Three ways to pitch your content to clients: tie it to events they're already planning, match it to their competency models, or connect it to problems they're facing right now like product launches or market loss. The easier you map your content to these buckets, the more deals you'll close.
So there are 3 different conversations that you can have with a potential client about why your content is of value to them. Number one is what I would call IP buckets, intellectual property buckets. So this is where it's usually event-driven. Someone's having an event, maybe it's a leadership development event, and in that event they've already decided that they've got a piece on communications for the new leader. Well, if your content is communications and it's effective to a new leader, that's pretty easy to have that kind of event-driven intellectual property bucket conversation. The second is competencies. So this is sort of a big secret that's not a secret. Most large organizations publish somewhere, typically in HR journals, you can find it on the web, do a little bit of research, what their competencies are for different folks in the organizations by function, by bandwidth, by level? If not, you can ask them, you can ask a potential client, can you show me your competency model or the competencies that you're working on for this population here? And once you see what those competencies are, then you could attempt to make a logical argument as to why your content actually enhances those competencies. And if they've already recognized or acknowledged that these are the competencies that are important for that population, and these are the ones that they're working on, all you're doing is kind of making the bridge that your content is a tool that enhances those competencies. The third, which is my personal favorite, not that anyone really cared, but it is, is when you can tie your content to real-time business situations. What does that mean? That can mean there's a change in the market condition. That can mean there's a product launch. That can mean there's a change in the way that an organization is going about positioning or selling itself. It could mean they're growing rapidly. It could mean they're losing market share, but you're tying your content to something that's going on in the market that's real, in real time, that's affecting them every day, and showing how by being exposed to your content in whatever format, whatever medium you decide is effective, is going to help them get through that situation. So it's either going to get them to do something better, quicker, faster, cheaper, or it's going to take them away from pain that they're experiencing. So if they're losing market share, how does the exposure to your content help them change that course of direction? If the organization is siloed, if they've just gone through a merger and acquisition, whatever the business issue is, and you can find those things out pretty easily today. So again, 3 ways to position your content. One is against intellectual property buckets. Number 2 is against competencies. And the 3rd is against business issues. And the more broadly you can think about those things and the more easily you can tie your content to any of those things, the more conversations you're going to have with prospects and the more work you're going to get out into the marketplace. Thank you.
