Unlocking Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses by Overcoming Sales Barriers
Sales is a barrier to growth for a lot of entrepreneurial businesses. Understanding how to break through that barrier can be very challenging. How can you do it? Some common thoughts that go through your mind might be:
- Do I have the right people in place?
- Are we taking the right approach?
- Do I need to document my processes?
- Do I need to improve my scorecard?
Many of these things can be helpful, but acting on these questions may lead you down the wrong road because you may not be addressing the root cause of the problem. Many times, the challenges are more foundational.
Three questions you should ask yourself before acting on one of those questions are:
- Do I clearly understand my ideal client and the outcomes they want from their business?
- Are my uniques/differentiators/value proposition aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
- Is the path to realizing our value clear for my ideal clients?
Let’s explore these questions in more depth so that you can have a better understanding of what the root cause of your challenge might be.
Do I have a clear understanding of what my Ideal Clients want?
If your ideal client profile is too broad, it can weaken your message and make it challenging to reach your entire market. Honing your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has two huge benefits:
- It strengthens your message – a tighter ICP makes it easier to create a message that resonates.
- It allows you to be more effective with your limited sales and marketing budget – simply stated, investing the same amount on a smaller pool of more qualified prospects that your business is more optimized to serve yields better results.
Your ICP should include the high-level outcomes that Ideal Clients want from their business. This helps you align your offerings and also create messaging that hits the mark.
Are my differentiators/uniques aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
The ideal state is that you have some uniques or differentiators that directly align with your Ideal Clients’ desired outcomes. In its purest sense, if you uniquely position your services to satisfy your ideal clients’ desired outcomes, sales, and marketing can be like shooting fish in a barrel.
This is a lot harder in businesses that operate in a competitive market. The EOS™ 3 Uniques concept states that, while some companies might share a unique or two, the ideal state is that no other business offers all three.
If you are in a market that is challenging to differentiate, then clearly connecting your services to your Ideal Client’s desired outcomes might be the best thing you can do to differentiate.
Is the path to value clear for my ideal clients?
The path to value has a lot of interchangeable terms:
- Client Journey
- Proven Process in the EOS world
- Client Experience
Regardless of what you call it, the keys to leveraging the concept to win more are the same:
- Tightly integrate your uniques into the journey
- Make it clear how your Ideal Clients navigate their path to value
- Brand your Client Journey and use it as a tool to connect with your Ideal Clients
As Donald Miller says, “… if you confuse, you lose.” Clearly communicating your Ideal Client’s path to value will not only help you speak to prospects and clients, it will also help you align your team to deliver the journey that you desire.
Conclusion
This should help you better understand the root cause of your barrier to sales. If you are able to resolve these questions with good answers, then the next step is to look at your systems and people and build your growth assets.
Read more on how to identify your ideal client profile.
Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.
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