You can have the best product or service in the world but that doesn’t mean much if people aren’t buying. In today’s world, good work is simply not good enough and there’s more that needs to be done to ensure you reach your business and revenue goals.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
Why the best sales and marketing wins and why it must be prioritised above you service
How to use your value to your advantage to showcase your good work
The importance of leading with results and the type of results you need to demonstrate to cut through
Good people, with excellent services, need to shift from passively promoting their business to actively getting seen by your future clients. This episode is to help those who do great work and know they want to get it into the hands of more people.
You can have the best product or service in the world but that doesn’t mean much if people aren’t buying. In today’s world, good work is simply not good enough and there’s more that needs to be done to ensure you reach your business and revenue goals.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
Why the best sales and marketing wins and why it must be prioritised above you service
How to use your value to your advantage to showcase your good work
The importance of leading with results and the type of results you need to demonstrate to cut through
Good people, with excellent services, need to shift from passively promoting their business to actively getting seen by your future clients. This episode is to help those who do great work and know they want to get it into the hands of more people.
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
Shannon Stone:
Hey guys. Welcome to the podcast, super excited to jump into this episode today.
Shannon Stone:
Today, we are talking about why doing good work is just not good enough and this almost hurts me to say this. It's, like you know, for the businesses and the people who are good people and who do incredible work. But is that really enough to grow your business the way that you would like? I would love to say it does. I would love to say you know, we can stand by that notion that build it and they will come to do the good work and put out your good services and help the people the way that you really do, help them the way that I know that you help them and they will send their friends and they will leave great reviews and the word, the word will get out there, and we know that word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing. But if that hasn't worked up until now for you, it's probably not going to work in the near future. So what are we going to do about that? So that's what I want to talk to you about today.
Shannon Stone:
I've got three things you can do about this, but this happens to so many people, and I think the type of businesses that you know like it really does affect all kinds. But businesses that have been around for 20, 30 years plus, which is often a category of clients that I work with they are the OGs. Right, they've been around, they've had great businesses. Obviously, they're doing well to be still here multiple decades on. But the world has changed, business has changed, marketing has changed and the way people buy has also changed as well, and so it wasn't how it once was, where it was much easier to get clients and customers. So for them and for everyone, it's to say you can still do good work, you can still be incredible at what you do, but something has to shift because doing good work is just not good enough. It's not going to reach the number of people that you need to for your revenue targets or various goals in your business.
Shannon Stone:
And one of the things I find, before we jump into the three things, one of the things that I do find almost like a common denominator amongst all of this denominator, that's me helping my daughter with her math homework way too much. I'm not a math swiz only when it comes to marketing, but I find the common denominator is often people will passively like wave the flag of their business. It's like they'll put some things out, they'll put some marketing out, but it's almost very passive. It is kind of still with that notion that you know if I put this out there, people will see it and they will reach out to me. Now the three steps I'm going to share with you will show you what you can do and maybe why some of what you have been doing hasn't quite worked and you might just be a couple of steps behind. And that is okay, because you've got a business, you've got clients, so you're already doing some things really well.
Shannon Stone:
Just what can we do better? So number one, it's to recognize that it's not the best product or service that wins, it's the best marketing and sales that actually wins. And this like back to the topic. It's like it shouldn't be this way. Right, that's the way I think about it. It's like if you do something really really well, if you've got the secret to solve all the world's problems or the secret to solve your clients problems, that should be the person or that should be the business who wins, but unfortunately that just doesn't happen. It really comes down to the best marketing and the best sales that win. The service that you deliver or the product that you deliver, it does come second. It doesn't mean you can't and shouldn't have a really great service. You absolutely should but you equally, and even a little bit more than that, should have excellent marketing and excellent sales.
Shannon Stone:
So, with your marketing, your marketing is about your ability to reach the people that you need to reach. That is really what marketing is. How can I just get in front of the people who have the problem that I can solve Now with sales. Sales is about converting those people into clients, so you can get in front of them, but how do you get them onto a call or how do you get them to inquire about your services and how do you handle that process? Say you have a call with them. Is it one call? Is it multiple calls? Do you qualify them before that call? Are you asking them certain questions? So there are two parts to it and if you fall short in either of these, in your marketing, in your sales, it's almost like putting a stop sign to anything that comes past that. It's like going to get very few sales from that point onwards. So it's not the best product or service that wins, even though we know that's really, really important. It is the best marketing and the best sales that wins. So in the action steps, I will invite you to have a look at your marketing, have a look at your sales and really give yourself a tune up there.
