It used to be that if you wanted to earn a little extra money, you’d get a part time evening or overnight job at a fast food restaurant or Kinko’s. Now there’s everything from part-time multi-level marketers to renting out your home or car – or a portion of it – to secret shopping and piece work for both industrial and personal assistance tasks. The last numbers I saw recorded approximately 16-million freelancers in the United States.

What was once a growing trend quite simply exploded during the recent Coronavirus-induced lock down. While many industries suffered at first, people working for Postmates, UberEats, and InstaCart got considerably more work. And, thankfully, as essential workers, they were valued by the people receiving those deliveries. I had one friend, who between larger and more frequent deliveries and higher grateful tips, earned more in three months than he had for the prior year, even working multiple jobs.

Once we recovered from the initial shock of sheltering at home as a nation, many companies shifted immense amounts of their daily tasks to both online and freelance applications. But as often happens when there is such a quick, radical shift, some of the early benefits to freelancers started to evaporate or be subsumed by corporate interests. Even in small businesses.

In the words of Darth Vader, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter any further.”

Not the Best of Both Worlds

One of the biggest issues I’ve seen are companies pivoting to more freelance arrangements, with a caveat. The companies want the benefit of employing freelancers, but expect the freelancers to behave as employees.

So they only pay by the hour – but they expect full availability. This can be a company that wants their employees to work for 5 days, but is only willing to pay 20 hours – 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. Or a company that demands that their freelance employees “clock in” every single day, seven days a week.

Sometimes, they’ll ask freelance workers to attend training or meetings, but as unpaid time. They’re paid by the project accomplished. That’s great when you’re getting $13 for remotely monitoring a phone conversation that runs 20-30 minutes. That’s $26-30 per hour, not bad in many parts of the country…until you add up the extra hours that they’re not being paid, because of how time is billed.

It’s not fair to take advantage of the benefits of having freelance workers while limiting the benefits to them. What’s more, you will see the best workers disappear as they get frustrated or seek better situations. Suddenly, you’ve cut off your nose to spite your face.

Something employers never seem to think about, but employees wrestle with all the time, is whether or not to pad their time, or look for loopholes in the system to benefit them. The more good freelancers you lose, the more likely it is you’ll hire one of these less scrupulous contractors – and the only one you have to blame is yourself.

Plus, if you don’t see the issue or course correct, you’re establishing a very negative work culture. It may not legally be a hostile work environment, but it’s certainly not a pleasant one.

Interesting Conflicts

Another related issue is restricting freelancers from working for other people. Now, I’m not talking about conflicts of interest. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t want one of your employees or independent contractors working for your nearest competitor. But I’ve seen situations where employers will only guarantee a small amount of work, yet require the freelancer to sign an agreement that she won’t do the same type of work for anyone else.

Again, that’s fine if it’s a competitor, or if you’re employing them full time. But it’s technically illegal to restrict someone’s ability to make a living. This also crops up in unusual ways. When I was working for Paramount Television back in the day, my boss came to me angry because she found out I was working part time for the Home Shopping Network.

Now I wrote and produced commercials, promos and the occasional movie trailer for Paramount’s UPN network. At HSN, I was sitting in a cubicle, taking phone orders. I was in the same building as their broadcast facilities in St. Petersburg, but I was not in any way doing the same work.

What We Have Here is… Failure

With the sudden advance in adapting to virtual work, there’s one factor that may have fallen through the cracks. It’s not even necessarily anyone’s fault, it’s just that sometimes a new situation leads to added challenges.

When you’re in an office setting, quite often you hear and know even more than you’d like to. Unless you’re a busybody, or an energy vampire like Colin Robinson from What We Do In the Shadows, there’s almost too much information. But now, we have no water cooler, no office gossip, no back and forth. And, also, less communication, from both the leadership and your colleagues.

