A few clients in a certain industry is not a niche. Neither is a service that you provide to clients who are either high-maintenance or not likely to engage you for other services.

Niche development has resurfaced as a way for professionals to differentiate themselves, but few have clarified their niches or the process to pursue more business in them. It is not the same as cross-selling and it’s not just about identifying clients with similar characteristics.

When identifying a true niche, we have found that it has several characteristics. And there are ways of promoting a niche that require awareness and strategy for your entire firm.

What is a Niche?

A niche can either be a specific service or expertise you provide or a type of client/industry segment to whom you offer tremendous expertise and value. You need to be clear about whether you will categorize your niches by service/practice area or client/industry segment. You can certainly identify your core services and types of clients, but to qualify as a niche they must have these qualities:

Your People “Get It” – Your people know so much about this area that they add immediate value. Their experience is deep and they require no onboarding to speak the client’s language and proactively support them.

Price Is Rarely A Factor – Clients don’t cite price as their reason for choosing you. They have a high demand for your team and experience.

Clients are Your A-List – You want to clone these clients because they recognize your value and they buy additional services from you. They are your strategic foundation.

Competitors Envy You – They wish they had the depth of expertise that you have in this area and the caliber of clients. When they hear your name, they think of a specific service or client base.

Thinking about a niche in this way probably rules out a lot of what your firm offers as well as the types of clients you work with right now. Developing a niche is a long-term proposition. There is a fair amount of risk involved to put your chips so heavily into one or a few baskets. But in an economy where professionals are screaming, “I don’t want to look like a commodity!!” it could pay dividends down the road to take a very close look at the true potential for niches in your firm.

What is Not a Niche?

Firms will often have one person who is so good at a certain thing that leadership starts calling their service area a niche. The problem with one star service provider is that your star can leave or retire. One trusted advisor is not a niche. To have a true niche, you need to train and develop several people to serve it for the foreseeable future.

You also don’t have a niche if your entire firm is not aware of it. t You can’t build a niche in business valuations for farmers or in construction law unless everyone — from administration to leadership — can talk about why you are the best.

Finally, a niche is not something you are fearful of growing, either due to the level of your internal expertise or concerns about the potential client base. You need to commit to staff development and leadership in this niche, emphasize it in your sales pipeline, promote it in your brand messages and marketing and speak about it in publicity.

If you don’t truly believe — passionately — that your team is the best in this area and the clients you could serve are the best for you, then it’s NOT a niche.

Can You Aspire to a Niche?

Of course! That’s the fun part about growing a firm. But you must create a different mindset to business development. It is not about sales. It is about identifying the clients you most want to work with, the services you most want to provide and the career you most want to develop. Be as proactive with the vision for your business as you are with your clients.

Get over the fear that clients “can’t afford it.” If it’s something worthwhile, can they afford not to afford it? Selling only occurs when your agenda is more important than theirs. Knowing your clients’ businesses well enough to proactively suggest some areas where they can benefit from professional advice is helping, not selling.

Here are other things to consider when clarifying and developing a niche:

Educate your staff. As a partner in a firm or the lead on a client, you can’t know everything (unless no one else is doing any work), so it is up to you and other leaders to educate the staff who work on the client about the various services your firm offers now — but also how to identify services you can develop to help them long-term.

One of the most important barriers to helping clients grow is a lack of knowledge about other service areas your firm offers or could offer. Create “Service Spotlight” cheat sheets for the staff to use. Put together a synopsis of the service, how it benefits the clients, the team to go to and five questions the staff can ask to identify if there is a need.

Even better, have the service team leader come into a meeting and talk about a success story. Stories work the best when educating the staff. They have to understand the needs a client may have and the resources the firm has to solve problems. Most professionals get into their “silos” of knowledge early – education is the way to help them service their clients better.

Sell internally first. Be the inside sales person. If you have a specialty, then first work the inside of the firm. Make sure everyone knows the importance of this service. Tell stories about how your service benefited the client. To get to the firm’s clients, you must first promote the service internally. It is your job to help your whole team understand your specialized area and know how to spot the clients you can help. It is not the team’s job to read your brochure at night and recommend specialized services based on little knowledge.

I worked at a firm a few years ago that was trying to get their financial services division up and running. They started by working with their own clients and then communicating successes. The partners within the financial division slowly built their book of business and trust among the other partners.

Focus on expansion. Most incentive plans that I have seen do not pay for expanding services and I believe this is a huge mistake. It is so much more difficult to bring in new business; work on your existing clients and find out if you are doing all that you should or could be doing to help your clients succeed.  Consider this client survey that correlates to the number of services a client buys with how likely they are to stay with a firm.

