I’ve so many things I could sell in my business – what should I concentrate on?

I’d like 1 bottle of wine for every time I’ve heard this question from a confused business owner or potential business owner (it would usually be 1 penny but since I can’t travel to the Chateaus of France like Chateau La Gordonne or Domaine Fradon wine sent to Mersea Island – Dry and Rose would be good!)

The question is this;

“Mandie I do so many different things and I could sell to so many different audiences so how do I choose? I’ve been told to niche but if I niche how will I sell to different groups of people and how will people know what I sell, and what do I talk about and then I go back to questioning of all the hats I could wear which is going to be profitable and make me money, aaaaa, help me!”

That is pretty much what I hear out of new clients all the time and here’s my “quick, easy to action and create a plan that’s achievable and give you a business you adore selling to people you love” rough and ready guide to getting that fast, ready?

IF you really want to grow your business and make this happen as regular readers will tell you they end up reading my articles and books twice;

1. Once to read.
2. Once to go back with pen and paper, take notes and create an action plan.

I don’t write to sell, I write to help you rocket your confidence, team, sales, profit and success. So grab a pen and paper and let’s do this.

1. Don’t build a business until you build you (this came up only recently at a BWN event and I see it all the time. a great strategy without great faith and confidence still fails (or wins to only a small degree so becomes frustrating and then you procrastinate, falter and end up back at the start).

To fix this on the home page of my site and under books is my Free book on how to eradicate Imposter Syndrome. It’s the first thing you need to do. I’ve seen people who tell me they are confident and yet we’ve found the Imposter Syndrom lurking in their head damaging their thoughts, emotions, actions and results. So start here. It’s free!

2. The second thing to do is check and build your confidence. I hear people tell me they are confident and then when I suggest they give a potential lead a call or phone a past customer for a review or reference I hear “I can’t do that!” All signs that you lack confidence. Don’t worry it’s something we all face and we can all control it.

Just remember I can tell you what to sell, who to sell it to and how to sell it (even at what price) but if you doubt yourself you are far more likely to find yourself changing course because of doubt, People who have only 1 session and expect to be “fixed for life” come back and say “I think I lost my way” and that is two fold;

1. They started to question if they were doing the right thing. Networking in lots of places, trying to do too many 5 day challenges (they are free so why not right?), free courses (free right, so why not?), a book someone recommended, a seminar (hey it was free so why not right?) listening to lots of people saying “you should niche”, “you should do this”, “you should get up at 5am”, “you don’t want to sell that, no one is buying” and before you know it your direction is lost. You have self doubt set in, confidence waned and then you are like the Catherine Wheel Effect doing a ton of stuff, but not getting the results you want. I will never make my clients busy fools.
2. You lost site of why you were doing what you were doing. If a new client can’t tell me what their 3 to 5 tasks are on their action plan that we I sent them in their coaching report, I know it’s buried away and is slowly being forgotten. Why do you think people have coaching with me every 4 to 6 weeks? Because they love me or because I keep them on track, accountable, focused and driven to get results? (It would be lovely if it was love but I’d say it’s more because I help them grow a business they adore and they don’t want to lose sight of all they want to achieve or the processes we’ve put in place to achieve them. My favourite random call from a client? “Mandie my tax bill is huge!” I replied “If you don’t like this years, you are going to hate next years!”

When you do things that don’t match to your plan because you lost faith then you still don’t get where you want to go. So take my confidence course here

3. Next step is NOT to look at what sells or what people will buy (you could spend your life selling things you’ve no passion for and guess what eventually happens? It stops working, you get resistance to it, you hate your job and you are looking for a new venture.

I’ve seen what you are going through literally thousands of times so I know what will work, you’ve got to find what motivates and inspires you, what will get you out of bed when it’s snowing, the boiler has broke, the cat/dog/child/partner has been sick in your shoes and you are still raring to go to work!

4. Get a big piece of paper if you are a visual learner (for those not visual a list or app or excel spreadsheet is going to be more your style) then write down all of the products and services you could sell. Use lots of different colours if you like – when I do this with a client it helps us to group things naturally as we go.

At this stage don’t worry about costings or will it work, or “I don’t know how to this” or “I’d love to do that but I don’t have the skills/money/time” etc etc. Write everything and anything. Just what you would LIKE to sell.

5. Now write down all the words in one colour associated with how those products and services make you feel and what they give you.

6. Next choose a different colour and look for what they mean to potential customers.

For step 5 and 6 think about the way it makes you feel, what it will give you personally and professionally, how it would impact on life, hobbies, holidays, everything and anything that springs to mind. Dismiss nothing. Add everything. (It is in the daft, throw away statements I find massive eureka moments with my clients!)

7. Now it is time to look for common themes, words and sentences. And bring them together into groups.

You will start to see patterns of what products and services really resonate with you. (Again at this stage dismiss nothing, let your heart and passion guide you. Business will come after (and I can help you with that too) but you need to find all the good powerful, motivational, inspiring emotions and feelings associated with your business ideas first. It’s imperative for every step of your business success. (And when I work with an established company we often come back to this step to help the team feel connected to the goals, to restore momentum, create powerful marketing and grow the business – it is an essential step that many do not give enough time and effort to understanding.)

As an example of how this process can work, recently someone was talking to me about the 4 different things they did and they didn’t know what to do. They could use any of these methods, practices, products and services to  make a business, but could they work side by side?

Would they confuse customers?
Would it muddy the waters in how to market their business?

There was so much choice it was hard to choose! And when you can’t decide you end up procrastinating, talking about a ton of things and people can’t work out what you sell or what you do! 

So we stepped away from this plethora of choices and looked at the above strategy to help them see that regardless of what product or service it was, what they did was all about giving people back their power.

8. When you can see the commonality then you can create the business goals, products, services, (pricing structures) target audiences and marketing strategy. Not the other way around.

Do you care that when I coach I use 25 years experience in growing highly successful businesses, Harvard Business School strategies, CBT, CAT, NLP Coaching, Counselling, Psychology, TA, Da Vinci and Platos’ theories?

Nope you just care about what you get out of it.

So when you are considering how to create your business, sustain your business and/or grow your business see it from what you want to get and what you want people to get.

I hope this helps for starters.

The next steps would include looking at your target audiences and how to sell to them. So I recommend my target audience course then the marketing course. And if you are worried about having the fundamentals of business in place (as I see with a lot of established businesses who aren’t able to maintain growth (no matter what) because the foundations aren’t there, do that course too. These courses include a profit calculator too so you can check the business model you are building is actually going to give you the profit, lifestyle and business you want.) 

And if you loved this article, a £1 on the PayPal button on the right makes me happy….or wine, wine is good.