In most cases, it’s not intentional. But now that you’re aware of it, that’s exactly how you must handle communication – intentionally. As the leader of your business, you need to adequately communicate. This might even start with over-communicating, just to make sure everyone’s on the same page. You use tools like Basecamp, Slack or Cliq, to keep everyone in a very large loop. That way no one’s left out or forgotten about, or finds themselves suddenly in the middle of an emergency because they were uninformed. You must communicate with your team.

Fire in the Hold

A potential side-effect to lack of communication is the last minute fire bomb. The famous quote from Bob Carter comes to mind: “Poor planning on your part does not necessitate an emergency on mine.” But all too often, especially if you have hard working, loyal employees and freelancers, they don’t invoke that clause. Instead, they bend over backwards, making an extreme effort to save you or your business from your failing. Imagine how frustrating that can become when it happens over and over.

You can have the best laid plans, everything in place, ready to go… But if you haven’t communicated that to your people, they feel left out or ambushed when things start to happen. Or, if you’re blessed with freelancers and employees who take initiative, they may be stymied or made to feel unappreciated. They’re not trying to usurp your position – they’re trying to help out by taking the reins, because you’ve left them uninformed.

When handled appropriately, freelancers can become some of your greatest assets. The wrong ones can also sink your business ship very effectively. The key to finding and keeping the best ones lies in making sure they feel appreciated. Income is nice and necessary, but hundreds of studies have found purpose is a better driver of achievement.

Keep them informed. Make them feel like a team or a vital part of the team if you’re split between full time staff and freelancers. Allow them to reap the benefits of being part of the gig economy without micromanaging them within an inch of their professional lives. Try to find the best win-win situations, and reward the ones who stick with you.

When we work as a team, we make everyone’s lives better. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

Just can’t help myself. I crave knowledge and can become obsessive at times, filling my brain with facts and miscellaneous information.

One lesson that was consistent across all my sources was something that seems counterintuitive on its face. A $100 investment made in your 20’s, and never added to or touched again, can, over time, grow to dwarf the results of making weekly $1000 investments in your 50’s or 60’s. The power of compound interest causes the tortoise to beat the hare every time – assuming the tortoise starts early enough.

Sadly, this is a lesson we fail to teach our children in high school or college. (Along with balancing a checkbook and doing their taxes. But that’s a discussion for another time.) Too often they struggle to get ahead early in life, thinking they can always invest later.

Now take it one step further and imagine they don’t stop at the initial $100 deposit. Instead, they add $100 every month, and when they make more money, they progressively increase that monthly, weekly, annual amount.

The Content Connection

When you’re looking at content creation – especially doing a periodic content blog targeted at your ideal customer – it’s easy to think that it’s some sort of magic bullet. A one-size fits all solution that will guarantee the growth of your business.

And, in all honesty, it can easily and quickly cause a spike in your customers, sales and reach. One that easily justifies taking the time to plan and build strategically. It thrusts digital marketing head and shoulders above many traditional marketing efforts. When properly executed, it can vault your results high enough to create an illusion of instant gratification.

But, sadly, while it does work quickly, it doesn’t sustain that growth over time – not unless you take some additional actions. Content creation is not one of those “set it and forget it” tasks.

But just like the early investment I talked about earlier, content can compound. In fact, in many ways, content creation can be sustained and create continuous growth over time. Some small businesses would be content with that spike at the beginning and then slow, gradual increases year over year.

But I know the readers of our blog tend to aim higher. Their businesses were established, in some form or fashion to enact true change in our world. The goal is to make this world or life better. So why would you be content with minor changes, when a little more effort and strategy can lead to more global results?

To truly get the most out of your content creation investment – and it IS an investment in time and effort – you need to think like Warren Buffet or Peter Lynch. You need to create content like an investor.

Customer Experience Rules

At first this may appear to be pretty boilerplate advice. Of course you want to focus on delivering a good customer experience rather than making quick cash. But in this case, we’re not talking about customer service or CX or similar.

Specifically, we’re making sure the customer – and potential customer – get the best experience within the context of your blog posts. You need to make sure every post has value to your ideal customer. You can vary a little on subjects and angles, but you need to consistently create content that they find useful.

