Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve shared some information (OK, a LOT of information) about “positioning”–which is how your educational consulting company fits into the broader education market and, more specifically, your field.
Positioning is crucial for attracting enough business to make you successful, as well as the right kind of business (people you really want to work with).
Now, here’s something to keep in mind:
You already HAVE positioning; if you don’t know what that positioning is, that’s probably a bad thing.
Here’s what I mean. When people come across you online, whether it’s your website, a social profile, an article you’ve written or whatever, they quickly (and usually subconsciously) take in a bunch of information about you and create an immediate first impression.
If you haven’t put much thought into how you present yourself (positioning), that person is very likely to get an impression of you that’s inaccurate or even negative.
But if you carefully craft your positioning to be exactly what you want it to be, you can be confident you’ll leave the right first impression that often leads to new clients.
And it’s that careful crafting of your positioning (and the impression you leave on people) that I’ve been talking about in the past few weeks.
Now, to this point, I’ve covered the first two key elements of positioning…
- Your Persuasive Persona–I gave you a bunch of tips and tricks for presenting yourself in the best, most attractive light to your Ideal Clients
- Your Ideal Client Avatar–I gave you all the information you need to craft a super-detailed description of the kind of people you’re trying to attract, so you can speak directly to them using their own language
With those two elements in place, you now know how to show up the right way to the right people.
The Third Element: Your Competition
But there’s another crucial element to your positioning that we haven’t talked about yet: your competition.
Because what if your Ideal Client Avatar, when searching for help with their challenges, finds not only YOU but a whole bunch of other educational consultants offering pretty much the same thing?
Yikes!
In such a situation, how does a potential client who’s ready to buy (they have the school’s PD budget burning a hole in their pocket and they need someone NOW) choose which provider they want to help them out?
Do they toss a coin? Or throw darts at a dart board? Or do rock-paper-scissors?
Probably not.
Instead, if all of these consultants look pretty much the same, the answer’s usually simple…
They’re going to go with the cheapest option.
That’s what we call, in business terms, commoditization. And in that situation, it becomes a “race to the bottom” of the pricing barrel.
To get the job, you’ll probably have to undercut everyone else’s pricing, making the gig hardly worth the effort.
Obviously, you don’t want to be in that position!
The Solution: Become a Category of One
Luckily, there IS a solution to the commoditization problem. And that solution involves differentiating your business from all the other service providers in your field.
The business gurus like to call this becoming “a category of one.”
In other words, if you can position your consulting business as unique in your field in some way, your prospects can’t compare you to anyone else. You literally have NO COMPETITION!
And in that scenario, you can charge whatever the market will bear–usually double or triple what others are charging.
Now, you may be wondering how you pull off this miracle. Well, it takes a little work, but it’s not rocket science.
In upcoming posts, I’ll walk you through the exact step-by-step process you can follow to analyze your competition and create your positioning as a category of one.
So, hang on to your laptop or tablet. You’re in for a ride!
If you follow along and do the action steps I assign with each of the coming posts, you’ll have established your very own niche within your larger field–and that’s positioning you can use to set yourself apart from everyone else.
We start the journey in our next post, so stay tuned.
Willy
P.S.–If you’ve been thinking lately about your competitors and how you can position yourself as a better alternative for your Ideal Clients, please share with me what you’re most worried about.
What are the biggest challenges you see in overtaking the competition and becoming the “go-to” option in your field?
I’ll reply quickly and give you my thoughts.
Just Reply in the Comments and let me know what you’re thinking.
