Did you know there are four offer stages in a typical B2B deal?
Yet, how many b2b business owners sit down set aside a little bit of time to craft one compelling, intelligent offer? Pretty much none. They chase clients, they jump on any opportunity and they have no way to upsell or down sell or keep the relationship hot.
...Over the years I’ve been privileged to meet and interview a whole bunch of amazing entrepreneurs, people like Bill Gates, James Dyson, not that he’s an entrepreneur, but even the Dalai Lama. And I’ve heard it said that entrepreneurs are amazing risk takers.
I don’t believe that entrepreneurs are amazing risk takers. I just believe that they are better able to analyze the facts. Everyone else is governed by fear. And as my mother likes to remind me, every now and then fear is an acronym. It stands for false evidence appearing real.
So next time you’re presented with an opportunity, I want you to think like an entrepreneur, I want you to analyze the facts. I want you to de risk it, and I want you to stop being governed by that terrible word fear, because most of the time fear stands for false evidence appearing real.
...What’s your favorite strategy for opening doors and connecting with future clients on social media?
For me, I’m in the b2b space. So I love LinkedIn. But if you are going to reach out to future customers and clients, you’re going to need one thing, one very important thing. And that one thing is a gift of high perceived value to your target audiences.
A lot of people get caught up in push marketing. So what they’re doing is they’re pushing themselves, their product, their service on strangers, saying I’m better check out my competitive advantages and my features, and I’m awesome, and this is why you should work with me. But that’s never gonna work. I much prefer pull marketing.
That’s when you create something of high perceived value to your target audience and you say, Do you want this? And when they say yeah, that’s when you invite them into your world and that’s when the real conversation begins.
...Are you thinking of using a quiz as a way to generate leads? Please do not do this.
Now this is especially true if you’re in the b2b space. Maybe you’re a consultant. Maybe you run an agency. If you sell knowledge and expertise and you’re thinking, You know what, I’d like to try running a quiz as a way to generate leads and pre qualify leads. Please do not call it a quiz. It sounds really frivolous, and like it’s probably going to be a waste of our time. Don’t call it a quiz.
Instead, try some of these words diagnostic checklist, or even a pre qual diagnostic and checklist. If you selling a complex product or service it pays to let people know that you are serious that you are commercial that you are in the business of doing business.
...I was just speaking to a client of mine and they’ve got this great new idea for a startup the target audience is a horse trainers. Now, this is a business that’s involved in a professional services industry already.
But they’ve seen this opportunity to create something, there’s a gap, the markets there, be very easy to create an MVP. My recommendation for this person who’s on the fence was this. Make that audience the focus of your core business, so that you can build the list. Build the list of that audience so that when you are ready, if you do still feel like it’s a good idea of the Passion still there.
You’re not going to launch the crickets. Build the audience, then launch do not go by the Field of Dreams approach. If you build it, they will come no build the list, build the audience. Then you can test ideas with a captive captive audience and you won’t be launching to crickets.
...I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but most business owners that sell a complex product or service really struggle to vet down their target audience.
If you’re looking a way to really dial this in here’s little test that we call the doctor on the plane test. Now, if you jumped on a plane and you said, is there a doctor on the plane, the doctor puts up their hand and the Doctor of Philosophy does not put up their hand.
People who are doctor know who they are, they put up their hand. If you jumped on a plane and you said, Are there any purpose driven socially focused entrepreneurial leaders on the plane? People just kind of look at each other funny.
So does your target audience satisfied the doctor on the plane test? If you call out their name? Do they sit up and pay attention
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