The stock market has its ups and downs; you win some, you lose some. But if Warren Buffet consistently made poor picks and his hedge fund dropped over and over, he would get booted. By the same token, your customers have limited patience for rabbit trails and content of little or no use. Fool them once, shame on you – you won’t likely get to fool them twice, cause they’ll go looking elsewhere for information.

And guess what? Google doesn’t send searchers to you if the content isn’t of value and authority either. And the algorithm is more ruthless than people are. It has to be.

So make sure what you’re posting is valuable to your ideal customer.

Long-Term Outlook

This is the most obvious parallel between investing and content creation. Again, one post won’t launch your business, no matter how clever your title or how valuable the information. Here at Grow The Dream, we recommend at the very least posting once a month. Realistically, though, if you want to see growth, you’re accelerating your posting to every two weeks minimum. The biggest bang for your content buck? Once a week – every week.

Depending on your product or service, the long term approach can also connect to repeat business.

You build relationships over time, and the same is true of content. The more content, going further back, builds solid credibility on Google search results and in your professional life. A track record builds on itself – that’s the content version of compound interest.

Follow the Numbers

The best investors will tell you that data rules. Despite the fact that our customers make decisions based on emotion, we must limit how they influence us. Yes, you’ll still make emotional decisions, but you need to let numbers and logic dictate whenever you can.

Of course, this is part of your strategic work as well. In profiling and targeting your ideal customer, you’re using whatever data you can to hone the final picture. The more detailed and specific you can aim for, the better your initial results will be. And the more likely you’ll still gather in the outskirts of that target customer.

Peter Lynch might deal in mutual funds, but that doesn’t mean he just rides whatever wave or crest is happening in the market. You don’t get 30-75% returns by indexing to the average. He follows the trends, tracks the data and makes picks based on past performance and strategically reaching for companies to invest in that haven’t hit yet.

Again, yes, he makes some mistakes. But he’s secure in the knowledge that he’s following a plan, based on the data and his interpretation of it, based on his skill-set.  

Always Diversify

No, this does not fly in the face of my customer experience section. All of these points build on each other. You do the strategic work. Make a plan for the long term. You follow the numbers. And, yes, you take a few “chances.” But they are always calculated risks.

We all know not to put all your eggs in one basket. And while you are always focused on your ideal client, there is room for different approaches to gain their attention. And to gain a stronger Google ranking.

So some posts are short, to the point – but valuable. 300 words or less.

Some posts are longer, more impactful, maybe even more evergreen – 500-1000 words.

And some are pillar posts – the ones that rank higher on the Google SERP scale – reaching for the Zero Position of search engine results. They become the paragraph that the searcher can read without clicking to your website – but that’s often what it leads to.

This is also where social media and email blasts fall. Both can be used as solo advertisements of your product or service. But they can also point back to your site, to significant articles. Diversifying means you can draw more eyes onto all of your posts, which, again, compounds your credibility and authority, which raises your Google ranking, and on and on. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Accept the Call

When you make the effort to approach your content creation with an eye of an investor, you will compound your efforts and outreach. But again, only when you’re creating consistent, regular content. If you don’t have the time and the resources to do that, you’re not going to grow – not very quickly anyways.

Let us help you. We can get you on the right track with a strategic approach – something no small business should be without. We can also help you implement the strategy, from the smallest efforts and planning all the way up to creating and posting the content for you. Our writers are qualified and experienced, ready to engage with your ideal customers.

There are no guarantees in life. But I can promise you – if you’re not taking a strategic approach, your business isn’t likely to grow to its full potential. If you’d like help with any or all of the above, please reach out. We’ve built our business helping other small businesses expand. Let’s Grow The Dream together!

Return on Investment.

And if you’re more of a creative type like I am, you may have grumbled a time or two (or sixteen) about the difficulty of quantifying the ROI on an artistic venture. My go-to for those arguments is a quote by author Kurt Vonnegut:

“The arts… are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward.”

