When you have a fabulous Thing–especially when it’s simply something you see and get that other people don’t see or get–it’s important to build structure around it when selling it.
I have a Thing like this. I often just ‘see’ what’s right in front of someone (on the end of their nose) that they do and can be their business that they don’t see they do, or they see it but they don’t see it’s value (the other part of ‘not seeing). And for me to simply say "I see Things" is quite hard to sell (although, it’s sometimes my opening gambit)!
So what I’ve done, and what I encourage my clients to do too–whether it’s a Thing about speaking, about marketing, about selling, about wellness, about anxiety, about story telling... whatever the Thing–the best thing you can do is to bring it structure. We can all easily do our Thing, but the value is in being able to do it, explain it, teach it, show someone else how it’s done the way we ‘see it’.
If you can’t add the structure around your Thing, then you can still sell it but you’ll always be stuck in ‘doing it’ mode... you’ll simply get paid for doing the Thing you do brilliantly that no-one else can do. And actually, it will make your marketing harder if you can’t explain ‘how’ you do that even if you do it brilliantly.
If you want to sell more than you simply ‘doing’ the Thing–you want to sell the formula or recipe, you want to teach it, you want to train others to do, or all of the above–then you’ll need to formalise the ‘structure’ around your Thing that makes it works. And this can be a little tricky to do as you probably don’t think about it as you’re doing it. But you will need to think about it, or at least pick it apart, to be able to present it for sale.
I typically talk about the structure of a Thing in terms of a process or philosophy, as it’s usually a set of instructions or steps (a process) or a group of keys/elements/pillars/tenets that make up the whole ‘result’ (a philosophy).
The great thing about structure is it gives legs to your Thing: it’s the strong foundation that’s no matter what niche you take your Thing to, or what flavour you make of it... it’s the key ingredients that make up the recipe of your Thing every time. When you can explain the pieces of your Thing and your market sees the structure of it, they have a lot more confidence to buy as it’s all clearly set out, and obviously thought through. The added bonus, of course, is they can also see what ‘bits’ they might want now, and what’s leftover for later (so no awkward ‘upsell’ or ‘extras’ when it comes to sales conversations).
If your Thing is just ‘something you do’ right now, take a step back and set up a structure for it, and you’ll find it selling it a lot easier.
Want to talk more about this?
Thank you Lucy for continuously being inspirational, grounded and motivational! I love this post – even though I’m reading it a little late. Thank you.