Newsletter
Sell Futures, Not Features
A million-dollar business only needs 40 customers at $2,000 per month. -Mike Killen
That was an opening line from Mike Killen, a keynote speaker at this year’s Recurring Revenue Retreat.
I couldn’t get that line out of my head. I still can’t.
The numbers seem strangely attainable, yet I’m not there. I have a few more than 40 clients, but the average MRR is significantly lower.
To get there, though, Mike said you need one—and only one—answer to each of the following questions:
- Who are you selling to? What does the particular customer need to be or have for you to think “I’ll do the work for free, because I’ll crush it so well she’ll want to pay me!”
- What is the problem? What are they waking up in the night thinking about? No one wants the feature, they want the future: “I’ll help you X without worrying about Y.” (That last part is key and often omitted.)
- What is the function? What can the customer walk away with? This must include a metric, a timeframe, and a direction; e.g., “Your revenue will increase 10% within 12 months.”
What kills businesses, Mike said, is when the answer to any of those questions isn’t a single, specific answer. Either prospective customers get confused about whether you can actually help, or your capacity stretches too thin trying to service multiple kinds of customers.
So let me know…
Are you clear on who you’re selling to?
Do you know what problem keeps them up at night?
What will your customer walk away with after working with you?
Answering these questions could be your ticket to a million dollar business.
Hit REPLY and tell me about it!
Subscribe to receive the latest newsletter posts to your inbox every day.