I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. – Bill Cosby
Selling today is not about broad coverage and bombing every known venue with your sales pitch. That is a surefire way to come across as noise, especially since the internet is filled with more content than we have ever consumed in past decades.
No, success today is about being specific, not broad. It is about targeting and ensuring your message is reaching your audience with precision. If you play the popularity game, you will experience Cosby’s truism – trying to please everybody leads to failure. That is because you will be noise; you cannot be differentiated from everyone else shouting to the masses. You are irrelevant.
The game for winning the sale today is about focus and thinking smaller. It requires a commitment to the few, not the many. You may be able to spam the world, but at what cost? You will get blacklisted by Google, put into spam folders and utterly ignored. Gimmicks will not cut it. The world will filter you out.
Instead of acting desperate and trying to win everyone, how about connecting with your fans – the people who can say, “Yes,” and act on an engaging dialogue. They are your fans. And here’s how to get focused on connecting with them:
- Name the numbers. In the next year, how many new customers will you have, if you did things right? This is working backwards. If it is 10, 100, or 1000, it is far less than the universe holds. Write this down. Then name how many “No’s” you will have to get to the “Yes” people. 100 new customers may mean 500 total opportunities.
- Break it down monthly. If you will have 100 new customers, then that is about 8 new sales per month. 8 is your monthly number to focus on.
- Profile your customer. From the example, if 8 is your number, who are these customers? They are likely the same customers you have. What is it about them that makes them your customer?
- Create a buying process for the few. Now that you have a more manageable number, identify why people buy from you. This is hard thought, but it’s likely right under your nose. If you can’t answer this clearly, then you are going to miss. Nail this and it constitutes how you connect. Build a buying process that appeals to why your prospects buy and connect accordingly. The ones that matter are only the few, not the many.
In essence, you are working backwards. You are cutting out the fat. Your true audience is what matters. Ensure your inbound marketing and sales process align towards buying by true buyers.
It is about thinking smaller. It takes out the vague thinking which plagues the failures. The cost, otherwise, is becoming obscure and inconsequential. Everyone is not your buyer. Act accordingly.
How can you start to think smaller? Feel free to comment below.
