Is your work preventive maintenance or is it repairing something that’s broken?

Transcript

Hi there, it’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here’s the idea that I’d like to share with you today, and that’s this: When you, as a thought leader, as an expert, as an author, as an advisor, are talking to folks that could potentially become clients, that could use your services, how are you positioning yourselves?

Let me unpack this a little bit. Oftentimes, what I observe in my work with folks like you is that they’re really diving into the thought leadership. They’re diving into the models and the methods and the frameworks, a little bit of the wonkiness of the research and the application. I think you need to simplify it early on in conversations with potential clients and frame it as it either prevents something or it repairs something. Simple, right?

Preventive maintenance are all the things that we should do in our homes, with our vehicles, with our equipment, with things that we have. We tend to lack doing that, and it tends to be in the “one day I’ll get to that” bucket, or the “I know I should” bucket, but it’s not going to bubble up to the top of my list, right? Preventing things, routine maintenance, and upkeep, and such.

Repairing something that’s broken—well, that’s different, right? If you wake up in the morning and your car doesn’t start, or there’s a window that’s broken, you’re not going to push that off.

So, try to nuance your way through the conversation with a potential client to say, where do you think they’re putting you? Are they putting you in the “preventive, nice to have, this would be good,” or, “ah, this is the thing that’s keeping me up at night, this is the thing that’s preventing my organization from growing, from my team from thriving, and I got to get that fixed, and I got to do that urgently.”

Love to hear your thoughts, as always. Thank you.