This week’s podcast episode features advice from Jay on how companies can better position their offerings when pitching to prospects. Jay discusses why trying to showcase all of your services and capabilities at once can actually hurt your chances of closing deals.
Main discussion points:
– Leading with too many offerings can overwhelm prospects and make it hard for them to understand what your company really does.
– Successful brands are known for one core thing – like Bombas for socks or Ring for video doorbells.
– Trying to be known for everything means you end up being known for nothing.
– Lead with your most recognizable offering when pitching prospects. Once you establish expertise there, you can cross-sell additional services.
– Even if only a fraction of your revenue comes from your leading product or service, it gives prospects a clear understanding of your core competency.
– After winning business with your primary offering, you can showcase your other capabilities and expand the relationship.
Transcript
Foreign. Welcome back for another one of our do this not that Short episodes. Ask us anything. It was really exciting when we launched this new shorter version.
We're still doing the longer version on Fridays, but the ones that released in midweek, we got a lot of people writing in all sorts of questions. And the format of this is really short, where we answer one work related question and. And then we answer one totally ridiculous question.
So we got this question in this week from Todd from Dallas and here was his question. It's a good question. He says, my company is struggling to close business. We present our services to prospects but don't get the business.
We have a ton of offerings but very few prospects. Say yes to our offering. Do you have any thoughts? And I do.
And it's this concept of when you go to market, doesn't matter if you're selling consumer products or business services or whatever it is that you're selling and promoting.
When you go and let's say you have 10 different lines of services, you're selling five different products and you're trying to present all this great stuff you have because you're excited about everything that you're capable of, everything you sell. It's very hard for the prospect to be like, oh, I'm interested in that because it's overwhelming, right?
And they don't know what your company really does. If I said to you bombus, the first thing that comes to mind are their socks.
If I said to you ring, the first thing that comes to mind is their doorbell. If I said to you Apple, first thing that comes to mind is their phone. They are known for something.
If you are trying to be known for everything, all the different stuff that you do when you're trying to be known for everything, you will be known for nothing. It is critical to be known for something.
And then once you get people to get excited about that one thing, right, with bombas, with their socks, then they're going to try to sell you shirts and hats and whatever else. Same thing, obviously with Apple. They go in with the phone, they get, you do everything else.
Even in my own business, okay, in my business I'm known for email marketing, right? We have subject line.com, we do all this email stuff. But here's something interesting.
Less than 50% of the revenue from my company, my overall company has anything to do with email. Less than 50%, okay, but we lead with email because I used to lead with all these different agency services that we did and we got no traction.
But we lead with email and People say, oh, they're really good at that. Let's bring them on for that. And then after we build that relationship, we offer up all the other stuff that we do.
Because people are like, well, they're great at that. What else do they do? So you really want to think about being known for something.
When you go in for that pitch, you pitch that one thing, maybe you have one final slide that shows all that other stuff and try to win the day with that one thing. Doesn't matter if your business services, consumer products, whatever it is, and then do a great job and then build out from there.
So this idea of if you are known for everything, you are known for nothing. All right, so that's what I would think about if you're having struggle, if you're struggling to try to really close that business.
Now, let's get to the question of nonsense. We got a very important question. I think it's an important question from Cheryl from Michigan.
Cheryl from Michigan says, are you a Star wars or Star Trek person? Now, first of all, I don't. I don't pretend to be like, deep on either one of these, but I do have an opinion, and I am one or the other.
I am 100% a Star Trek person over Star wars person. It's not even close. Star wars lost me when they did Jar Jar Binks back in the day, and that was terrible. And Star Trek has always been great.
I mean, going back to Captain Kirk and George Sakai, who I love. Oh, my. I love that guy. Right? And then all the shows that follow, right?
You had Next Generation when you had, you know, Captain Picard and you had Jordi laforge with his, you know, banana clip glasses. That was amazing. And then they rolled out all these other shows, you know, Deep Space Nine, which is okay.
And you had Voyager, and now you have all the. A million other shows like Picard and whatever, and they're great. The problem with Star wars is it's mildly depressing.
And the only people who are really the awesome people are the Jedi. So if you don't have the Jedi power, then you're kind of a loser. And that's annoying to me because in Star Trek, anybody could be the hero, right?
It could be anybody because everybody's just a person or a Klingon or a Romulan. You don't need to have special powers, which is awesome. So I'm all in on Star Trek, not Star Wars.
I'm sure I'm going to get some hate mail from that and send in your questions, work related or ridiculous related, whatever it may be. And if you haven't signed up for Guru Conference, it is coming up in a matter of days.
GuruCommerce.com free virtual two days all about email marketing Martha will be there. I'll be there. Hope to see you there. Hope you keep checking out the episodes. Thanks a lot. You did it. You made it to the end.
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