I think you’re going to find this really useful. Today, I explain why you really should offer a new service or product to your existing customers. PLUS, I give you some proven advice on how to get started.

If you don’t already know, here’s why you should think seriously about developing a new service.

The quickest, most profitable way to generate additional income for your business, is to sell new services to your existing customers. It’s a lot faster and more profitable, than finding new customers for your existing services.

Faster and more profitable — why?

Because your customers already know you. They already trust you. They have an existing trading relationship with you. And marketing to existing customers costs a fraction as much, making it more profitable, too.

Whenever I share this idea with a new client, they immediately see the potential. After all, these cookies were already smart enough to hire me. They then follow it up with a great question.

“How do we get started creating this new service, Jim”?

Obviously, when I work with one of my clients on this, I work with them to develop exactly what they want and need. However, I thought I’d share some general pointers that you may find useful, if you’d like to have a do-it-yourself shot at it.

Go premium

A useful place to start, is to take a look at one of your existing products or services, and think of ways to add valuable, premium features to it. Something that significantly increases its value to your customers. In every economy, there is a very eager marketplace of people who actively seek out premium products and services. It’s why we have luxury restaurants, clothing brands, hotels, watches, cars, etc.

There’s an additional benefit from going premium. In my experience, those who purchase premium products and services are often far, far easier to work with than any other group.

Express yourself

Alternatively, you could look for opportunities to create an express version of one of your current services, for those who value speed and will happily pay for a new, faster service.

Express services always work best, when you offer a guaranteed deadline. It’s not enough to say you’ll do (whatever) faster. You need to tell them that it will be done/ready by 9am, or in 24-hours, etc.

An all new offering

If you want to introduce an all new product or service, a useful place to start is to look for things that will compliment what you already provide. For example, if customers already use (x) they’ll have a potential need for (y).

Accountants discovered this decades ago. They figured out that their clients would value new, complimentary services from them. So they started offering profit improvement planning, document storage and the development of HR policies for their client’s businesses, etc.

Do some research and if it stacks up, dive in and give it a shot.

Sustainable

You might also want to consider the huge market for environmentally friendly products. Sustainability has become a major factor in purchasing decisions. In some cases, sustainability is a requirement before companies can purchase from a provider.

Developing a product that’s kind to the environment, or finding a more sustainable way to provide your products, makes sense on multiple levels.

Give it a try

I hope those examples offer some food for thought.

Important: Creating a new product or service is especially useful, if you find yourself with a cashflow problem. As you know, it takes time to market your existing services to prospects who don’t know you, then go through the various processes/meetings/testimonials/follow-up, etc. However, the speed with which the type of ideas above can be put into place, offered to clients, sold and invoiced is rapid.

I hope you’re inspired to examine the huge potential here. Because as I see over and over again with clients, when you get it right, the results can be absolutely transformational.

Photo by Alex Padurariu

Why don’t people hire me, Jim? I get asked that question a lot. Here’s what you need to know, in order to regularly get hired by great clients or sell to equally great customers.

I need to start with a simple question: Can you guess what every single one of your prospective clients or customers has in common?

Here it is:

They can all, easily afford your products or services! All of them. Every. Single. One.

Here’s why people really don’t hire you or buy from you.

1. You’re attracting enquiries from the wrong people.
2. You haven’t given them a powerful enough reason to buy from you or hire .
3. They don’t trust you enough, so they don’t believe your message.

Let’s look at these 3 challenges in a little more detail. Plus, how to overcome them and make massively more sales.

Let’s go!

1. People won’t buy from you because you’re attracting the wrong people

No matter how amazing your products are. No matter how outstanding your services are. You’ll never achieve the results you want, if you’re talking to the wrong people.

Let’s say you provide a premium quality service, which rightly has a premium price tag. If so, you’re wasting your time marketing to the low-fee crowd.

Yes, very occasionally you may be able to change someone’s world view. However, you’re far more likely to sell your premium services, if you market only to those who already value premium service.

The key phrase here is: Market to the unhappy, NOT the uninterested.

In other words, using the above example you’d market your premium service to those who are unhappy with their current situation, and who value a premium service.

It’s never ever about the money. It’s always true that your prospective customers can afford your products or services.

And here’s why.

If someone genuinely can’t afford what you offer, they were never a prospective customer in the first place! Think about it. For someone to be a prospective customer, they need to have the ability to pay you.

So, identify who your ideal prospect is. Then, make that select group of great people the sole focus of all your marketing. The alternative is to do what most failing business owners do, and try to be all things to all people. That approach can’t work. It will drive you nuts and lose you a fortune.

