Jim Connolly Marketing

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

The top business in its niche, is seldom the best in its niche

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marketing, best in niche, results

Today, I’d like to help you avoid maybe the most frustrating thing in business. I’m referring to watching your less capable (and often less ethical) competitors, gaining more of the market than you do.

It all starts with understanding the following.

The most successful service provider and the best service provider, are seldom the same service provider. In fact, it rarely happens.

That’s because being the best doesn’t automatically mean people will notice you, believe you or hire you.

Why is that?

Commercial success requires a critically important balance.

You need to balance the development of a great service, with the development of a strategy to earn the attention, trust and patronage of your marketplace.

Here’s why that balance is essential.

  • If your prospective clients don’t know you exist, it doesn’t matter how exceptional your service (or product) is, because you’re not an option for them.
  • If your prospective clients DO know you exist, but your marketing doesn’t inspire them to trust you, they won’t hire you or buy from you.
  • And if your prospective clients know you exist, and they trust you… but your marketing doesn’t motivate them to take action, they won’t hire you or buy from you.

Without that balance in place, trying to grow your business is extremely frustrating, as less capable competitors grab your share of the marketplace. You will already know competitors in your space, who are nowhere near as good as you, yet they’re flying.

With that balance in place, you get all the rewards your hard work and dedication merits.

Thankfully, this is something directly under your control. All it takes is a decision. The decision to adjust the balance, so your business attracts the volume and quality of clients you deserve.

But here’s the challenge. It’s even easier to ‘keep on keeping on’ and hope things just get better. Which is why this message is ignored by most people I share it with. It’s why there are business owners still whining about how unlucky they are… and how unfair the marketplace is… 5, 6 or 7 years after they started their business.

It’s not luck.

It’s a decision. THIS decision.

And it should be the easiest, most obvious business decision you’ll ever encounter.

You know what’s good for business?

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Whats good for business

It’s good for your business…

When you make short-term decisions that are consistent with your long-term plans.

When you hire amazing people and pay them what they’re worth.

When you build a reputation as a trusted source of value.

When you connect with the right kind of people.

When you feed your mind with rich mental protein and take care of your body.

When you pause to reflect before saying, publishing or sending anything important.

When you start each morning thinking about the things you’re grateful for.

When you start your working day, writing a list of things you want to achieve. And close each day, with a review of the things you’ve learned.

When you build your primary marketing channel on a platform you control. Your website. Your email list. Social media platforms can, and do, wipe out businesses by deleting their accounts.

When you treat different clients differently, according to their unique needs.

When you make promises to your clients and deliver on them.

When you learn to absolutely LOVE what you do. Because work becomes joy and this improves literally everything.

25 Reasons why people don’t hire you

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why wont people hire me

It’s a massive source of great frustration. You’re trying to sell a service or product to a prospect… and they just don’t ‘get it’. So let’s look at 25 common reasons why people don’t hire you. By learning why people don’t hire you, you’ll find it easier to turn things around.

Here they are in no particular order.

  1. They make decisions slowly. You move quickly. They’re still trying to process things.
  2. They make decisions quickly. You move slowly. They’ve lost interest.
  3. You’re assuming too much about what they know, what they think or what they need.
  4. They’re short term focused and you’re selling a medium to long-term benefit. Or vice versa.
  5. You’re dealing with the wrong person.
  6. You have a closing problem. Read this.
  7. They’re under a great deal of stress. Which is really common right now.
  8. You’re connecting to them using the wrong medium. You’re using email instead of sending a letter. A letter instead of a phone call. A phone call instead of Zoom. A Zoom instead of in-person.
  9. You’re using too many words to describe your proposition. This is common.
  10. You’re using too few words to describe it. This almost never happens.
  11. There are too many steps in your sales process. You’re losing them. They get half way through whatever you’re communicating, and they’re already forgetting the start.
  12. You’re using incompatible marketing ideas, approaches or strategies from a different industry. This is a huge, HUGE problem for service providers. I wrote about how to avoid the problem, here.
  13. They can see the value, they do want it, but are lying to you because they’re broke and embarrassed.
  14. Your product or service, if purchased, would force them to admit they failed in some way.
  15. You’re attracting poorly targeted leads, so they lack the need, awareness and / or finances.
  16. You haven’t given them a deadline to make their decision. Deadlines sharpen the mind.
  17. You’re confusing them, because there’s a disconnect between what you say and what they see. This is very common. The vendor says they’re professional and reliable, yet their marketing gives the opposite impression.
  18. They’re very visual and your marketing or presentation isn’t.
  19. You’re not enthusiastic enough, about your product or service, so they’re not enthusiastic enough to hire you.
  20. You haven’t demonstrated the full value of your product or service to them. So, they wrongly believe it’s too expensive.
  21. You haven’t explained the core benefits of what you’re offering, so they don’t even know they need it.
  22. They’re scared. And your level of reassurance isn’t cutting it.
  23. They’re expecting the approach or marketing from someone in your industry, to look or sound different.
  24. You haven’t made it easy enough for them to switch to you from their current provider.
  25. They don’t trust you enough, to lower their guard and let your message land.

