This post shares with you a strategy – the Beacon Strategy – for positioning as an expert and authority in your field.

But first …

What is an industry expert or authority?

A recognised expert and authority in an industry is someone who is prominent and
respected in their niche.

They are known for their capabilities or ideas.

Their message cuts through in a noisy environment.

They are the people that we turn to first.

They create a high degree of trust with their audience.

People listen closely to experts and authorities.

What are the benefits of positioning yourself as an expert and authority in your
industry?

Being the recognised expert or authority can lead to many benefits, including that a
recognised expert and authority can more easily:

• Be the first, “go-to” choice for prospects
• Generate inbound leads – people reaching out to you to ask if they can work with
  you
• Make more sales and get more clients – more people coming to you for help
• Make more premium or “high ticket” sales – higher priced coaching, event,
  program, or service sales
• Get better “gigs” – from speaking gigs to writing opportunities for magazines such
  as Forbes or Entrepreneur
• Generate new and better opportunities to partner with strategic partners (“JV
  partners”)

How do you position as an expert or authority in your niche?

There are many ways to position as an expert or authority – there are lots of different
strategies you can employ.

Usually you would have to hang out in lots of different places to learn these
strategies – like participate in expensive high level mastermind groups, hire an expert
coach, or read obscure books. You’d have to gather them, one by one, from different
sources and places and people.

That can take a lot of time – in many cases, years – to learn the strategies.

I gathered 21 of the most powerful expert and authority positioning strategies that you can use though – and am publishing them as a series of blog posts here.

Here is the first one: The Beacon Strategy

Expert and Authority Positioning Strategy #1: The Beacon Strategy

The Beacon Strategy involves being known and seen for something exceptional.

Seth Godin talked about the idea of a “Purple Cow.” A purple cow is remarkable because we don’t usually see purple cows. So people stop and pay attention to a purple cow, whereas they ignore all the ordinary black and white cows.

To get people to pay attention to you … be a purple cow.

Be exceptional. Do or be something remarkable, and let people see it.

Here are some examples:

• Bill Clinton charged US$400K for a speaking fee, making him probably the highest paid speaker in the world. Why could he charge those rates? Because he had a remarkable and outstanding former job – President of the United States of America, and “leader of the free world.”
• A leading figure in the coaching and training industry started her main business when she told her coach she was consistently getting close rates (sales) of 60% of the audience at live events. That was remarkable. Normal rates were more like 10 or maybe 20%. She refocused her business around her remarkable point of difference, and helping people get those higher close rates.
• Another leading sales trainer and business coach for experts had been in corporate sales, and regularly made corporate sales worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Compared to other other people teaching high ticket sales or sales skills for coaches, this was an exceptional and remarkable sales result.
• A friend of mine is a coach and advisor, who works with high net worth individuals in positions of high responsibility and charges them $1M to $3M – per person – for 10 month 1-1 coaching packages. That’s a remarkable and exceptional result for coaching sales. There is an extremely small percentage of coaches who make 1-1 coaching package sales at the million-dollar-plus level. When she teaches about high ticket sales, coaching high net worth clients, sales, or mindset, people pay attention because she has established credibility.

To apply the Beacon Strategy, you – or one or more of your clients – first have to achieve an exceptional, remarkable result, that stands out head-and-shoulders above what’s in the range of “normal.”

You (or they) have to win the gold medal – not “just” the silver or the bronze.

Then you position around that “beacon” result, and let the beacon shine. People will come towards it.

You can also apply the Beacon Strategy at the product level.

Raise one of your products up to the level of being the stand-out leader in its niche – the remarkable best-in-class product that everyone raves about.

Then position what you do around that “flagship” product or service, and add all your other products and services around your “flagship product” as cross-sells and up-sells.

How can you apply the Beacon Strategy in your business?

But the Beacon Strategy is not the only way to position yourself as an expert and authority.

The next strategy for positioning yourself as an expert and authority in your industry is the Ratcheting Up Strategy.