How does this relate to being a Chair and finding new members?

What does it mean to be an expert or thought-leader within your niche?

Is there any value in being perceived as an expert?

How much time does it take to establish yourself as an expert?

Do you have the tools, system, process to make your voice heard as an expert?

Benefits of being perceived as an expert

First, let’s talk about the benefits of being tagged as an expert or thought-leader in a particular subject matter:

• You get calls from reporters asking for interviews
• You get offered opportunities to be a guest on live radio shows, internet radio shows, and other blogs
• Your name gets passed around via WOM (word of mouth)
• Your reputation rocks! You’re “perceived” to be at the top of the pinnacle in comparison to your peer group
• Your target audience expands in terms of subscribers, followers, lurkers, stalkers who are interested in your content as a perceived “expert” and thought-leader
• Your personal brand and reputation precedes you – meaning you don’t have to “sell” yourself so hard anymore – you’re literally “pre-sold”
• Your “voice” carries a lot of weight – when you post blog articles, tweet, put something up on your Facebook wall, send an email to your list – people sit up and take notice that you have something special to say
• You begin to get calls from individuals seeking the opportunity to engage with you one-to-one. These people are interested in your services, products, and what you can offer them

That’s a pretty good list of benefits.

Investment of time to become an expert

Here’s a good question to ponder:

If you could on average 30 minutes a day – 5 days a week – for one year – to gain the benefits I describe above – would it be worth the time investment?

I can quantify the number of leads/opportunities I’ve converted into revenue that came from my “social media-on-line expert” presence. It’s roughly $50,000 – and that’s after only about 12-18 months of activity. My goal in the next 12 months is to move the needle to $100,000 in lead/referral conversation from my “presence” on-line.

Is having another $50-$100k in your pocket for 2.5 hours a week work the investment of time. There is no out-of-pocket cost – other than perhaps a small monthly charge for website hosting and the small monthly fees you might pay for a professional account on LinkedIn.

Chair’s advantage in becoming an expert?

As a Chair, you are in a unique and highly leveraged position.

First, you’ve got more expertise around leadership and management for entrepreneurial-middle market companies than any of your peers in a local community. Who are really competing against?

You are competing against the 2-3 other major formal CEO forums/education learning programs like TAB or YPO, you are competing against all the local business coaches that target CEOs as their clients, and you are competing for the CEOs attention when they are searching for FREE information on the Internet.

You’ve got so much content to share with potential CEOs for your group that I’m overwhelmed. You’ve got the LIBRARY chock full of great articles, you’ve got the 500 articles Speakers send you every month after they’ve presented to your group (guilty), you’ve got stories, case studies, and vignettes from your member experiences with speakers, one-to-one recommendations, and issue processing (sanitized of course to protect the innocent). If you’ve been a Chair for at least a year – you’ve probably got enough content to share every day for the next 10 years.

Secondly, you are in a precise, specific, constrained geographic area which “amplifies” your message since there is a limited and focused target group. For example, my focus is national – much harder competitive environment – because the message gets diluted when applied across the entire United States.

You have the ability to target, bombard, and overwhelm the local CEOs in your precise geography.

Imagine this success scenario one year from today

You are regarded as the “go-to” person for leadership and management expertise within your geography (let’s pick San Jose, CA as our focused geographic example).

What will happen in San Jose one year from today if you become perceived as one of the top experts in leadership and management (especially for the target size of businesses in your Vistage/TEC Group)?

• You’re getting lots of free pr through being asked to participate in interviews in the local business section of the newspaper – in fact, you’ve been offered a weekly column
• Your blog is one of the most popular and widely read by CEOs in the San Jose area
• Your tweets on twitter regarding management and leadership are frequently commented on and re-tweeted
• CEOs are emailing you and calling you for more information
• Your being invited to various CEO forums through San Jose, including business groups, trade groups, associations, and other gatherings of CEOs.
• You’ve published so much great content through your blog – you’ve now turned it into a book project through a ghost writer and the enhanced reputation as an author.
• The local universities around San Jose are asking you to be a guest lecturer in their MBA programs, and are featuring you as a key speaker when the sponsor leadership programs for their CEO community
• You are getting calls and requests to step onto various business, civic, and non-profit boards based on your leadership reputation

If this vision could come true over the next 12 months for a minimal investment of time, do you believe that it would generate enough great leads and referrals to keep your two CEO groups at full membership?

My guess is that you would have a waiting list of potential members!

How do you achieve this vision as an expert?

First step is to master all the fundamental elements of content creation and distribution, on-line networking, and social media for the purpose of attracting, engaging, and nurturing relationships with CEOs who could be potential members in your group.

What’s the solution for rapid learning/immediate implementation?

Take the 30 e-Course that I’ve created specifically for Chairs to master the use of social media and networking to build a referral and lead generation machine that creates an abundance of potential members raising their hands to be part of your group.

If you would like to take the e-Course, send me a note through our contact form by clicking here. There is a little good news and bad news I should mention before you agree to sign up for the e-Course. The good news is that it’s FREE. The bad news is that for 30 days – 4 weeks – you must be willing to commit 5-10 hours per week to complete the homework assignments.

I look forward to your participation in the e-Course and learning that one year from today, you have been given numerous awards from Vistage/TEC for your ability to sustain full group membership with low turnover.

Barry Deutsch