Sales

I’ve spoken with over 50 authors and thought leaders in the last few weeks and asked them all what they struggle with.  The range of experience and levels of success that this group has achieved was varied; I spoke with experts that had been practicing for 30 years and some that have been practicing for under 3.  Some had 5 or more best sellers under their belts and others haven’t been published yet.  Some had substantial businesses and others had a relatively small practice.   What I heard were 4 themes, now not everyone specifically mentioned all four and some were struggling with other issues but I believe these are the primary issues that thought leaders struggle with.  My hope is that we can all learn from the experience of others and increase our individual level of awareness of these issues so that we can deal with them as best we can.

1) Prioritization: The most universal challenge amongst the group was the difficulty that they had prioritizing the many task and activities that need to get done to run their businesses on a day to day basis as well as all of the future projects that they would like to do.  That’s a pretty broad statement so let me expand on it a bit.  This group, for the most part, has a longer list of things they would like to do in the future than any other group of professionals I’ve ever interacted with.  It may be the next book, some new content, a new offering.  The common denominator is they are passionate about what they want to do and want to reach a large audience and build loyal followers.  However given that this is clearly a struggle they are often spending too much time on things that don’t yield the results they could and not enough time on higher value tasks.  I’d also say that many of them are performing tasks because they need to get done not because they are the ones best qualified to own these tasks.  Without having the clarity needed to help them understand where they want to go prioritizing activities accordingly becomes a daily struggle.  When measured against opportunity cost it is an incredibly expensive struggle.

2. Books- Past, Present and Future- This one puzzled me a bit.  If 5% of your total revenue could be attributed to an activity would you rationally spend 50% or more of your time on that activity?  Probably not.  Books however are a strange beast. The publishing industry is struggling (understatement) and attempting to invent business models that work for all of the players including the authors.  In the interim the gap between the objectives of the author and the objectives and business interests of the publisher have never been wider.  A book is often the only physical, tangible representation of someone’s work, yet marketing a book is part art, part science and part luck.  Spending a year of your life writing a book that sells 2000 units is incredibly frustrating.  Almost every author I spoke with was frustrated and confused when it came to deciding whether they should self publish or stick with a traditional publisher.  I think that’s the wrong question.   I think the question that should be asked is where does the book fit into the overall strategy to market and leverage my content?  Is it about cache?  Building a brand? Generating leads?  Increasing speaking fees?  An ego enhancer?   Or does it have a well defined place in all of these things as well as new product introduction, pricing strategy and market differentiation?  The time to think about the offerings that can be derived from a book is before it’s published, not after.  Do you have a large enough group of “fans and followers” to insure the book can have a predictable level of success?  Is your strategy to use it as “the ultimate business card”?    Are you proactively building relationships with other experts that have loyal followers or are you waiting for the call from Oprah to make your book a success.  There are no clear cut, universal answers to these questions but I for one believe you should be able to clearly articulate why you are writing a book and what you think success will look like as a result of publishing it.

3. Portfolio Mix: Given that content is something that can be amorphous or vague and difficult to scale and monetize it wasn’t surprising to me that the less diversified the portfolio of offerings the more the thought leaders struggled with the business side of their business.  For example many that I spoke to rely on speaking as the primary path to generating revenue from their work.  Given that the speaking market has tanked in the last 18 months and is not likely to return to pre 2008 levels any time in the near future this is a very valid concern.  Sure you can lower your fees and be more flexible but so can everyone else.  If you can only win an engagement by being the lowest cost provider you are in trouble.  This isn’t only true for the speaking side of the business but many of the authors I spoke with do not have a diverse portfolio mix of offerings that can whether economic cycles and generate income that is not contingent on the, personally delivering the content.  Assessment tools, virtual coaching, train-the trainer, certification, subscription based content models can be created from almost any content but it requires having a solid strategy as well as access to specific skill sets to develop, manage and sell and market effectively.

4 Differentiation: Let’s face it , there is a lot of “stuff” in the market place.  Sales, Leadership, Communication Skills are just a few of the dominant categories and differentiating is not easy.  What I learned was that those that believe that their work can benefit “anyone” struggle more than those who have either niched out into a specific industry or a specific population.  You can’t be all things to all people but your content can be modified so that it is the best in class against a smaller segment of the universe.  Even if your message is universal those that have customized it so that it has a unique and beneficial outcome are far more differentiated than those that have not.  I’d suggest thinking about your work and doing some sort of an audit to help you understand whom it has the strongest impact on and why.

In the next week or two I will be sharing some of the things that I learned when speaking with this group that I hope will be beneficial to you.

What are you struggling with when it comes to getting your message out to the world at large?

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