#138: Selling With Specificity
‘Tis the season to be running around like crazy looking for the perfect holiday gift.
My 10 year old desperately wants this one sports jersey, and my husband and I can not find it anywhere.
I looked it up and there are 350 million products on Amazon. So, you would think I could find what I am looking for.
This podcast is the second in a series called Three Truths About Marketing in 2023 and Beyond. And it's called Selling With Specificity.
And you can see why when we are looking for that perfect present, we know exactly what we want, and it's hard to find, we're able to make decisions faster, we're willing to pay a premium. And we are so happy when we finally stumble upon it. This is exactly the way that our clients feel.
So, this is why selling with specificity in 2023 and beyond is one of the best ways to grow your business.
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Listen to the Show:
Laura 00:00
As I'm recording this podcast, many of us are running around like crazy looking for the perfect holiday gift. In our house, it looks something like this, a zipline that is long enough to go over a stream but short enough that I don't have to worry about whether or not my eight year old is going to be safe riding in my backyard. A Duplo set with Mini, Mickey can be in it. But it cannot be without Mini, a wreath, a wreath for the house that can be hung damage free, but also has lights that don't plug in. By the way, this doesn't exist. I've looked trust me. And don't even get me started about the various obscure sports jerseys that my 10 year old desperately wants and the names I don't remember at all. And so I keep asking my husband, did you get the one with Judd in the name? Did you get that one? Did you order it. And we have had the hardest time finding it anywhere. Just to give you perspective, I looked it up and there are 350 million products on amazon.com. When you also include marketplace sellers, Amazon itself sells 12 million different products. So you would think that what I'm looking for wouldn't be that hard, but it actually hits. And for many of our clients, they feel the same exact way.
Laura 01:24
This podcast is the second in a series called three truths about marketing in 2023 and beyond. And it's called selling with specificity. And you can see why when we are looking for that perfect present, we know exactly what we want. And it's hard to find. We're able to make decisions faster, we're willing to pay a premium. And we are so happy when we finally stumble upon it. This is exactly the way that our clients feel. And so this is why selling with specificity in 2023 and beyond is one of the best ways to grow your business.
Laura 02:05
Welcome to the Next Level Leap podcast. I'm your host Laura Meyer top growth strategist to some of the country's fastest growing brands, and mentor to consultants. My signature leap methodology has changed the way 1000s of companies look at growth strategy, and this podcast shares best practices and inspirational interviews to help you make that next level leap in your business. Stick around and join me as I share the journey of how we as founders can multiply our income impact and influence by landing on the other side of our next big leap. Let's go.
Laura 02:44
In the introduction of this podcast episode, I shared a little bit about why selling with specificity is so helpful when it comes to products when it comes to shopping on Amazon or looking for E commerce shops. Because when we are shopping for that perfect present, we need it to arrive in a particular timeframe within the range of what would be acceptable to the person that we're giving it to so that we can make sure that we just make the best decision possible. So we can just move on with our lives and continue to kill it at reaching our goals. It was just yesterday that I finally called in help called and reinforcement, I had one of our trusted babysitters come Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 2 -
over and help wrap presents and I had her help put together a family album, she sat in the extra desk in my office and designed a way for several hours. And then we were painstakingly choosing the different types of covers and making sure that we were ordering something that would come in and look really nice when it finally arrived.
Laura 03:43
And for our customers, when it comes to info products when it comes to services, which many of you sell. Many of you are coaches and consultants and educators and info product owners, maybe affiliate marketers, anything like that. What happens is that it's even harder to find what you're looking for, because everybody kind of sounds the same. And in a lot of ways they look the same, which makes it very difficult for buyers to know exactly who it is that can help them. So when it comes to information services, this is a particularly obscure hunt. I don't know if you felt this way recently, but when I scroll through my Instagram feed or my LinkedIn, it's a lot of different people who sound and look very similar. I'm sure if you were to ask them, they would say oh no, it's nuanced. Like I talk about leadership in this way. Or I say you can do it from my own perspective.
