💡 Business Brainstorms 💡- My favorite ideas of the week
#1 💡
One of the most interesting learnings after doing lead gen for 100+ b2b companies: the more directly your offer is related to one the core b2b “desires”, the easier the sales process.
Many offers are only indirectly related to them. A better design might increases conversion which might generate more revenue. Happy employees might produce better work which might lead to better retention. The connection is quite indirect and selling these kind of services is difficult.
But if you have an offer where it’s crystal clear how the service/offer will help a business make more money or save the decision maker time, selling is easy.
Interestingly, this is often primarily a positioning problem. For whatever reason a lot of businesses shy away from making the connection to the “core desires” explicit. E.g. “we write GORGEOUS copy “ vs. “we write copy that increases conversion”.
#2 💡
#3 💡
Many people try to use elaborate spreadsheet-point-systems to decide what business idea to pursue.
It’s easy to come up with dozen of criteria that seem important, assign weights to them, and then start ranking business ideas. Unfair advantages, easy to sell, low friction asset production, recurring revenue, no crazy hours, income potential, minimal customer input to get value, how proud will you feel about building your public profile around this, ….
The problem with this approach is that you will always be second guessing since you know deep down that all your ratings are completely made up. You will most likely never start executing or stick to it, since no idea seems perfect if you look at it like this. And you will waste a ton of time researching that you could also spend executing.
A better approach is to focus on the most important thing first, revenue potential, and worry about the rest later. It’s a cliche but money does solve a lot of problems.
#4 💡
The low hanging fruit in some ecosystems are long gone. When you’re late to the party you’re playing on hard mode.
But luckily new ecosystems are popping up all the time. E.g. Framer right now.
#5 💡
Importantly: don’t buy courses. Instead pay someone for a few hours of their time.
End Note
As always, if you’re enjoying this brainstorm, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.
And whenever you're ready, here are ways I can help:
If your B2B business has an established sales process and you are now looking to systematize and scale your outbound efforts, my agency Sales.co might be able to help.
Have a great week,
Jakob