4 Blind Spots That Stop You From Getting Clients

I’ve been in the marketing and sales world now for more than 20 years. I can tell you, despite all the innovations and changes, the problems of sales and marketing haven’t changed.

I see the same patterns happening over and over. I’ve included 4 of the blind spots that hold businesses back from growing in this article in the hopes you can spot them and avoid them.

It doesn’t matter how many articles or how much information is put out, these blind spots persist.

Before I dig into them, there is one issue, I see which is a problem of human nature, not just sales and marketing.

It’s the process problem.

We know Rome wasn’t built in a day. We know things take time. We understand that there are no shortcuts in life.

We still look for the shortcuts.

We look for the quick wins.

For you to sell anything to anyone, there is a process of trust building.

People have to believe you and what you offer. That’s a process.

If you quick process to chase an event (quick win), you’ll be disappointed.

Likewise, if you start a process and quit it because it didn’t give you quick wins – you are playing a fools game.

The secret to all success is process.

It isn’t sexy, but it does work.

Now let’s look at four of four top issues that hold people back from growing their business.

The Wrong Audience

I see this problem a lot. Marketers talking to marketers. Coaches building a community of coaches. Copywriters building a community of copywriters. It’s like a backslapping group. Why does this happen? We get lost in our own heads. We market and sell our services to ourselves. We write content for ourselves and so, we attract and built an audience of people who do what we do.

Marketing agencies are terrible for this. They basically create a bubble filled with other people who do what they do. Essentially you talk over the heads of your prospective customers and speak to other experts or industry insiders.

How do you fix this? Spend some time going through social media and google. Look at what your target audience is talking about, most of the time you are talking to what I call the ‘Big Pains’ and Big Wins’ rather than the coal face of ‘symptoms’ and ‘real world impact’.

If you speak with someone who has targeted the wrong audience, they’ll tell you exactly who their target clients are, but when you look at their activity to get clients and build a crowd – it’s a totally different audience. They assume the audience is like them.

The Ambiguous Offer

This is a common issue too. I’ve met too many people who say “I know my service can make a huge difference, but nobody wants to buy” – This is problem is about packaging in 99% of the cases. The service is good, but the way it’s put together for customers is unclear.

If you cannot break down your benefits in a way that customers can see the value, you’ll struggle to achieve consistent sales. People buy for very specific reasons. They want to achieve something. If your product or service doesn’t make it patently obvious what it can achieve for them, you’ll be p*ssing into the wind.

Typically, motivations to buy are categorised into four groups

• Money (Financial Benefit)
• Time (Time Benefit)
• Quality (Quality / Efficiency Benefit)
• Emotion (Feeling / Ego Benefit)

Your customers primarily will buy for one of those reasons. Know which one it is and make that clear in how you present your service.

Audience Building

At any given time, just a fraction of your target clients are looking for what you are selling. The industry stat is just 3% are seriously looking right now. In other words, 97% of your target audience aren’t looking to buy right now or aren’t even thinking about the problems you solve.

For you to find clients in buying mode today, will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Let’s just be honest about it.

So, this leaves you with a challenge… finding the needle in the haystack, that’s why Ads, SEO and Cold outreach exists. To find the prospective clients in buying mode, you have to be in the right place at the right time. That’s expensive

There is an alternative to this…

Audience building – being in the right place for the right time. Gathering a community of target clients and nurturing them at scale. It’s less about selling and more about being the Expert in their world.

You consistently have a community of people around you in different positions. This method, what I call the Crowd-to-Client Engine allows you to nurture people and be an influence in their world. As they mature and move into an active buying status – who do they go to?

This is what true marketing really is. In these days of short-term thinking, many businesses are only thinking 60-90 days ahead, this means they aren’t building a future proof model to their business. Building a Crowd-to-Client Engine is about being future-proofed in terms of leads and clients.

Every day I’m building customers for tomorrow. I’m building my expert status and focusing on adding value to their world, so that I am the preferred choice.

Back in 2018 when I launched this model, we had 10 clients, today we have more than 100 clients and thousands who join our courses and programmes.

Consistent Message

This is a big struggle for many. How do you keep your message consistent and not sound like a stuck record.

News flash… you should be a stuck record.

For people to retain the message, you have to repeat and say the same things over and over again.

What many miss is that you can say the same things in lots of different ways. I help people grow their business, get more clients without the hard sell. I can talk about that in lots of different ways…

Get more clients from social media without cold outreach

Get more clients from social media without paid ads

Grow a business without turning into a salesperson

I can say the same Big Message but break it down into practical applications, I can focus that message into specific situations and technologies. Behind it is the same message, it’s just expressed differently.

Strategy Fit

For many people they are chasing a strategy to bring them clients and often chopping and changing strategy as they see others doing different things. I see some brilliant people frustrated in their own businesses. They didn’t start their business to go on a quest to find the secret to sales. They didn’t sign up to be a marketer.

You don’t have to be.

You just need to be yourself.

Your strategy must fit with who you are. Otherwise, it will be difficult to sustain and do.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have to challenge yourself, but it does mean you have to find a strategy that you can sustain.

Marketing is simply the process of helping people see the value you can add.

Sales is the process of helping people buy more of that value.

So, you find a way to do those two in a way which you can confidently achieve.

In a Factory, you design the machinery and production process around the customers and product you are selling. You don’t build the factory and then decide how to make the product.

Likewise, you must design the process around you and your business model. Otherwise, no matter what it is, you won’t sustain it.

Every business needs a system it can repeat to get clients and serve them.

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