The Expert's Edge for Becoming a Go-To Authority Figure

If you've followed all the rules to build your business and it isn't working, you owe it to yourself to read Lizotte's book and get a new perspective on how to ignite your enthusiasm and take your business to the top. The Expert's Edge is a great book that you'll really want to keep on your desk at all times and refer to it continuously.

The Expert's Edge, by Ken Lizotte is a book that will minimize the impact of the economy's ups and downs on your business. You'll learn what other successful entrepreneurs like Martha Stewart, Stephen Covey, Suze Orman and Tom Peters know - and how they came from being virtually unknown to achieve the celebrity status they enjoy today.

Lizotte's revolutionary book, The Expert's Edge, utilizes 5 thoughtleading pillars that will help you gain the cutting edge on your competitors and turn your business around to enjoy the fruits of success rather than the frustration of stagnation.

Businesses sometimes play a continuous game of catch-up when it comes to keeping customers and coming up with new ideas that will draw business. It's the eternal practice of trying to keep up with the Joneses - falling short and then scurrying to stay in the fray. The Expert's Edge offers the magic bullet that will take your business to the next level - and keep you there.

The five pillars that you'll learn about in The Expert's Edge and that will help you build your business and quit worrying about the boom or bust economy are:

• Get prospects to seek you out.
  
• Keep your customers loyal - and coming back for more.
  
• Generate ongoing referrals and word-of-mouth.
  
• Eliminate your competition
  
• Raise your fees and revenue

When you grasp the meaning of Lizotte's five pillars, you'll become a thought leader in your market and watch your business climb to the top echelons. You won't worry about the economy's boom or bust mentality or losing a client because your competition has a better idea.

The Expert's Edge, by Ken Lizotte, is a must read book if you're in business for yourself or have a position with a company that relies on new ideas from thought-leading people to boost sales and retain or attract new clients. If you're aware that it's imperative to keep ahead of the competition and be able to withstand the economy's fickle ways, you'll put this book's principles into practice.

Business owners and executives are often involved in networking or chat sessions that tend to turn toward questions about how to do business - how to get leads, advertise and keep customers happy. Answers to the questions often include referrals, advertising and networking.

But, if you're looking for the magic bullet that will take you to the top of the heap, look no further than Lizotte's, The Expert's Edge. Lizotte draws on his experience as Chief Imaginative Officer for the Emerson Consulting Group and other business and community-building positions to teach his readers about the practice of thought-leading and how it can help turn their businesses around.

The Expert's Edge is an appealing and comprehensive guide of techniques that are proven to help entrepreneurs climb to a status that has eluded them in the past. Lizotte's simple pillars of success will unlock the hidden segments of your mind -- and that will carry you and your business to new heights.

Others have built empires based on the principles taught in The Expert's Edge. Now, you can learn how thought-leading can change your business - and your life.

Ken Lizotte is the CIO (Chief Imaginative Officer of Emerson Constulting Group, Inc) and coined the word, "thoughtleading" to describe his strategies for business success. His former experience as a career motivation consultant, freelance journalist and community organizer and his present position helped him write The Expert's Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn to Every Time.

Lizotte keeps in touch with businesses and the economy by being a keynote speaker at conferences. Entrepreneurs flock to his sessions to learn how to become a true thought leader, publish a book or article, creatively utilize the internet, get publicity, increase business, and build customers' loyalty.

The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and Fortune Magazine are just a few of the business giants that have interviewed Lizotte as an expert in building a business - and a fortune. His ingenious methods of thought-building, designed to put your business on the fast tract and forge ahead of the competition makes The Expert's Edge a reference book that you'll often turn to for encouragement and ideas.

Among Lizotte's many awards is the Institute of Management Consultants' prestigious Certified Management Consultant (CMI) credential which signifies the highest standards of consulting professionals and devotion to ethical principles. It's a recognition that's only been awarded to 1% of consultants, worldwide.

It's easier to comprehend how Lizotte has blazed the trail of "thought-leaders" when you realize that he has the distinct privilege of living in Concord Massachusetts, where he jogs past the historic homes of Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott and Thoreau's Walden Pond cabin.

In these rough economic times, many companies, entrepreneurs and consulting firms are finding themselves looking for an edge. During good times of course almost any strategy will do but during bad times both target markets and competition stiffen up. No longer is new business so easy to find, no longer does an endless stream of new customers come knocking at the door. So to distinguish their products and services, some companies are trying something new: writing and publishing by-lined articles.

