Obviously, you can see how this may relate to the first step. In many cases, something to differentiate your business can be as simple as serving a very tight niche market. It also can be the way in which you package your services. It can be in the way you price your services. It can be in an image that is related to your service. It could be your reputation for a special process.

The problem in small and medium businesses is that your prospects really can’t tell the difference. One accountant looks like another. One electrician looks like another. It may not be true, but unless you’re spending millions of dollars in advertising to tell your story, in many cases, they can’t tell the difference.

What happens is they pick up the phone and ask how much. That’s the way in which they determine one from another. They base their decision on price.

If you can find a way, something that really makes you the obvious choice in your industry or in your market, and then you tell the world, you will very quickly rise to the top of your market. Price really is not going to be the same issue for you at all.

A lot of times people say they provide quality work and fair pricing. Unfortunately, those aren’t differences. Those are expectations.

Your prospects believe that if you’re in business, if you’ve got a business card or a sign out in front of your store, that you meet those expectations.

Here’s a suggestion that you can pursue yourself or have an outside firm do it for you. Interview a handful of your clients and ask them specifically why they buy from you, how they found you, what makes them stay with you and why they refer business to you.

In many cases people who buy from you or use your services are more prepared to tell what you do that is different or unique than you will ever be. SME and small business owners, we’re just doing it how we think it should be done or how our parents taught us to treat people.

Very often, you will find that there are little touches you provide that really are a big deal to your market or your specific clients. Those can be the things you want to tap into and communicate how you’re different.

Another great place to look is with your competitors. What do they claim to do that is special? What don’t they claim? Where is your industry not served? These can always be great places for you to go out and recognize nobody is doing something, promising something or putting themselves out as an expert in a particular area. Maybe that’s a place that you can grab on to and have as your point of difference.

Once you’ve gone out and done your interviews, the hard creative work begins. What you want to be able to do is to let people know how you’re different and unique. You can put it into a powerful short phrase.

Try to answer a question with your marketing phrase, your core message. The question is “What do you do for a living?” Imagine you’re sitting at a party or on an airplane and somebody asks what you do for a living.

Instead of saying I’m a marketing consultant or an electrician or an accountant or a lawyer, which are essentially just titles but they don’t tell them anything, we could say “We teach SME and small business owners how to double what they charge”. You could say you show homeowners how to get the most from their thermostat.

Again, you’ll be tapping into your target market. You’ll be tapping into something that you provide that’s maybe different. It almost forces the person beside you to ask how you do that.

Capture a phrase that really gets at the heart of what your market is missing or at a frustration or something you do that is exceptional in eight or ten words. That can become not only the way to differentiate your business, but it can also become the real seed of all of your marketing messages. Everything will grow from that statement.

When you go back to your staff and associates, teach everyone in your organisation how to answer the question of what you do for a living.

You create this memorable phrase based on what you know your ideal target market wants and that you can deliver. Teach everyone in your organisation some variation of it, and then expand upon it in all of your marketing messages.

This is Step Two in our 7 Steps to getting your business to hum. Continue to read Step Three – Package Your Business.

Stop trying to be all things to all people. You really must find a target market. That may not sound like news or new information, but it is amazing how hard it is for SME and small business owners.

The phone rings, you pick it up and somebody on the other side asks if you can you do “X.” Typically, you say you’ve never done it before, but how hard can it be? The next thing you know, you end up being scattered so thoroughly that no matter what you started out to do in your business, you end up off target.

In many cases, when SME and small business owners are asked to describe their target market, it comes down to anybody they think will pay them. Unfortunately, the problem with that is it becomes so difficult to distinguish your business from another. Prospects want to believe that somebody can truly fill their needs.

A good example is a financial planner who works with family-owned businesses or maybe a financial planner who bills himself as a specialist in working with recently divorced individuals. If you were a recently divorced individual or owned a family-owned business, whether his claim is true or not, you will be predetermined to believe that his business is more suited to fill your needs.

