Week 3 – Who can you offer your services to and where can you find them?

Lesson Six –Find the hungry or thirsty audience

It’s faster and easier to sell to an audience who knows they need what you offer.

Long-term, you may choose to offer something that requires educating your audience and creating demand, but in the short term, it’s useful if you can position what you offer as fulfilling a need that your audience can quickly and easily know if they want or need.

Go back to Lesson Three and review what you chose as the desirable outcome you can offer. It may be that the outcome you wrote down helps you also name who is mostly likely to want or need that outcome.

The goal here is to define the main qualities someone needs to have in order to be a good fit for your offer. The goal is to be able to say to yourself and others, “I am looking for people who . . .” and then fill in the blank with easy, conversational language.

One great way to find this is to identify the language that prospective clients are using when describing their challenge or obstacle.

For example:

I am looking for smart women who KNOW the right things to do to be healthy, but aren’t doing them . . .
I am looking for women who are tired of hearing themselves say “this is the year I am going to start my own business” . . .
I am looking for small business owners who want to reduce the stress of getting their books together at tax time. . .
I am looking for writers who want to write consistently and complete some of their cherished projects . . .

You’re “I’m looking for” phrase should be clear, specific, and concrete. Not:

I am looking for people who are spiritual seekers . . .
Or
I am looking for people who feel like something is missing and aren’t sure what . . .

Your phrase will often describe a challenge, problem, or situation that your audience is facing, that is likely to make them eager to find a solution.

Your step for today:

Come up with 1 to 3 strong “I’m looking for . . .” statements that define the audience that is likely to be hungry for what you offer.

Note: For those of you who have worked or are working with me on message development. Message development addresses the long-term growth of your business and operates under slightly different rules. The goal of this Simple Steps program is to get you more clients in the short term, and that may mean simplifying what you offer, or shifting who you make offers too. It’s ok to offer something super practical in the short term while building your ability to communicate something bigger, or more complex, and taking time to educate your audience about that offer.

Lesson Seven – What groups can you reach out to?

Clients often come to me saying “I don’t know where to find people.”

The truth is, unless you offer something very specialized, odds are good you will find some of those “I’m looking for” people in almost any group you belong to.

(Want to know what I really think? I think sometimes the “I don’t know where to find people” is a way to protect ourselves from the vulnerability of actually reaching out to make an offer. As long as we don’t know where they are, we can’t reach out, and we don’t have to risk being rejected. When we are really ready to take on the vulnerable work of making offers, we usually can find people and places to reach out to.)

So, grab a pen and paper and make a list of all the groups you belong to, whether professional or personal. So your list might look like:

• Neighborhood association
• School parent association
• Church
• Political action group
• Local women’s networking group
• People at my aerobics class
• Your family
• Your extended family
• Your high school alumni group

You get the idea.

Ok, you may cringe or grimace, or even insist that it would be inappropriate to bring business to any non-business gatherings. But the truth is, these are all places you can find people.

If you truly don’t belong to any groups, or to very few groups, or you are poorly connected within those groups, this might be a place to apply your energy. That is, you may want to join a few more groups or deepen the connections you have in the groups you already belong to.

(Funny story. TODAY, someone bought my $297 home study program. She knows me only from a 1000 person Facebook group I am in about fashion and dressing.)

Your step today:

Make a list of all the groups you belong to. All the groups. Whether you think they are appropriate or a viable avenue to find people. Take a moment to consider how many people you are already connected to in some way.