Posted by Ben Kniffen in Entrepreneurship
Well? How did last year go for you?
Did you accomplish what you set out to do?
Did you see your business grow?
And are you ready to jump in with both feet this year to expand and create a major impact?
It’s an amazing feeling when you reach your goals. Unfortunately, too many business owners never do. They make the exact same goals year after year and if they make any progress at all, it’s just little nibbles. It’s not through lack of effort. Or lack of skill.
It often comes down to not having the right strategy or framework to actual reach those goals.
Maybe you’ve been there too. You try a little of everything, hoping that something will stick. Or you spread yourself thin trying to catch as many opportunities as possible but you know what that means…
Burnout. When that happens, people tend to become desperate. They lose track of their vision and start going after whatever clients they can get instead of going after the RIGHTclients for their business. Instead of creating a positive impact that ripples through their lives, their clients lives, and their whole industry, it causes businesses to shrink and they’re growth stalls.
But think about this..
If you were trying to catch a whale….
Wouldn’t it be easier to catch one with a harpoon rather than with a fishing net?
If you want to catch whales…or if you want to go after the clients that are actually a good fit for your business and who can pay you enough that your business can actually grow and you can actually make an impact, keep reading…
In this post you’ll learn the 3 mental frameworks you need in place to make 2019 the year that really matters.
What It Really Takes to Make a Bigger Impact While You Increase Your Revenue
“If your business isn’t where you want it to be, you don’t have a STRATEGY problem, you have a YOU problem.”
I consider myself pretty well-read. I pride myself in staying up to date on the latest science on productivity and peak performance… it’s literally my job to make sure my team and I are firing on all cylinders.
EVERY result, EVERY customer, EVERY dollar and ALL the impact you do or do not create, comes back to one thing and one thing only . . .
Your MINDSET.
[thrive_leads id=’14005′]The biggest problem most people have is that they lack focus. They lose track of what’s important because of all the shiny objects these days. Or they even begin to believe that either they’re goals weren’t worth it, or they aren’t. Let’s set the record straight:
Whatever you set out to accomplish this year, it’s of utmost importance.
But you won’t accomplish it unless you have the right mindset. Now, I’m not a “woo-woo” type of guy, but one thing I’ve learned from experience is that the mental frameworks and systems you have work like lenses you see the world with. If you’re not careful, it can skew and warp your view without you realizing it.
Here are the 3 mental frameworks you need to help you get your biggest clients and create the impact you know you can in 2019:
1: Approach life and business with a harpoon.
I’m talking about having extreme focus. Focus on exactly what you want and specifically, who you want to work with.
When you fish with a net, you spend a lot of energy to cover a vast amount of space where you’ve assumed your “whale” of a client is. While you might generate some business casting your net and acquiring smaller clients; it’s likely they won’t be the best fit and it’s hard to create real impact that way. Like trying to fit a square into a round hole, you can’t grow the way you want to if you have the wrong clients. Not to mention, the extra time, money and resources it takes to service them…could actually hurt you in the long-run.
So we need to know what our whales look like (what a whale is, where they are, why they’re there and how they got there). Not that sharks aren’t huge, but we’re not hunting for sharks – we’re hunting whales. If we can’t clearly define what OUR whale looks like, then we aren’t whale hunting. We’re in the wrong business!
Now, this doesn’t mean that you should trash low-ticket prospects, because we’ve seen first-hand how those can turn into huge high-ticket clients. Small fish turn into big fish. Our mission to impact as many people as possible isn’t changing, our approach is.
That’s why we’re pulling up the net, and putting an even bigger emphasis on the harpoon. This means you must clearly define your prospect profile so you know exactly who your very best clients are, where they can be found, and what makes them tick.
2: Concentrate only on the activities and tasks that will attract your whales to you.
Once you know exactly who you can create the biggest impact for, you must decide on those tasks that lead directly to your goals. What tasks can you cut out that aren’t getting you the results you want? We’ve found that it’s consistently a 20:80 ratio… you need to identify the 20% of tasks that are making 80% of the difference in your business and cut the rest.
One place to consider is strategic positioning. Take your harpoon gun approach and everything you know about the specific clients you want to focus on and use that information to optimize your online presence. If your ideal prospect looks you up online, and the presence they see doesn’t reflect a match… then they’ll be done. You don’t get a second chance very often.
For us, we aim to position ourselves and our brand as the authority in lead generation and B2B marketing and we know exactly how to attract our ideal clients. We know what questions they’ll have and we know how to answer them in a way that leads them to the sale. This means that we focus on a few strategic tasks that really make a difference in getting our prospects on the phone. But it all starts with the proper positioning.
[thrive_leads id=’14005′]3: Reality check: be human in your business.
It’s too easy to talk about goals and target clients but in a way that it separates you from your clients and it’s easy to start to view them as numbers. You’re the hunter and they’re the hunted. So I’m going to backtrack here but stick with me because this is important.
When you really want to make an impact, you need to go after the clients you can really make a difference for and who are happy to pay you what you ask. This allows you to have the capital and the brain space necessary to focus on what’s important and keeps you from desperation. We’ve already discussed this, but what we haven’t discussed is how to approach those clients. if you approach them the wrong way, they’ll swim away immediately.
So when it comes to actually connecting with prospects and turning them into clients, drop the “hunter” game and be human. Especially if you have high-end clients, and you offer anything from $2k – $100K or more, you must put the focus on building trust.
It’s based on a simple psychological principle:
Human connection is as fundamental a need as food or water.
That explains why people trust individuals more than they trust brands. In fact, here’s the landscape businesses are up against…
- 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision. – Ogilvy/Google/TNS
- 90% of people trust product or service recommendations from people they know, while only 33% trust messages from a brand. (Source)
- 76% of business decision-makers say they use online sources to learn about professional service providers.(Kredible Research)
- 74% of decision-makers say they prefer to work with professional service providers who also know their colleagues, friends, or acquaintances.(Kredible Research)
To sum up: People look online for information but a major factor in their purchasing decisions are personal suggestions from people they know and trust.
What this means for you:
You need to find a way to systematically win the trust of your prospects.
When you approach your marketing and sales with a harpoon, consistently re-evaluating who are the best clients for you, when you focus on the 20% that makes 80% difference in your business starting with strategic positioning, and when you remember to bring the human element and build trust into your marketing, you open the door to vastly improved business performance, laser sharp focus and productivity, and yes, increased revenue and impact.
Want to meet your business and financial goals this year?
Use the harpoon.
We don’t want to hunt a whale with a net, we want to land that next big client with precise targeting. We’ve developed a strategy that has generated millions of responses from targeted prospects, and we plan to double down on utilizing this approach.
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