In this article, we discuss the challenges faced by leadership consultants in growing their businesses and identify the author services they can use to get their publishing careers going.
Authorship is one of the most effective marketing tools that’s still under-utilised by consultants and professionals in the leadership training sector. Moreover, for training centers grappling with the competitiveness of their market, effective book publication can serve as a long-term strategy. It provides a significant edge over competitors for years to come.
The job of leadership trainers and experts is to provide effective training. The advice given to rising figureheads and managers are supposed to up-skill and maximise their strengths as company executives and team heads. It’s one of the most human-centric, information-heavy sectors. The more established firms are able to consistently find and retain their business relationships with top-tier clients. However, the small to mid sized groups struggle with consistency and getting a larger slice of the pie.
Some of the growth challenges that leadership consultants encounter include:
- Transitioning from boutique to a mid- or large-scale service provider. Smaller firms may struggle to meet client requirements due to communication gaps, difficulties in finding quality hires, or retaining talent. This leads to less than stellar results, which then becomes the cause for cancellation of the project or the project not starting at all.
- Finding their niche expertise in the industry. While the firm can provide the same full services as their competitors, they’re unable to pick 1-2 niche services that they can highlight and convert the prospects with more specific needs.
- Surpassing their own “credibility ceiling.” In many industries, top companies have established credibility over the years through factors such as size, quality of services validated by positive reviews and repeat orders, association with key figures and brands, and effective marketing.
Compared to overhauling your organisation and your business model, punching through your credibility ceiling is the more practical challenge to take on—not only will it cost much less, but you won’t have to disrupt your operations to make it happen. If you are a constant contender and you wonder if there’s an effective way you could penetrate the top tier even on a modest marketing budget, brand upgrade through corporate authorship or publishing a leadership book under one of your representatives is a worthy investment that has the potential to give you high return on investment.
authorship for Leadership EXPERTS
There are two types: corporate authorship or individual authorship. Corporate authorship is a collective endeavour, in the sense that the book represents the company. Meanwhile, individual authorship is publishing a book under an individual’s name. This person can be the CEO or one of the managers and they may or may not be directly promoting the company or brand in the book. Regardless, the objective of publishing the book is to increase the legitimacy, credibility and image of the company it is linked to.
Now let’s play a little game. Below are some thought-leadership books. By only looking at the covers (no cheating), can you guess which books were done to promote a specific company or brand?
You might be thinking, “That sounds like a trick question,” and you’re absolutely right, because they all are essentially business-oriented thought-leadership books!
If to you they don’t seem to have common traits, well that’s exactly the benefit of coming out with a book for a company or brand. You can either make a straightforward manual or a how-to book. Or you can go the route that Ray Kroc, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk all took, which was to highlight their business success by telling their life story, and both ways would be correct.
Other benefits of HAVING A Book
Being a published leadership author opens more doors for you and your company. First, as a business and public figure, every bit of boost goes a long way and authoring a book would give you tons that would last for many years.
Second, the book release gives huge free PR to your business. With proper marketing strategies put in place, you can seek free promotion from business news outfits, which is automatic exposure for your business.
Next, having a well-written, quality book raises your credibility and authority in your industry for good. Prepare for invites to speaking engagements from now on.
Additionally, if done in a recurring fashion, books can fuel your business mailing list that keeps you connected with your clients. The contents of the books can churn excerpts and offshoot ideas to share with your already engaged database, thereby elevating your authority further.
On a more personal side, a book is something tangible to leave to your colleagues and loved ones forever, even after you retire. They can learn from your ideas, principles, and legacy. And they can reread them whenever they feel like it and share it with their colleagues or pass it down to their children.
Lastly depending on the book concept, it could be an additional major revenue stream. If you manage to incorporate the book into your training programs, having it can increase the value of your service.
Author Services for ConsultantS
TRUTH: Self-publishing (as in you, the consultant, fund the publication of your book) is still a complicated business. But the biggest upside to this is not only do you have full control over the final version of the book, you also get all the royalties after every sale.
Depending on who you choose to work with—a ghostwriter, editor, designer, printer, or marketer—once you understand the differences of every stage, it will be easier. You become fully immersed in the process and the whole journey for you as the author/publisher becomes even more enjoyable and fulfilling.
To give you an idea of the steps to becoming self-published, here are the main author services leadership consultants can take advantage of:
1. Ghostwriting
Sometimes you have all your ideas written down, but it’s still a giant mess. You need professional help to craft those ideas into more coherent, engaging sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. A professional ghostwriter with some experience in writing about your industry can be the difference between a book that nobody ends up reading and a quality book that sells.
2. Editing
Assuming you send your finished manuscript to an editor or self-publishing service provider, they may provide several types of editing.
- Developmental/Structural/Substantive Editing: Checks the broad picture, overall direction, POV, characters, plots, scene, and pace of the storytelling. To be clear, even though you have a nonfiction book, the narrative is still crucial.
- Line and Copy Editing: Checks the style and structure of the sentences, the choice of words, their overall clarity, accuracy, and readability.
- Proofreading: Checks the grammar, spelling, punctuation, spacing, and formatting.
3. Cover Design
Nothing can be more criminal than sleeping on the cover design. People do judge books by their cover. Invest in a designer who knows your genre.
4. MarketinG
Depending on how you plan to make the books available, as in whether they can be bought on your website or on platforms like Amazon, it’s worth creating buzz months before the book launch. Running ads on social media and announcing it to your mailing list can gather pre-orders, which is automatic revenue even before publication.
5. Formatting, File Creation (Print & Ebook)
Again, depending on whether you sell through your website, through an online marketplace, or your events, it’s important to seek professional assistance on this step to make sure that your book doesn’t have any layout errors or misprints. And even when you’ve hired a formatter, you must request a proof copy from your printer pre-publication. You’d be surprised with how many self-published books’ first print run resulted in stretched-out or upside-down covers!
6. Printing
After you’ve sent your files to your printer, you’re tempted to pat yourself on the back. But you can’t just yet because you still have some work to do. You need to keep marketing your book. If you did your book well, this stage would be effortless, because you’d be confident to show it off to your colleagues at events and perhaps even reach out to a few business media outfits for free PR.
Conclusion
Think about the most prominent people that you look up to in their respective industries. It is likely you would find that they have a published book or two under their belt already.
Because in reality, this transformation is how a rising CEO becomes a Trusted Figurehead, a Public Servant becomes an Inspiring Leader, and a Celebrity becomes a Bankable Brand.
In summary, getting published is something that every leadership consultant or business should consider exploring, for five reasons:
- To elevate your business further to the public
- For legacy-building—a gift to your colleagues, followers, family, and to yourself
- For brand enhancement—to show a new side to your image or clear up some bad publicity or misconception
- For a more personal touch—a book is more raw, more authentic, and more permanent than a fleeting advertisement
- It can be money-generating—whether as the product itself or as part of your portfolio
And after ample marketing and selling done you’ve found that the company has gotten additional inbound leads and revenue from new avenues and unfamiliar sources, it’s likely that you’re now experiencing the long-tail effect of a much-improved credibility. Don’t stop. Ride it—make more books. Sell to another audience. Consider your book project a proven successful marketing investment.
And of course, pat yourself on the back for being a legitimate published author.
Caret Publishing is a small press and imprint of niche non-fiction. Feel free to send us your manuscript or a proposal if you have an idea for a book. Go to Submit Your Work for more details.
Caret also provides select author services for aspiring self-publishers. Go to our Author Services page for more information.