Want To Increase Sales? There’s almost limitless methods for doing so.

Be in front of your audience when they need you.

That’s it. That’s the key to increasing your sales. Think about it, when you’re at a restaurant, do you care with the bathroom is? Not til you need it, right? Or an ATM. You likely pass dozens of them every day and don’t notice them, right? But what happens when you’re out of cash? Every ATM comes into focus. What’s more, you might scurry to find one.

So many small business owners don’t consider this when they market their business. They work hard on their vision and business plan. Then they focus on their offer and how best to communicate that offer to a target market. Ideally, they’re wanting to position themselves as an expert in a select niche market.

But no one cares that you’re an expert until they need an expert. In other words, no one cares that you can solve a set a problems until they are faced with those set of problems. Then, they go out and look for a solution.

As a business owner, you want to find the most effective ways to get your business, your expertise, your solutions in front of people when they need it.

I know what you thinking…how do I know when people need what I have to offer?

The simple answer is, well, you don’t. But you can spend time identifying a clear niche in which to spend your marketing efforts (and budget). And you can use search engines, forums, social media (blogs, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc) and your website to make yourself more visible to people as a whole. The more people know what you do, the more potential for your work to passed on to someone who needs it.

For instance, you can use SEO and SEM to target specific key phrases that people may be searching for when they’re looking to solve their problem. But be specific and highly targeted. If you train poodles, you likely aren’t going to get much return for optimizing your site for dog trainers. But if you optimize your site for poodle trainers in New England, now you have a specfic niche you’re targeting. And when people need their poodle trained, and live in New England, you’ll likely get found.

Same is true with social media. Use your blog and profiles on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, among others, to establish your expertise. Then openly share with people who you are, what you do and who you do it for. If they don’t need your services, they may know someone who does.

And there’s other approaches as well – forums, blog commenting, article submission, etc. The list goes on. Just remember that you want to present your expertise at the time when people most need it. If you allow that to be your guiding light, you won’t be marketing in the dark. And more people will buy – today, even.

Are you targeting your audience at the times they need you most? If so, how’s that working for you? And if not, why not? Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from Troy Holden on Flickr)

There’s lots of definitions of positioning because the term is often used along side branding. The definition that I gravitate to is:

Positioning is the space that you wish to occupy in your target audience’s mind, relative to your competitors.

In this short video, Guy Kawasaki talks about positioning and finding your niche. The key, as he suggests is know thyself and know thy niche.

[youtube PHhfDkLrOpA]

So the key is to clearly identify how you position yourself in your niche. In other words, how do people perceive your products and services.

So, how strong is your position? And how unique is your business? Let’s chat about it.

You work real hard to position your business just right in your target market only to find that the people buying aren’t in your target market. What do you do?

Well, some businesses decide that should reposition their business to reach their intended target market. MISTAKE!

Why do this? If you already have customers buying, who cares where they come from. Perhaps you miscalculated with your target market. Perhaps you didn’t see how your product or service would benefit a different market. So what!

The difference between success and failure in your business comes down to are you talking to the people who are listening? Or, are you talking to people who aren’t?

My advice, and the advice of Guy Kawasaki in the video below, talk to the people who are listening. Then, readjust your positioning – if even necessary – to reach more of those who are already buying in. Or, as Guy says it, “Take the money.”

[youtube FA9Yzunsrlc]

So are the ‘right people’ buying into your business? Do you care?

It’s certainly true in sports. In baseball, if your defense is positioned wrong, the other team can more easily score runs. In basketball, both offense and defense are decided by how players are positioned on the floor. Get it right, and you have a strong defense or an explosive offense. Get it it wrong and you loose.

The position of furniture in your home can make a huge difference between the room feeling comfortable and spacious as opposed to dark and cramped. And with your office, how you position things around your desk can often decide how efficient you are.

Position is so important. So why, then, do so many businesses get it wrong? Worse, why do so many businesses not focus on it at all?

I once was the product buyer for the largest single-store Patagonia clothing dealer in the world. We did in the neighborhood of $4.5 million per year in Patagonia clothing alone – all out of one, 3,600 square foot store (read: tiny).

The two owners were great guys and the business flourished, growing more than 25% per year each of the three years I was there. But the success was all from luck. They started the store with a different intention and really stumbled upon their success simply because the store was located in a wealthy area where their customers just loved Patagonia clothing. So because the customers had plenty of disposable income the store grew at an enormous pace. And continued too after my three years there.

In the first year I was there, they hired a new manager. Tom was a great guy with a great sense of humor and just a joy to be around. But he came from a different retail background and never really understood why the store was a success. You see, Patagonia makes high-quality clothing for many intense, outdoor activities. But we weren’t an ‘outdoor store.’ We sold about 15% of our clothing to your hard-core outdoor user. The rest went on the backs of upper-class families who like the quality and label status. Tom, had come from the hard-core outdoor industry and had visions of changing the store into an outdoor gear haven. Tom and the owners had the same vision.

But the customers didn’t. They saw the store as having cool Patagonia stuff – you know, fleece and organic cotton.

So in the aftermath of September 11th, a few years after I had left, and with the slow down in the economy and the fears that surrounded people, the store began to decline. Within a year they closed. Not because they couldn’t sell Patagonia to wealthy people any more. They certainly could. But because they had tried to change their focus from being ‘the place’ to get Patagonia in the Midwest to trying to be a hard-core outdoor clothing store. And as Patagonia took a backseat to other lines and ventures, people lost interest in shopping there.

What ultimately happened was that the owners never really understood the position of their business. They started as one thing. Yet they found success in something different. And they never let go of where they started from. Hence, they ultimately made decisions about positioning themselves that caused the collapse of their rather successful company.

