3 Steps to Your 80/20 Sweet Spot

Businesses that operate from their 80/20 Sweet Spot have the best chance to grow and expand.

Here are the three things you must know:

  1. Identify your Ideal/Top Clients
  2. Identify and Articulate your USP [Unique Selling Proposition]
  3. Create Systems to Under-Promise and Over-Deliver to Your Top Clients

If you truly are a business owner who wants to not just get by, not just exist on the flow of the market-but who wants to dominate their market…and when I say dominate, I mean be a recognized leader in all aspects; have great customers, great employees, systems that deliver consistent results under the umbrella of Under-Promise/Over-Deliver and have increasing revenue and cash flow, then you need to read on.

Are you experiencing any of these symptoms? 

  •  You feel as if you are doing all the right things, but your marketing is falling on deaf ears.
  • You are feeling the pressure from your customers, prospects and competitors to lower your prices.
  • You can’t take on any more business because you have no more hours to give. You are feeling burned out and unsure how to continue to grow and expand.
  • You are always understaffed and/or have the wrong people in the wrong slots.
  • Your cash flow is inconsistent or uncertain.

 If any of these symptoms resonate with you, then you are not operating from your 80/20 Sweet Spot.

Businesses that are operating in their 80/20 Sweet Spot:

  1. Easily attract the ideal target audience for their business – both customers and employees.
  2. Never experience pressure to compete on price. In fact, their customers gladly pay a premium for the value they are receiving.
  3. Can easily grow and expand their business without requiring extra hours of work from the owner/entrepreneur.
  4. Have consistent and certain cash flow – month in and month out.

It’s easy to fall for the “shiny ball” syndrome and get caught up in the latest marketing, selling or time management tactic or trend.

If your business does not have a solid 80/20 Sweet Spot Strategy, at some point, you are going to hit that growth plateau.

Your 80/20 Sweet Spot is where your Top/Ideal customers [the 20%’ers], your Unique Selling Proposition [USP] and your Under-promise/Over-Deliver Systems all intersect.

In order to thrive, grow and expand, you need all three.

Why?

  • If you don’t know who your best, easiest to work with, easiest to communicate with, most profitable clients are, and what they need and want from you, then you can’t possibly create marketing that will attract them.
  • If you don’t know or can’t adequately express what makes you different from your competition [in a way your Ideal/Top clients actually care about], then price will be the only thing you have to compete on.
  • If you don’t have the systems and process that deliver Under-Promise/Over-Deliver Results, consistently without you, then you are stuck trading dollars for hours. You will never be able to grow beyond the number of hours, you the owner are willing and able to contribute.

Would you like help identifying and implementing your 80/20 Sweet Spot strategy?

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Symptoms of Working with Everyone or How to Avoid a Slow Miserable Death

The most common symptoms of an ailing company are:

  • Lack of time.
  • Uncertain or inconsistent cash flow.
  • Not enough of the “right” employees.
  • Not enough of the “right” customers.

“Most ailing organizations are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems but because they cannot see their problems.” – John Gardner

Most struggling entrepreneurs scramble for money and time and almost always it is due to saying “yes” to working with almost everyone.

Inconsistent or inadequate cash flow is the most devastating of the four most common problems most businesses have.

Does this sound familiar?

  • “We’re just one project, one client away. Once I sign this deal, we’ll be good.”
  • Borrowing money to meet payroll.
  • Not paying yourself.
  • Asking a key employee, usually a trusted manager, to hold off cashing his check until “Monday”

The say yes to everyone strategy is not sustainable.

Our 80/20 Assessment Analysis will identify, with absolute “black & white” clarity, who you should be working with and who you need to fire.

80/20 Assessment is about first identifying the customers who you are losing money on, who you are stocking inventory for that you don’t need, who make you cringe when you see their number on caller ID, who demoralize your staff, who pay late, who beat you down to the very last penny, etc. etc. etc.

When you have eliminated the deadwood you now have breathing space.

Could you cut back on staff? With the money you freed up in unnecessary inventory, where could you invest that more wisely?

You now have time to innovate and systematize your business.

Once we’ve helped you clear out the bad, the second step is to identify the very top clients and then implement knock-their-socks-off service and products for these select clients.

Through targeted marketing you now can nurture them and strengthen the relationship.

You can now start serving them so extraordinarily well, that they start to come in more often, purchase more when they do come in and become your private army of outside salespeople and refer more like them.

Every time you clean house you make room for more of your ideal clients.

More clients is not the answer. More of the right clients is the answer.

This is how you grow and expand your business the 80/20 way and eliminate the symptoms of an ailing business.

 

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How to Get Your Ideal Customers to Raise Their Hand and Beg You to Sell Them More

The real key to success is not having better answers…it is rather in having better questions.

One of the most effective 80/20 strategies you can utilize is to interview your TOP clients and find out what they wish you could change about your industry, what they wish you could provide them or sell them, what they wish someone, anyone could solve for them, what would make their lives so much easier, what would help them grow and expand their business.

Then, do your very best to fulfill every wish. It isn’t that you disregard everyone else, it’s just that you create your systems and solutions based on what your 20%’ers want and don’t want.

Your other “average” clients will benefit as well due to the trickle-down effect.

If you are going to be the business in your marketplace that dominates, you have to come to the realization that you can’t be all things to all people.

First, you need to go back to your 80/20 Assessment Analysis and pay special attention only with your ideal, top clients.

If you have 1,000 customers, it is likely that as few as 10 or maybe as many as 200 qualify as your ideal, top clients.

You interview these people and you talk to them, ask them smart probing questions and you LISTEN to them.

Ask them why they do business with you?

Ask them if there are any other products or services they would like to see you offer?

Ask them what they like least about your industry in general and you in particular?

Ask them what you do well that really, really pleases them?

Ask them what they hate most about other types of businesses – like restaurants, cleaners, auto dealers, shopping in general?

Ask them about their aspirations, challenges, short and long-term goals?

Our 80/20 Assessment Analysis consists of anywhere from 12 to 15 different qualifiers.   Contact me to learn more.

Never waste your time, staff or resources providing what your top, ideal customers don’t want or don’t care about.

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