Clear Message Archives

3 Reasons Your Sales May Be Flat

by Bill Poole | Aug 22, 2023 | Sales

Unlocking Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses by Overcoming Sales Barriers

Sales is a barrier to growth for a lot of entrepreneurial businesses. Understanding how to break through that barrier can be very challenging. How can you do it? Some common thoughts that go through your mind might be:

Do I have the right people in place?
Are we taking the right approach?
Do I need to document my processes?
Do I need to improve my scorecard?

Many of these things can be helpful, but acting on these questions may lead you down the wrong road because you may not be addressing the root cause of the problem. Many times, the challenges are more foundational.

Three questions you should ask yourself before acting on one of those questions are:

Do I clearly understand my ideal client and the outcomes they want from their business?
Are my uniques/differentiators/value proposition aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
Is the path to realizing our value clear for my ideal clients?

Let’s explore these questions in more depth so that you can have a better understanding of what the root cause of your challenge might be.

Do I have a clear understanding of what my Ideal Clients want?

If your ideal client profile is too broad, it can weaken your message and make it challenging to reach your entire market. Honing your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has two huge benefits:

It strengthens your message – a tighter ICP makes it easier to create a message that resonates.
It allows you to be more effective with your limited sales and marketing budget – simply stated, investing the same amount on a smaller pool of more qualified prospects that your business is more optimized to serve yields better results.

Your ICP should include the high-level outcomes that Ideal Clients want from their business. This helps you align your offerings and also create messaging that hits the mark.

Are my differentiators/uniques aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?

The ideal state is that you have some uniques or differentiators that directly align with your Ideal Clients’ desired outcomes. In its purest sense, if you uniquely position your services to satisfy your ideal clients’ desired outcomes, sales, and marketing can be like shooting fish in a barrel.

This is a lot harder in businesses that operate in a competitive market. The EOS™ 3 Uniques concept states that, while some companies might share a unique or two, the ideal state is that no other business offers all three.

If you are in a market that is challenging to differentiate, then clearly connecting your services to your Ideal Client’s desired outcomes might be the best thing you can do to differentiate.

Is the path to value clear for my ideal clients?

The path to value has a lot of interchangeable terms:

Client Journey
Proven Process in the EOS world
Client Experience

Regardless of what you call it, the keys to leveraging the concept to win more are the same:

Tightly integrate your uniques into the journey
Make it clear how your Ideal Clients navigate their path to value
Brand your Client Journey and use it as a tool to connect with your Ideal Clients

As Donald Miller says, “… if you confuse, you lose.” Clearly communicating your Ideal Client’s path to value will not only help you speak to prospects and clients, it will also help you align your team to deliver the journey that you desire.

Conclusion

This should help you better understand the root cause of your barrier to sales. If you are able to resolve these questions with good answers, then the next step is to look at your systems and people and build your growth assets.

Read more on how to identify your ideal client profile.
Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.

#entrepreneurialbusiness #salesbarriers #idealclient

Buyer’s Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Outcomes

by Bill Poole | Jun 13, 2019 | Marketing

What you sell and what your clients buy may be two very different things. We think we sell products and services. What our clients really buy is outcomes.

Theodore Levitt, the father of modern marketing put it brilliantly: “People don’t buy drill bits, they buy holes.”

Your prospects don’t want to buy products, they want outcomes. For example, business owners don’t buy color printers, they buy color printouts. If you boil that down even further, they don’t really buy color prints. If they are printing invoices, what they are buying is the ability to collect money faster from their customers. If they are printing marketing material, what they are buying is competitive advantage and business growth. (more…)

How To Make Your Message Appetizing in a Bland Market

by Bill Poole | Jun 6, 2019 | Marketing

Having grown up in Canada, I love maple syrup. I remember Saturday mornings at the sugar farm. Each spring right as the snow was beginning to melt we’d head out into a grove of maple trees.

Each tree had a spigot with a small bucket attached. Sweet sap would drip into the bucket. We’d gather that buckets of sap and bring them the sugar shack.

Straight out of the tree, maple sap tastes like water with a few granules of sugar. When it’s distilled, delicious maple syrup emerges. It takes about 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. It’s no wonder that maple syrup is so valuable—and tastes so good. (more…)

What Would Happen If You Told Your Prospects What Types Of Clients You Want To Serve?

by Bill Poole | May 30, 2019 | Marketing

This week I’ve been creating the website content for the new suite of services our team here at Convergo will roll out this summer (can’t wait to launch this!) It’s got me thinking about what our ideal prospect looks like.

We all have ideal prospects. These are the future clients that are a great fit for your business. They value what you do. They align with your values and culture. They recognize the value you deliver and are willing to pay for it.

We also all have prospects that are not a good fit: They don’t value what you do. They don’t align with your values and culture. Instead of recognizing value, they want to grind you for a lower price. While you may make a little bit of profit on the deal, you’ll lose all and more of it as your employees get frustrated serving a client that is misaligned with your company. Usually, these non-ideal clients end up leaving and are often your most vocal critics.

Idea: What if you told your prospects what types of clients you want to serve?

I think if we were more explicit about who we wanted to serve, good things would naturally happen. Ideal prospects would resonate with your values, vision, and culture. They would say, “Yes! Finally! I’ve been looking for a partner like this!” The non-ideal prospects would be repelled. How helpful would that be?

As I’m writing the content for our new website, I thought it made sense to tell our prospective clients what type of companies we like to work with. The hope is that it will create resonance with our ideal prospects while repelling our poor-fit prospects.

This is a work in process, but I’d love to hear what you think. Here’s my message: (more…)

Consistent Execution: The Secret To Revenue Growth

by Bill Poole | Feb 26, 2019 | EOS

“Execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than the competition.”
– Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year

If you want to be successful in growing a company as a business owner, or growing a territory as a sales rep, you need to execute consistently. You can have a great vision, amazing products, and all kinds of great intentions. But the marketplace only rewards ideas that get implemented.

Execution needs to happen in the three core areas of your business that touch your clients and prospects. Let’s consider each of these in turn. (more…)

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