Line or Net?

Line or Net?

In any market, and particularly in this one, you had better try to attract as many potential buyers as possible. It’s the difference between a net and a single fishing line. If you’re trailing a huge net, you’ll attract a great deal of fish, and you can decide which to keep and which to return. But if you use a single line and reel, you’re trying to catch one elusive fish at a time. And you’re more prone to keep even a pretty bad fish which you otherwise wouldn’t consider a good catch.

Of course, you’re going to be there all day and the next, foul weather and fair, and not have time to do much else.

Your net can be as large as you can manage. Some of the ways to increase your “catch”:
• Don’t be a one-trick pony. Stop focusing on “presentation skills,” for example, and open it up to “communications effectiveness.” Move from sales forces to telemarketing and call centers, as well.
• Don’t focus on your methodology, e.g., the “Aspirational Aquisitive Angling Art.” It’s too easy to say, “We don’t need that.” (Or: “What one earth is that?!”) Focus on results: “We help you turn problems into innovative new directions.” (“We don’t replace the bar, we raise it.”)
• Use technology to go global. You can “time shift” your business to reach new audiences, especially with products and remote services.
• Create passive income and decrease labor intensity. Allow people to buy products and services that do not require your direct engagement. Turn your intellectual capital into intellectual property. You can’t sell what’s between your ears until you put it on the table.
• Move in a 360° rotation, and in three dimensions, within clients. If you’re helping to formulate strategy, can you also help to implement it? If you’re doing workshops, can you also provide reinforcement over time? If you’re dealing with a subsidiary, can you deal with the parent, and vice versa? What about suppliers, venders, and customers of your client? What about trade associations they may belong to? Can you deal with individuals and teams?
• Have you regularly gone back to past clients and past prospects?
• Can you adjust your approaches to work in a variety of industries and organizations?
• If you see yourself as someone who improves your clients’ condition, then can you engage in consulting, coaching, facilitating, training, speaking, and products? Why can’t you? Can you get someone to help you?
• Are you using all available avenues to educate people about your value? Are you being interviewed, are you publishing, are you networking, are you doing pro bono work, do you have newsletters, are you speaking, are you doing teleconferences, and so forth?

These are intelligent ways to cast your net in any market. If you’d rather stand in the surf casting a single line and hoping a fish will bite, I’d suggest you try to stay warm and have someone check on you every so often. And it had better not be someone else with a single line standing next to you.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.