Laura 04:44
And they're probably not wrong, but I'm going to suggest that going into 2023 and beyond that we need to be extra careful to make sure that we're selling from a place of high specificity because information on how to solve general problems in the business world, or maybe you are in fitness, or maybe you are in health and wellness, or maybe you are in relationships, whatever type of category, you're in information about how to solve that problem is readily available with the millions of different articles, blog posts, Instagram posts, YouTube videos out there. And I'm going to suggest that it's even commoditized in many industries, but it's not easily digestible. Overwhelm is as commonplace as getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth. And the reason why people are so overwhelmed is because the myriad of choices that they can select from when solving some of the core problems that they're experiencing every day. I was speaking to somebody at a fitness class this morning. And they asked me, well, you're an expert in online marketing, what's popular right now, what's doing well, right now. And I said to them, the clients that I have, and the clients of my students who are doing the best right now are selling from a high level of specificity. They are solving a niche problem for a niche audience niche or niche, whatever you want to call it. And they know their avatar really, really well.
Laura 06:19
And more importantly, even if they don't have that completely nailed down, they know exactly the problem that they're solving within a specific market, they're not just generally good at helping people with business are generally good at helping people get fit, or even fitness within a yoga category, like that's still too broad. And what happens is, is that when people hear Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 3 -
information that sounds similar to what they've heard in the past, or it feels like overly general, not specific to their situation, they'll just kind of gloss over it, oh, that looks nice, that person seems friendly, that's kind of interesting. And then they won't internalize it, they will hear it, but they won't digest it. And when we get specific with our customer segment, we can start actually even just giving away the solution freely, because that helps people identify whether or not you're the type of service provider that can really solve their problem. And then what happens is, is you get to charge a premium for the implementation, I'm going to say that, again, for the people in the back, you get to charge a premium to help them with implementation, meaning that they become attracted to your content and to your solution. Or even they increase the amount of awareness that they have around their problem, because of the free content that you put out there because of your podcast episodes, YouTube videos, Instagram content, even relationship marketing, communication. But then, because they realize, oh, my gosh, this is the thing I've been looking for. Wow. Okay, tell me more, you can charge a premium for actually helping them get a result with the information.
Laura 08:09
Because of the amount of overwhelm that so many people are experiencing, going into 2023, the specific implementation is the missing piece that's keeping something undesirable the same. Many times when I'm helping a client just get started and think about what's possible for their company, the answer that they come back to me with is Oh, yeah, we've thought of that, actually, we've considered something like that. And it doesn't mean that my consulting advice isn't valid, it just means that they considered something that seems to be a pretty solid solution. They are the best expert on their own business. So that's not surprising. But it's getting support around the specific implementation, and the steps and the guidance and the twists and turns that tend to come up when we're implementing something new that is keeping them where they are today are trying a lot of different things that may or may not move them in the direction of their mission and their vision of their organization. So because of this information that's readily available, we need to not only communicate from a high level of specificity, and then also help sell those specifics when we are presenting our solution. But until we do that, we may experience very long sales cycles, because in absence of being able to clearly articulate that solution, people are going to kind of just be like, I don't know, maybe this person can help me I'm not really sure it's kind of sounds like they do what other people do. I don't know I don't want to pay for another thing that doesn't get a result like that is the cycle of indecision that many people stay on while they're trying to figure out whether or not you can help them with that high level of specificity that's been under communicated that if you do As highlighted a little bit more, with likely increase the amount of conversions that you see in 2023, and overall growth of your business.
Laura 10:14 Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 4 -
So right now your wheels might be turning a little bit, you're like, Okay, this makes sense. And I've heard it before. And I think Laura is right, but I'm not exactly sure how to get started. So I'm going to help you with some ideas that you might be able to implement into your business right away going into 2023 that can increase the amount of specificity in your offer. And I want to use my own consulting certification program called fractional freedom as an example here. Fractional freedom is specifically for people with a professional background. Typically, those of you who have an agency background done for you marketing or sales services, such as copywriting, and you're looking to work on the bigger picture of the business. And really, you're kind of done with the done for you. That is a highly specific person, I know exactly who they are when I see them in our sales pipeline. And I'll tell people, you know, if they're new to business, and they're trying to decide between coaching and consulting, and they're not sure, and they really like trying to help people with their personal style, and they really like the Enneagram. And they're also thinking about business growth, I will say to them, you are not ready for this offer.
