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Remember Cat’s Cradle? How to Use It to Build Your Advocacy Practice
Just back at my desk after the last of this Fall’s (2013) three APHA workshops, this one held in Los Angeles – another great experience meeting so many passionate, inspirational advocates and soon-to-be advocates…. As those who took the marketing workshop learned – one of the most important things we should do is to measure the effectiveness and client satisfaction of our work once it’s completed. To accomplish that, after each of the workshops, I surveyed attendees to see what they found most useful and to understand what didn’t work so well, too. The results: The answers varied. Many cited as most useful the business workshop’s session on how to price your services using their value as the foundation. Others mentioned marketing by focusing on benefits instead of services. Some advocates appreciated the more in-depth information about maximizing their web presence. Still others finally understand how to get a client to say “yes” to a contract. But there was one element that was mentioned most often among almost 150 surveys. Networking! The great majority of attendees loved the networking opportunities. This came as NO surprise to me. None. In fact, it’s the sole reason I trekked all over the country to hold these workshops in person instead of merely developing online learning modules. Just like the post I shared a few weeks ago about high tech, high touch, and the reasons advocates are successful in their work, individual advocates, and those who aspire to opening a practice, benefited a great deal from meeting each other, comparing notes, asking questions, finding like-minded individuals, and realizing they aren’t alone in their quests to build private practices. The results of that great networking – a variety of cat’s cradle-like outcomes: In some cases two or more advocates came together with complementary skills and will begin referring their clients when the services they need are better offered by the other person. Several times I met an advocate in one location who, because of similar interests, I could then introduce to an advocate in another location so they could share ideas. Lisa from New Hampshire…
