Selling sucks.
There, I’ve said it. The question now is, “What do we do about it??”
That can be a complicated question, but I have a simple solution: make the selling process as easy on yourself as possible. This past 4th of July Weekend, not only was I reminded of that lesson, but I also learned some ways to make it happen…
A few years ago, I somehow came into the possession of a bunch of American Flags (don’t ask, I can’t quite explain it myself. They somehow came to me while I was on the board of an Indian Association…).
I’m patriotic and all, but I had little need for fifteen smallish American Flags. However, I had no idea what to do with them. Throwing them away was certainly not an option. But who then could I give them to?
Faced with a dilemma for which I had no answer, I did what many people do: I ignored the problem, and hoped it would go away. I stored the flags in a corner of my condo and forgot about them.
My girlfriend recently found the flags and asked about them. I told her the details of my dilemma, and she came up with a brilliant, if obvious solution.
“We should give them away on the 4th of July!”
Of course. So simple – we didn’t need them, so why not share them with people who would did?
On the 4th (which, for international readers who may not know, is American Independence Day), we gathered up our flags and went down to the Ben Franklin Parkway where all of the day’s festivities were taking place.
My girlfriend was carrying the flags (yes, that is my form of chivalry – let her do the heavy lifting…) when, not ten minutes into our excursion, a young voice calls out, “excuse me, can I have one of those flags?”
It was a girl, about 12 years old, asking if she could have one of our flags. I’ll admit, I was a little surprised by the boldness of someone just outright asking if they could have something for free, but more importantly, I was excited.
“Yes, of course!”
We handed her a flag, which then multiplied into four flags so that her family and friends could have one too.
Wow, that was easy!
We walked for two more minutes when another voice called out, “Excuse me! Are you still giving out flags?”
Seems someone had overseen us giving away the first batch, and they wanted in.
“Of course!”
We handed this girl a flag, and gave her two more for her friends.
That was pretty much that. After another five minutes we had distributed the last of our flags.
I didn’t think it would be hard to give flags away on Independence Day, but I didn’t realize it would be that easy. We didn’t even have to walk up to a single person and say, “excuse me, would you like an American Flag?”
Man, I wish I had thought of that myself four years earlier!
After we handed out our last flag, I thought to myself, “Wow, if only all sales and marketing were this easy!”
And then I realized that there are some pretty important lessons any small business person can learn from my experience giving away flags…
1) Find a Hungry, Hungry, Market
Years ago I read a book on product creation, and it used a very simple but effective analogy. The book opened by asking, “If you went fishing one day, what would be the most important thing you would want to guarantee you caught a lot of fish?”
The answer was not “a great fishing rod,” or “perfect bait.” No, the answer was, “a pool of hungry fish.”
Seems obvious, but so many business people (myself included at times) make this mistake. We have a great product, and we create great marketing materials, with brilliant slogans and titles and beautiful websites, but then no one buys.
While all that stuff is great, if you don’t have an existing market that’s hungry for something – specifically, for what you offer – you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.
On the 4th of July, there were literally hundreds of thousands of people hungry for patriotic items. Giving away flags was easy.
In the same way, if you want to make your sales and business life easy, find a big pool of hungry fish and go feed them.
2) Make the Right Offering to that Market
It’s not enough to find a hungry market. You then need to offer them something that they are hungry for.
At this 4th of July celebration, people were hungry for three things: patriotism, entertainment, and food. There were plenty of people offering those things.
However, there were a few really random (to me) businesses with tents set up. One was a home contracting company with multiple displays.
I can’t say whether it was worth it or not because I don’t have access to this company’s numbers. Maybe they generated a ton of sales.
It would seem, however, that the attendees that day were not really looking for newly finished basements. Sure when you have close to a million people walking by, you may still drum up business by sheer volume of numbers. However, that’s a scattered, unfocused approach which is a lot of work for a small payoff.
My friend and fellow speaker Mark LeBlanc talks about finding Pure Groups. A pure group is a group of people where a large majority of them are highly targeted prospects for your business. If you are going to undertake a marketing activity (taking out an ad, speaking, sponsoring, getting a tent or tradeshow booth, etc.) he says to only do so for pure groups. This maximizes your chances of success (and minimizes expenses, since targeted groups are usually smaller and less expensive).
Can you build a successful business going door to door and asking every single person in the world to buy? Sure, but you’ll be knocking on a lot of doors and wasting a lot of time, money, and energy.
You’ll be much better off offering that hungry market what it is actually hungry for. That makes selling a whole lot easier.
3) Be Visible to that Market
We could have had the best flags in the world, but if we had sat inside my condo all day, we would not have given away any. Similarly, if we had walked around with the flags in a sealed bag, no one would have seen them and said, “Hey! Can I have a flag?”
Once you have an appropriate offering for a hungry market, all you need to do is get yourself in front of that market.
There is no universal best way to do this. Your job is to figure out where your hungry target market goes to find information to make a buying decision, and then put yourself there.
This is where a lot of small business blow it. People sometimes ask me, “Should I start a blog to help my business?” You would think my answer would be “Yes, of course!”
It’s not. My response is always, “It depends. Is your target market, the people who are going to actually pay you money, reading blogs to make a buying decision?”
There are a lot of people online, looking for information, and reading blogs. However, there are still a lot of people, for whatever reason, who aren’t.
Don’t get sucked in by new technology or marketing methods that people rave about.
Instead, find out how your target market makes buying decisions and use those methods to reach them.
4) Set the Right Price for that Market
Here’s an addendum: I know the skeptics right now are reading this thinking, “Yeah, but you gave away the flags for free! You didn’t actually sell anything!”
Yes, giving stuff away for free is easier than asking people to pay money. So price matters.
However, the principles are the same – find a hungry market, offer them something they are hungry for, and get in front of them. Once you are there, you can go one of three ways:
- If you are the only option, charge whatever you want.
This is why concert and sporting venues can charge $7 for a Miller Lite…
- If you are looking for leads and have more to sell, price a bit lower. This only really works if you are collecting contact info at the sale (like when you sell online), but if you have a big back end sale, you may want to price your initial offering a little lower to get people into your funnel.
- If you want to maximize profit in this sale, or if you can not collect contact info, or if you have no follow up sales, then you have to play the “supply and demand game.” See what the competition is charging and then go with your best guess – seriously, it’s as much an art as it is a science (especially in the small business world, where you won’t have access to reams of data and a team of people to analyze it). Aim a smidge higher, as it creates the perception of value and increases your net; you can always discount later.
As in the other three steps, price is also dependent on your target market. If you charge way more than your target is expecting to spend, then you’ll meet resistance. If you charge way less than your target is expecting to spend, then you’ll also meet resistance.
Not that you can’t overcome these resistances, but if you want to make your sales life easier (and it’s not part of your strategy to intentionally be outside the range), consider fitting in the range of expectations.
In Conclusion
Who knew hanging out on a holiday weekend could be so educational? (Ok, I guess I did, since I wrote a blog post about it just last week: 11 Ways to Come Out of a Long Weekend Without Feeling Like a Waste of Humanity).
If you are a small business owner, or if you have a message to spread, event to promote, or cause to champion, then use the lessons in this post to make your sales, marketing, and business life much easier.
Find a hungry market, make them the right offer, get yourself in front of them, and set the right price.
Do those things and yes, your product or service will be as easy to sell as American Flags on the 4th of July!
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