When you consider the core of any business, there's not a lot there:
First, you start with who you help, the people you serve - they're your ideal audience.
Second, there's the thing you do for them, or the thing you sell them - this is your irresistible offer.
That's it.
One In Front Of The Other - Repeat
Business is putting an audience that's buying in front of an offer that's selling.
Anything beyond that isn't necessary to run a business, it's simply 'nice to have'.
Because without your ideal audience you've got no one to sell to. And without something to sell, what's the point of building an audience?
But we tend to focus on the 'nice to haves' instead of the 'necessaries' and our businesses suffer for it.
It's why you need to focus on these two areas of your business first, before you think about your branding and website, what your marketing strategy will be, or how you're going to scale to thousands of customers.
Because without that first sale to that first person, you don't have a business at all; you've got a pipe dream.
And this applies when we focus within a business too.
Launching a new offer
If you're thinking of launching a new product or service, you'll need to figure out who it's for and what you're actually selling if you want to see any results.
For the marketing and sales folks reading this, how are you getting this information from your clients?
Without it, you're working on something built on shifting foundations. And no matter how good your work is, it's still going to be limited by your clients' lack of clarity on who their audience is and what they're offering them.
And this is a common source of frustration for both business owner and contractor, because both parties feel like the other 'let them down' somehow.
Questions to ask
For business owners:
- ask contractors what they need form you in order to do their best work.
For contractors:
- make sure you've got processes in place to get all the information you need to deliver a stellar result, before you jump in.
But above all, make sure an ideal audience is chosen and you're irresistible offer is well laid out before doing anything else.
Nail the necessities and you'll have as much time to play with 'nice to haves' as you want.
