Experts Never Chase

Note: I’ve updated this post to reflect that the book has since come out.

I also apologize for this post having more links than a Polish sausage factory, but what are you gonna do?

Desperation repels, and we trust referrals

I’ve been thinking of how often people chase after me to get me to hire them for something, and how rarely it has ever actually resulted in me hiring them. I’ve referred to this as leg humping before, which is another term I didn’t coin on my own.

Don’t get me wrong, real experts know how to prospect and fill their pipeline…

…but they don’t need to leg hump or pitch slap you to death.

Desperation repels.

On the other hand, if I give it some more thought, I find more often than not the people I do tend to work with, and not to mention clients who’ve hired me, have almost always been referrals.

And I don’t mean from going into FB groups and asking.

“Who do you recommend for…?”

or

“I’m looking for this or that, who here can help me?”

There’s something powerful about PERSONAL recommendations rather than what is often a dogpiling of people desperate to get more business and throw their hat in the ring on such posts.

Which is one of the reasons I’ve been involved with the Book of Experts by Salesmap

Sidenote, if you want to build out your referral circles and get listed among our hand-picked experts in the areas of business or life coaching, digital marketing, leadership, public speaking, podcasting, and like 60 other categories, reach out to me.

(See what I did there?)

Oh, and I’m still writing and helping writers, don’t get me wrong. That is my primary focus. But nearly two years ago I realized I sucked at filling my pipeline and had been relying too much on posting content on social media with calls to action like “reach out to me if…”. In the end, I was attracting the wrong kind of people, as covered in my post around that time, Scarcity vs Abundance Mindset.

Taking some time to market and sell for someone else took a lot of burden off of doing the same for myself for a season, and I’ve learned a lot. I have enjoyed how much less of my ego is involved in selling for other people as opposed to myself, and as a result, I’ve developed up some skills and not to mention built up some inner-fortitude when it comes to my own offers.

The reason this is all on my mind is that recently in a writing group I’m in (among quite a few), I saw someone post that they were looking to hire someone to market their books for them.

No big deal, right?

Except this was someone who came to me in private messages a while back to ask “what my secret was” with marketing, selling, and getting reviews for my books when they were struggling to even sell few copies of their own if any.

I noticed the plea on Facebook while scrolling one time and it was worded along the lines of “if you’re interested, pitch me in private and send me a resume with references.”

I try not to judge because I encounter indie authors all the time who have no idea how to treat their writing career as a business. So, perhaps this person didn’t know what they didn’t know. But I thought a couple of things:

1. How unfortunate this person didn’t take any of my advice a few years back, and
2. He’s going to get mostly messages from desperate newbies and wannabes.

Why?

Because experts never pitch.

They don’t have to.

They’re busy delivering results for their own clients they’ve obtained, and they’re getting clients through other means by this point IF they’re reached expert status at the thing they’re a boss at.

Bottom feeders and people looking for their first clients, or who get clients but infrequently are the types that will jump on those types of Facebook posts.

Another thing that happens as well? People will comment and refer their expert recommendations.

But the actual experts are too busy crushing it themselves and will probably only notice it because someone else tagged them.

Available in Kindle version or Hardcover on Amazon.