Stephanie Chandler says: Own Your Niche
My guest for my radio show last Tuesday at 10.00am on 105.5 FM was Stephanie Chandler. Stephanie is an author having written 9 books around the topic of business and specifically on the topic of sales and marketing be it online or offline.
Stephanie and I first met at a Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce trade show in April 2006. Stephanie was setting up a booth she had taken at the trade show where she was promoting her latest book and offering her sales and marketing suggestions. I too was an exhibitor and didn’t have too much time to speak with her during the trade show but from a quick conversation we had before the trade show opened, she agreed to meet with me at my office later the following week. The reason I met with Stephanie was during our quick conversation she made a suggestion and that was to write a book explaining to my potential customers how to sell their business.
This one suggestion from Stephanie stayed with me and so was the topic of our first meeting. Stephanie explained that writing a book was more intimidating than it looked but that its benefits were huge. It made you research your subject so this knowledge was always helpful, it allows you to stand out from your competitors who have not written a book, it’s the entrée to the next step which is to do public speaking and again, position yourself as an expert in your field. Stephanie explained that if the process to write a book was too daunting, she could write it as a ghost writer and provide the final manuscript.
After chewing on Stephanie’s suggestion for a few months I jumped in and wrote my first book, Successfully sell your business. After writing about the sell side it made sense to write about becoming a business owner. When I looked at this there were three options that each led to a book, Successfully start your business, Successfully buy your business and Successfully buy your franchise.
After the books there became an obvious need to have a website to not only promote and make the books available but also the business services I provide. To complement the website, the next step was to do a blog with original content so the search engines could bring those looking for help and the answers I were able to provide. Next steps were some videos on You Tube and being active in the main Social media sites.
The hard costs to put all the above marketing together are not large. I have not tracked the total costs but am comfortable saying it would be no more than $500 per year once my website was built as it allows me to post my own blog articles and I chose to self publish my books.
Where’s all this going? From meeting Stephanie at a trade show event and her one suggestion for me to write a book about selling a business it has kicked off a tremendous “pull” marketing strategy where I present what I know and if it’s of interest to those that can use my help, they give me a call. Cold calling and direct mail are not part of my marketing burden. From my perspective, the costs and randomness of these marketing options are neither appealing nor productive. With my own website I have backend information that shows me lots of information including my daily number of visitors. Each month as I see these numbers rise as well as the calls and emails I get, I am able to track its success.
This single suggestion from Stephanie to write a book and its surrounding strategies led to a call from radio station 105.5 FM to host my own radio show. They found my website and thought it was very well put together and would I have an interest to host a one hour show each week. What an incredible opportunity.
A business owner needs to wear many hats – owner, manager, operations manager, book-keeper, lender/financier, tech expert and just as important as any of these skills, a sales and marketing guru.
There were many other questions in my conversation with Stephanie. If you would like more information about “owning your niche” by listening to our conversation, please click the following link – Stephanie Chandler from Authority Publishing
If you are looking for some sales and marketing ideas visit Stephanie’s websites. She has a few of them and here are a couple – Stephanie Chandler and Business Info Guide. If you want help with writing or publishing a book you will find her at Authority Publishing
