TRANSCRIPT: 

00:04

Hello, welcome to the sales show. I'm Maree Kirkpatrick, your sales and business strategist. I'm a mom, a wife, and a multi-business owner myself. With over 15 years of experience in sales and business, I have worked with startups all the way through to multimillion-dollar companies. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I love helping service-based businesses make an income as well as an impact. Let's jump into talking about all things sales and business.

00:34

Hello, and welcome back to the sales Show. I'm your host, Maree Kirkpatrick. And today, I want to get a little bit ranty on a topic that I know some business coaches may disagree with. Or it may even come across as a little controversial. And to be honest, I don't even care if I'm not about keeping everyone happy. I'm about being real, true and honest to business owners. I want to take a no-BS approach. And I'm Ajaan with apologizing for it. We're here to get real and to make an impact. Life's too short for fluff. So if you're ready to cut through the noise and take your business to the next level, you're in the right place. today's rant Well, I actually main podcast is all about understanding niching why does it matter? How do we avoid the common pitfalls? And so grab a pen and a notebook. And let's dive into the world of niching and target markets.

01:26

Now to kick things off, let's start with the basics. We need to actually define your niche. It's not just about the demographics. It's about the essence of the person, or people that you want to work with. What are their values? What are their beliefs? What are their challenges, who are the people you want to build real relationships and connections with all those people that you think if I had another 10 of those clients, I'd be a happy little teddy bear? When identifying your niche, don't get stuck in the trap of only looking at demographics, dive deeper into the socio-graphics and behaviors. Demographics provide a surface level of understanding your audience, which is great to a certain degree. But psychographics and behaviors offer a more profound insight knowing their values, their beliefs, their challenges, what lights them up what their everyday looks like to really understand your ideal client helps you connect with them on a more personal and an emotional level. Although they say business is impersonal, let's be real. We're all humans. Understanding your ideal client allows you to create marketing messages and services that resonate so much deeper, we want to understand your client's values and beliefs and what makes them your ideal target client, we want to make sure that our marketing strategies are relatable to them.

02:47

We also want to make sure that we have great messaging and to have all of that we need to really understand who our ideal client is. It's not about shutting the door on everyone. It's not about niching down so hard that we eliminate people. It's about finding your people based on their values, beliefs, and challenges and the people that you really want to work with. For instance, if you're a fitness coach targeting young professionals, it's not about their age and their income, but also about their desire for work-life balance. They're interested in holistic health maybe or the challenges that they might have with high management.

03:23

 Tailoring your approach to these deeper aspects fosters a stronger connection by far, at the end of the day, you can't be anyone else but you so be you, your ideal clients will be attracted to you and your vibe, I say this so often to my clients, if you are you and people can see the real you. They'll know whether you're right for them or not. It's not just about age, or gender or location or industry. And I know so many business coaches will say to you need to niche down, I have been told that time and time and time again, you really need to niche down Marie, you really need to choose an industry that you want to work in Marie, if you try and serve everyone, you'll end up serving no one. And to be honest, I call BS on all of that.

04:11

Over the years, I found that it's not just about niching down, it's finding people who I aligned with, it's those people that we share the same values and beliefs. It's those people that were in business for the same reasons such as that impact as well as income is those real honest or real people. I am so much more focused on relationships and helping the right people build their business rather than helping everyone or just a specific niche. The reason why I say that is I remember years ago when I had a heated discussion with a business coach that was a lot further along in her journey than what I was and she kept saying to me, if you just niche down and just decide on one, one industry that you want to be the specialist in.

04:56

Then other people that find you can kind of be like a bone nurses. And what I found was when I stepped into certain industries, there were people that I loved working with, and there'll people that I didn't love working with, there were parts of the industry that I loved. There were parts of the industry that I didn't love. And so for me, it was just about the people. It wasn't about the industry. So once you're clear on the people that you want to work with, we then need to look at how do we actually connect with them. Because it's one thing to know who we want to work with. It's another thing to be able to draw them in to connect with them, and to understand how we can help them and eventually get them to buy.

05:33

I like to create a persona for my ideal client, and I call her Sally. Hello, Annie Sally's out there, Sally was actually built on a previous client that I absolutely adored working with. I don't know what it was about her at the time. But I thought, Wow, I love working with this woman. She lights me up, I enjoy seeing her succeed. I enjoy being challenged by her. I enjoy challenging her and really love seeing her results. So every time I create something every time I look at my marketing, every time I look at my messaging anytime I create anything for social media, even talking on podcasts, I always think about Sally, anything I do to grow my business. I do it with Sally in mind, always. Now to help you connect with your Sally, I want to give you some questions that you can ask yourself, I don't want you to think about this as surface level, I want you to sit with it and really process what I'm asking you here.

