Episode 152

with Brandee Gaar and Kelly Ann Peck

Some key highlights from the show

• Kelly’s background in the wedding and hospitality industry

• The “It” factor in doing sales

• Importance of focusing on our people

• Rules when starting a business

• The first thing to think about to start creating the niche process

‘A niche strategy includes selecting your target audience, defining an unmet or underserved need, researching your customer base, creating a business plan, and marketing your business to your specific audience.“

A business niche is a specialized or focused area of a broader market that businesses can serve to differentiate themselves from the competition. A niche strategy includes selecting your target audience, defining an unmet or underserved need, researching your customer base, creating a business plan, and marketing your business to your specific audience.

In this episode, I had the pleasure to sit down and talk with Kelly Ann Peck, who is a business coach for events pros at Emerson Reese Creative, where we had a comprehensive and extensive talk about understanding your niche, the dos and don’ts in creating the niche process, and the importance of focusing on your niche area.

The “It” factor in doing sales

“If you have your own business, you are a salesperson, because if you’re not booking clients, you don’t have a business.“

There’s a stereotype that people put out into the universe that some people are salespeople while others are not. Well, we’re all salespeople! If you have your own business, you are a salesperson, because if you’re not booking clients, you don’t have a business.

You have the sales trait if you love what you do, you love talking about your business and how you can help people, and you make it completely about the potential prospect or client in front of you. Once you learn strategies and put one step in front of another and start to practice, it will come naturally.

Essentially, sales are really just having a conversation with a prospect to see if they’re a right fit for you and if you can help them. When we tend to simplify it instead of making it hard and overcomplicated, it does become easier.

Sometimes when we start businesses, or we’ve been in business for a couple of years, we tend to forget that we bring all of the expertise like school, education, life, work, all of those details, you bring that to the table, you’re not starting over, you’re just starting a new thing and you’re selling a new thing you’re selling a new offer.

That takes time even for a veteran person who has been selling for a long time. Or if you’re just really starting to work that piece in your business, it’s literally just a conversation and realizing that that person is your person, giving them the option to be able to choose what types of services they want to work with you and then let them close. Because as long as you’re asking the right questions, that happens pretty naturally, but it takes time and repetition.

 Why it’s so important to focus on our people

“When you want to do all the things for everyone, you can’t pour your expertise and love and your skill set into the right people.“

Niche is the hardest part of any business but you should know that the riches are in the niches. When we want to do all the things for everyone, we can’t pour our expertise and love and our skill set into the right people, and we also don’t have the time to go out and look for those people and sell them our services and close them.

So when you’re first starting out in business, you dive in and take things on and it might not be the right fit, because of the fact that you’re just trying to grind it out. But in the first year of business, what’s really cool is you start to learn who the person that you want to go after is. 

It’s okay if you don’t know your clients and it’s knowing that you don’t know and doing something about it, that’s where the power comes in.

What are the rules when starting a business?

“When you really let go of one thing and can laser focus on another, you have time to go out and find those bigger clients or the clients you truly want to work with.”

People start their businesses for one reason and when the reason they started their businesses doesn’t fill up their business love tank anymore, they freak out, and then they have to shift because this is what they really were meant to be doing.

They know who that ideal client is because they’ve niched down. They have recorded the information and they have adapted, they have changed things.

The fact that there are no rules for starting businesses and there’s no handbook to entrepreneurship, sometimes we tend to look at what everybody else is doing and if you’re not a rule breaker, that can be completely overwhelming. If you are a rule breaker and like to color outside the lines, then it’s a very freeing piece.

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