It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It doesn’t necessarily matter if that person who works with family-owned businesses has any more special knowledge or experience than other financial planners. If you say you work with just anybody, a lot of times your prospects will look at that and say they want to work with the other person who says they work more specifically toward their needs.

The problem really comes down to trust. One of your biggest challenges as a SME or small business is to overcome this lack of trust. They’ve never heard of you. Why should they trust what you have to say?

For many people, if they believe you understand them, you serve their needs or if you’ve served somebody just like them, you are more suited to meet their needs.

What we’re really suggesting is you take a look at your ideal client. For those of you who have been in business for any amount of time, think in terms of what makes up your ideal client.

For many people, it’s as simple as taking a really good hard look at current clientele and looking for common characteristics among their best clients. For a lot of people that may not be the clients you do the most business with, perhaps. Sometimes it is. It’s great when it is.

Take a really good hard look at your existing clients and find some common characteristics with your best clients. To me, the best clients are those who really trust what you do, who really value what you do and those who really look to your specific expertise in order to bring them the results they want.

Sometimes, the case may be you’re just starting or thinking about starting and don’t have any clients. If you don’t have any clients, one of the tips is to think in terms of going to some complementary businesses, ones you admire perhaps, ones that wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves competitors but probably serve the same target market as you and ask them to describe their ideal client.

For those who have been in business for a while, you’ll probably find people are very willing to help. People love to be asked their opinions. In many cases, that can be a great way for you to go out and find common characteristics.

When we’re talking about common characteristics, we’re talking about types of businesses, sizes of businesses or number of employees. For individuals, if you’re dealing with homeowners, look at what the neighborhood is like. Does the level of income of that neighborhood dictate where you might find your ideal clients?

When people do this and then look for ways to rank their clients, they end up finding out what makes up their ideal clients. It rises to the top in many cases.

You need to sit down and really describe your ideal client, business or person. Write it down on a piece of paper as though they were literally sitting across the table from you.

This exercise is very important for several reasons. It helps the business get a firmer grasp on who makes up the ideal client and who to go after. It can be as simple as asking where more people who look and act like that or have this problem are.

It’s also a great tool. Few businesses can actually explain to their employees or other associates who they’re looking for. In some cases, their salespeople don’t really even know what to look for in an ideal client.

Once you describe that, you can go out and tell the world. You really stop talking to people and stop taking work from clients who don’t fit your profile. In some cases, it’s just as important to know who is not a client, as who is.

Its not unusual for SMEs and small businesses to take work from clients who don’t really fit the profile of their ideal client. What happens is that those non-ideal clients become the biggest headaches. You can really save yourself some of those headaches by having this firm description and narrowing your focus.

You can say “no” every now and then when you know someone doesn’t fit your profile.

This is Step One in our 7 Steps to getting your business to hum. Continue to read Step Two – Find and Communicate a Core Difference.

How to create the Ultimate SME/small business Marketing System in 7 steps

If you’re like most SME and small business owners, there really is too much to do in your business and not enough time in which to do it.

You probably didn’t start your business because you wanted to be a marketing expert. You most likely started it because you wanted to do whatever it is that your business does (be it accounting, plumbing or wedding planning). What you probably found very quickly is that what the business does consumes most of your day.

Unfortunately, marketing which is vital to the success and survival of any business easily gets shoved aside by the shipping it, making it and fixing it that you end up doing.

On top of that, as an SME or small business, you may have reached a certain level of success but want to take your business to the next level through:

• Attracting all the clients your business can handle
• Working only with clients who value what you have to offer
• Significantly increasing what you charge

The answer to all this is a simple systematic approach to marketing that produces predictable results in return for your time and money.

What follows is that simple systematic approach.

This is the introductory post to our 7 Steps to Getting Your Business to Hum series, continue and read Step One – Narrow Your Focus.