06:33

So you want to understand what is the biggest challenge that you solve for Sally? What do you give her? What do you help her achieve? What is the outcome that you get for her? Then we want to look at what is it that Sally really wants? Not like surface-level stuff. I'm talking deep down the things that she writes in her journal the things that she has conversations with her best friends over a glass of wine, those really deep desires, what is it that she really wants, and it doesn't have to be about business, it can be about life, it can be about family, it can be about finances, whatever that is, what is it that she really wants, and it's not about what you think she wants. It's about what she wants and how she talks about it. The other thing I want you to look at is, what does she think she needs? Not maybe what she does need, but what does she think she needs? For example, people come to me saying that they need help with their sales. And they think the answer is more leads.

07:30

 Now most of the time, it is about setting up a high-converting sales process to convert the leads they already have. However, if I didn't address the fact that they wanted more leads, I would absolutely lose them in the process. We want to make sure that any leads coming into their business has the highest chance of becoming clients. And so I know more leads does not always equal more sales. It can just mean the end up with more people that aren't converting. But if I said to Sally, if I just kept trying to bang my head against a brick wall and say no, you don't need more leads you need to convert, then I'm going to potentially lose her. So what I do is I address ways to talk about Yeah, absolutely. You may need more leads. But it may not be right now there may be other things we can do to convert your leads rather than just tipping more leads into our buckets.

08:19

We want to understand what are Sally's biggest fears. Now, this is not about selling in a pushy way and just pushing pain points. It's so much that doesn't even cover it. We want to understand her biggest fears so we know how we can help her move forward. We want to know what it looks like on the other side. If the fees wasn't even an issue, we then want to look at what does her every day look like? What does she do every day? What does she think? What's her routine? What is her processing time? Does she process time? Is she running around after kids? All of this information will give us a really good understanding about how Sally works, the best way that we can connect with Sally.

08:59

 I know that was running a masterclass earlier this evening. And I was saying that if you're one of your ideal clients, or your Sally is a busy mum, there's potential that creating content or opt-ins or lead generation material, creating things like PDFs that are 30 or 40 pages long for a busy working mum, the chances of her reading that are probably slim to nil. So because I know what her every day looks like, I know that she's probably going for a walk. And I know that podcasts are probably a great way for me to help educate her, give her some tips, and add some value to her day. So that's why it's so important to understand what her every day looks like and how you can potentially slot into that. We also want to understand where is she looking for solutions or products. And when I asked this question to a lot of people they'll say oh, she's on social media. Not good enough. It's not a good enough answer. We want you to be more specific and clear. Is she on Facebook? Is she on Instagram? What groups is she What type of questions is she asking? Where is she seeking information? What sort of people is she following all of that will allow us to connect in the right places, I see a lot of people that when we start tracking where their leads are coming from, and where they meet, most of their ideal clients and their sales come in, they will say to me, oh, it's through networking events, or it's through LinkedIn. And they're spending so much time on Facebook and Instagram, where that's not necessarily where their leads are coming from, because they're Sally's not hanging out there.

10:28

So make sure that the time and energy you're putting in from a marketing perspective, is where Sally's hanging out? Okay. We also then want to look at what does she tried in the past to solve her problems. Or what does she bought in the past? Or what has she done? To move herself forward? Did it work? Did it not work? If it didn't work? Why didn't it work? What's the reason she tells herself it didn't work? I know, one of my amazing clients is doctors that help women with weight loss. And a lot of the time, their ideal clients will say, Well, the reason why it didn't work was because my willpower was not strong enough, or that they're not good enough. So when we understand the ideal client, we can address those things, that it's not about the willpower, it's understanding the chemistry and the hormones and all the things that that are going on in your business. But if we don't address the willpower, they may not necessarily feel like you're understanding them, we then want to know, does she know what she needs? Some people will say to me, are Murray people don't really know that they need me. And that's okay.

11:31

There's ways that we can work around that with your messaging and your marketing. But what people do know a lot of the time is what they want to think and feel. And so if you can give them those thoughts and those feelings and those outcomes, then it's just about marrying those two up and connecting those pieces of the puzzle. So that she goes, Oh, well, maybe it is Option A that I'm looking for, I just didn't know I needed it. And you can see that through your messaging and your marketing throughout your business. We also want to know, does she know that she needs us? And if she does, how does she know? How do things show up for her.

