Heather Townsend - The Go-To Expert ePub eBook: How to Grow Your Reputation, Differentiate Yourself From the Competition and Win New Business

Countless books have been written about how to do networking, lead generation, social media, selling and brand management. Probably even more have been written about content mastery and how to become really good at doing something. Call those perspectives marketing and content, respectively.

Curiously, I cant think of any books that specifically link those two perspectives for professional services how to develop and run a business built around the idea of expertise. Until this book.

It sounds so simple: get better than anyone else at something and then build your business around it. For example, weve all heard the quip, Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. But that optimistic formulation begs a few critical questions.

The first is why mousetraps instead of bicycles? If mousetraps, then what does better mean? Is a green mousetrap better or is colour irrelevant? How can I be better than anyone else at it? These kinds of questions go on, and on, and on.

The second question is just how is it that people will come to beat a path to your door? How will they know where your door is? How beaten does the path have to be in the first place? How will they even know you have a mousetrap, much less a better one?

And finally, if you have a better mousetrap and people find out about it what will you do with it? How can you ensure mousetrap quality control? How to become the worlds best-known mousetrap? Should you branch into cheese? And so forth.

It sounds so simple. And of course, it may be simple but that doesnt mean its easy.

In The Go-To Expert , Heather Townsend and Jon Baker have produced a comprehensive, practical book about how to build a client portfolio and/or firm based on expertise . (Interestingly, the book itself is a marvellous example of precisely what Heather and Jon are talking about: an offering linked to a defined market, with a comprehensive package of business building tools around it.)

It may sound obvious that a professional, or a professional services firm, should build itself around an area of expertise but its not obvious or even necessary. Many firms, intentionally or otherwise, build their strategies around markets alone, or products alone, or based on a competitive segmentation, or a cost position, or relationships, or distribution channels. Expertise is not the only choice and its easy to fall off track even if the choice is made.

It may also sound obvious that an expertise-based professional services firm, having chosen that as a strategy, will intuitively know just what to do but, again, the truth is counter-intuitive. For a host of reasons which Townsend and Baker itemise professionals are marketing-averse, fearful of specialisation and loathe to think at a meta-level about content. Again, its easy to fall off the track.

Whether youre a solo practitioner, interim, freelancer, salesperson or a professional services firm of any size, the ideas in this book are insightful, provocative and powerful. But its not just an ideas book. Townsend and Baker have included a rich vein of examples, exercises, practical advice and tips, and an accompanying online Workbook. If you have trouble implementing the ideas in this book, it wont be for lack of a concrete roadmap!

And if you do implement them, you can look forward to higher levels of brand awareness, profitability, effectiveness, reputation, sales and probably personal satisfaction as well. Being a Go-To Expert is simple and not easy but well worth the effort.

Charles H. Green, co-author of The Trusted Advisor ,
and author of Trust-Based Selling
West Orange, New Jersey