•    You’re a self-starter? Check.
•    You’ve got marketable skills? Check.
•    You’ve got all your equipment, resources and contacts? Check.

So you’re ready to go, right? Nope! Where’s your niche?

“Niche” you ask… ‘neesh’ or ‘nitch’ … what’s that?

A niche is the intersection between you and your market: the skills and experience you have that make you a credible and reliable problem solver, plus the specific customers who want your solution.

You can make naming your niche easy or tough on yourself. Let me show you why:

The Easy Niche – An inch wide and a mile deep

Several professions lend themselves to immediate niches: accounting, law, insurance – each of these have specializations that allow you as a professional to declare your specific services. Now all you need to do is name a particular type of client you serve.

As soon as you name your target customer, all your marketing activity can be pulled into sharp focus.

You can write articles that relate to your customer’s key business issues, and network with other professionals that serve that same client base.

As you build your relationship with this customer base, you can continue to deepen your offerings by adding on new services and products to that same group of customers – all building on your expertise.

Neat, right?

On the other hand other folks take the tougher path:

The Challenge Niche – A mile wide and an inch (or a mile) deep

We make it through our educational system being told we need to know as much as possible about many different things. This doesn’t always help when it comes time to focusing ourselves professionally.

Work at a lot of different things and your selling point sounds a lot like “I’ve done a lot, I’m adaptable” rather than “Here is the specific solution I can provide to your greatest challenge.”

Your customers want solutions.

So here’s my recommendation: Set aside everything you’ve worked to learn, and select one solution that people are seeking. Make that your selling point for your first 100 clients and then you can broaden you offerings.

If you want your home based business to thrive, take the easy path – select a niche that will allow you to stay sharply focused.

Technorati Tags: Small Business, small business marketing

Re-Position Yourself

Professionals are among the most resistant entrepreneurs you’ll find. They take their technical expertise, go out to ‘go it alone’ or build a small professional firm, and clog up the works by diving into the depths of their work.

Your value as a technical expert is only one aspect of your value to your clients. Of greater value than billing hours to solve some matter for them, you need to become the ‘manager’ who makes solutions happen.

That means shifting to being a business builder who steps in to refine the work being done by other resources.

Really.

Keep that in mind and don’t let yourself be pulled off course and into the depths of ‘doing the work.’

Re-Purpose Your Know How

Your magical opportunity is to take your technical know how and experience and find new outlets for it. It’s not about gaining new know how – it’s about taking your know how and re-shaping how it’s offered in as many ways as possible to hungry audiences who are waiting for it.

Here’s an example. A recognized economist is a frequent expert witness. That’s a highly paid use of his know how.

But wait, it gets even better. He’s created a series of free white papers he’s posted on his web site. And hes’ turned them into articles distributed through the internet. Not a revenue producer you say?

Well, it is. Because he has paying newsletter subscribers. They get his analyses of the impacts of each related case and of actions by the government, describing the potential effects on the very types of cases he’s used for. Instead of use one case at a time, he now has paying subscribers across the country paying for his insights as they work up their own cases.

His subscribers may come to him for expert testimony, this year or sometime in the future. Either way, he’s got a steady stream of revenue using his expertise in ways other than one-on-one problem solving one customer at a time.

It usually come from the silos that most businesses use to get things done ‘efficiently.’ Everyone has specialized and only come together to solve problems. So the full ingredients that are in the recipe of successful businesses are known to only a few people with both broad and deep experience.

So the average small business is run by someone who left one organization in order to pursue an opportunity, and all their attention became absorbed in working to make it happen.

Along the way, they loose site of how it all got started and miss these two vital actions:

Ask

If you wait for your results at the register, you’re too late! You need to be out talking with your prospective buyers, checking if they are hungry for the solution you’re devoting all your time and energy to.

Get in front of your prospects and ask them first what they’re looking to have solved. Then you can suggest a couple of approaches to see if they really want it solved (and will pay for the solution) or are fantasizing about an ideal world they won’t actually invest in.

Be sure you ask enough people for their thoughts, to see what are true trends you ought to spend time pursuing before you launch into designing and delivering that solution.

Answer

I know, I know: the solution might be a new product or a service. It might be repackaging and repositioning what you already have.