Unfortunately the people holding the purse strings usually want a more monetary return on their investment. So these days I point them to the ubiquitousness of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, etc. – the services that got us through the pandemic shutdown without losing our sanity or murdering someone – all filled with creative endeavors. Pieces of art that the platforms have (and continue to) pay a pretty penny for.

But that’s not what we’re looking at today. While we’ve all considered ROI, for the money lenders and our retirement accounts, I’m betting most small business owners haven’t considered the corollary: the Cost of Inaction.

What Are You Waiting For?

I can tell you, from my time educating people about retirement options, that bankers and investment specialists also focus on the flipside of ROI – COI. The most poignant example is the one where you take a look at how compound interest works. A dollar properly invested at age 20, even if it’s never touched again, after 10 years is worth nearly 100 times what investing $10 is at age 30. Even during the recent recession.

Stock Brokers and Mutual Fund salesmen are fond of pointing out that when the stock market crashed in 1929, the people who survived and thrived in the Great Depression were those who didn’t panic. While the average consumer was pulling their money out of investments and savings and loans, the Rockefellers and Carnegies “let it ride.”

Opportunity Cost is defined as “the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.”

Opportunity cost can be positive or negative. Cost of Inaction is the negative side. In Tim Ferris’ “Fear Setting” exercise, he calls the Cost of Inaction possibly the most important consideration you can take. For him, understanding the emotional, physical and financial costs for you and the people in your life is what truly drives us to take the uncomfortable action that moves us out of the status quo.

Put simply, every choice is in fact two choices. Every time you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else. And every no is really the choice to prioritize another yes.

Investing Your Time

In many ways, building credibility and visibility online is like investing for retirement. We don’t have an exact formula with marketing like they use in calculating compound interest, but it’s a similar mindset. The more you do now, the more your results will build on each other. The longer you wait, the smaller your potential returns could be.

Brokers will also tell you, the more consistent you are at putting away a few dollars every week, the more your investment will increase, not just compounding, but growing exponentially.

And just like investing for the future, consistently producing valuable, actionable content blog posts will exponentially grow your search engine visibility – regardless of how often Google changes their algorithm. Consistently providing extra worth to customers and searchers boosts organic search traffic. Adding value will always yield a profitable return.

Trust Doesn’t Rust

I’ve written extensively on the fact that 99% of the time, you won’t make a sale from a first visit to your website. In nine out of ten cases, searchers will never return to your site after the initial visit. I wrote those articles a few years ago, and I think if someone studied it, those numbers may have adjusted slightly since the pandemic began, but for the point I’m making they’re still valid.

You exchange valuable information like Lead Magnets for the potential customer’s contact information. That way you can keep in contact with them on a regular basis and when they’re ready to make a decision, hopefully you’re top of mind.

Online, there are seldom opportunities to do the old Tom Hopkins sales presentation to build company credibility. Even if you tried, people don’t have the patience for it, and often distrust the presenter, even if they appear interested. But every time someone visits your site and finds the answers they’re looking for, it adds to your trustworthiness in their minds.

The more often, and more consistently you provide value to the people who find you on search engines, the more you build credibility. And it’s an even stronger, more emotional connection, because they’re making the decision to trust you – not just taking your word for it. And as ol’ Tom has often told us, emotions make sales.

Investing in Emotional Impact

Psychologists tell us that as human beings we are more emotionally affected by losing something than by gaining something. We like to win, but we hate losing even more. To the point that if we worry that upsetting the status quo will cost us, we’ll sometimes ignore the fact that it can also greatly benefit us. Even with a track record of knowing change has been beneficial, we can still be stymied by the fear of loss.

The doctors call this “Escalation of Commitment.” But you might know it better by the economic take on it – the sunk-cost fallacy. Fear of losing, especially after we’ve invested so much time, money, resources, causes us to justify throwing good money after bad. To remix a couple of metaphors.

But as small business owners, we must resist this urge. Or better yet, counter it with emotional regulation. Emotional regulation strategies employ cognitive skills to redefine the meaning of a stimulus or situation. For example, both therapists and Weight Watchers employ and teach a technique called  “reframing.”

