We are very much recipe people.
Occasionally we’ll take on something new in marketing (like Clubhouse, as an example) and we’ll find ourselves floundering about a bit, until we have worked out the success recipe.
I think that’s why we love marketing so much, there really are success recipes for just about everything. Once you have the recipe figured out, you can keep following it for a good while, and continue serving up great results. Occasionally advances in technology or changes in fashion means that the marketing recipe you are following isn’t working as well as it used to (Tapioca Pudding, anyone?) and it’s time to develop or adapt.
Do you have any recipes in your business?
Having a standardised process, or methodology for delivering your service to your clients is a profitable way to differentiate yourself from your customers. It can also be very effective during sales conversations. When you’re able to outline your process or methodology in detail, it demonstrates your expertise to a potential client, showing that you’ve done this work before, and works quickly to build their trust in you, and make them feel taken care of. Compare this experience to when they meet with your competitor who doesn’t have a defined process, and can only talk in terms of what they ‘could do’ to help, and ‘might consider’. It’s so powerful.
In business, your recipe is known as a ‘signature service’. It’s whatever you are best ‘known for’. Just like a chef has a signature dish. Your signature service is something you’ve developed yourself and you do in your own way. It’s not something you pass off onto a subcontractor. This means it’s going to be a high-margin offering, and if you market it correctly, you can command a high fee for delivering it, because you’ve got a reputation for doing it the best.
I’m sure you are starting to see the benefits of working on this.
Here are some well-known examples of signature services:
- Kwik-fit Express Tyre Fitting
- MacDonalds Drive-Thru
- Dyno-rod Drain Unblocking
- Tony Robbins – Unleash The Power Within
- Marie Forleo – B-School
Interestingly, these companies all deliver other services too, but they’ve invested a huge amount of marketing budget to develop value and recognition for these signature services. Once they have a client using them and trusting them for one thing, they can up-sell the others too.
Defining a signature service is something we work on with our clients as part of our The Illumination Lab (👈🏻 see what we’ve done there?) Most businesses already have a unique methodology, process or technique that they haven’t realised is where the real value in their business is hiding. And, because we Brits find sharing what’s great and special about our own work so blooming difficult, they rarely show off this innovation and quality by sharing it with their audiences.
That’s where we come in. Identifying, sharing and promoting your secret sauce is what we do best!
There really are just three simple steps to creating a signature service:
- Define the area that you want to be best known for (okay, I said simple, but in reality focusing on what is sometimes just a tiny part of all the things you can do can be quite difficult). To get this right, look for the Venn diagram intersection between what you love delivering, and what a typical client needs the most.
- Focus on clearly defining the service. What are the boundaries to it? Where does it start and end? Which steps do you take to deliver the service? What else do you need from your client in order to deliver it? How much should it cost? What does the client ‘get’ for this fee?
- Give it a name.
When you have this figured out, you can start to promote the service, et voila, you have a key differentiating factor against the competition.
This might just seem like one more thing to do, but getting this right will unlock a huge success factor for your business. We can help, find out how by booking a free consultation today.
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