Shannon Stone:
Okay, number two for us is to use your value to your advantage. Now you are my best people to help my favorite type of businesses and clients, to help the ones who really do great work. You know you can tell a business, especially by looking at their reviews or just the way that they talk about their business, the way they talk about their clients and customers. You can tell who has great value and who has a great business and is worthy of growing that business. But all these things, that's still not enough for you to just make the sales that you want to make. It's like we have to have all these other bits and pieces as well.
Shannon Stone:
So number two here is to use your value to your advantage. So if you do and I don't think about competitors in the same way most people do I think we're all like very much in abundance mindset, but obviously you do have to, in some regards, be mindful and strategic and stand out and all those kind of things. But if you believe you do incredible work maybe even more incredible than some of the other businesses out there who do a similar thing to you do, you need to really get that seen by people. You need to showcase your value and your advantage and you need to really demonstrate that you are a cut above the rest. And this isn't about putting other people down in order to make yourself look better. I flip it on its head and I like to look at showcase how you really help your clients, really help your customers. Case studies are a great way to do this. So think about how can you use your value to your advantage. It's like you know you do incredible work. How can we milk that in a really good way? How can we really show this to people?
Shannon Stone:
Now, there's two parts to this that you need to be really mindful of. One say, you do case studies, for example, so you create the case studies. That is one part of it. The other part is actually getting that seen. And a lot of people and this is where they'll kind of sit on that passive front they will create the case studies, they will create the content. They will show, you know, create various blogs or articles or content or whatever it might be. Or you're just talking to people and you're telling them what great work that you do, but you really need to get that seen by more people.
Shannon Stone:
So remember that, when it comes to showcasing your advantage, showcasing your case studies, how are you actually getting that seen? It's not just about quantity, it's not just about okay, let's gather you know 30, 40, 50 case studies from our clients. How about we get three or five or 10 really good case studies and then we focus on getting that seen by more people? So that's number two for us, okay, and number three is lead with results. So I know, especially service-based businesses, you help people to achieve results.
Shannon Stone:
Now, what are these results? And when I talk to a lot of people, sometimes they don't even that they know they do good work, they know they really help people, but have you really quantified what these results actually are? And this is what you need to demonstrate to people, and it's the results that matter to your ideal clients, to the people that have the problem that you can solve right now. What are the things that actually matter to them? For example, you could be a sales trainer. You know you could help people to improve their sales skills and so maybe part of that is you help your clients to only speak to qualified leads, which helps them to save 10 hours per week and generates 300% in more revenue. So that would appeal to someone who is probably constantly on the phone with people who aren't really going anywhere, so they're spending a lot of their time talking to the wrong people and obviously that's going to affect their revenue. So the results that matter here to that person is that the sales trainer helps them to only speak to qualified leads, which helps them to save at least 10 hours per week, and from what comes out of that is 300% more revenue. So you need to think. This is just an example.
Shannon Stone:
But in your business, you have to think about what are the results that matter and find out for yourself first. Sometimes you know the business is you're so busy doing what you do and helping people and seeing the happy clients and customers on the other end, but to sit down and think through, well, what are the actual results we're helping them to achieve? And there would be multiple angles to this as well. The number side of things. There's the impact this has on them and their life and their business. You know more of the qualitative things, the more fluffy things you know they were able to tick, you know all these things off their bucket list that they thought they would never get to.
Shannon Stone:
You know, whatever the things are that are relevant and important to your ideal clients are the type of results you need to lead with, and so I do invite you to figure out what are these results that you help people to get, and you know, tying in with number two, it's about getting those results seen as well. So what I would suggest is, once you figure out what all these results are, create content about it, add these into your sales process as well. When someone's booking a call, you know you want to put these results in there. You want to use these results as the headline in your content. You want to use it as your call to actions as well. I help the client XYZ achieve XYZ result if you would like this book or call here. So you want to start weaving all of this into your marketing. Like I said, it's not just about creating it, it's about getting it seen as well. Okay, so there are three steps that I wanted to take us through Before we jump into the action steps and make it really simple for you to turn this into something. I want you to know that.