In therapy, the counselor helps you see things from a different perspective, presumably allowing you to put yourself in another’s shoes and see the behaviors you experienced as negative in a positive light. Weight Watchers, its own form of therapy, you look at why you overeat. In many people’s cases, the root cause is stress. So the program teaches you to look for alternative ways to relieve stress and try one of them.

The end result is the same – changed behavior due to a redefined emotional state.

Sacrifices Must Be Made

I know I got a bit technical with the last section, so let me bring it back around. Our topic last week was delegation and outsourcing.

There are only so many hours in the day. Even if you try to drive yourself 24/7, you’ll discover, as I did in college, that after about 72 hours of being awake, your brain starts sleeping for you, whether you want it or not. The phenomenon of microsleeps (mentally sleeping while awake) can occur in some subjects after just 48 hours without sleep. And after you pass 96 hours – awake for four days straight – your perception of reality is severely distorted.

Not the best situation for running a business.

Even if you’re the type of person who only needs four to five hours of sleep per night, you’ve still only got 19-20 hours to work and live life. Something sometime has to give. No one, no matter how talented, can do it all, not all the time.

One of the things we encourage our clients to do is to focus their attention and efforts on the things they do well. The places they succeed and get energized and do better than anyone else. It just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice your best time and effort – in areas where you are mediocre at best. I’m not saying that to be insulting, just asking you to face facts.

Spending time on one thing means less time for other things. Trying to do everything is not only untenable, it’s costing you the success your business could have. You’re wasting resources to save a few bucks – when it’s really costing you much more in the long run.

I can’t tell you how to run your business, but I can tell when you’re stretched too thin.

Faith Without Works is Dead

About halfway through this article, I repeated a phrase I’ve used often in the past five years of writing this weekly blog. You need to be “consistently producing valuable, actionable content blog posts.”

Valuable. Actionable.

I work very hard to research and write interesting, valuable content that will help your business succeed, even if you never once consider hiring Grow the Dream in any capacity. I do it for a variety of reasons. The most important being that I believe we should operate our business the way we recommend others operate theirs. So giving added value to every article is important to me.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t offer a call to action. In most instances, I try to be somewhat subtle. I encourage you to reach out, if you need help or want to learn more. I remind you that we built our business helping small businesses and entrepreneurs scale up their businesses.

But today, I want to, at the risk of coming off as “salesy,” be very direct. You could read every word we’ve written in these blog posts, going back nearly 20 years. You could memorize them. Tell them to others. But unless you take action – it’s all pointless. You get nothing out of it.

So I’m going to tell you very bluntly. We can help. Grow the Dream has taught and executed small business marketing strategies for more than 20 years. We get results. Our work is successful and we are very talented at what we do.

On June 5, 2021, we are hosting a LIVE, face-to-face Strategic Marketing Workshop.

This workshop will provide you with the tools you need to succeed in the digital marketplace – and how to manage your time and reduce your stress. It’s an amazing morning, breakfast and coffee provided, worth at least five or six times the amount we are asking from each business owner.

And we only have 30 slots.

We have to limit attendance due to COVID Safety Parameters, but also because we want to give you very detailed, hands-on attention. You’ll walk away with the top strategies and most up to date information. No question will be left unasked – and you’ll know exactly what steps to take next.

This is a program you cannot afford to miss.

This is your opportunity.  Don’t miss out. It’s time to take action.

Sign up here.

But instead of bemoaning the constant rejection, the best approach is to reframe things. Think of it like shoe shopping. When you go looking for a pair of running shoes, you’re not looking for stiletto heels. Even if you saw the most incredible, perfect pair of stiletto heels, you’re not going to buy them – because you’re shopping for running shoes. It’s not that you don’t love the stilettos, or they’re not exceptional for what they are, you’re just not shopping for stilettos.

In the same way, a pair of stilettos cannot masquerade as sneakers, or whoever buys them will be severely disappointed. They don’t need stiletto pseudo sneakers, they need actual sneakers.