12:08

So if we use the beautiful doctors as another example, or the same example, just in a different way, she may be feeling tired, she may be having three o'clock cravings, she may be putting on weight for no specific reason. And she thinks it's her fault. But really, there's a whole heap of hormones and all that sort of stuff showing up for her. Or there's a whole heap of hormone sorry going on for her. But the way that that's showing up for her is weight gain. And so she's like, what's going on? And so when we look at our messaging and our marketing, we can be like, Hmm, are you putting on weight for no real reason and can't understand why.

12:42

 That's the difference between getting really clear on our salary, and just winging it. As I said before, we also then want to look at how does she likes to receive her information. Is she watching YouTube? Is she in Facebook groups? Does she love watching videos, reading books, once we know this stuff, this will help us understand how you need to communicate with her and what channels she's on. So we can go in and find her and chat with her and create that beautiful connection. But if you are creating things that is not right for your ideal client, then you're really going to struggle to connect, and to build that relationship to then move them forward to help them the last piece of this puzzle is what are the words she uses that she uses?

13:27

Not what you think she uses the words that actually come out of her mouth? What are those words that she uses to explain her thoughts? Or feelings, her beliefs, her ideas, her wants all of that around the challenge or the desires that she's looking for? Now, if you answer all these questions, you'll be so much clearer on who it is in your niche, and how you need to connect and begin building the relationship with them. I know you've probably heard it before. But you know the saying where people say oh, we all buy from people we know like, and trust and connect with the best way to do that is to build rapport and to show them that we do actually know who they are. And that we do understand what they're going through and what they're needing. I see a lot of experts in the industry that have been doing what they do for so long that they forget to get on the floor with their niche or their ideal client.

14:23

They let jargon word slip out. They let it's like that they've got to constantly prove this ongoing specialty and expertise side of it. But what I want you to do is every time you go to launch a new product or an offer or you open the doors to one of your programs or you sell anything, go back to your niche reassess them check in see what's happening for them. I say to my clients to really get on the floor with them. It's like understanding that when they're down and out when they're on the bathroom floor crying when they're in the shower processing their thoughts. What's really going on for them, we don't want to be those people in business that have been in business for a while and just get a little bit too far advance and think that we know what people need, the more that you can keep checking in. And going back to what our people are saying and how they're saying it, you will be so much more successful in this, we tend to put our own spin or jargon on it. And what we really need to do is we need to keep it simple, clear and connected. I know I was joking around with one of my clients, and she's like, so we just need to, like, really dumb it down for them. And I'm like, Yeah, kind of, because it's not about staying at your level, from a knowledge point of view. When you're looking at your niche in your marketing in your messaging, you want to make sure that they get that you understand them. And that jargon and all that sort of stuff can create a really big disconnect.

15:50

So that is a wrap on today's rant or podcast on niching. You don't have to listen to everyone, right? You need to do what is right for your business. What feels good for you. What do you need to do to have more of those awesome clients like those ones that you think, ah, freaking love working with her? Right? Like, surely everyone has had one of them. And if you haven't, oh, my god, please go and find one. They they're absolutely amazing.

16:16

My goal is to now only work with those sorts of people because it makes me a better business owner, it makes their results absolutely shine because I'm so invested in them. I'm invested in them from a business perspective, and they end up becoming my mates, my friends, the people that I love hanging out with the ones that I am more than happy to go and have dinner or share a drink with like it's just amazing. So find those ones that are right for you and your business. If you want a copy of the questions I have mentioned above, you can download them at Mareekirkpatrick.com/Sally. And as usual, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out you can email me at podcast at Mareekirkpatrick.com. And on a little side note we are opening the doors to her sales club over the next few weeks. If you want to jump on the waitlist and get your hands on some amazing extra bonuses. Just go to Mareekirkpatrick.com forward slash club we will keep you updated on all the bonuses that are happening when doors are opening and the exciting launch that we'll be doing so until the next episode of the sales show. Keep on selling from a connected and relationship-focused space.

17:27

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the sale show. Please share it on social media for your friends to see and make sure you tag me at Mareekirkpatrick so I can personally say if you would like to show me some love, leave me a review on Apple podcast. I'd love to hear from you email me at  Mareekirkpatrick.com And if you'd like to work with me further or see any of the free resources mentioned on today's show, they can be found at Mareekirkpatrick.com I truly hope this podcast provides useful information and so much value to you, too. You can build a business with impact and Income