SFR 246: How To Choose Your Market...

One of the most frustrating things for me at the beginning of this whole game was that I didn't know what a market was... and there wasn't anybody who could really define it for me...

 

SALES STRATEGY SHORTCUTS?

 

Usually, I don't believe in shortcuts, but if you know your market, a lot of stuff just gets answered for you… and it’s much easier to pin down…

 

• Your Messaging

 

• What To Sell

 

• The Funnel You Should Build.

Existing companies I work with like this a lot because it helps them position themselves in relation to their competition

 

New people want this because it actually fills in a lot of the questions that get asked along the way.

 

For Example:

 

• What should I sell?

 

• Who am I talking to?

 

• What kind of sales message should I create?

 

Choosing the right market is one of the major things that help to shortcut the game for real.

 

HERE’S THE PROBLEM…

 

There are some things that it's obvious that I need to teach; I can see everyone's struggling with X, Y, and Z…

 

However, there’s an area in my brain that I've NOT  quite uncovered yet and I keep trying to reach to it.

 

A few days ago, I woke up at five, 5:30 and spent three hours trying to figure out what question I should be asking…

 

I believe that questions invite revelation; therefore, I must be careful of the questions that I ask.

 

I always consider the questions and ask… and who I’m asking those questions to.

 

For example:

 

Am I asking broke people questions... or am I asking rich people questions?

 

In fact, I have a whiteboard where I list out the major questions that I feel I should start asking. I'm NOT trying to answer them, I'm just logging that I have that question.

 

Then when I get a little more clarity on what I need to be asking, I go to my bookshelves…

 

I buy a lot of books.

 

… and it's because I'm trying to create clarity on what question I'm hunting the answer for, so I don't get stuck in learning loops…

 

I just hunt the answer.

 

… and I've been hunting answers a lot lately.

 

Half of what I do is teach people, “Hey, this is X, Y, and Z -  I see a lot of people are struggling with this.”

 

The other half of what I do is in a discovery realm that’s super fun mentally, but exhausting.

 

And there's something that I’m trying to grasp, and I'm NOT quite there yet…

 

HOW TO GET MORE CUSTOMERS

 

I used to believe that in order to have success, you needed a good funnel.

 

Now before anyone poops a brick, let me explain...

 

Originally, I’d build a funnel and then I build an offer contingent with the funnel that I’d hacked... NOT based on what the customer needs...

 

Then I’d build a sales message.

 

Eventually, I realized that I needed to be doing the exact opposite…

 

Instead, I need to create the…

 

1. Sales Message
2. Offer
3. Funnel

 

...and I started teaching it that way.

 

However, I  quickly realized that wasn’t where I needed to start

 

I was like, “Wait a second, I’ve gotta go even further back; way before the sales message and get to know the Red Ocean a little bit more.”

 

...and that's when I started creating my Red Ocean Analytics Checklist.

 

It’s a living, breathing checklist of my actual findings; I'm not taking that from anywhere, it’s my stuff.

 

Red Ocean Analytics, Baby!

 

So before I’d create an offer,  I'd go through the Red Ocean Checklist…

 

But then I was like, “Crap, no! We can't start at the Red Ocean, we have to go back even further because there are other oceans and other markets…”

 

• There are ghost markets

 

• We have to think in terms of the customer

 

… I have to go back even further.

 

The further I've gone back, the more I see that when people just follow the framework, (and not even well), the chances of their success goes way up.

 

The challenge is that I can tell that there's another stage before friggin' market selection that’s starting to pop out.

But I can't tell yet if it's a pre-market selection or something that’s in it…

 

Sometimes I feel like it's ‘The Beautiful Mind’ kind of thing, “Y'all here?”

 

It's like schizophrenia, “Aah, pictures, patterns everywhere...”

 

That's my unique ability. I'm not very good at many other things besides this.

 

ART VERSUS SCIENCE

 

It seems funny for me to say, (cause I'm the “offer guy’), but I'm at a spot now where I believe you can't even make a good offer until you know…

 

1. The market you’re selecting
2. The customer journey and where they've been previously.

 

I can't sell something to a customer that they’ve already gone through - and that's what I mean by a ghost market.

 

It's the ghost of “marketing past.’

 

The ghost of the ‘vehicle past’ that they've already gone through.

 

It’s interesting to start looking at the journey the customer is on…

 

You have to understand that piece…

 

Market selection is still an art right now 'ca...