What makes this a promising strategy? For one thing, most other companies will not be employing it, leaving the firm that does standing all alone. For another, it's far less expensive than even a modest advertising campaign, since the investment generally requires primarily the willingness to sit down and bang out some key business thoughts, then email the resulting article over to an editor.

And finally, publishing articles results in promoting products and services in such a way that the company and the actual "by-lined" author of the article become known as "thought leaders" in their field or industry, no longer mere vendors. This means a firm's core value can be articulated clearly, confidently, persuasively and implicitly endorsed by the fact of a publication's decision to put it all in print.

What About White Papers?

Within the topic of writing articles for publications, however, frequently this question arises: "What about white papers?" White papers, i.e., essentially unpublished articles or case studies drawn up by an individual or company for the purpose of promoting skill sets, successful customer projects and/or value propositions, are an age-old business tradition. Countless websites and resumes tout them as examples of a company's or individual's prowess, as well as the indirect advertising and credibility-building they provide.

But white papers waste a valuable opportunity because their authors never bother to go the next step. Though perfectly suited for publication, most white papers are never submitted anywhere. As a result, bona fide third-party credibility for all the hard work and smart ideas that likely went into the unpublished white paper never occurs.

"Writing articles for magazines, newspapers and Web sites is one of the best ways you can promote your services and products in a B2B context," says veteran PR expert Henry Stimpson APR, Stimpson Communications. "Articles highlight you and your company as experts and thoughtleaders." By getting your articles out there beyond just your website, Stimpson explains, visibility for the firm and the individual expert-author extends dramatically, especially when an article is published on the Web.

Simple 3-Step Process

So if article-publishing makes so much sense, why do so many professionals and companies ignore it? The biggest reason may be that they don't know how to successfully carry it out. Let's therefore consider a simple 3-step process for doing so:

1. Obtaining the go-ahead from an editor, rather than actually writing an article, is Step One. To accomplish this, be sure to decide the business objectives you want your article to advance, that is, what you want to be known for. Say you're a sales expert who wants potential clients to learn how knowledgeable you are in the area of sales-closing techniques. Your article topic might then be: "Five Effective Ways to Close a Sale." You'd then want to submit this idea to relevant business journals.
2. Choose your target publications, that is, publications read by your target customers. In this case, our sales expert-author works primarily for high-tech companies. Thus his target publications might have names like High-Tech Sales Manager, Technology Selling and Tech CEO.
3. Pitch your idea to your target publications. Do this via email and pitch preferably a few ideas at a time, to give the editor some choice. Don't write the story first however because you might end up writing one that's too long or too short or not quite the right angle.

Don't make the pitches themselves too lengthy either. Each pitch should be composed of a headline and a brief paragraph. For example: "Five Effective Ways to Close a Sale: This article will cover five tried-and-true sales-closing techniques that great sales reps have learned to use again and again, with repeated success. Author can include anecdotal examples of how each closing technique works."

After emailing your pitches to at least 10-15 target publications on your list, sit back and wait. If you hear nothing in the next 7-10 days, email your pitches again. It's a safe bet though that you'll hear from at least one of your target editors within a week or so. And when you do, it'll probably look like this: "Thanks for your ideas. I do like the sales-closing article in particular. Could you write up a 1000-word version for me by end of this month? If so, I may be able to include it in my next month's issue."

Once you receive a response of this kind, it's all up to you. Write up your article as best you can, have a colleague or professional editor look it over, revise as needed, then send it off to the publication. You'll want to include a short bio at the bottom and 300 dpi e-photo.

If you follow this simple process, you'll soon be a published author! And once you get into the swing of it, you'll have forgotten all about the "white paper" concept and you'll be publishing your ideas left and right. Since your competitors will not likely be doing the same, your new thoughtleading author status will enable you to get a leg up on your competition that will carry you through these hard times right into the next economic boom.

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Ken Lizotte CMC, author of The Expert's Edge: Become the Go-To Authority that People Turn to Every Time (McGraw Hill) and Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO) of emerson consulting group inc., transforms companies and professional service firms into "thoughtleaders," separating them from the competitive pack. Contact info: 978-371-0442, ken@thoughtleading.com or www.thoughtleading.com

If you don't realize that publishers are dying, stick your head up out the hole you've crawled into. New ones are dropping off every day. POD self-publishing is the way to go.