I'm delighted to welcome Molly. This is one of three blogs where she addresses key questions for MicroBusiness owners.

Marsha asks: What’s the key to finding the right focus for sales?

What I notice is that service providers seems to get lost around articulating their offers, including the results they want to be known for. E.g., you’re known for Authentic Promotion, and the Self Employment Telesummit is a great way for people to access that benefit. So you can focus your sales efforts on the Summit and on that promise.

How would you recommend that other Accidental Entrepreneurs – perhaps beginners – develop that kind of focus through which they can sell/showcase their services?

The biggest mistake I see people make with respect to sales, and one I continue to wrestle with myself, is trying to be all things to all people.

When I was first coaching, I went through a phase of trying to write a business plan. I got stuck at the very first part: what was I offering and to whom. I would write something that sounded good (based on what I was reading online at the time), but it didn’t feel real to me.

I noticed that the harder I worked on this plan, the worse I felt. I’d be depressed and distracted, sometimes I even felt physically ill. And one day it hit me that there was a connection between trying too hard to articulate an offer and feeling so crummy.

I still didn't know what would work, but I was crystal clear about what wasn’t working, so I stopped trying to sell myself. As soon as I did, I observed something stunning: I had one perfect client. (And I do mean perfect.)

This client was paying my full rate. She was clearly getting a lot from our work. She knew how to create value from coaching (very important!), and I found working with her to be stimulating on many levels. It occurred to me that she held the key to my marketing plan. Whatever caused her to hire me and to continue to value me was what I needed to be telling other people.

So I resolved to stop trying to sell (which wasn’t my favorite thing anyway) and to start really listening to what this women said about our work. I paid attention to what she said she got out of our work. I neither elaborated nor minimized it. And I started using the language she used in our sessions to talk about my work.

After that, when I was asked what I did, I might say, “My clients tell me I clarify things for them, that they see their choices more clearly and feel more confident in their decisions.”

My brand, Authentic Promotion, emerged in a similar manner. I wrote a grant and secured funding for a local workshop in business communications for artists and craftspeople. While authenticity has always been a core value for me, the real power of the term comes from the fact that dozens, if not hundreds, of people who have experienced my work describe it as authentic.

What I’d like readers to take away from these two stories is that the key to having a focus around which you can sell multiple products and services is that it be (1) something other people readily associate with you and (2) something you are comfortable standing for.

The mistake I was making in the beginning and that I see others make is to look for a broad focus. “Broad” and “focus” is a contradiction in terms. A helpful metaphor here is the hearth. The Latin root of “focus” meant domestic hearth, the focal point or gathering place for the home. Similarly, your sales focus should be like a warming fire, an attractive gathering place around which other products and services can be arranged.

How do you find your hearth? Notice what attracts other people to you over time. Listen carefully to the language others use to describe the value you bring. Then choose one way to express that value in a product or service. That is your flagship offer.

I chose Authentic Promotion because that was the focus of my work at the time. I felt comfortable bringing the value and perspective of authenticity to the challenge of marketing and promotion.

These days I offer a variety of other programs and products including The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right and Authentic Wealth. The people who are attracted to Authentic Promotion tend to be attracted to my other programs. You could say they belong in the same gathering place. So Authentic Promotion does not need to include these other programs so much as those programs need to be congruent with Authentic Promotion.

In this way, a simple, even narrow, focus can anchor a broad array of offers.

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