The Fastest Route to a YES
We’re all looking for more YES’s in our business. But are we all taking the most direct path?
That is an absolute NO. If it was true, there wouldn’t be people who feel like they waste time and money on marketing. There wouldn’t be any sales people who can’t close. There wouldn’t be sales cycles that take 2 years to get through.
There are a few important things to consider if you want to get to a YES as fast as possible:
Know who you want a YES from
Be clear on what you’re asking them to say YES to
Give them an easy way to say YES
Have you answered all those questions for your business? If not, read on :)
Know who you want a YES from
If you’ve read any of my content, you’ll know that I’m a BIG believer in narrowing your niche as much as possible. But a lot of people misunderstand WHY you want to be super specific. It’s not so you can spend a huge amount of time creating a perfect Ideal Customer Avatar for your business. It’s not getting every piece of demographic information right (age, gender, household income). It’s about knowing who CAN say yes, and making sure you are spending as much time (and money if you want) talking to THOSE people.
If you were selling fried chicken, would you spend time hanging out at the fitness center talking about your product?
Unfortunately, it’s not quite so black and white with service providers. The challenge is that you COULD provide your services to pretty much anyone. But do you really want to?
Part of a specific niche is including the type of people YOU want to do business with. Who are your favorite clients? If you could choose, wouldn’t you have more of them, as opposed to just anyone? Who can you get the BEST results for? Wouldn’t it be better to have more of those people referring you?
The sooner you identify who that dream client is for you, the sooner you can consider them in your marketing & sales efforts.
Have you ever experienced a marketing message, or even a social media post that sounded like it was meant specifically for you? That’s because it WAS. It spoke directly to you because whoever wrote it had you in mind when they wrote it. Maybe not YOU specifically, but people who have the same problem who are ready to look for a solution.
Be clear on what you’re asking them to say YES to
This is another thing that is trickier for service providers than product providers. If someone needs salt, and I sell salt, the conversation looks like this:
Hey, I need salt.
Great! I have salt. This is what’s special about my salt and this is what it costs. Do you want to buy it?
They buy or they don’t buy your salt.
But service providers LOVE to talk about ALL the THINGS they can do. I’m a life coach, I can help you “get a better direction”. I’m a virtual assistant and can do “admin, technical support, social media, copywriting, SEO, graphic design, web design, whatever you need”. I’m a financial consultant and I can “help you sell your business OR get funding OR anything else you need”.
The more things we’re good at, the more we want to tell everyone what we can do. The thing is, NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU. They care about their problem and the fastest way to solve it.
So, if you aren’t giving them the most straight-forward way to solve it, they start looking elsewhere.
Option 1: I ask you, “what do you need?” You may need lots of things (some of which I may provide), but the bigger problem is that you don’t really know what you need, you just have a problem that’s making your life hard and you don’t know why. I’ve just created a scenario where neither of us can get to a YES without further discovery…and just made the process longer and harder.
Option 2: I ask you, “are you having trouble finding your ideal clients?” Someone can EASILY say yes or no. If they say yes, I can invite them to a call to learn more about their problem, but I already know: 1) they have a problem I can fix, 2) they are familiar enough with it that they can answer the question, and 3) if they agree to a call, they are at least considering fixing that problem.
*Bonus Tip: It’s equally important on this front to be able to accept a NO. If you’re going to make a clear ask, if it doesn’t resonate with someone, they will (and rightfully should) say no. Which is actually GREAT for you. You can decide to nurture them if you want, but you don’t have to spend a lengthy amount of time in a sales process when they don’t meet the 3 above criteria ;)
Give them an easy way to say YES
Alignment with a problem you can solve is great, but it can’t stop there. You have to be able to give someone a way to easily buy your services as soon as they decide the fit is right.
One easy tip, is to have a registration or payment link in your immediate follow-up email. And make sure you SEND an immediate follow-up email so people can take action. Your conversation is most likely the place where they get excited to buy from you, so the longer you go without follow-up, the more you risk the magic fading.
The overarching action to take is a Call To Action. If you want them to buy from you, YOU HAVE TO ASK THEM. In the salt example above, the exchange is totally moot if I don’t ask them to buy it.
A lot of people shy away from this in the beginning stages of their business. And then they wonder why they don’t have any clients.
You have to invite people to do business with you. If you have a solution to their problem, it’s your duty to offer it. And if you can’t, we should talk about why that’s feeling hard for you in a Discovery Call.
