Thought Leadership as Business Development

As providers of professional services, we must strive to prove to our target market that we truly are experts in the areas where they have issues we can resolve. Remember, clients hire experts for their important work. They cannot afford not to. Clients will seek them out and pay them more. Therefore, we have to prove we are experts to a very sophisticated target audience who knows her business significantly better than we ever will.

Writing articles, speaking and teaching others are ways to show that we are experts. They help us become experts, prove we are experts and can ultimately help to drive our businesses. To accomplish this, however, writing and speaking must be thought leading and must be done in a way that creates strong third party validation of us as experts, otherwise our writing and speaking can actually can end up reinforcing to our clients that we are NOT experts.

What is Thought Leadership?
Thought leadership means just what it says. What you will write about is at the forefront of thought and understanding in the area. You must accurately see the future, understand trends and provide high-level, well-supported information that the reader can rely upon to make the basic decision: “Do I need to hire you to help me address this risk or achieve this unique opportunity before my competitors do?”

Thought leadership involves the creation of new models and methods to more clearly address a perplexing area for which no current model is effective. It involves exploring new worlds, emerging markets, changing cultures or governments, and proving you hold the keys to identifying the right pathway to riches there. Thought Leadership pushes the envelope in whatever area you practice within.

Your article ultimately must present information that your sophisticated and experienced prospects and clients will want to read. Information they are seeking and will find if you write about it.

What Thought Leadership is Not:
Many professional service providers see that many of the people they work with currently do not understand the basics of what they do. As a result they tend to write about the basics. They tend to write summaries, overviews or reviews of the processes or of things that have happened in the past. While these might have value, they only show that you are willing to write.

Anyone can sit down and regurgitate the basics or summarize the past. Unless there is a reason to do this, perhaps because new situations have arisen where review of the past is critical to understanding the future, and this is coupled with true thought leading analysis of that future, the author will not be perceived as particularly expert in the area. In fact, these relatively mundane tasks will be attributed to a lower level administrator or young professional – someone decidedly NOT an expert.

This sort of writing will not be publishable in any reputable journal in which experts your target clients rely upon are published. They are appropriate for basic White Papers that should be researched by young professionals in the firm and placed on the firm’s website without author. They are useful for those clients who need to understand the basics so that the project can begin. They are as helpful in business development as your CV and brochure. They will, however, not prove to potential clients that you are an expert capable of handling their most important and most lucrative cases.

Third Party Validation - Experts are Expected to Lead Thought:
A client cannot afford to rely on what you say about yourself. You, after all, have a significant conflict of interest. The client ultimately must make a leap of faith in hiring you and, for lucrative projects, he will need as much certainty as possible before doing so. The most powerful information you can provide are validations by third parties who receive no benefit from doing so.

Clients expect experts to be published in prominent journals, those in which other experts they rely upon are published. Editors of these publications are very picky about who is permitted to publish in their Journal. It is critical to the success of their publication, in a very competitive environment, that their readers perceive the content as extremely valuable and thought leading. Just being published in these journals is a strong third party validation of you as an expert before the article is even read.

Once published, you must send the article to all of your clients and prospects so they know you were published and so they can read what you have written. Use the article in proposals and marketing. In this day and age, clients often expect experts to also have a blog or column where powerful thought leading advice is conveyed. Reading your published and on-line work gives the client a way to gain an understanding of your methodology, processes, areas of expertise as well as your ability to write concisely and convey meaning clearly. Your own well-written blog is ultimately an excellent independent validation of you as an expert.

The client expects to see that you have spoken as an expert at relevant association events, which is a validation of you as an expert both by the organizer of the event and by those who agree to serve on the panel with you. If you have served as a professor, adjunct or otherwise, at a prominent institution, preferably in their graduate program, that shows that at least that institution believes you to be an expert and that you can convey that information to students. Finally, experts rise in stature when they rise to leadership of organizations, especially organizations of other true experts. If your peers elect you to such prominence, you can more easily be considered an expert among experts.

Finally, secure a prominent co-author for all of your articles. Choose someone you want to benefit – an existing client or a prospect. Getting them published helps to make them look like an expert, which is a big feather in their cap. That you helped them achieve that will not be forgotten. Choose a co-author who is a bit more prominent than you. Being associated with the co-author is a third party validation of you as an expert to the co-author – client or prospect himself, to his firm, and to the industry.

Once Published – Exploit:
Place a link to the article on both your website and your co-author’s. Place it on your CV and other marketing materials. Send it, usually a link, to all relevant prospects and clients. Create and deliver webinar, seminars, Continuing Education or other presentations with the co-author. Be creative. When you send the article to all of your clients, you are providing your co-author with a distinct benefit – you are telling the world you think he is an expert. He will appreciate that very much.

Perhaps the most significant benefit of having a prominent co-author is that the co-author will send the article with your name on it as prominent as his to all of HIS clients and prospects, effectively marketing you to them, as an expert, in the process.

Build the relationship with your co-author. After all you are bonded in print together forever! Cultivate her as a “coach.” Look for opportunities you can work on. Present together to clients. Meet her partners. Meet people she knows. Become strong business friends.

Process:
Come up with the idea first. In my experience in nearly 3 years of doing this, trying to develop an idea with the co-author simply never gets off the ground. Partly because you each tend to defer to the other. Also, the client does not really understand your business. You understand hers, because it is your business to do so. Therefore it is incumbent upon you, the expert, to dream up the great idea and invite her to participate.

We have developed a simple “One-Pager” used to craft a concise summary. We complete this, present it to the co-author, edit it as required, and then use that to market the idea to editors of target journals. This avoids writing long articles that the editor does not want to read and which might miss the immediate needs of the editor. Once accepted, the editor will provide the parameters for the article. The length can range from 700 words to 7000 words. The editor often relates other articles that have been or will be published and how the article should be focused to avoid conflict. We use these parameters to craft the article by the deadline set by the editor. Then we keep on the editor to make sure that the article is published within the promised timeframe.

Conclusion:
Driving thought forward helps to establish expertise, prove it to the prospective client, expand relationships and build business opportunities. Doing it properly can make huge differences in how a professional is perceived in the market, and after all, perception is reality.