Laura 11:25
This is an offer that is specifically for somebody with pretty extensive business experience, preferably as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, but not always, we've seen people successful, coming from a corporate as well, who know that they want to be a consultant, and they want to transition out of what they're doing right now. Because it's an intense program. And it's not for beginners. And by being able to market and sell in this way, yes, every now and then we lose a few sales, it's totally fine. I'd rather do that and keep the container, very specific space, which ends up being a transformative space, where people love the program and see result. Right now we are seeing about 50% of our consulting certification, students ascend into our mastermind, which was mind blowing to me. I didn't expect that at all. And honestly, when I started this certification program, I didn't even know we were going to have a mastermind. But as I started to get to know the students better, I realized they were going to really need support well beyond the eight to 10 weeks that we were together initially. And with that high level of specificity for it being a very specific program, and then coming in knowing that they're going to be around business owners just like them. That has contributed to the success of this program, where a lot of people in the coaching and consulting space are seeing their enrollments go down, we're seeing the opposite, we're seeing ours go up. And I attribute it to the level of specificity that's available both in fractional freedom, as well as our abundant consultant mastermind. So I hope that example was helpful to you.
Laura 13:01
And if you're still thinking about how can I sell the specifics better in my business, the first step is really just to have the ovaries, I would say balls, but many of my listeners are women, the ovaries to let go of what the other people that you're no longer going to serve. I think for so many of us who are business owners, we'd love to help. And we loath the idea of leaving Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 5 -
anybody behind. But with that level of specificity, it just creates space for somebody else to serve the people that you're not in a totally different way. It also opens up space for you to become a partner with somebody else who solves a specific problem that you don't. So for example, a lot of our best affiliates for fractional freedom are people who provide agency services training or copywriting training, because they know at a certain point that students going to need to, they might have a desire to ascend beyond that particular type of offer. Or they might want to mix in advisory services to their suite of services. And fractional freedom is the perfect solution for that. So in doing that, I actually open up more possibility for the business rather than reduce it. If you're trying to figure out well, who exactly is my program for, I want you to start getting really obsessed with who your best client was. There's a lot of ways that's often your favorite client. If you think about the person who bought right away, understood your offer immediately got a result was really an engaged student and left super happy telling everybody and anybody about it.
Laura 14:34
Think about that person, or if there's several people like that, think about what they have in common. That'll help you nail down specificity around your offer. And then finally, if you're looking for ideas, one of the things that you can do is start looking at some of the trend reports that are coming out on social media and different websites and they tend to come out about now, I just saw on LinkedIn news 41 Big Ideas to change our world in 2023, go through these trend reports go through the future 100 report, you can you can Google it, I look at these reports all the time, because it just helps me understand what level of specificity I can add in to my programs and offers going into the future, anticipate those trends and be on the cutting edge of them or be on the front wave of them versus trying to catch up on the back end and adding that on once everybody has already heard of it. I'd rather be a leader in my industry than be following from behind. So looking at some of those trend reports and thinking, Okay, well, if that's coming up in the future, maybe I can add that type of language or a module about that or more information about that in my program. And that will just increase the specificity within a way that's going downstream, not upstream.
Laura 16:03
So in wrapping up this podcast episode, I want to leave you with some actionable ideas that you can implement when it comes to selling your programs and offers and even products with a higher level of specificity. If you have an existing business and client base, survey them, look at the people who are the best customers in your business and reverse engineer their psychographics or their demographics. To increase the level of specificity in the avatar that you serve. Need ideas? Look at some trend articles, look at the future 100 Pinterest always puts out an annual report on the trends that they are seeing within their platform, or looked in LinkedIn news search for that 41 Big Ideas article that I referenced. And finally, look for those situations where energetically things are already working. Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 6 -
Laura 16:56
I don't subscribe to very many newsletters. But the ones that I do, I love to read. And James Clear, just this last week sent out a newsletter where he said, look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill, invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect, create products that tap into a desire people already have work on projects that play to your strengths. And then once the potential of the situation is already working for you add fuel to the fire, pour yourself into the craft act is if you have to outwork everyone else, even though the wind is at your back. The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill. What I find is that when people lack specificity, they end up grinding uphill. And the idea is to sprint downhill or even for some of us every now and then I like to float downhill. It's something that I've gotten over time, I have increased my amount of appreciation for the times that we get to do that. And specificity offers us the increased ability to be able to travel downhill on our entrepreneurial journey. Listen, entrepreneurship is hard enough as it is there are so many unexpected events that take place that we need to adjust to. So why not just add specificity and give yourself that extra edge so you don't have to feel like you're constantly grinding uphill when it comes to selling and marketing your offer. Next week, I'll be sharing the final truth about marketing in 2023 and beyond and it's all about human connection ties into the book that I just released. But I'll be going into even more detail on how you can implement human connectivity in your business. I'll see you then.
Laura 18:44
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The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.