“Our management team has read your book, and it really reflects what we would like to do… so obviously you are already at the top of our short list.”

This is pretty much verbatim the opening line of a phone call that I received from a well-qualified prospective client last week. Now, the interesting part for me was that this was a firm we did not know, they weren’t in our database and, as far as I know, we had never contacted them before. Yet here they were.

In fact, this wasn't the first time this has occurred. There have been many variations on this theme over the past few months. How did it happen?

To be honest, it involved a lot of hard work and planning. Writing a book is perhaps the ultimate example of content marketing. But it is only one piece of our content strategy. For several years, our firm has been systematically generating and distributing original content that we believe will be valuable to our target audience. By writing and doing research, we make it easier for qualified prospects to find and trust us.

The centerpiece of this effort is our book, Spiraling Up: How to Create a High Growth, High Value Professional Services Firm. There are many benefits to publishing a business book. Sonja Jefferson recently wrote a nice post on writing a book that outlines some of these benefits.

I’d like to focus instead on how to use a book to generate new business. Here are some of my lessons learned:

  1. Write for your target audience, not your peers. Demonstrating that you are the smartest professional may feel good, but it's even better to write a book that your readers will find useful and practical.
     
  2. Make it very, very readable. When we developed Spiraling Up, we went out of our way to make it short, easily skim-able and visually interesting. We also worked very hard to make the story engaging and relevant to our readers. This turns out to have been incredibly important. Just writing a book will impress people. But when they actually read it, a book can generate serious business.
     
  3. Get it out there. Do whatever you can to get the book in front of people. Speaking engagements, book signings, blogging about book topics, webinars, workshops and reviews are great opportunities to get your book into people's hands. Wherever we go, we give away copies. Distribution drives lead generation.
     
  4. Build your campaigns around it. Choose a topic that reflects what your firm is all about. Don’t pick a technical topic that represents only a small part of what you do. We wrote on high growth, high value professional services firms. That turned out to be a good choice since we are all about helping firms grow and prosper. When folks read the book they really understand our research-driven approach. This helps prospects to pre-quality themselves. If they are not a good fit, they usually don’t contact us.
     
  5. Make it partner-friendly. It turns out that partnering with associations and other professionals is incredibly useful. Third-party endorsements can increase distribution and boost credibility. What does partner-friendly mean? Well, choosing the right topic is important. It needs to be broad enough to be relevant to other peoples’ messages, as well as your own. Whatever you do, don’t make your book a promotional piece for your firm. If it’s useful to your target audience and not blatently self-promotional, potential partners are more likely to be interested in sharing, reviewing and advocating your book. The irony is that not being self-promotional is the most effective promotion of all.

 
So far, our book has been an incredibly powerful tool. And it’s the kind of tool that will likely be useful to many professional services firms. Yes, writing a book requires a lot of time and hard work, but if you do it right the payoff can far exceed your investment.

Resources

I’d like to recommend that you check on Sonja Jefferson’s blog for some great perspectives. Also, check out the Spiraling Up website and download the book to illustrate the points I’m trying to get across.

Finally, here are some tips to make your content more enjoyable. Good luck!

 

Lee