complaint up with "No one knows my business better than I do" and feel empowered to DIY their website and end up hurting their chance to "show up on their ideal client's radar" because they didn't use the right brand color.
Obviously there can be a number of reasons someone doesn't show up on their ideal clients radar, but I'm using color as an example because it's typically taken it for granted.
Here is something else I've seen. Someone complaining about “not knowing what to talk about'', seeking the assistance of a content planner instead of a visual designer. You’ll spin top in mud on the first situation, never determining whether you're in that situation because you either lack clarity on what's trustworthy about your services or you fear what other people think.
Further down the line are others too distracted by competing to realize they only think they aren’t, and those who just can’t be helped. Stance and belief in what you preach aside if you don’t have a plan: something tangible a client believe makes your services better than everyone else, as it relates to the type of people you prefer to work with, you can forget about being seen as a specialist because they’re not identifying your services as ‘for them’. And if they're not buying, how are you making money? Google AdSense?
Service providers in this situation, don't realize that they have not productized their own value.
As I said in an earlier article, the voice is always accompanied by the solutions provided and the process supporting it. When you’re targeting a validated group of people, that's when self-qualification happens because you’re not speaking to any ole person claiming they want your services but to the people who actually need it. Just ask Ebempire.
Now, this doesn't disregard the importance of having ‘a lot of the same clients’. If anything, I get that it’s a measuring stick for the focus and experience someone has. But as a basis for a decision, it doesn’t highlight your unique skill-bank; the real reason you’re paid. When the emphasis is there, then and only then showing examples of ‘the same clients’ actually means something and considered helpful to a prospect compared to vanity metrics .
I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB **Get online in one day with The One-Page™ **Schedule a call if you need help narrowing in on your real problem **Sign up to receive these weekly articles in your inbox if you’re not quite ready to work with me yet.
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