The Mythical "Easy Button"

The mythical sales "easy button" doesn't exist. Sorry!

Every week, I talk to business owners looking for an effortless way to attract qualified leads and close sales. If you listen to the "growth hackers" and "gurus" on LinkedIn, it's easy to be fooled into believing that building an audience should be virtually effortless.

Just hire the perfect marketing consultant, allocate a big ad budget, buy the right marketing tech, and wait for the leads to come in.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

Good marketing and sales takes a coordinated effort including:

• Picking a niche where you can really deliver the goods and where competition is minimal or ineffective.
• Defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) so well that you know exactly what they need and how to articulate their problems.
• Developing a compelling story that attracts the ICP's attention.
• Finding the channels where your ICP engages so you can meet them there with really valuable content.
• Talking to your ICP on a regular and consistent basis so you can understand their status quo, pain points, buying triggers and buying process.
• Creating fresh, original content that speaks to your ICP and helps move them from inertia to taking action.
• Publishing that content where your ICP is likely to find it.
• Getting speaking opportunities at events your ICP attends.
• Becoming a thought leader to attract your ICP and build trust.
• Executing an account-based outbound strategy to engage, establish relationships and meet with members of your ICP on a regular basis.
• Preparing a marketing funnel that attracts your ICP, gets them to subscribe, and nurtures them with meaningful content until they're sales ready.
• Providing your sales team with deep insight into your ICP's world so they can engage in meaningful conversations, uncover pain, and help clients make solving the problems a priority.
• Delivering a smooth onboarding process that takes them from the point where they make solving their pain a priority all the way to actually helping them solve the problem.
• Creating effective and meaningful case studies and collecting testimonials to help with the next customer.

"Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off."  
— Sam Altman

"There is no substitute for hard work. There is no such thing as an overnight success or easy money." 
— Henry Sy