Before you get too far down the line, pull together a prototype or sample or clear description of your product or service. Take them back to the folks you talked with before and ask for their impressions and preferences.

One of the most important questions you have to answer for yourself as you build your business is who is your target market. As a result of this feedback you might find your target market is actually a different buyer than you have been assuming.

Get the focus right and the offer tight and you’ll find your ideal customer clamoring for your products and services.

Little know and seldom spoken of, the easiest credibility building activity you can use is creating white papers that prospects can read to better understand why they’d want to work with you.

You don’t have to make a mountain of a project of this either.

There are 2 simple steps that will have you drafting and completing a set of articles that you’ll use over and over again.

How To Find Your Topic
The objective of these articles is to create an evergreen set of articles, rather than write ones that are so solution specific they become out of date. I’ve turned this into 3 elements that resonate with your reader every time: Form, Content, and Timing.

•    What is a familiar form of a problem that many of your clients run into, that you can quantify the cost to their business of putting off solving it.
•    Where is there a key content element of solutions they often miss, resulting in greater expense, delays or even procrastination in solving the mess they are facing.
•    How does time impact their challenges, making it all much worse as they delay handling the matter.

Using this triple topic will allow you to write one white paper on each – how a client was facing that particular breakdown and how you solved that so you could solve their overall challenge.

How To Use Your Topic

Once you have your topics, create a short 350-word article on each topic to put on your web site. Don’t get elaborate, just describe how often this is an element that your clients face. Email them every 3 weeks to your current customers and suggest they share them with their team.

Here’s a bonus! You can even create a separate article summarizing these elements.

AND – Put a link at the bottom of your email signatures, in color, for the reader to click on and be taken to that article on your website

AND – Then take each of those and record a simple audio reading that article. Put that audio on your web site, on your company’s phone system.

AND- You can even turn them into brief videos and post the videos on your web site.

AND
you could even create a tip sheet for how to recognize when these
elements are the ones that are hanging up identifying and addressing
the challenges themselves.

All of these activities will jump start your marketing and can stay published and relevant for years to come.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing

The benefit here is how you create marketing with the clearest focus, in words that resonate for your buyer, rather than as advertising about what you personally want them to value. You’re going to be able to double and triple your sales by making this shift.

My marketing leverage formula

My business marketing leverage formula goes like this –

Your ideal client’s challenge + Your matching solution = Unbeatable product and service offerings.

The key is the word “matching”

There are 3 steps to creating a solution you key customers will be clamoring for:

1. Ask them what their business Vision looks like, and what the key roadblocks they are running into are. You might uncover a frustration you can fix with little or no effort on your part. The difference will be when you tell them that’s the very thing you want to solve for them.

2. Be a problem solving resource by staying in regular contact. Your job is to be the relationship builder, rather than the technician. You can hire people to provide your products and services. YOU are the one with the broader business experience so that you can leverage your rolodex to connect your customers with the experience and intelligence of other people to solve their business challenges.

The more you do, the easier it will be for you to focus your customers on turning to you for ideas that grow their business.

3. Challenge “the way we’ve marketed in the past” to constantly invite new, more productive and more profitable ideas be brought to your attention. Spend 30 minutes each week reading business periodicals like Entrepreneur Magazine, just to see the myriad ways other businesses have marketed themselves.

Every time you read an article, no matter what industry or product or service it’s covering, ask yourself how you might adapt their approach to your business. You’ll find a gold mine of new ideas your competitors have never thought of.

The other great thing is as you go forward using this marketing strategy and you deepen your relationship with your customers, your competition won’t recognize what you’re doing. They won’t even think of it as marketing and you’ll be leaving them in the dust as you create deeper connections with your clients.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing

One of the myths I hear all the time is you cannot grow your business in a recession. While it doesn’t require jumping off roof tops or exposing private information, I think I can bust that myth for you in this article.

You can’t grow a business in a recession

I love hearing this one, because I have a three part response to this belief:

1 – These folks are mistaken

2 – These folks are your competition and you want them to believe this

3 – The is the best time to make moves they would never consider, and claim a bigger piece of the market

Make Profits Faster

Recessions provide perfect business building opportunities in at least 3 ways:

1 – Take the lead with your vendors by offering to pay them ahead of time for a 10% consideration. Rather than try to figure out how to slow down payment (like your competitors are doing), move yours up. You’ll be reducing the stress your vendors are feeling and you can bet that your needs are going to take precedence over their other customers.