2. People don’t hire you because you haven’t given them a powerful enough reason

This one is huge. No. It’s bigger than that!

We need to start here by looking at motivation. The word motivation comes from a fusion of the words: motive and action.

When the motive (or reason) is powerful enough, we take action. In contrast most small business marketing lacks motivational power. It’s generic. It’s predictable. And as you’d expect, it lacks the impact that’s essential, to inspire people to buy from them.

Why do so many businesses rely on weak marketing that fails to generate the results they need? Having transformed the marketing results of small business owners for more than two decades, here’s what I’ve found. And it’s something I see examples of pretty-much every working day of my life.

It’s the business owner’s attitude to marketing. They’ll happily pay an expert to style their hair, but they’ll willingly risk their financial future with lousy, ineffective, DIY marketing.

They honestly believe that dabbling with their future is safer, than hiring an expert to do things correctly. They tend not to admit it publicly, because in many cases they don’t admit it to themselves. In conversation, you find that this happens when the business owner still operates and makes decisions, from an employee mindset. They see risk in all the wrong places. Unaware that the riskiest thing a business owner can do, is avoid expert help when it’s clearly needed.

However, this is great news if you want your business to thrive.

Really, Jim?

Why?

Because you can massively outperform the vast majority of your competitors, simply by being professional enough to invest in expert marketing help. It’s the easiest win in business. Low risk. Massive return.

3. People don’t buy from you because they trust you yet, or believe your message

For your marketing to work, people need to believe it. They need to trust you enough, to accept that what you’re telling them is true.

Sadly, many sales are lost this way, even though the marketing message is completely true and honest. The provider really is as good as they say. Maybe even better then they say in their marketing.

So, why does this happen? And more importantly my friend, what can you do about it?

Trust is lost when there’s a disconnect between.

• What the marketing message says.
• And how the prospective client feels.

Here are just 2 very common examples, to explain the point.

• Promising an expert service, yet charging average fees. Your prospective clients have been told since they were kids, that when something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. So they don’t believe it. ‘High quality’ and ‘cheap fees’ are opposite ends of the spectrum. Putting them together creates massive doubt in what you’re saying.
• Promising a professional service, yet having an amateur looking brand. It’s like a restaurant serving a delicious meal, but on a dirty plate! It totally destroy trust. And it does so literally in seconds. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. You lost the sale or new client needlessly. And you won’t even know.

If you notice anything that could cause a stranger to get a negative impression of your business, fix it. And fix it correctly.

Why?

Because while it’s broken it’s losing you money and opportunities. While it’s broken, the lifeblood of your business is broken. And to ignore it is like ignoring black smoke bellowing from the back of your car, hoping the car will ‘just get better’. When in reality that car will soon grind to a halt.

Summing up: Why people don’t buy from you

Those 3 examples of why people don’t buy from you are easy wins. They’re easy, because with the correct approach, they can easily and quickly be overcome, allowing you to blow the lid off your potential.

What you can’t do, is carry on as you are in 2024 and expect things to magically improve. You’d think that goes without saying, right? Yet time and again, we see small businesses that still face ongoing struggles, for years and years.

Here’s just one example, from an email I received.

The guy who wrote to me is in his late 60’s. He’s worked hard all his life. He told me that he’d never made any “real money” and that he kept waiting for things to improve. With some expert help, he could have quit working decades ago and been very comfortable now. However, he explained that he still needs to work in order to pay the bills. It’s heartbreaking, because it’s easily avoidable.

As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In business we simply say, “more of the same leads to more of the same”.

In short, if you want massively better marketing results, financial security and everything that goes with it in 2024, you have to improve things accordingly.

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20

It turns out that everybody in your marketplace has at least 2 things in common.

1. They hate being sold to.
2. They hate having problems.

The most successful business owners have figured this out. In fact, they’ve taken those pet hates, and used them to develop a powerful, extremely effective growth strategy.

Instead of selling to prospective clients or customers, they help them solve problems. And they do this via the products or services they offer.

Think about it, your business exists in order to solve a problem or a number of problems. Every business does. Therefore, as business owners we should be approaching prospective clients as a problem solver.

This means talking to them, instead of pitching to them. It means listening to their needs, so we get a clear understanding of their problem, then explaining how we can help.

When your marketplace sees you as a source of answers, they’ll regard you as a useful asset. And that changes the whole dynamic of how you do business. You become a massively more attractive proposition. Because we’re drawn to those who can help us or assist us.

In short, doors that were closed to you when you were trying to sell stuff, will fly open when you approach them as a problem solver. And you’ll find people start hiring you or buying from you, without you having to sell anything.