I was talking to a young buck yesterday that is just out of college and trying to make it in sales.
He’s the first real sales person at his company, similar to what I was at Malomo about 4.5 years ago (whoa…)
Immediately, he began to tell me about the 1,000 things he’s doing to try to get just one person on a demo (first call).
He was attacking the whole market as one big ocean of potential customers.
The issue very early on in the conversation was that even though he felt ‘unique’ and ‘different,’ I’ve personally heard that same pitch a million times.
PS – he is trying to break into the same industry as me, so I’ve talked to 100’s of companies similar to the one he is at.
He was speaking very generally and was attempting to serve everyone.
He was looking at the opportunity in too large of a manner that he was speaking to no one.
My advice?
Make the industry smaller.
Instead of “we go after Shopify merchants” (~2M stores as of today and growing), how can you make your story speak to someone by going smaller.
What about “we go after food & beverage Shopify merchants that are doing $100k to $1M in revenue and need help turning their website conversion rate from 1% to 3% to bring in more sales.” ….a bit long winded but you get the point.
As I reflect on the conversation, that logic of breaking something into smaller parts to make it digestable is applicable in so many areas of life.
Eating – hard to eat a steak in one bite. Easier (and way more enjoyable) in smaller bites that you enjoy.
Finances – hard to know what to do with a $60,000 year salary. Easier to break it up piece by piece into a budget that makes it more manageable to know your spending and plan for the future.
Working out – hard (and daunting) to run 5 miles. Easier to run 1 miles 5 times.
The world – hard to change the world or be friends with the world. Easier to change yourself, your family, your local community. As well as more enjoyable to spend time with those people rather than trying to focus on the world as a whole.
Break things up into smaller pieces. Make it more intimate, more personal.
Potential 