What is Your Practice’s Greatest Weakness?

The good news is your practice doesn’t have one! 

The better news is asking that question is a great way to open up powerful, new opportunities. In this article I’ll offer a rock solid plan to have your practice be the very best it can be.

It all begins with your brand. Is your brand really working for you and your clients? It will, but only if it contains two important elements. The first is a clear definition of your market. The second is your promise of the specific value you pledge to deliver to every client.

Those two elements are tied to your clients’ career fields. If your brand isn’t aligned with those fields, you’ll produce a general résumé—a near useless document.

Let me offer my own brand as an example of folding in both elements: 

“I help rising, senior, and very senior executives win the careers they’ve always deserved, get paid with their worth, and reduce the stress of the job search.”

My market is clear. And I know precisely what I’ve signed up for. I will only work with people who hold senior leadership positions in any career field. I’m also committed to support people in all three economic sectors: private, non-profit, and public. Finally I am committed to assist clients worldwide.

Let’s look at what I promised item by item. Since I pledged to help my clients win the career they’ve always deserved, I must qualify them very carefully. That’s easy when I see people who don’t qualify. Those would include job seekers who have slacked off or have unrealistic expectations.

I promise my clients they would get paid what they are worth. “Paid” is shorthand for the entire compensation package. Said another way I’m going to help them win a reasonable salary (or commissions), perks, benefits, bonuses, and severance. Beyond that I pledge to help them find and thrive in a supportive corporate climate. 

I also pledged to reduce the stress of their job search. Almost all our clients are influenced by two major stress-producing factors. First is not understanding the serious limitations of artificial intelligence (AI). The second is what I call “folklore.” Let’s examine each one.

AI uses the large language model. It searches millions and millions of résumés to find what it considers the best. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those documents were never successful. The result is predictable. AI will guide people to produce résumés that look like too many others. The frustration builds because those job seekers don’t know why they aren’t moving forward. In addition, AI has no sense of empathy, no code of conduct. Users are on their own. No wonder they soon become disenchanted. (What a great opportunity for your marketing campaign!)

“Folklore” produces the same results. The trap is endless searching for so-called “key words.” Those are collections of nice sounding adjectives, traits, or responsibilities. All they really define are the minimum standards. No one would hire somebody who wasn’t… 

“An executive with an exceptional record of success…turning around underperforming organizations…delivering strategies to facilitate growth…excels at leading enterprise-level change…and streamlining processes to increase efficiency.…”

Your advantage is offering clients your wisdom. When we apply advanced techniques we replace uncertainty with confidence.

So let’s use the same techniques that serve your clients so well to bolster your practice. Using your brand as a guideline, describe what your practice would look like if it were the very best it could be. Be as specific as you can. 

Your brand must meet your needs as well your clients’. That’s why you include your preferences in the expanded version of your brand. Theoretically, doing everything for every client might serve them well, but if that required working 70 hours every week, the cost may be too high.

Now compare what your practice looks like today with your ideal model. You’re seeking deficits between the two. Your next steps are now very clear: what must you do to fill those wisdom and knowledge shortfalls?

Formal training and certification programs often meet the need. But before you invest time and money in any of them, ask the provider this key question: “If I completed your training or earned your certification, what would I be able to do at the end of that effort I couldn’t do at the beginning?” You are looking for solid answers. If you get generalities, you’re seeing a program that’s not well put together, not worth your time or money.

PARWCC offers a huge variety of articles, tools, and exercises to help you gain the knowledge you need. One of the most powerful resources is our annual conference. If you haven’t yet looked at what Thrive25! offers (https://www.thrive.show/) do so, keeping the knowledge you need uppermost in your mind.

Now your brand adds real coherence to your plan. It tells you how you are going to benefit your clients with new wisdom. And it is all measured against the market included in your brand statement.

Even if you can’t serve a potential client because they aren’t in your brand, you can still provide value. Refer that jobseeker to a colleague. Your win is the 15% referral fee for very little work. The colleague to whom you referred gets a new client. The client wins because you arranged a great match between their needs and your colleague’s capability.

To make this article valuable please consider this homework. Write out your brand. Are you serving the best market as you define “best?” What’s keeping your practice from being the best it could ever be? Which resources do you need to close the gaps?

Improving your practice is much like what you do for your clients and offers the same kind of returns on investments. Let me illustrate.

Why should my clients pay me $1,200 for a résumé and cover letter? Because I know my brand so well, I know most clients make about $200,000 a year. Every week they aren’t employed at that level costs them the $3,800 they didn’t earn. If I can cut their job search by just two days they will have made up their investment before their first day in the new job.

Suppose you’re research shows it will cost you $5,000 to get the capabilities you need. And suppose you charge $500 for a résumé. You will have made up your investment once you’ve sold ten such documents. Do you write two résumés a week? You’ll recoup your investment in just five weeks, about a tenth of a year.

If you think $5,000 is too much, wait till you do the math if you don’t spend that money. You’ll continue to lose potential earnings every day from now on.

So, I suppose your practice could have a greatest weakness after all. 

That would be not having your brand deliver all the value it can to you, to your clients, and to our industry.