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Very soon, I’ll be leading my intensive, Masters-Degree-
Level program, 12 Sentences: The Ultimate Business Creation
and Articulation Course, and one of the first issues we address
immediately in The 9 Strategic Inquiries Manual is the question,
“Are you marketable?” And it’s a tough inquiry. It’s scary to look
at whether what you have is good-enough. Perhaps you’ve put
months and years into learning a process that really matters to
you—but is it something the market really wants? You think it’s
a great idea, but does anyone else? And can you support (prove)
your claim that they would want it?

In this particular chapter and corresponding weekly call, participants
must face a few hard realities about the viability of their services.
When they don’t have enough clients, I always say, “Maybe they’re
just not that into you.” And sometimes that’s something you can
change (with a vamped-up Brain-Sticky differentiation, and/or a
new target market, and then strong, Brain-Sticky communications.)

But other times, you just aren’t selling anything the world wants.
We probably all remember what happened with New Coke. But
Pepsi failed, too, with its Pepsi A.M. and Crystal Pepsi. As Wallet
Pops writes on its blog:

      In the late 1980s, Pepsi came up with the brilliant plan
      to cater to the  breakfast cola drinker, under the assumption
      that because Pepsi contained caffeine, it must be a natural
      substitute for coffee. Well, you know what they say about
      assumptions — but needless to say, Pepsi AM was not successful,
      and neither was Pepsi’s later foray into clear cola, Crystal Pepsi.
      Apparently, when it comes to cola, the consumers know what
      they want — they want it brown, and they want to drink it all day
      long.

Then there was bottled water for pets, Harley Davidson Perfume,
Maxwell House Ready-to-Drink Coffee, RJ Reynolds smokeless
cigarettes and, of course, the Ford Edsel. These are enormous
companies, with vast resources, and certainly the ability to
conduct meticulous market research—yet in the end, the idea
failed. Nobody wanted what they were offering. And it
cost them millions. In many cases throughout business history,
it cost a company its entire reputation. It had one shot and blew
it.

So, can you escape this fate yourself? Or is it part and parcel of
being in business? I personally think it is, absolutely. Ideas are
going to fail. The trick is to not put all of our “eggs in one basket”;
to not fixate on one idea for business, stubbornly refusing to alter
direction. This is an issue I see with many of the students and clients
I’ve worked with over the years: they want to have the business
they want to have and no matter what they have to do, they’re
going to push that round peg into the square hole. People need this
service and come hell or high water, they’re going to get it! 

And then their sales are limp and they blame the economy, or make
excuses that they’re too busy to really promote their business…
when the reality is that the public doesn’t want what they have.

And I hate to say this, but I see this with greatest frequency among
service providers—coaches, wellness practitioners, speakers. They’re
not offering a marketable product or program.

How can you tell if you’re one of them? For starters, are you feeding
a significant pain? A service business solves a problem, and it
must be front and center, top-of-mind. You cannot be in a position
where you are convincing someone that they need you. They need
to ”get” that they need you—and they will if they’re acutely aware
of their pain.

Are you really focusing there? Or are you focusing on your great
service? Have you just earned a certification through an energy
healing school and are you all excited about how powerful and
transformational the work is? Or are you blown away by your
coaching school’s unique technique and can’t wait to share it?
Neither of these techniques will be marketable until they solve
a very noticeable problem.

You are un-marketable until you have a market with acute pain.

Now, maybe I’m going too far. You may be marketable to a market
with mild pain—but you’ll be relegated to your market’s “discretionary
income” column in their budget. You will be a luxury because without
a significant issue they need alleviated, there’s no urgency to buying
you.

In the service industry, people buy what they cannot do themselves.
And their spending rises in direct proportion to the degree of their pain
and to their inability to do it themselves. That’s why we pay a pretty
penny for lawyers, accountants, electricians, plumbers: we need them
badly and we don’t have their expertise.

You fall into the category of “highly marketable” when you find the
sweet-spot between these two.

So, to recap, to be marketable you need to solve an acute problem—
for the right market and have a specialty that they don’t have and that
they recognize they need, in order to alleviate their pain.

Now luckily, unlike most products, a service can be adjusted.  Indeed,
an entire service business can be adjusted (and must be!) to meet the
tastes of a particular market. A truly ho-hum, unmarketable business
can suddenly jump to life when its programs and services are revamped
to diminish or eliminate a specific pain in a truly original way.

One of the twelve sentences participants have to write in my 12 Sentences
course—after they’ve finished the incredibly rigorous strategic work–is,
“Why you MUST buy my service over doing nothing?” This, I tell them,
is their greatest competitor–not someone else in their field. When you
can answer this, (and all the other sentences) you are marketable. When
their pain is sharp enough and ”doing nothing” is unacceptable or just not
possible, they’ll buy you. So, try your hand at this one this week.

And tune in for the 3 free calls next week that give a sneak-peek into
12 Sentences. I have a feeling that Pepsi may have escaped their
major blunders if they’d taken it. 🙂