Focus On The People Keeping Your Lights On
Ten percent or less of the people who interact with your business actively support your business by buying from you. If you have an online business, it’s probably closer to 1%, with the other 9% making some positive contribution via comments, social media sharing, and so on.
We could talk a lot about the other 90% and why they’re not buying, but instead, let’s talk about that 10%.
That 10% understands your value-proposition enough to support your business.
That 10% likes what you do and probably want to see more of it.
That 10% keeps your lights on, day in and day out.
How much of your business activities focus on that 10%? (Click to tweet - thanks!)
Most businesses that I’ve seen and worked with - including my own - don’t spend enough time, energy, and attention focusing on that 10%. In the busyness of business, we mistakenly assume that that 10% is static rather than seeing the truth of it: that 10% represents a market that could be expanded significantly. If we focused on growing in that segment rather than trying to get in front of more eyeballs, something dramatic would happen …
We’d have businesses with much higher conversion ratios.
We’d spend less time qualifying leads and explaining our value-proposition.
We’d have more people who like what we do and want to see more of it.
We’d have enough people that we wouldn’t have to worry about keeping our lights on.
And we’d have a surprising amount of clarity when it came time to make decisions about where to take our business. We’d simply have to ask if the proposed change benefitted the people who keep the lights on.
Of course, that would mean knowing who that 10% is. Do you? If not, how are you going to start learning who they are?
If you do know, how are you rewarding and supporting that 10%?
Lastly, what are you going to do to divert more time, energy, and attention from the non-supporting 90% to the supporting 10%?
(My talk, Go Big or Go Home … Or Go Deep, talks a bit more about this if you’re interested.)