Marketing Specialist Finds Niche Market for Her Productized Service

This article focuses on our interview with past client, Lynn McGinnis, owner of Lynnmcg.com. Lynn has over thirty years of experience in marketing and public relations. In 2016, she decided to start her own agency and use her voluminous experience to help others navigate the complicated world of marketing.

However, Lynn had so much experience she didn’t know how to offer her skills as a product. “I've got all this experience and now I don't know what to do with it,” was her statement. She wanted answers, not schemes or false promises of tremendous overnight success.

Lynn had a goal of helping others with her skills; but needed a clear-cut process to make it happen. What Lynn needed was a roadmap to simplification.

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"I don't have to use everything with everybody"

Lynn’s key discovery: even though she had the skills to help many different kinds of people, it was okay to specialize and narrow down what her agency offered. She productized one core service - she only considered the part of her expertise that clients found most valuable and she found most enjoyable. This turned her best work into a repeatable process. Once she had her productized service established, she was liberated. She said, “Seeing how people reacted to the productized service was fun, and exciting.”

Solving a client’s problem does not require her to utilize everything she knows, and in her case, Lynn can be free to focus on the area that she likes the most, providing services to a specific niche of which she was previously unaware.

Of course, when speaking to her clients, Lynn doesn’t mind adding value from her 30 years experience. Clients are pleased to find that she is experienced and knowledgeable about many aspects of the marketing (whether or not she accepts them as a client).

A Small Community Can Bring Big Results

Lynn’s courage to focus on one valuable idea has created a surprising, previously unknown referral base for her. At first, she was resistant to the idea of using LinkedIn, because she did not believe it was a place where she would find an audience. But she took her coach’s advice, set up the profile and got to work.

Now she is building a reputation within a community with remarkable networking potential. As she’s having valuable conversations with prospects, they are referring others to her. She is building a referral base of inbound leads.

While the smaller audience size was originally worrisome to her, Lynn has found that with a smaller community, people can get to know her and what she does more quickly. More importantly, her new contacts speak positively about her to other members of the community.

Trust the Process. It Works.

Lynn joined the program because there were no false expectations. The work drew out the expertise already inside her, and structured it to have maximum value to potential clients. But she did have to yield herself to the process. Lynn recommends, “Do the work in the order provided, even if it doesn't feel like it makes sense. It's going to make sense. There's a reason for every step.”

In fact, Lynn recommends approaching the three core systems like you don't know what you're doing - follow the steps. During the last couple weeks of her coaching, it felt great to see how everything was coming together. And when she started implementing what she had learned, a whole new level of business opened for her.

"Leave Your Limiting Beliefs at the Door"

Lynn would recommend that anyone ready to learn Coveted Consultant’s blueprint should leave their limiting beliefs behind. Beliefs such as, “LinkedIn won’t have the audience I want,” or “A smaller community means less opportunity,” were ones from which Lynn herself had to shake free. It took Lynn some effort to get past conventional wisdom and embrace the new process.

She gives the example of a preconceived notion of what “selling” is. We tend to think that selling means “always be closing.” But this intense focus on the close, means the seller is not listening...just waiting to speak (close). The process showed her how to turn this idea on its head: listen to what the buyer wants, and what his or her problems are. Don’t work to sell - work to solve.

Premuim Thinking = Premium Results

What were Lynn’s results upon concluding the program? Her results are as follows: 800 new Linkedin connections, 13 sales calls, and one premium productized service that she is excited to sell.

Now that her services are productized, simplified, and repeatable Lynn is fine-tuning the series of systems. She has found through continuous, genuine, person-to-person conversations she can expand opportunities.

Lynn plans to take her agency to serve a higher echelon of client by adjusting her premium product to the next level of premium service. She is considering focusing exclusively on the specific area of publication. Lynn says, “I’m pretty excited about it.”

We’re excited for you too, Lynn!