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Sunday, 1 October 2017

Make Your Own Lane: Top Three Portfolio Mistakes

One of our clients from India needed assistance regarding the following:

1] Move up the value chain for existing clients
2] Research other segments of IT market where the company can get ongoing work that can be billed per hour basis and continuous engagement throughout the year. Fundamentally they wanted to improve and expand ITES business to other segments of market in USA and other countries
3] Team size was 100+ engineering graduates and therefore resource optimization was their third ask.

Now as a consultant, even if you provide solutions, you cannot measure the outcomes of your recommendations unless the basics are taken care.

For example, this company had Web Designing as one of their service offering

1] How can you possibly go up the value chain?
2] How can you get a foothold in new markets with additional services?
3] How can you exploit the true potential of your resources?

If your website looks like it was created by an amateur or a recent graduate.

1] How will the testimonials in the website make any difference?
2] How will the case study you uploaded in website transfer trust and conviction to your prospects?
3] How will your human resources have that basic sense of pride when the most critical marketing tool - the website does not meet industry standards?

If website designing is your service offering and your own company website is not a great example of your creativity and designing abilities – why should a prospect even bother considering you or your services for their business?

Even if you share multiple logos in your website that you already worked with, it does very little to build that confidence in a prospect’s mind when your own website is poorly designed.

Mistake 1: Poor examples

I know someone who recently began consulting and picked the easiest business available today (Most amateurs think this can be a one man business and you do not even need a garage to get started) - Digital Marketing

I am observing his online behavior – Here are my first impressions

1] An incomplete website for more than two months
2] Presence in multiple face book groups and presence – dropping the same message
3] Providing freebies to build credibility, which is basically sourced from experts, not hinting at any personal value add - except postman services.
4] A slide share done in a hurry with multiple errors
5] There is no blog
6] Twitter is Crowdfire managed and has followers not remotely relevant to his business
7] Articles published in LinkedIn is not relevant to digital marketing. If those were written before the business started, there is no point adding them in Quora to establish digital expertise
8] Random use of multiple mediums and forums 

Structured, organized and consistent efforts to build your own digital profile is not only a great example to instill confidence in your prospect’s mind, it reflects a degree of maturity, even if you are new entrant in the market.

Mistake 1:  Poor example of marketing his portfolio digitally
Mistake 2:  Futile multiple attempts to behave like legends when you are actually still learning to hold the rope

It is perfectly alright to take time to be doubly sure about your business idea and long term intentions before you quit your posh job to bootstrap your startup.

What is not alright is switching industry and intentions at the drop of an eyelid – Your decision fluctuates because while you want to start a business, your online presence talks about your primary occupation – your livelihood. 

Mistake 3: To let the potential of making money drive your business appetite

Why should your Facebook profile show former Vice President, XYZ Company when you are trying to be a retreat specialist or spa therapist as part of your startup idea

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com to have our team review your portfolio and share perspectives/call out scope for improvement


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