I’ve talked several times in the past about how the riches are in the niches. And you definitely need to focus your business approach to target your ideal customer. Today, I want to talk about a focus of a slightly different stripe. Focusing your offerings.

Pro-Vision of Choice?

When I was growing up and even into early adulthood, the prevailing theory was that more options lead to more choices. 31 Flavors. Thousands of combinations. The more you offer, the more sales you’ll see. This idea persisted even in the face of such anecdotal evidence like the famous story of Dave Thomas. Dave is of course, most famous as the founder of Wendy’s. But first, he was instrumental in the success of a different fast food franchise – Kentucky Fried Chicken.

When Indiana’s Hobby House restaurants partnered with KFC, the house of chicken was offering a multitude of menu items. Dave’s suggestion that they whittle things down to their signature fried chicken in the red and white striped bucket put the growing restaurant on the map. Dave also suggested that the Colonel appear more often in the commercials.

Within about 15 years, Dave was a millionaire and decided to start his own chain – Wendy’s -with square patties, because they “didn’t cut any corners!” And of course, in 1989, he heeded his own advice and relaunched his baby with commercials starring himself.

While this is just one story of many, marketers and business owners continued to insist that the way to increase sales was to offer more. Normally, I’d put in a plug here about how Coke and companies of that size are the exception that proves the rule. But they’re not. Diet Coke was spun off as its own brand, after it failed to gain the market share that Tab dominated in the 70’s and 80’s. Not to mention, Coke has attempted a coffee-variation on their carbonated beverage at least three times, all with limited success.

Crippling Cacophony of Choices

It wasn’t until a pair of graduate students from Columbia and Stanford released a study on “selection demotivation” in 2000 that marketers took real notice.

Sheena S. Iyengar & Mark R. Lepper published a paper titled, “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Essentially, they did a series of controlled experiments that revealed a startling conclusion. While multiple options initially drew attention and interest, inevitably, the quantity of choices led to fewer sales. In fact, by limiting options in their experiment from 24 to 6 increased sales by nearly 10%.

Too many options resulted in a harder decision-making process, which ultimately led to much fewer sales. In their second trial, sales were removed from the equations. Students were given options to write essays for extra credit. Not only did more students who were offered limited options complete the assignment, but the essays turned in by students with limited options were markedly better than their counterparts.

Their third experiment found that people randomly assigned with fewer choices opted for a positive result nearly 50% more often than those given an extensive selection to select from. Their conclusion was the opposite of what they and leading marketers had expected. Too many options actually significantly decreased the chance of ANY choice being made.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz goes one step further – between analysis paralysis and buyer’s remorse, he posits that Americans are more depressed as a nation because we have more freedom to choose. There’s even a theory that a significant influence on Steve Jobs maintaining his status as a genius innovator was his decision to wear the same thing every day. Removing the decision of what to wear each day left him more decision making resources to devote to Apple innovations.

Packaging the Dream

So how exactly does this relate to your small business? In addition to your efforts to streamline your marketing, anything you can do to minimize the effort it takes for your customer to make a decision will increase sales.

A la carte pricing and multiple options may seem like the key to getting more sales from more people. But in truth, it’s easier to get larger sales by packaging your efforts. Yes, you get fewer sales, but they’re more significant purchases. It also builds loyalty and connection to your product or service.

As an example, years ago I worked for a financial services company. They underwrote life insurance, refinanced mortgages and brokered retirement accounts. But they didn’t sell ANY of those things. They sold a total financial makeover. Their core business was life insurance. But they packaged everything together to serve multiple financial needs of the typical family. By refinancing customer’s mortgages, they eliminated debt and freed up cash to put towards life insurance and the ability to start investing in retirement.

Now instead of three companies, all with separate billing and infrastructure and hassles, customers had a single point of contact. One that was helping them fulfil their financial goals. A single company that assisted with all of those transactions. As the mortgage dwindles, they divert more money towards retirement and life insurance needs diminish. So instead of three individual transactions, the business had developed a happy, loyal customer, committed for life.

