One of the frequent questions I get asked as a business consultant is - “how can I sell more of my product or service?”

The holy grail of questions - How do I sell more?

Unfortunately, there is not one silver bullet of an answer - instead there is a set of steps that need to be followed, in a very specific order, which collectively give the answer and the results to help you sell more.

But why am I asked this question time after time?

Because of one single marketing mistake that is responsible for more than 90% of businesses having this same problem: Businesses are trying to be all things to all people.

It’s a common misconception that if you market to a really wide range of people, then surely you’ll sell more? Or if you narrow down your focus, then won’t you sell less? Both wrong – Why do I say that? I’ll use a real story as an example – a fishing story:

“I was fly fishing with friends in the beautiful Tongariro river at Turangi, and we’d been fishing for about 3 hours with no catches to show for our efforts. We turned a corner and could see about 40 or 50 specimen fish bathing in a wide spot in the river, so we excitedly cast our lines perfectly in the fishes reach. Time after time we cast in what we deemed the perfect spot, and watched helplessly as our flies drifted past the impressively sized fish with no interest from any of the forty or so fish. After an hour of this we decided to move up river, where we fished faster running waters for another hour, still no luck. A few minutes past the hour I was joined by another fisherman, who walked across a 100 meter stretch of river to a certain spot, and started casting – within 3-4 minutes he caught a lovely rainbow trout, 10 minutes after that he caught another. This pattern continued for about 4-5 fish until I couldn’t help myself but to walk over to see what “magic juice” he was pouring into his part of the river! He was a really nice chap, and explained to me that at an exact time of day, in this part of the river, the fish are hungry, and you have to ‘cast like this’ (and showed me) – I followed his lead, and a few minutes later caught my first of the day, and he became my new best friend for the day. We continued catching because he had knowledge of the fish, in that area, and his focused efforts on that was handsomely rewarded.

So how do you get that focus with your business? How do you find the right spot, with the right number of hungry fish and have the right equipment to catch them? It’s focus, and there are five steps you can follow which can make a massive difference to the future of your company – those steps are:

1. Understand Your Competition

What to look for: Understand their strengths, their weaknesses, and their focus – Where you can find weaknesses, you find opportunity.

How: Yellow Pages (online/paper), Website, Advertising – use only the medium type available to the general public because whilst you may think they are really strong in something, if they cannot articulate that to the wider audience / potential clients, then you can take advantage of that.

2. Understand Your Own Company

What to look for: Understand your own strengths, your own weaknesses (areas to improve) and where you focus today.

How: Make sure you have a balanced view, get opinions/feedback from your staff (if possible), your customers, those closest to you and of course your own. The more balanced the stronger it will be as a base to work from.

3. List All Possible Niches you can Focus on

What to look for: What areas / groups of people (aka your Niche) does your product or service best cater for? List all of them without filtering the list, the larger the better to get all your ideas down on paper.

How: Brainstorm by yourself or with others who are knowledgeable about your offering.

 

4. Filter the Niche List to the “Golden Niche”

What do look for: Here you’re looking to find the best Niche (the “Golden Niche”) to focus on today (you can revisit the larger list later once you’ve picked one)

How: Rate the list from point 3 with: Weaknesses & Opportunities from your Competition, Strengths from your Company, Profitability, Revenue, Size of Customer Base and Enjoyment Level (ie why focus on something that makes lots of money but you’ll be unhappy doing it?)

5. Learn everything there is to know about your “Golden Niche”

What to look for: This is where you need to assume the life of the target niche market – what do they like buying, what are their challenges, frustrations, wants, needs, etc – the more you know, the more you can better position your offering in their language.

How: If you can’t do this easily, then start asking the target group to collect information, whether surveys, interviews, go to whatever level you need to in really understanding your target market. The main aim: To talk and think like they do. If you can get to that point, you’re ready to start picking the right words to sell the right products, at the right price, to the market that you have now selected as the best fit for your company.

Good luck!

Jamie McKean is the founder of The Profit Partnership, in Auckland, New Zealand. A Professional Business Consultant, a Business Coach, a Trainer, a published author with an MBA from Henley in the UK and a Partner of the Alchemy Network - a global network of Small to Medium Business Consultants.