I know what you’re thinking: “Get a grip, Tim, I haven’t got time to hunt for your so-called hidden treasure - I’ve got a business to run!”

But what if I showed you how changing a few little things could make a huge increase in the number of people who show up on your business’s doorstep - interested people - to find out how you can help them? And this same thing works for institutions and not-for-profits as well as for regular businesses.

Whom Should Your Clients Be?

Many business owners and executives don’t take the time to identify just who - specifically - would find the most value in their product or service. Remember we mentioned the word “treasure” earlier? Well, we have to qualify it with the understanding that a select group will find the most value in what we are providing. Those who find the most value, or “treasure” are also those who are willing to pay the most for it - because it IS valuable to them!

Now, a shotgun approach to marketing - that is, marketing to anybody and everybody - will bring some results, but it’s a very expensive way to do things. It’s imperative that consideration be given to evaluating our buyers to find those who find it the most valuable. For instance, five years ago a builder client had been told by his parent company to target families with incomes of $75,000, which would provide him with a profit on each house he built of about $1500. He did that, and in a mail campaign to people in this group found he was getting about a 1/10 of 1% response rate to his letters. He wanted to do better. With research (and some help from a business coach) he found that a small portion of his clients, those with incomes over $100,000, were a substantial portion of the respondents to his letters AND gave him an average profit on the homes he built for them of $3000 - double what he made normally. With that in mind, he did another mailing, this time targeting those families with incomes of $100,000 or greater. Immediately - within a week in fact, his response rate jumped to 2% - roughly 20 times what he was getting before, and of course his profit on each house he built doubled on top of that. Within two weeks he had doubled his income, just by paying better attention to those customers who considered his work the most valuable.

What Are You Really Selling?

Ever had someone ask you “What does your organization do”? How did you answer them? Chances are you told them what services you provided, or what products you sold, or what degrees your university awarded. A friend of mine who is a business coach in Kansas City was attending a business networking group as a new member, and was given, along with five others, 10 seconds to introduce himself and to tell about his business. Imagine his surprise when three of the four proved to be business coaches also, and all were to speak before he did! He listened, and every one of those coaches stood up, gave name and credentials, and said “I’m a business coach”. As they spoke he realized that to connect with the dozens of business owners and executives in the audience, he was going to have to appeal to something very different from that which the crowd were already associating with these three men. His turn came, he stood up, and giving his name and business name he ended with “I help people double or triple their business within six weeks. If you’d like to talk to me about that please meet me by the side door after the meeting”. When the meeting ended ten minutes later he had a line over ten people long waiting to speak with him.

business-marketingWhat was different about what he said, how did he connect when those other coaches didn’t? He addressed the pain! While the others were giving a list of their “stuff”, he was talking about the results he’d gotten. And those weren’t empty words by the way, his approach had actually doubled revenues for organizations in as briefly as a week. So number one, what do you do that meets the “pain” people are struggling with? What does your organization provide that people are interested - or even anxious - to get hold of? You should know what that is, and you should practice being able to express it clearly in a very short space of time.

“I help people double or triple their business in 4-6 weeks” (a business coach)

“We give students the key to working for the best companies in the land” (a university)

“Our company gives businesses the tools to cut their turnover by 75% while meeting their revenue goals” (a trophy and awards company who added incentive programs to their “mix”)

Show Your Results

You might have noticed that two of the three statements were very specific in the results they presented, one was a little less specific (”…the best companies in the land”). But even when you’ve put your finger on the pain people are feeling, you have to be able to show that you’ve achieved results. Those ought to be specific, and of course, they’d better be true!

Consider that for a minute. What results can you show those people who are looking for the relief that you can provide? You’re still in business, so you must have successes. Putting those in front of prospects is important to show them that your service or product is the one they should be thinking about.

To Wrap It All Together

So there are three things to consider if you’d like to supercharge your marketing efforts: 1) find the right prospects, 2) identify and show how your product addresses their pain, and 3) give them real results to bear these things out. Take an hour, right now, to sit down and do these three things, you can spare that, can’t you? Change your marketing approach to address your new, clearer ideas, and then see what happens to the number of people “walking in your door”. NOW you’re really marketing!

The author of this article, Tim Connor, is president and founder of Rodeo! Performance Group, Inc., an Ocala, Florida-based group of facilitators working with businesses and executives who want to make their businesses competitive on a global scale. Tim can be contacted at timconnor@rodeopg.com, or by phone at 1-877-284-0009. Visit Rodeo! on the web at http://www.rodeopg.com