They also established themselves as a credible experts. By offering potential clients ONE product that analyzed their current financial state AND gave them a plan to reach the financial goals the client identified, they subtly led the customer to an easy decision. A decision that was truly in their best interest.

Getting Down to Brass Tactics

Simplify, simplify, simplify. I can’t write this enough. Decision paralysis doesn’t just affect our customers. It can also cripple small businesses who are trying to do too much and serve too many potential clients at once. Dr. Schwartz also observed many instances where companies cut down on options offered to customers, purely to streamline their costs. In almost every instance, their sales increased and their employees were more efficient and even happier.

Presenting your services in easier to understand packages saves you time and money. These packages can be easier to show visually and simpler for the client to commit to. They know what to expect and what to not. Customers overwhelmed by options get both confused and scared. As a result, they will usually pinpoint the cheapest option as the easiest and less risky – even if it’s neither.

By presenting a few, fully-packaged options, you display credibility and leadership. And the client is more likely to choose a higher cost option because they inherently trust that you know what your customers need. Especially if you’ve demonstrated that by targeting your marketing efforts at an ideal client. And that’s true even if they fall outside of that proverbial customer bullseye.

Just like the financial services company, you can create a better, curated experience for your ideal clients. Suddenly you’re not a salesperson, but a quality steward, helping customers find the best solutions for them. A travel guide, providing them access to the best there is to offer.  

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

While this turn of phrase was initially intended to be a compliment, we’ve strayed far from its origins. We live in a world where the classic Renaissance man is no longer valued because there are so few who actually embody it. As a result, a company offering many options is perceived much like the man who can’t keep a job. We don’t value knowing everything, because we don’t believe people actually do.

Too many options to choose from and customizations to decide about may cause the average person to believe that you aren’t an expert in ANYthing. Even though Wendy’s offers salads, chicken, and even fish (there’s still Lent), they made their mark by focusing on the square burger. The same is true of KFC, who shortened their name in part because they offered more than chicken. Now they lead Popeye’s and Church’s by only a very small margin in markets that have both.

The Illusion of Control

One final word on choices – typically, you do need more than one. Just like having two to three ideal customer profiles, you want to have three to five options for people to choose from. Especially in the United States, we have a need to feel like we DO have a choice, and we are taking control of a situation. Emphasis on the word “feel.” The perception of control is more important than actually having control.

Just ask anyone who’s seen a magic show. You want to feel like you selected the card, even when the illusionist is carefully manipulating your choice. Even if you perceive it’s happening, if you believe you have the choice, the control, you don’t mind.

In a similar fashion, have your packages laid out in pairs, or at the most, three on the same page. Just like the magician, based on your initial conversation with the potential client you select which of your pairs of options would likely appeal to them. Again, there’s value in not trying to appeal to too wide of an audience. With two to three possibilities at hand, the client feels like they are in control of the decision. And it’s a win-win situation.

Stratergizing

Yes, I invented a new word. You may have noticed I didn’t use the word strategy yet in this article. Yet everything I just presented to you assumed intentional tactics. If you want to be successful in business, you must adopt a strategic approach. It’s even more important now, as our world becomes increasingly overwhelmed by options, decisions, choices and just general background noise. Strategy makes you stand out.

Going back to that financial services company… Their main strategy was on educating their clients. They freely taught them the financial essentials that so few of us learned from school. That approach may sound familiar. Of course, every week here at Grow the Dream, we strive to educate our readers on strategic marketing approaches. And no surprise, it’s the bedrock of what we tell our clients to do as well, whether they are creating the content or contracting us to do it for them.

It’s not just to make sales or draw in customers who need our help. It’s also our way of giving back, enriching the small business community by making them smarter and more prepared for success. If you need help, I hope you’ll reach out. We offer free 25-minute initial consultations in addition to the education we attempt to provide with this blog.

We’ve built our business helping small businesses succeed. Let’s Grow the Dream together!