The Sales and Business Growth Corner
Where Should I Focus?
I recently had a conversation with an old friend. He was recently laid off from a good well-paying job at an automotive company.
Now he's trying to figure out where to go next and how to replace the income that's suddenly vanished. You see, he had no idea the layoff was coming, then one day, BAM, that was it!
One of the many options he was considering was, "say I want to do consulting, what could I sell that people would actually pay for?"
This is a problem I see a lot of businesses struggle with, especially when the market changes and they have to come up with something new.
Here's the advice I gave him:
You really want to think about who you want to serve and what their biggest challenges/pain-points are. A lot of businesses get this backwards, they start with the product they want to build first then try to figure out who they can sell it to.
I think that's the worst mistake you can make because it leads to spending a lot of time and effort building something that nobody wants or would pay for.
So you start with thinking about your ideal client and narrow down the biggest challenges they face.
Then you want to dig deeper and figure out how are they dealing with that big challenge today. If the way that they're solving it (or trying to) today is sub-optimal, then you might have something worth building.
The next step is to actually get in front of these people and talk to them about it conceptually. That means you don't need to have the product or service fully developed yet. You can just have an outline of what it would look like/involve.
You could even just draw it out on a whiteboard or a piece of paper - no death by powerpoint (unless you want their eyes to glaze over).
The key is to get real live feedback and for them to clearly tell you that it's a problem they want to get solved and that they would pay to solve it if the price is right.
When it comes to how much to charge, I think a value-based approach is best. So, instead of thinking time and materials plus a desired margin, it is much better to base your pricing in proportion to the value you deliver.
So, let's say you can confidently save them $500,000 per year in operating costs, then a fee of $50,000 would seem quite reasonable to a prospect even though your time and material cost might only be $10,000. That's a 9x return - let's see a stock portfolio do that!
Bottom line - focus on solving big problems and think customer-first not product-first - that's a great way to build something people will actually buy, and pay you good money for!
Maximizing Your Mental Performance
Switching On the Right Thinking
According to the latest neuroscientific research, our brains are equipped to do two types of thinking:
1) Focused-mode thinking
2) Diffused-mode thinking
Focused mode thinking is great for solving familiar types of problems where you have a strong knowledge-base in a particular area of expertise that you can call on to help you find the solution.
Diffused-mode thinking, on the other hand is very non-linear type of thinking. This type of thinking is great for coming up with highly creative solutions by connecting the dots between ideas/thoughts in very different domains and bringing them together to come up with solutions that require out-of-the box thinking.
You can turn on focused mode by getting your body into a heightened state of alertness - a quick bout of intense exercise or a shot of espresso or strong coffee can help with this.
Diffused-mode thinking is the reason why we tend to get some of our best ideas in the shower. But you don't need to get into the shower every time you want to activate it.
To turn on diffused-mode thinking, it's best to stop trying to concentrate hard on solving the problem and just go and do something different like going for a walk around the block or take a few minutes to meditate. You might be pleasantly surprised at the ideas that bubble up to the surface.
Bottom line - you have far more control over how your brain works than you think. Why not harness it to build the kind of business/life you want?
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Side-note: This kind of stuff has always fascinated me so I'm working on a NEW project to help people improve their mental performance by unlocking the mysteries of how our brains work, and how to keep our brains healthy and effective so we can keep performing at high levels for as long as possible.
If you're interested in learning more, you can check out the details here:
Check out the SuperBrain OS project
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And that's all for this week.
See you in my next issue.
To your success,
Humza
BTW, speaking of brain health, I'm working on a project to help people improve their mental performance by unlocking the mysteries of how our brains work, and how to keep our brains healthy and effective so we can keep performing at high levels for as long as possible.
If you're interested in learning more, you can check out the details here:
Check out the SuperBrain OS project
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And that's all for this week.
See you in my next issue.
To your success!
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