Focusing on Your Act
I recently read about an exchange between Jerry Seinfeld and an aspiring comedian. The young comedian approached Seinfeld and asked him for advice about marketing himself and getting more publicity.
Seinfeld’s answer? Just focus on your act.
It’s easy to take that kind of thinking at face value and commit yourself to your craft. Screw marketing and sales - do great work and clients will come. I can agree with the sentiment there. But I think it overlooks two things:
If you run an agency your “act” is now different than it was when you were a practitioner.
The “act” is not neatly separable from marketing and sales - and that’s a good thing.
Let’s dive deeper.
Client Work is No Longer Your Only Work
The idea of your work speaking for itself is a wonderful fantasy.
It may be true when you are producing client work and are trying to get hired or promoted but it's an incomplete picture of generating new business for an agency.
Yes, your most powerful tools for bringing in new clients are your case studies and work product. But it’s very rare for potential clients to stumble across these examples organically. As an agency leader, our most important job remains ensuring the quality of client work (that will never change) but finding ways to bring in new business is a close second.
Just focusing on your “act” surely now means attentiveness to sales, marketing, and your differentiated positioning.
Deep focus is Marketing and Sales
If you’re an expert in your space, you should be constantly evolving your approach and refining your skills. Creating good thought leadership is a forcing function for this. And making the painful commitment (time and energy) to do it the right way creates a double-benefit.
Simply put, good thought leadership improves your act and drives new business.
The act of writing (or recording, if audio or video is your channel) should be hard, because doing it right requires deep focus and reflection. You will improve your practice and create deal opportunities when you commit to exploring a focus area or niche with a fine tooth comb. Clients will love it and your value proposition will become crystal clear. Remember, expertise comes in the process and not before it.
I will note that it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking we’re putting out beneficial thought leadership when in reality we’re spewing mediocrity. In order to improve your work and attract new clients, your thinking needs to advance past the current discourse or gain a new level of specificity. There are more thoughts on how to do that here and here.
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So yes, focus on your act with intensity. But don’t harbor illusions that your act doesn’t include marketing and sales, in fact, they’re one and the same.
