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As Sales folks, we do ourselves very few favors when we operate under the assumption that our products and services have universal value. Or that "everyone is a good fit for what we sell."
Your clients, prospects, and all the good folks in this world of ours will spend their entire lives exploring the opportunities and challenges they deem needed, wanted, enjoyable, and valuable, for long or short-term reasons.
As folks evolve, what we deem “important” changes along with our age, level of maturity, and priorities. I always say that "growing up" has more to do with a shift in one's priorities than anything else.
We change as our lives change. A 35-year-old married guy with kids will have priorities, routines, and hobbies that are vastly different from his younger, single self: From Bro to grow!
As business owners, we stand a much greater chance of being successful if we spend our time and resources to help identify those who are at the stage of their own personal life journeys to need and/or want what we have to offer-With helping them succeed at whatever it is their endeavors are at the heart of our efforts.
Remember, business, much like most if not all other aspects of our lives, is about others. Helping other people. Not ourselves.
Your business growth strategy cannot be one that is meant to feed your own ego or agenda, but rather to support the folks who could best use your products and services.
Minority report
Of course, a third group would be those who might not realize that they could better enhance their lives, protect those they love, enjoy a night out, etc. By availing themselves of your product or service.
I believe it was the late great Steve Jobs who famously had this thing about market research: He didn’t find them very useful. His view was that these types of intel sources told us what was already happening in the marketplace.
He believed that his job was to build the products of the future. “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them” he once famously said.
Small business owners, marketers, and direct-sales-folk often exhaust precious time and energy chasing down every single lead we think will yield optimal outcomes -The “my product is for everyone” mentality.
While that may be true in theory, those who are most likely to explore the services and/or products you sell are those who will agree with that assessment. Oftentimes, these are folks who have reached that point in their personal evolution to deem what you are pitching "valuable".
So, and I am speaking as a lover and practitioner of the dark arts we call sales, learning to identify those who are great (potential) consumers of our offerings and learning to finetune the way we communicate the value of our wares would be a much better way for us to invest our limited resources.