2 – Do more marketing by negotiating favorable ad rates. Your fellow business owners are falling into the wrong-headed thinking that they need to cut expenses and marketing goes first. That means that ad rates are dropping – a perfect opportunity for YOU to be the only brand consistently in front of your ideal customers.

3 – Reposition your products and services by talking directly to your customer and matching your offer to their needs. Forget about selling what you think they should want. In tough times, your clients are buying only exactly what they cannot do without. Fill that need, stay in constant conversation with them, and you’ll know exactly when they’re ready to open the purse strings for other solutions.

Get Direct Results

When you step up to the challenge, you get to learn first-hand the secret that Bank of America and Steinhafels taught the big boys in the last recession: There are plenty of opportunities for growth!

As Washington Mutual and IndyMac Bank were failing under their subprime mortgage load, Bank of America—which got out of them in 2001—attracted $21 billion of new consumer deposits as consumers ran to safety. While the Wickes furniture retailing chain filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, as more than 100 truckloads of furniture were on their way to its stores; financially solid, a Milwaukee retailer Steinhafels, bought the contents of several at bargain prices.

Myth: You can’t grow your business in a recession

Truth: Busted! YOU can while others don’t even try

As your competitors are trying to do less in these challenging times, it’s your chance to take the dare, do more and actually build your business.

Technorati Tags: Small Business, small business marketing

The good thing is you can use that clear sightedness on purpose with these 4 easy steps.

Tie Your Passion To The Market
Entrepreneurs who succeed are those who both have a passion and find a ready outlet for it in the market place. They create their competitive advantage by asking their prospective customer what they want solved.

Keep that in mind and don’t let yourself be pulled off course with things that interest you but don’t have buyers – save those for the hobbies of your weekends and vacations until the day there is a true market for them.

Tie Your Products To The Market
Your golden opportunity is to design products and services people want right now, for the challenges they rank the highest on their own “I Need This Solved” list. Once you’ve heard back from the marketplace what they want solved, give it to them.

This may sound simple, but if it were simple your prospective clients wouldn’t still be looking for someone to solve it!

The more people who tell you they have that same challenge, the easier it will be to build your path to success.

Tie Your Customers To You
Solving your customers’ number one challenge is the beginning of a relationship that can last for years. Let them see how you approach solving their problems and you’ll be seen as a trusted advisor for other issues they are facing.

This part is powerful. You may not be able to solve each issue they run into, but if you stay in conversation with them about their challenges, you’ll be the first to see the opportunity and will be able to refer them to the ideal resource they need.

By being the person they regularly discuss business with, you’ll be the first to know of each next opportunity.

It’s as valuable to solve the key challenge even when it’s by finding them another resource first as it is to be the provider of the solution itself. So your job is to stay in regular contact with your clients and prospective customers and invite them to turn to your for solutions. Let them know they can get more great information, quicker, from you.

And one way to grow your business to the next level is to join the Business Accelerator TeleSeminar Club at http://www.TheBusinessAcceleratorClub.com – come on board and join for $200 savings the first month.

Come join me and like-minded business builders and learn all about how to run your current business ever easier, AND how to take your experience & expertise and turn it into – Programs, Products & Services Your Clients Are Hungry For – with all the how to’s set out for you.

Technorati Tags: small business marketing

1. Pick a single topic – Yes, I know you’re expert at a lot of things. Even so, for a 90-day period, select a single topic to use as the foundation for your marketing activities.

2. Make that topic the first thing you use when introducing yourself in networking settings.

3. Send a quick survey to your customers and prospects asking them what their “Single Biggest Question Is” about that topic.

4. Use that topic to write 12 articles. You can put those articles one per week on your blog and web site, submit them to article directories, and email them to your list of customers and prospects.

5. Offer to give a 20-minute talk on that topic to your best referral sources. This might mean a brown bag lunch talk at law firms, accounting firms, banks, professional association meetings and so on.

6. Tell your customers that you’re giving a talk on that topic on a teleconference and invite them to join in the call.

7. Have a colleague or friend interview you using the top 10 questions people shared while others listen to the interview.