Shannon Stone:
You know putting your business out there more than you have previously can feel uncomfortable. It can feel like you are constantly talking about yourself, saying you know, look at me, look at what I'm doing, but the reality is not everyone is going to see it and they're not going to see it all of the time. And however your business, whatever position it's in at the moment, you know probably not enough of them as seeing it right now, and don't hold yourself back by viciously waving the flag of your business rather than passively and they use viciously, as in a nice kind of way, don't be afraid that you're going to get too many clients. I think so many people think, well, if we do all of this, if I really start, you know, pushing my marketing and pushing the sales and really using my value to the advantage, showing the results, showing the case studies, all these kinds of things, I'm just going to have too many people reach out and, yes, that is an amazing problem, but don't let it be a problem. Until it's a problem, a lot of people will see that and think about that and think that's going to happen. But until it happens, please do all the marketing that you need to do in order for that to happen, because a lot of people will be almost too afraid that they're going to get too busy, too many people are going to reach out, they're going to let them all down and so they don't do anything or they don't do enough. And I think that's a similar thing that can happen amongst you know, business owners who do get good results do our incredibly good-hearted people. They would just be too passive when it comes to really promoting their business.
Shannon Stone:
And I guess caveat to all of this you can promote your business. You can really focus on marketing and sales. You can lead with results. You can do all of this In a way that works for you. You know it doesn't mean you have to be like the town crier, screaming about your business. You can do it in a way that works for you, that makes sense for you. That Is like you know what. Yeah, that is an extension of my brand, that is my marketing, and the way that I'm, that I want to do sales is the way that I ultimately want to do it. What I'm providing for you here is the framework. I want you to then fuse that framework into your business and apply it in a way that suits you, the way that you do things, and I know that you'll get some really great results from it.
Shannon Stone:
Okay, the three action steps that I have for us here today. Number one it's to remember it's the best marketing and sales that when service comes second now this doesn't mean that we stop doing, you know, delivering great stuff for our clients or anything like that it's equally the best marketing and the best sales. It's like you know someone who is trying to lose weight. You can't just eat healthy and you can't just exercise. It's actually got to be both of them. So action step is to look at your marketing and look at your sales and see what needs to be improved there. And I guess quick little insight here or something to look for is where are people falling off, you know? Is it that they're not actually booking a call? If so, you probably got a marketing problem. If you're getting people onto a call but they're not actually signing up, there's probably something to do with your sales process or your sales skills. So look for where people are actually falling off. Okay, action step number two is to showcase, once a week, a case study or something, something that shows your value, something that really shows that you are a cut above the rest without putting other people down. So how can you showcase what you do once a week that really gives people insight into this is what you do. This is how you're really great at what you are, and it's that Not just the creating of the content, it's getting it seen as well. So that's a once a week activity that I invite you to do.
Shannon Stone:
And the third action step, the last one for us here today, is to quantify what you do. So this is looking at the results that you help people to get and turn it into some type of data, some type of metric, something that is resonant for the type of people that you want to work with. And for some people it is numbers. For some people is more that qualitative. It is around, you know they're they're saving certain amount of time and what impact that will have with them. I think all of the above matter. It is the numbers as well as the qualitative. You know, everyone buys in different ways. Some people are very logic driven, some people are more emotionally driven, but it's never 100%. So I might be more logically driven, but there's always still going to be an emotional element to the things that I buy as well. Same would go for you and any of your clients and customers.
Shannon Stone:
So the last thing I'll leave us on here, this is not an action step, but to really just wrap all of this up, we have to get your good work into the hands of good clients, and so I think it is almost the responsibility of the business owner to take care of the future clients. You know the ones that will one day come to you by doing what you can right now to reach them. So if you do incredible work, almost see it as your. I don't want to put the pressure on you, but maybe your duty this is part of your mission, like finding the people that you can help should be part of your mission. And you know, maybe it's, you know, a dozen clients a year. That's all you need to work with. Or maybe it's 100 clients, or 1000 clients a year, whatever your business looks like. But remember that just because you do good work doesn't mean that the people are going to come. That might have worked in the Roman days, but in 2024 and beyond, we need to embrace what is working now, the way that people buy and, I guess, how technical things can get as well.
Shannon Stone:
So hopefully you found this useful. If you have any questions, definitely reach out, but I hope you have an amazing day and we'll talk very, very soon.