1 service = 12%
2 services = 28%
3 services = 61%
4 services = 74%
5 or more services = 98% retention

As the results show, if a client is buying five or more services a year, they are basically a “client for life.” When they are only receiving one service, then only about 12% of these clients will still be with a firm four years later. This speaks to the trust growth between clients and their service providers and the commitment the providers have to understanding how to help their clients.

Talk to clients/prospects. Use agendas at client meetings. Be specific about what you want to address with the client – create the environment for them to think in a direct manner, instead of merely asking, “How’s business?” or “Is there anything we can do for you?” An agenda keeps you focused.

Use a client service checklist. These can be filled out when the client service manager/partner in charge of the client has a few minutes to review their file and to think about the client. Since they are simple questions, client team members can also review it and see if there are any opportunities.

Invite a technical expert to a business development meeting. They may ask different questions about the prospect’s business than a partner. This might include a marketing director, an IT specialist or someone in a service area other than your own.

Allocate resources. It takes nonbillable time and money to grow a niche. Once you have identified some opportunities that are worth the long-term investment, you’ll have to back it up with continuing skill development, messaging, visibility and sales. This is the time to invest in a strategy to get out of the blocks quickly and start realizing returns.

If you look at the history of any firm that dominates a niche market, you will often find this domination based on one or two people who became the famous “go to” people in that industry. Everyone in the industry knows that when you have certain kinds of problems you “go to” this person. The “go to” person is quoted in the press about the industry, asked to speak at industry events and maintains a high profile with the local and national associations. The “go to” person has probably even written a book.

A lot of firms are known for certain niches, but very few have cracked the fame code —  the household name for agribusiness accounting or the “go to” immigration attorney. And as more firms work at niche marketing, it is going to get harder to gain that fame.

Many smart and strategic firms remain at the most basic level of recognition, which I call “visibility.” Your people show up (this does not mean sign up; it means show up), meet people, write articles and offer to speak. You sponsor an event and now you also have to advertise in the niche market newsletter or publications. If you are personally charismatic and connect well with people, this may be enough to gain some measure of fame. If you are not, you had better add more strategy and focus.

My first choice when riding the niche train to fame is through public speaking. When you have a toehold in a niche and are looking for domination, speaking is probably the easiest way to both gain the reputation as an expert and develop personal relationships in the niche.

If  You Speak It, Own It
However, doing a few “pretty good” speeches or being on a panel or two is not going to cut it. The competition is tougher and you just have to be better.

When Ingenuity helps someone get famous through speaking, we start with strategy and follow up with integrated implementation toward the goals.

You need a purpose. Most of our clients speak in order to develop business for their firms. That’s pretty generic. Decide on the true reason for your speaking — which services you want to promote and why you are convinced that people need them. The best speakers have a passion for their topic. You need to truly believe that you are making a difference and can help people with what you share.

You need a goal. Start with your end in mind clearly or you will be giving away a lot of nice, free information to people who may not care and may never buy your services. I cannot tell you how many CPAs, financial advisors and attorneys I have seen give away the store in their public speeches. Because they are trained to be experts, they tend to give away all their knowledge in the PowerPoint, leaving the audience with no appetite for more. I am not saying you should do a hard sales approach; that never works. But a thoughtful approach to your topics and your purpose along with the desire to track your results will show what works pretty fast.

Create a list of organizations filled with the kinds of people who can buy your services.  You need to find out when these organizations have conferences, what they are looking for and how their speaking decisions are made. Decide which audiences you will charge a fee to and which you will not, as well as how you will develop leads from speaking. Always pass out an evaluation form to qualify leads.

You need packaging. A great photo, a speaker bio and a list of topics and audiences will help you sell yourself to groups of people who do not know you. You need a great package with compelling topics in order to get in front of the decision makers you want.

A speaking coach can smooth away your nervous tics, train you to take off your nametag and shorten your Powerpoint, and most importantly help you create something dynamic and unique for your audience. If your speaking style is shaky, you might need to invest six months at Toastmasters. Tape your speeches and make yourself watch them for improvement.

You need a platform. Start pitching tidbits of fresh information and ideas from the services you most want to sell and/or are passionate about. This needs to be done regularly as many organizations are staffed by volunteers who may take a while to make decisions. Try to tie those topics to the pains of your audience. You can’t create a platform outlining the services of your firm…speaking must address the pains and needs of an audience, provide insight on industry trends and a certain level of recommendations and solutions that tie to your services.

Platforms are the subtle art of public speaking. Your goal is new business, but your platform is about showcasing your knowledge and awareness of audience pains and potential solutions. Through your visibility and credibility as a smart and informed speaker, you’re on your way to fame.