Chris Davidson

I'll open this first "Competitive Difference" broadcast of 2010 by wishing you all an abundance of peace and prosperity for the coming year. However, just because I wish it for you, doesn't mean it'll come to pass. You make your own peace and your own prosperity. These are, of course very different notions and so it makes sense to deal with one at a time. In the last broadcast of last year (Volume 2, Issue 50) I set you some homework - let's kick the year off by reviewing it.

I prefaced the task by saying that, "Somebody, somewhere, needs what you sell and your job is to find him or her and put forward a winning argument for your stuff being bought in favour of anything else that's competing for the budget at the time."

The overall objective was to help you create a strategy for nurturing your clients throughout 2010.

Task review
Here's a reminder of what I asked you to do - also useful for those people who have signed up for CDCD broadcasts recently, thereby missing the previous issue.

Brainstorm as many "How to..." as you can think of that your clients might want to know about. Tick off all the ones you can write about off the top of your head and make a separate list of the ones that need further research.

Research how your (potential) clients like to receive information (see above list). This should give you a clue as to how you go about delivering the content from your brainstorm.

"How to..." instructions
We all know that time is money and yet how many times have you seen people messing around trying to get "stuff" done? The "stuff" itself could be almost anything - for example:

• Working out sales tax for an invoice
• Preparing invoices manually with handheld calculator
• Trying to print an address onto an envelope
• Trying to print a sheet of address labels
• Trying to do a mail-merge between MS Word and Excel

All the above stuff needs to be done by all businesses. Of course, there are lists of industry specific "stuff" too, for example:

• Restaurants: How to design good menus
• Domestic cleaning: How to create an efficient staff rota
• Car repair garage: How to design a good part inventory system

In both cases, general and specific, the lists are endless, but the common point is that it all comes down to knowing how to get stuff done - and guess what? There's stuff that you know how to do that other people don't - and they'd love to pick your brains for five minutes in order to get a head start, so they don't just give up out of total frustration in the first ten minutes.

If you didn't have the time over the recent break, then I urge you now to sit down and work your way steadily through a typical week and make a note of the "stuff" you do. There will be nuggets of gold in there, for sure.

...and then what?
The next stage is the hardest: accept that you actually know stuff that other people will value. Once you've got your mind around this, the rest of it becomes relatively easy. It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that on-line video is becoming the next "big thing" and YouTube is becoming a really useful site. For example, want to know how to tie a bow tie, how to make pastry, or how to manage curly hair? Videos for all of these can be found on YouTube. Now if you just happened to be a tailor, run a delicatessen, or be a hairdresser, there are three super videos could have loaded onto YouTube - and advertised your business at the same time...

...but someone else beat you to it (this time).

No matter, you can always look at their videos and make better ones, or pick other topics. As I said above, the list is pretty much endless.

In summary: Make 2010 the year you get stuck into on-line video (targeted at telling your customers how to do something).

As usual, please do keep in touch and send me your thoughts, comments and questions directly.

Best wishes to all.

Chris Davidson
Editor, Professional Speakers Journal
editor@professionalspeakersjournal.com