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[Excuse any strange typing errors; this is a direct transcription for your benefit.]
Today, I wanted to talk about four focus strategies that greatly impact how you grow and scale your business. I wanted to share these because we’ve had a few questions recently about where to focus.
If you are looking at your marketing and considering where you need to go next, we’ve got plenty of resources you can access, one of which is our marketing checklist. Go to superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl. It’s especially important at this time of year to do a bit of a review. Where are you? Where do you want to be? Where are your goals? How far forward are you?
Sometimes it’s very easy just to be doing without thinking, “Is this working?”. It aligns with some things we were talking about last week about what you can do this summer. Today I want to talk about these four areas:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Behaviours
- Skills
No matter where you are in your business, keep saying, “What are we doing on marketing? What are we doing on sales?”
Are we embedding the behaviours around these two and building our skill level to deliver what we want?
1. Marketing
Marketing is all about demonstrating to people exactly what you can do.
Before we can sell to someone, we have to demonstrate to people what we can do. In today’s internet-driven world, it is much easier to present to our target market how good you are at your job. The way that we do this is by adding value.
Frank Kern, one of my mentors, always says, “Demonstrate to people that you can help them by actually helping them.” Content marketing is popular because you can demonstrate your brand authority and help people by helping them. Imagine writing a blog post on the great skills of a receptionist, an architect, a commercial manager, or how to write the perfect CV?
You’re helping somebody by actually helping them. When you make a major purchase, I am certain you will look around and connect with someone who adds value for you. Maybe they’ve written a review of something, or they’re demonstrating how you can use a particular piece of equipment; perhaps their customer service is good, but what they are doing is revealing their value to you as a potential customer.
That is what marketing does. It is creating value ahead of time. When people join our membership program, Superfast Circle, we focus them on easy, quick wins to demonstrate value to people. We provide them with some emails they can send that they need to tweak. We get them doing social media. Then they start to get people coming to them. Suddenly, they’re a presence in the market, and that’s because of marketing.
Marketing demonstrates how that recruitment company can help a candidate or a client, and then the selling starts. You must nail marketing, selling, and your behaviours and skills before you start building a team or scaling. I know many of you operate on your own or with a couple of contractors and have nailed the company’s business marketing and sales aspect.
You’re happy making £/$300,000, £/$400,000 a year. This might be you as you’re starting. Start with marketing and sales because that’s going to make a difference. Marketing is all about showing, and selling is more about telling people the specifics of how you can help them.
2. Sales
We had someone contact us the other day that wanted to work with us, and we told them the specifics. “Okay, this is how it can help you. We’re going to help you get a brand presence. We’re going to help you connect with your audience. We provide the content for you, which means you will stand out as an authority in your market above others in your sector.” We did our selling by telling people the specifics of what we do. You have to get specific when you’re selling. Your marketing is going out there and adding value. Selling is when you start to get specific.
3. Behaviours
You have your marketing and sales process. Next, consider the behaviours around this. You have to post on social media, so you have to use a piece of social media marketing software you’ve never used before. You have to get some images created and write a compelling headline. You have to pick up the phone and follow up with people who are opening and clicking links in my emails, etc.
4. Skills
You go from unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent. Start with the behaviours, and the skills will come. Start doing the behaviours like sending emails, religiously posting your blog content, picking up the phone, going through your database, and ringing people. Your skills will build over time.
It doesn’t matter where you are in your business. We’ve just started a coaching business for Sharon. She’s been a leadership coach for many years, and we’ve just launched her brand. If you want to go and check it out, go to sharonnewey.com. We reviewed what we’re doing with our marketing and what additional skills we might need. The coaching market is obsessed with Instagram.
We already do a bit on Instagram with something like 1,500 followers for Superfast, but it’s not a skill area for us, so we’re posting there daily. Are we getting it wrong? Yes, probably. But we’re building our skills, and we’re not letting it stop us from going out there and doing it.
Conclusion
Marketing is about creating value and giving value in advance. Apart from telling somebody there’s a job, what value are you offering?
How are you interacting with candidates and clients, telling them about your offer, why your recruitment process is better than somebody else’s, or how can you specifically help them? Let’s say you’re marketing for the first time and have never posted on social media apart from putting a job ad out. Now you’re trying to write engaging content; just do it. Just keep getting it out there each day.
I have to share this; one of our clients who’s been working with us for about two years always says he couldn’t spell marketing before meeting us. Now his team has grown, and he has a part-time marketer working with him. He’s all over social media, and I see all his client testimonials and case studies. He kept doing the work.
He wasn’t confident, but his confidence has built massively. You can find his case study here. That’s the difference it makes for you. Know that you’ve got marketing ahead of anything else. You’ve got to create value in the market for people to listen to you, to be aware of you in today’s market. Then you’ve got sales, and then you’ve got those behaviours and skills that underpin everything, no matter where you are taking your business.
How We Can Help
As a Superfast Circle member, you get access to multiple campaigns you can use every month.
Book your call and demonstration here if you want a quick chat to see how Superfast Circle can work for you too.
Thanks,
Denise
P.S. If you want to join Superfast Circle and want to learn more, speak to us here.
