Churn Less Content, Sell More Contents?
[The following is a brief excerpt from my just released book Do Less. Sell More: How Entrepreneurs are Building Seven-Figure Businesses without Breaking the Bank, Working Like Dogs, or Losing their $#@%! Learn more about it, or purchase your copy on paperback or Kindle here.]
Content is working its way down the sales funnel farther than ever before. While we have historically thought of content in terms of “content marketing”—which generally lives near the top of the sales funnel—we should now be thinking in terms of “content business development.”
Meaning: How can we repurpose or specifically engineer a new piece of content in a way that is more direct and immediate in its application, so that it nurtures a personal relationship, rather than solely operating as a one-to-many awareness or branding vehicle?
First, it comes by way of a mindset adjustment. Rather than thinking of business development efforts as sales (if that’s your aversion), think in terms of serving others. Giving, rather than receiving. Invitations, not pitches. The offer, not the ask.
That simple shift in viewpoint alone will remove a self-applied pressure of expecting every outreach you make to someone to result in a sales opportunity. For one, it doesn’t work that way. Two, you won’t look forward to the activity.
But if you’re serving your network and people you’d like to include in your network, by providing them with either things of intellectual value or by raising their profiles somehow, that’s not selling...it’s serving.
And both you and the person you want to influence will be better for it, regardless of whether you ever work together professionally.