In business today, it is pretty common to hear someone tell you, “I’m just looking for new clients” or “We’ll do anything,” or “We are just looking for opportunities.”
Something like that…am I right?
But this really is a failure that can become fatal without too much time passing if you aren’t careful.
Why is this a problem? People want business, right?
While it is true that you or me can do all kinds of things, we can’t and don’t do “everything” or “anything” but in too many cases, our marketing and sales efforts don’t reflect that.
And that is where the challenge comes in…
To be truly effective at your marketing and sales efforts, you have to focus at some point…sooner is better, now is best.
Because if you try to make everyone your market, then absolutely no one is your market.
So, how do you focus on a market?
1. You have to understand the value that you want to deliver:
This is all really on you.
Think about it like this, I’m really good at smoking meats on my barbecue, but if someone calls me up and asks me how much it will be to cook him and his family a BBQ dinner, I am likely to tell him that I am a consultant that focuses on turning around and increasing revenue, not a chef.
But if I were just to do anything, I would say sure…its $300 and materials or whatever.
So you have to focus and say what value it is that you are looking to create for your clients and prospects and focus on that.
Do you want to improve your clients marketing? The value from their IT systems? Protect them from unwarranted law suits?
Whatever it is, focus on that.
2. Understand who your buyer is and what is important to that buyer:
We can all get trapped in that little trap of taking meetings with people.
Hell, it gets lonely sometimes, right?
But taking a meeting and advancing a sale or reaching a market or different things.
To help you focus on your market, you have to understand who your buyer is and what is important to that buyer.
Remember this: What’s in it for me is the key to your buyers…not you, but the buyer.
So if they are worried about making their quarterly sales target, how does your value relieve that stress.
If there are technical challenges brought on by poor infrastructure planning, what do you do about that?
Whatever it is, find out what is meaningful to the buyer and focus on that and how your value improves their position.