Mindset 5 – Smart marketer or dumb expert

This mindset is challenging for me because accountants are experts and many in my profession have a very negative attitude towards marketing.

They think marketing is unprofessional and selling is just dirty. They even look down of people that do it!

But, if we think about it, without marketing there are no sales and without sales there is no business. So, if we have spent years learning how to be an expert in something, we need to put at least the same time and energy learning how to be a smart marketer.

At the end of the day, marketing is an investment; it brings money into our business, everything else is a cost.

In fact, a business is marketing because marketing is about researching, finding out what the market want and giving it to them.

Experts go at it from the other direction; they design a solution and look to impose it on the market.

Remember, when it comes to growing our businesses and winning new business it doesn’t matter how good we are at what we do because at the point the customer makes the decision to use us they don’t know how good we are.

Even after they have made a decision they may not know!

Take accountancy for an example. Before I work with someone how does a typical small business owner know if I am any good?  Even after I have worked with them they will probably not be able to judge if I am the best at tax planning.

It does not really matter how much we know, or how good we are, what matters is the customer’s perception of how much we know and how good we are. And, marketing is all about perception and communication.

If we are not able to communicate in a way that makes the prospect feel that we understand them then they are not going to perceive we can help them.

That is why a smart marketer listens very carefully to their prospects. They use the words their prospects uses in their sales and marketing communication. And, they focus on demonstrating they understand the problems of their prospect.

A dumb expert has a Website with a homepage that tells you when they were established, what they do and how good they are. A smart marketer’s Website helps their prospect by offering something valuable.

When we combine being an expert with being an expert marketer we become very powerful.