I write this in response to a question that Mel asked after reading my article on how to promote your business confidently.
Getting clear on what exactly you’re offering is the first step to promoting your business confidently. And this is not always easy to do. I know, because I took the long and winding road to my current destination!
But looking back, my “clarification process” can be boiled down to one event and 3 questions.
The event
It all started when someone asking me if I’d be interested in promoting a particular product.
After a brief demo of this product, I found myself daydreaming about becoming a spokesperson and reseller for this product — even though I already had my own business to run! By the end of that day, I had actually begun to identify people I could partner with to promote and sell this product.
At that point, I had to stop and wonder what was going on – because clearly, there was something very interesting going on!
The 3 questions
Answering these questions (which took a while) became my “clarification process”:
- What about this product excites me so much? Why do I feel inspired to promote it?
The product in question was an eCommerce software product.
I found it to be an elegant yet practical solution to a very specific business need: it was a “turnkey” or “plug-and-play” solution for businesses that wanted to get into eCommerce without a big investment upfront.
From the demo, it seemed that the product was easy to implement and use.
It included all the basic functionality one might want initially, plus a few extras.
And it was affordable.
Most importantly, I could envision exactly the kinds of people who would find this product useful.
So promoting this product to this group of people wouldn’t be “promoting” at all – it would simply be answering a question they had.
For me to feel this way about my business, I realized that I needed to have similar elements in my products and services — which led me to my next question.
- What would my offering look like, if I could incorporate all these components into my business?
I had a 100% service business at that time. So I had to think about how to create “plug-and-play” versions of my services, which would be easy to use and affordable.
That was the easy part: I could write books, create home-study programs, and so on, to “productize” my service.
The difficult part was the topic.
If I wrote a book, what would it be about? My home-study program would help someone learn what? And why should anyone care to learn whatever it was?
In other words, just like the software product, my products had to be a clear and practical answer to a clear question.
And I had to be able to envision the people asking the question, so I could provide an appropriate answer.
The next question helped me with the selection process.
- What ONE question can I answer, that’ll make a BIG difference to people like me?
The answer came to me in the form of a casual remark from a fellow business owner.
She said that she liked my approach to business networking, and that other people would benefit from hearing about my perspective. Those were more or less her words.
I realized then that I had an elegant yet practical solution to a specific business need:
An alternative approach to business networking for self-employed people who wanted to and needed to network, but had limited time and energy.
So of all the questions I could answer, I picked the one that was practical, necessary for me as a business owner, and interesting for me personally: the ONE thing that made a big difference in my life as a business owner.
So how does this help YOU?
Find a product or service that you LOVE. One that you’re always telling people about.
Then use these questions to clarify and focus your own offering.
See if it makes any difference to how you promote your business after that.
Either way, please share your comments below — I’d love to hear about your experience.
– Sri