Читать книгу Oversubscribed - Daniel Priestley - Страница 26

Owning the relationship with buyers in your market leads to a market imbalance. If people don't shop around they eventually cluster and the business becomes oversubscribed. Have you ever stopped to think whom you might use as an alternative to your accountant? Is your accountant even number one? Does he/she charge a lot more than others, is he/she about the same as others – or is he/she a lot cheaper?

If you haven't actively considered these questions before – and most people haven't – it is because your accountant owns the relationship with you and you have stopped shopping around for alternatives. If accountants can build up more and more clients like you over time, they will earn a very good income from their oversubscribed practice.

You can turn yourself into an influencer in the market or you can align to an existing influencer whom people listen to for advice rather than shopping around. This is the reason that Roger Federer gets paid millions to endorse products, why restaurants bend over backwards for food critics or why mutual funds court the favour of financial advisors. All of these people have an existing market listening to their advice.

Why shop around for tennis gear when I know what racket Roger Federer uses? Why try all the restaurants in London when I could just go to the one that was rated five stars by a famed food critic? Why try to understand financial markets when my trusted financial planner has all the answers?

Relationships can eventually be formalised through contracts. When shopping around for phone plans, people waste hours of their life trying to understand the difference between “Go Time,” “Stop the Clock” and “Mega Minutes.” When a person finally signs a contract with a carrier, something strange happens the very next day – they don't see any more ads because the carrier owns the relationship through a contractual agreement. The more contracts a carrier can sign, the more valuable and profitable it will be.

Owning the relationship is a powerful way to become oversubscribed – and there are three ways to do this:

 Become more influential – Improve your ability to enroll others in your ideas and projects or align to those who can.

 Become better known – Widen your appeal through media, events, publicity and other brand‐building activities.

 Get deals in place – Create lasting agreements with clients and formalise them into a contract.