I tell my direct marketing clients to create Expert Proof Materials (usually books, but sometimes DVDs or CDs) and have them on hand to use as business cards. Didn’t follow my own advice today. Met a young lady today in a coffee shop to talk about teaching her clients – other entrepreneurs. Took a book – all cool, right? Nope. Turns out the coffee shop owner was one of her clients, and also wanted a book. I blew over an hour getting a book ready to ship, finding an open post office, and spending at least $5 on postage and gas. Keep a stack of EPM in your car, kids!
epm
Circle of Three P’s: Self Promotion & Digital Media
In the course of working with many of my clients, I help them produce Expert Proof Materials – EPM for short. These could be books, DVDs, online instructional courses, or almost anything else. Regardless of the end product, there’s a system to producing them. Well, a cycle actually.
The Expertise Tree
Very much like the tree falling in the forest, if you have expertise and no one knows it, are you an expert?
Houses Don’t Build Themselves
Let’s say you wanted to build a house. Somehow, you got all the tools and materials to build it dropped on your empty lot. How long until you’d be able to live in it?
Well, that depends. If you hire a team of contractors and laborers, you might be able to move in in just a couple months. If you and a couple buddies work at it during the week, maybe less than a year. If you work on it at night and on weekends, it’s going to take a lot longer. And if you do nothing at all? That’s easy – never.
Inverting The Sales Process
By becoming a RecEx, and producing Expert Proof Materials (EPM), our main aim is helping our clients to invert the typical sales process – or at least pave the sales path to make it smooth going.
What is the stereotypical sales process? The first and most basic version is the lone salesman, out trudging the road and knocking on doors. If Ms. Prospect has just a few minutes, we can introduce her to a product or service that will – ah, another door closed in our face. We trudge to the next door and try again.
Put Together Your Expert Proof Product
Every Recognized Expert should have an Expert Proof Product (EPP), or better yet – several that make up their Expert Proof Materials (EPM). An EPP could be a book, or a DVD or an audio CD, almost anything that demonstrates that the person is an expert in a particular subject, has definite ideas and opinions, and can reasonably be considered an expert on their subject.
In creating a non-fiction book (a novel could be considered EPP if the person is establishing their credibility as a fiction writer, or perhaps as a creative writing teacher), you don’t have to start from scratch. Putting together a series of articles or blog posts into a narrative that explains or explores the Expert’s niche is perfectly acceptable. Adding in some charts, perhaps even a transcript of an interview or two is also a possibility.