The Secret: Be Unconventional
By Gerry Foster

Copyright 2003 by Gerry Foster

A lot of the old fashioned ways of marketing and selling services do not, and can not work, if your goal is to grow, prosper, and make a difference in the lives of the clients you serve during these tough times.

My suggestion:  Stay away from conventional service marketing approaches … the old fashioned ways of doing things.

Mastery Marketing® works because it’s MTV, VH1, Showtime … “now-type” thinking.

It differs from conventional service marketing wisdom -- those so-called tried-and-true strategies, tactics, and techniques you may have used, are currently using, or are considering – ten important ways: 

  1. Conventional service marketing practice requires that you generate initial interest in your services.  The theory of Mastery Marketing® is that you pursue prospects that are already pre-qualified and pre-sold on the services you offer.  They are many more times likely to hire you.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice encourages you to follow up the initial interest to get an appointment, submit a proposal, bid or quote, or generate a meaningful discussion about your services.  The follow up is designed to separate suspects (people who have expressed interest) from prospects (people who are seriously interested in your services).  Mastery Marketing® is geared to primarily attract only genuine, good, prospects for your services.  Every market you target, every claim you make, and every tactic you utilize is designed to keep the riff raff out (suspects).
  1. Conventional service marketing practice measures how well it’s doing by leads, contacts, and closed sales.  Any service provider can purchase a mailing list, work that list for leads, set appointments, and close sales.  All that is meaningless if you are not able to quickly convert prospects to clients so you can have steady cash flow.  The primary measuring stick to masters is cash flow.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice suggests that you improve your ability to close sales.  Mastery Marketing® suggests that you veer away from selling prospects and look at enrolling prospects.  Your job is to enter their world with a keen ear for listening, hearing, and understanding what’s missing in their lives or organizations, and establishing a link between those unmet wants and your services.  Prospects flock to trusted service providers – where possibilities get generated and enrollment (purchase of your services) occurs - and will shun the ones who appear as if all they really want to do is sell them something.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice places an emphasis on landing the initial meeting with a prospect.  At that meeting a needs assessment, consultation, critique, review, analysis, estimate, or other diagnostic services are performed to see if there is a “fit” between the buyer and service provider.  Mastery marketers take this meeting a step further.  The focus is on understanding the prospect’s reason for buying, so you can deliver a demonstration of mastery that appeals to his or her reasoning.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice asks that you differentiate your services primarily on the basis of skills, experience, knowledge, and expertise.  Mastery Marketing® never scoffs at technical and professional distinctions or personal accolades but encourages you not to stress achievements that are important to you and provide no sustainable competitive advantage.  Your competitors can make similar claims.  Look for advantages in other areas, particularly in the area of performance.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice would have you believe that if you are good at what you do, you are not susceptible to the blandishments of competitive service providers.  A competitor can always claim to do a job faster, cheaper, or better.  They can always structure a more appealing financial deal, can always present a portfolio filled with more breathtaking photographs, and can always cite small oversights that imply vendor neglect.  If you decide that you cannot outsmart your competition by offering a strong warranty, guarantee, pledge of satisfaction, or promise of performance, you’re not trying hard enough.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice says you must know how to handle sales objections.  In most situations, in the selling of professional, business, personal, and technical services, we hear certain objections time and time again.  Mastery marketers must aim to transcend these objections (not just handle them) by altering the way potential clients perceive you.  It comes down to being better than you’ve ever been.  Demand more from yourself, hold yourself to a higher standard, focus on adding value to client’s lives, and communicate your commitment to deliver extraordinary levels of performance.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice emphasizes the importance of having marketing materials (i.e. a brochure, fact sheet, information package, etc.) and in some cases, a website.  I agree.  Mastery Marketing® urges you to embrace the use of copy for these tools that expresses the pain (annoying problem or predicament) your primary target audience is experiencing in terms that are meaningful to them, and clearly, concisely, and persuasively conveys the advantages and value your services provide.  That requires using what are known as power words and picture words, developing a Statement of Mastery that establishes you as an authority and expresses how you differ from your competitors, having a tagline, and not stating something prospects probably already know when it comes to your type of service.
  1. Conventional service marketing practice says the single most important task in marketing services is building, cultivating, and maintaining relationships with as many clients and referrers as you can.  Doing any marketing other than this intimidates many service providers primarily because of their fear of rejection.  Mastery Marketing® builds up your business by not wearing you down.  But you have to get out of your own way to use it.  You have to be able to take an intangible product and tangibilize it.  By tangibilizing the intangible with risk- reducing reassurances of performance, benefits that are bundled into an entire package, and promises of satisfaction, to name a few, you will be able to demonstrate your mastery to prospects and accept a possible “no” decision without getting yourself torn up in the process.  Why?  Because mastery marketers learn to let it be OK with them for prospects not to realize they are in fact good clients for your services.  It’s their loss, not yours.  Move on.

Remember, by becoming a master of Mastery Marketing® , you have an opportunity to engage in outsmart-outpromote-outservice marketing that will grow your service business.  Be grateful there is a better way to attract clients … for clients are assets usually more precious than the tangible assets on a balance sheet.

Please contact me directly by phone at 949.499.1174 or by email at gerry@masterymarketing.com if I can assist you in becoming a Mastery Marketer.