We all occupy so many roles – in just one day for my clients I am counselor, adviser, tech support, strategist, researcher, brainstorming partner, copy writer, website designer, programmer, designer, and friend. And then I go home to be a whole host of other roles.
At some point, it is important to look at those roles and determine which ones are appropriate to your business, which ones make you unique and which ones is it time to dump. For instance, I do not ever market myself as a tech support rep because I am not doing it every day and therefore don’t have the up-to-date knowledge I would need to do it as well as I used to handle it. On the other hand, my role as counselor is one that means my clients call me for more than just the immediate project need which makes it easy for me to get repeat business. Knowing that is an important role, I can easily keep that in the forefront and ask the right questions to keep being that role.
I would highly recommend keeping a notepad next to you for a couple days and for each interaction, jot down what roles you fulfilled for that client. At the end of the exercise, you will see where you spend the most of your time and it should give you some interesting insight into new marketing ideas and new ways to approach your clients. It will also help you see what roles you want to lose and that should help you manage your time and messaging.
The roles we occupy and which ones are important to us are different for each person but one thing is clear – if it is important to your client, it should be important to you or you need new clients!
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