8. Record the interview and make the recording available on your web site.

9. Send an email to your customers and prospects letting them know they can hear a recent interview you gave on the topic.

10. Create a tip sheet on the topic for people to download from your web site.

Bonus Tip – get permission from several of your clients and customers to use case studies of your working on the topic with them. These case stories are the foundation for testimonials that raise your credibility and authority in other people’s minds.

Each of these steps boosts your expert status, no matter what the focus of your business is. Once you’ve used all these steps on a single topic, you can now identify if there is another angle that will increase your expertise further and repeat all the steps.

I have found that there are 3 questions that you need to answer to sort out which is your ideal customer and worth putting your marketing efforts into pursuing.

1 – Who do you enjoy working with?
Silly as it seems, many people are using all their time, intelligence and energy to do it the hard way. Wouldn’t you rather work with people it gives you pleasure to help succeed?  Make a list of the characteristics of the businesses, industries, and style of people you most enjoy working with.

2 – Who has the greatest need AND the desire to be helped?
OK, it may seem self evident, but I constantly find I’m coaching my students and coaching clients to get their attention off “the people who should want things to work better” and onto “the people who are looking for solutions.” They are not necessarily the same people!

3 – Who values the result you will get for them?
One of my favorite clients selected a target market filled with professionals who want a Platinum result for pennies. The want the result but don’t value investing to get it. They don’t value my client’s expertise at getting the result. Life is way too short to keep trying to prove yourself to this type of customer. You are better off taking the time to find people who value what you do up front and them find more of them, over and over again!

I’ll share with you that I had to go through these questions several times for myself. For many years I was a generalist/specialist – helping many kinds of businesses increase their productivity. But it was only when I focused on small businesses, entrepreneurs and so on that I could create a message that matched their need.

My recommendation: The clearer you define your target market, the easier you can speak to their needs and the results you create for them.

That is why I created The Business Accelerator Club to train you how to build your business by increasing your productivity and taking your proven expertise and turning it into New Streams Of Income: I’ve done it, I’m teaching it, and I continue to do it everyday, consistently bringing to the Club Members the leading edge strategies that I am using today to build my business and my client’s businesses.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, small business marketing

The challenge for most business owners and entrepreneurs is to be able to keep enough focus on marketing and delivering clear solutions that makes a difference.

The 3 Most Common Mistakes People Make Over and Over Again.

Mistake 1 – Thinking it’s about you.
This one is really easy to do, especially since we each want to find a sweet spot in the market, but don’t know what to do with ourselves until we find it. Many people therefore tell their market all about themselves… rather than the solutions their buyer is seeking.

Sorry, but your buyer is not that interested in you. If they are, then they can read your succinct 2-paragraph profile in your marketing materials. The buyer is interested in what is in it for them.

Mistake 2 – Saying “Yes” to every request
Trying to be everything, to everyone, means that some people forget the vision they have for their business – the solution they want to bring to the world. They tell themselves it’s “just for right now” that they’ll take any customer request that comes along. Once their client gets a sample of their approach and the results they can produce, they’ll tell them about the Vision.

If you keep track over time you’ll see that transition never takes place. Your attention is diverted from doing the focused marketing you need to do to become know for your solution.

Mistake 3 – Talking yourself out of ‘Niche-ing”
This is the biggest trap most business owners and entrepreneurs fall in to. First the news media tells them about trends… that aren’t real. Then they hear of a program a competitor is offering… but never the true results. They even go to conferences where gurus tell them what to offer the market.

Most people never ask the true source of the answer: their customers, clients and prospects. If this is you, you’ll be spending tens of hours designing and marketing the wrong solutions to people who aren’t looking for them.

What to do instead – This is the part of business building that will set you apart from other entrepreneurs and professionals. Choose a specific topic in your niche – The more specific topic, the easier it will be to name mistakes that will get the attention of your prospect so they will see themselves in the mistakes. Now get out there and talk to your prospects face to face to test whether there are buyers for your solution. Let them tell you what they want solved.

And listen, really listen.

Tags: Vision,, Leadership,, Entreprepeur,, Productivity,, Small, Business,, Meeting, Management,, Problem, Solving,, Small, Business, Marketing

Technorati Tags: Vision