So many businesses don’t get this. They don’t understand it’s how you position yourself that makes the difference between success and failure. And they don’t see that if you change your position without considering your customer base, why they buy from you and how they perceive you – you can sink a highly successful business.

The difference between success and failure is in how your target audience perceives you. That’s positioning. How are you positioning yourself?

And what have you found to be effective in bridging the gap between what you do and what your target audience perceives you do?

(note: image from Kees Verwer on Flickr)

But does any of that matter of you can’t communicate it?

From my post yesterday, How Not Knowing Something Makes You More Of An Expert, an interesting conversation emerged. I really enjoyed hearing your perspectives on whether an expert had to know everything or not.

What most of us agreed upon is that the term expert can apply to anyone who has a unique and valuable perspective on a topic. In other words, you don’t have to be at the top of the ladder to be considered an expert. Rather, you can be seen as an expert simply by knowing more than your audience.

The second, and I think more important, point that was made had to do with how you get the title of ‘expert’ in the first place. We almost unanimously agreed that it’s unfair to designate yourself as an expert in anything. That designation is reserved for other people to ‘judge you’ by.

The conversation on this topics was (still is – as it keeps going) great. But one comment stood out for me. It was from Michael Sass, who, unfortunately, didn’t leave a URL for us to follow. Check this out…

Interesting topic that can trigger self-worth and self esteem issues. Here’s my take…Clients work with us not because of what we know, but because of our ability to bridge the gap between what we know and what our clients know.We are experts and students of our given fields. We have gathered a great deal of information and experience, but remain open to learning. A master is an expert and a student at the same time. Standing on a mountain of information and experience, they remain open to the unknown, and are not fooled into believing they’re finished learning.

When I read this, so many ideas popped off in my mind that I wasn’t sure exactly how to respond. Yet, I managed this:

Yes! Yes! Yes! Now you’re sounding a bit more like Confucius than Seth (Godin).

What you describe is very close to what I think as well. Personally, I run a business that’s about knowing, learning and synthesizing a number of components – marketing, business development, strategic planning, copy writing, website development, usability, graphic design, social media – to help people grow their businesses through the internet. So not only do I need to know what I know, I also need to keep up with areas that are quickly and constantly changing. And because I coach and consult with my clients, if I can’t effectively communicate what I know, then what I know is virtually useless.

Notice I didn’t say teach. I said communicate. Teachers often just spew out information (think of your TA’s in college) without much concern whether they’re doing so in the most effective way for people to learn. Communication, on the other hand, is about being understood. And the coaching is about helping people apply their new understandings.

Does all this make me an expert? I don’t care, really or personally. All I care about is helping my clients ‘get it and use it.’

Again, I’m running through tons of thoughts right now. But the one that sticks out the most is about communicating. Are you really an expert if you can’t communicate – clearly share – what you know?

I wonder. I know plenty of people who have a lot to offer. I know far less who can really share what they know in a way that benefits others. So, I ask you, can we consider someone with knowledge an expert if they’re unable to communicate their knowledge in a way that helps others?

Not according to Confucius. He once advised, “When you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it-this is knowledge.” In other words, we should not only know what we know, but also what we don’t know. Hence, it’s in knowing what we don’t know that we find our expertise.

Yeah, I know, the dictionary defines an expert as a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge or skill in a particular area. Certainly, that’s an expert and I’m not going to argue with the dictionary.

But is there one, supreme expert for any topic you can think of? I can’t. Is there someone who knows more about cucumbers than any other human being? And if there were would it not mean that our cucumber expert would know every single detail and every fact that all other human being know? To say they’re the supreme expert, I would say so.

But is that really possible? I’m not so sure.

So what am I getting too here? The point I want to make is that there are no true experts in anything. At least not objectively. The only expert on a topic is the one you know. And that expert may not be the most knowledgeable person on the topic.

But to you, they are. And that’s the important point. If you have some knowledge in an area, it’s easy to deduce that while you don’t have as much knowledge as some, you do have more knowledge than others. And to those ‘others’ that makes you an expert.

Confucius also said, “Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.” And neither will knowledge. There will always be someone who knows something more or different than you know. But what you don’t know isn’t what’s important. It’s what you know that is.

I like how Seth Godin phrases it in The Dip. You want to be known as the Best in the World. “Best as in: best for them, right now, based on what they believe and what they know. And world as in: their world, the world they have access to.”

So to be an expert you don’t have to be at the top of the ladder. Nor do you even have to be in the middle. What you need to do is clearly carve your niche. Find the one problem you can help people solve better than anyone else for a specific group of people. Then go about solving the problem for them. That’s how you become an expert.

Remember, being an expert “is subjective. I (the consumer) get to decide, not you. World is selfish. It’s my definition, not yours. It’s the world I define, based on my convenience or my preferences.”

As Seth continues, “Be the best in my world and you have me, at a premium, right now.”

So know what you know AND what you don’t know. And make that your expert niche. And remember what our friend Confucius said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.“

What do you think? Are there things you think you need to know that your really don’t to be the best in the world?

While branding was fresh on my mind the other day, I stumbled across a video on Phil Gerbysak’s site. The video, put together by ZeFrank, brings branding down to a simple concept:

A brand is an emotional aftertaste that’s conjured up by, but not necessarily dependent on, a series of experiences.

…Everything has an emotional aftertaste. And everything’s a potential brand.

The short video is definitely worth the watch. Just be ware that ZeFrank does use a few expletives in getting his point across.

[bliptv Zefrank-082906269]

Thoughts?