In our last installment of our series on the 5 P’s, we went over the first P, which was Purpose. This involved having an idea of what you want to happen when you confront a prospect. In this installment, we’re going to cover the 2nd P, which is the Prospect himself. This is where we decide who it is that we want to sell to.
One of the biggest mistakes that painters make is that they come out with this really great product and then they go out and market it to people who couldn’t care less.
Imagine that you’ve just created this brand new natural acne cure. It contains no drugs at all. It’s a home cure that can be done with natural ingredients found around the home. It’s cheap, and the best part of all is that it works in a matter of three days. It’s been tested, proven, and you’ve got testimonials from people claiming that it works. You’ve got the perfect product. Everything is in place. All you have to do is go out and promote it.
So what do you do? You head on over to a forum that is visited by people all over the age of 65 because they are interested in Medicare benefits. Do you really think that ANY of these people will have any interest in a natural acne cure? So do you think by going to this forum you are going to have any chance of making any sales? Heck, at that age, it’s doubtful that these people have any children who have acne.
Okay, this may sound like an extreme example, and I’d like to think that most people wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to sell acne cures to senior citizens. But the truth is, many marketers try to sell products to people who have no interest in those products.
Okay, so how do you go about finding your prospects? How do you know who is going to buy your product? Well, hopefully, before you even created your product, you did some research to see if the product itself is wanted by anybody. Imagine making the best gizmo cleaner in the world. It’s totally worthless if nobody wants their gizmos cleaned.
So, we have two ways we can go about this process. The first way is to find a prospect who is looking for a certain product that solves a certain problem and create it. This is actually the easiest way because we know for certain what the problem is and what solution they’re looking for.
The second way is to create a product and go out looking for people who want it. This is always risky because there will always be a chance that you’ve created a product that just doesn’t have a prospect. On the other hand, if you come up with something that nobody else has come up with and you DO find prospects, you could put yourself on the map.
Always keep your prospect in mind when you’re creating a product.
The last thing you want is for that product to be sitting on a shelf.
In our next installment, the 3rd of the 3 P’s.
See you then.
