So many consultants email me with their various problems in their consulting businesses and many times it boils down to this:

1. They don’t have enough quality leads consistently flowing in.

2. Therefore, they don’t have enough sales conversations with quality prospects on a consistent basis.

3. And ultimately they don’t get hired by enough quality clients that will actually pay them enough to meet their income goals.

However, in all of those cases, I don’t ever blame the business owners.

With rare exception, it’s always the consultants fault.

And in my opinion, 99.9% of the time most consultants I talk to don’t have enough clients for the following three reasons:

Problem Cause #1: Some consultants simply don’t do enough consistent daily action to generate sales conversations with quality prospects.

I’ll keep saying this until I’m blue in the face because so many consultants do little to no daily action to get in front of quality prospects and then wonder why no money is coming in.

Problem Cause #2: Terrible positioning that results in the consultant dealing with prospects that don’t value what the consultant is offering.

If you’re offering everybody and their cat and dog a free website, then you can’t be upset when all you do is build free websites.

Working for free is usually a terrible first point of contact with a potential client unless you have a system in place that makes sure that your “free” work doesn’t cost you much time, money or resources.

Problem Cause #3: Either due to terrible targeting/qualifying or money issues, the business owner can’t afford to pay the consultant what they’re worth even if they do recognize the value.

Most guru’s want you to believe that every business owner can afford to pay you thousands of dollars at the drop of a dime, but that’s not the case.

You must become a prospect targeting and qualifying ninja in order to avoid wasting too much time, money and resources on unqualified prospects.

See, after years of grinding it out in the trenches, I’ve come to realize that consistent daily action, expert positioning and a process for targeting and qualifying prospects makes all the difference.

However, today I want to focus on expert positioning.

Here’s a crystal clear example that I just experienced a few months ago that will illustrate my point:

Scenario #1: I stumbled across a book or website about general sales training and while I skimmed through it, my eyes glossed over fairly quickly.

Just to be clear, it wasn’t a reflection of the author, but it was because I’ve already seen, read and watched hundreds of books, articles, blog posts and videos on general sales training.

This was more of the same.

Scenario #2: I stumbled across a book or blog written on sales training for consultants and coaches.

Immediately my ears perked up a little bit and I focused in to see what the author had to share about the topic that could be new for me personally.

However, I still didn’t give it my full attention for too long because it was still a little too generic, but I did give it more attention than I gave the general sales training stuff.

Next, I signed up to the author’s email newsletter and I’ll see if there’s something worth investing in a little later on down the line.

Scenario #3: I stumbled across a website about high ticket client getting strategies for consultants and coaches.

Now, this author had my full attention.

I leaned in to my monitor. I closed out other browsers and immediately devoured the content and then scoured the website and search engines for webinar replays, other books the author had written and interviews they’d done.

Big difference, right?

What was the difference in those three scenarios?

Well, two things happened there:

First, the third author has niched (or customized) this particular webpage/website/landing page/resource etc. in a way that totally resonates with my goals.

Secondly, the author has positioned himself in a way that automatically elevates him in my mind.

(By the way, I don’t know if he has twenty lead magnets that are customized for different niches. He probably does, but it doesn’t matter to me because the funnel I’m in with him completely addresses my issues, concerns, goals and questions.)

Therefore, I automatically expect him to have at least a $997+ coaching or training product that he’s selling.

And I automatically expect him to have a ebook or video series that teaches the basic framework for his “system” for doing things with a pitch at the end.

And I would be floored if he offered free coaching or even offered coaching for anything under $1,000-$2,000.

By the way, the free training was so good I went ahead and bought the whole course for $997.

That’s the power of positioning.

That’s where you should strive to be in your target market.
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