I hope you find these examples useful.

Image isn’t everything. But it matters a lot

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New service, new product, jim connolly marketing

In business, the image you create isn’t everything.

But your image does matter. It matters a lot.

That’s because people are paying attention. Your prospective clients or customers, your marketplace and your competitors are watching. They’re looking for clues, pointers, tips and hints on how to judge your personal brand and commercial brand.

They want to know why, how or if you should matter to them.

Here’s the thing… when you take time to give them a hint, they’ll take the hint. No, not everyone. And no, not always. But a significant number of people and often enough.

With that in mind, there’s an all-important question worth pondering.

What kind of hints are you giving and are they attracting the right responses from the right people?

The easiest way for new clients to find you

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Google search, get found google, the easiest way

Image: Mitchell Luo

Here’s what we know for certain: There’s a huge difference between someone using a search engine to find your business by its name, and someone merely searching for a provider in your industry.

  • If they’re searching for your business by its name, they’ll find you.
  • If they’re searching for a provider, they will find countless pages of results. Even if they do manage to find the result for your business, unless you’re at the top of the results, or very close, the chances of them clicking through to your site is tiny. Because you’ll simply be competing with everyone else.

You could try to buy your way to the top of the search results, but it’s expensive, risky and all the risk is on you.

Thankfully, there is a far better alternative.

Searching for you by name

Here’s a vastly more effective marketing strategy. It’s the strategy I use myself, and it works in every economy!

You focus on making your business stand out from your competitors. [This article gives you a proven way to stand out with 10 examples to get you started].

You do things worth talking about, which means your name and brand spreads from person to person. So, when someone needs whatever you provide, they go looking for you – – the provider they’ve been hearing about, by name.

Your prospective clients or customers will use Google and other search engines, knowing who they want. No Google Ads, no auctions and no spiralling advertising costs.

By spending a little time and effort working on ways to differentiate your business from the pack, you can very significantly increase sales. Not only that, these sales will be more profitable as you’ll be able to either eliminate or slash your Google / Facebook advertising spend.

This approach is sound advice at any time. But it’s especially important given the medium and long-term economic outlook.

Let’s look at closing the sale

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When I started out in sales and marketing, it was all about closing the sale.

In fact, good salespeople were often referred to as good closers.

Decades later, I still see sales recruiters asking for candidates who have a proven record of closing.

Here’s why we need to be extremely careful before adopting the closing mindset, or any of the countless closing tricks and techniques.

closing the sale, sales closers

Closing for business?

The challenge with the closing mindset, is that it positions the prospective customer as little more than a barrier. A hurdle between you and the sale. An obstacle to be overcome. Little wonder so many closing techniques are based on psychological tricks.

The use of long, uncomfortable silences at key points in the sales process, for example, is used to put pressure on the prospective client. So is refusing to accept a “no” from them, by asking what they need additional information on, when they clearly just want the salesperson to go away.

In a nutshell, the focus is on outmanoeuvring your opponent. It’s them against you. A confrontation.

Here’s a very different approach, along with why I strongly recommend you use it.

Opening

I built my reputation in sales by adopting the total opposite approach. Instead of focusing on closing, I focused on opening.

Opening relationships and opening opportunities.

I found the idea of closing to be self-defeating. I discovered that you can achieve a great deal more, by opening relationships with people. This means taking time to listen to them. And then learning about their challenges and what they want / need. If our marketing is targeted correctly, we’re automatically only speaking with people who are our ideal profile of client.

When handled correctly, and preceded with effective marketing, this means there’s no need to close anything or close on anyone.

The whole process becomes a naturally-flowing conversation, where we seek to help people overcome a challenge, with the products or services we provide.

It’s a beautiful, fulfilling way to do business.

Too passive?

This approach may sound passive, but consider the people you like. The people you trust. The people you enjoy having around you. Are they pushy with you? Confrontational? No! That’s because we prefer those who respect us and are open and honest with us.

We like people who are open and honest.

We trust people who are open and honest.

We recommend people who are open and honest.

We buy from people who are open and honest.

In short, the more open we are, the more opportunities we’re open to. And yes, the more referrals we get and the more sales we make.