Let’s face it. If you can’t sell your service, it is going to be hard to survive as a small business. This article shines a light on one of the most common reasons one-man businesses struggle to sell well.
Solopreneurs will have to put an enormous amount of focus on building a client creating machine. Generating those clients and getting that revenue flowing is the number one thing to focus on for your first few years of ramp up. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs never understand the most likely cause of why they’re struggling to sell.
If you are not yet making a hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue, there is an 85% chance that just one thing is getting in your way.
Instead of fixing the main issue, I see struggling entrepreneurs worrying about:
- their pricing
- their website
- creating info products
- designing effective opt-ins
- growing their lists
- how to have a good enrollment conversation
- a host of other distractions
These may or may not need help. But none of these are usually the major cause of why these people are having difficulty in generating revenue.
So what is the cause then?
It is something very fundamental and basic.
Picture a pyramid. A pyramid has a high apex, one that every entrepreneur is aspiring to reach. The amazing business, the top of the pyramid. What many entrepreneurs forget, however, is that in order to reach that high, a pyramid has to have a very strong, stable base. What most entrepreneurs do time and again is that they don’t actually build their base wide and solid enough to support a great strong pyramid of sales.
First and foremost, you have to actually have a huge desire and commitment to succeed. Building a business is hard enough that if you don’t have a burning desire you’ve got a problem before you even start. Nobody else can give it to you. You have to come to the table with all of that burning inside you.
The next step is that you need to have a rock-solid niche that you have claimed as your own—and this is where that 85% issue comes in. Entrepreneurs are selling, marketing, writing blogs and auto-responders, and doing complex and time-consuming on-line launches (great Step 8 techniques), but their niche (Step 2) is faulty, so nothing else that they do is working well.
The problem is that they have a fundamental flaw in their business at a niche level. Having a really strong niche is incredibly important. Once you have that niche, everything else falls into place. Then you can easily identify that special something, your special ju-ju you have, what makes you unique, the thing that sets you apart from your competitors. You can use your niche to create a magnetic and powerful marketing message that will enable you to talk in a compelling way to your clients.
The other steps that come afterwards are more advanced and we won’t be getting into those today, but again, if you’ve found your niche, these steps will come much more easily. If you’re struggling with poor sales, and you’re under the $100k of revenue mark, I’m going to take a wild guess that you’re struggling with your niche.