Part 2: Solve your what
By Frank T Shaw
In part 1 of this series, we introduced a simple, three-step framework to help you scale your stuck business in 120 days or less.
- Find your why
- Solve your what
- Execute your how
We also introduce the first step in the framework, Find your why. Step one helps you understand why your revenue engine isn’t working. With that knowledge, you can move onto step two, Solve your what, and develop a strategic action plan to repair or build your engine.
This article, 3 Steps to Scale Your Stuck Business, Part 2: Solve your what, covers step 2. The strategic action plan we show you how to develop in step two serves as the foundation of your revenue engine project.
Like our framework as a whole, step two, Solve your what is designed as a set of repeatable and iterative activities. You can and should think about it as a way for you and your team to quickly experiment your way to re-starting or starting your revenue engine. Once you have your engine started, you can and should continue to use the Solve your what step to continuously optimize your engine which will lead to velocity and growth.
Note: If you haven’t read part one of our series, we suggest you read it first. Step two of our framework builds on concepts from the first.
Step 2: Solve your what (5 days)
In step 2, Solve your what, you build your action plan. The action plan defines the step-by-step approach required to run the experiment. The goal of the experiment: fix your revenue engine. Your experiment is informed by the insights you uncovered in step one, Find your why. Once the plan and experiment steps are defined, you and your team are ready to run your experiment. That’s step three of the framework, Execute your how.
You should also have the relevant and supporting data you used to answer step 1 questions. If you are missing data, don’t proceed to step two. Instead, set aside one to two days to gather the info you need.
The more questions you have answered, the faster you can begin step two, Solve your what. Once you have your supporting data and answers, we recommend you invest five working days to develop your action plan. Some teams may be able to complete this step in as little as 3 days. Others may need longer. It depends on whether your team is optimized to have a productive and constructive working session.
Have you hired people who know and love working together? Do these people have the right experience and skill set to help you design your experiment? It is possible you may start step two and discover the answers to one or all of these questions is no. If this happens you can take these learnings and use them to make appropriate team adjustments before you start step 3.
Here’s how we recommend you structure each day.
- Debate: Start with a rigorous discussion where you look at the cold hard facts that you unearthed in step 1. If you do this step right, there will be disagreement. There will be opposing viewpoints. Passions will run hot and there will be frustration and anger. There’s nothing wrong with conflict provided you can still chart a path to action.
- Decide: The debate leads to a decision on the direction of your first revenue engine experiment. In an ideal world, you and your team quickly come to a consensus on this direction. But don’t let building consensus around a single direction kill your progress. A better approach is to run a small experiment to validate the merits of each approach. This will allow you to iterate towards the fastest path to building and creating your revenue engine.
- Design: With one or more experiment directions in hand, you and your team are ready to start collaborating on the design and build of your first revenue engine experiment.
Desired Outcomes
If you successfully complete step two, Solve your what, you should have a great handle on what you and your company need to do to activate your revenue engine.
- You’ve debated and agreed on your ideal fit customer
- You’ve defined a value proposition hypothesis that demonstrates you can solve your customer’s problem.
- You’ve designed the first iteration of a buyer’s journey that can hopefully win you new business.
- You’ve mapped out a sequence and timeline to engage with customers on the buyer’s journey to test your value hypothesis
- You’ve set expectations on budget, resources, timeline, and tools
Before you begin
Did we say you should collect all of the data you need to answer open questions from step one? Yes we did. But it’s worth repeating because this is a critical step. The more answers you have, the faster planning will go in this step of the framework.
Day 1: Validate your ideal customer profile (ICP) and your unique selling proposition (USP)
On day one, you and your team look at the cold hard facts around your ideal customer profile and your unique selling proposition.
You will debate the answers you came up with and look at how the data supports or refutes your conclusions.
Once you are on the same page with your team, you can celebrate completing the consensus step!
It’s time for the team to collaborate on two documents:
- A profile outlining your ideal customer (ICP)
- A statement describing your unique selling proposition (USP)
Do your best to write both your ICP statement and USP with simple, straightforward language. Ideally, every employee in your company can explain both to a new employee, a potential customer, or his mother. We have an ICP / USP template our clients love that simplifies the process.
Day 2: Craft two messages around your USP that you can test with your ICP.
Congratulations, you crafted your unique selling proposition for your ideal customer profile on day one. Now you must translate your freshly minted USP and ICP into at least two messages that your target customers can relate to.
Why at least two messages? Because you will not nail the message on your first try. Starting with two differently worded but related messages will help you determine the right message for your ICP faster. Here’s how you we recommend you develop your two messages.
- Identify as many variations as possible. And then debate your way to the best options.
- Build consensus around the top two message ideas. Everyone on the team must agree on the two messages you choose.
- With the two top ideas selected, collaborate to reach close-to-final wording for each idea.
Once you’re done, you and the team have earned a break. Tomorrow you will take these two messages and develop content and activities to support your buyer’s journey.
Day 3: Develop content that supports your message.
The buyer’s journey represents the sum total of steps you estimate it will take to get your target customer to buy your product/service. Your goal is to outline a subset of content and activities that boost your solution’s message across the three major milestones in the journey;
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
During the debate stage of this activity, we recommend that you and your team dive into specific topics appropriate to cover at each stage of the journey. Your goal is to decide how each topic ties to the others. Topics must also tie back to your overall message, demonstrate your expertise, and move your customers to the next step in their journey.
You should build topics for both initial outreach, as well as follow up. You may have marketing and sales materials you can re-purpose. If you don’t, this exercise can help you quickly identify how to fill potential gaps.
In the final phase of the day’s work, you need to concentrate your team on determining the kinds of content you can develop the fastest. Are you master bloggers? Do your infographics or videos go viral?
Whatever your forte get your entire team to rally around your content development sweet spot. If you don’t have a content expertise don’t worry. Start by aggregating a collection of relevant, related content you find online. Instead of creating a blog post or video from scratch. You can introduce the related content on your blog, website, or social channel. Explain its value and why it relates to your value proposition.
Day 4: Sequence your content with the buyer’s journey
You’ve developed a set of topics and determined the kind of content to produce first. And you know what stage in the buyer’s journey you can use the content. Now you need to create an engagement timeline. To complete this step, you and your team need to answer the following questions.
How much content do you need at the awareness vs. consideration vs. decision stage of the buyer’s journey?
How frequently do you share content with prospects at each stage of the journey?
When does a member of your team do direct outreach to a prospect?
How long do you wait before classifying a potential customer as a poor fit or not interested in your product/solution?.
Your aim is to develop a sequence that unfolds over a timeline you and your team can agree on. The timeline needs to have a clear start, middle, and endpoint. And it should be based on your deal history. In other words, don’t choose a sequence length of two weeks if it typically takes you six weeks to go from cold outreach to close.
“The goal of this process is to create a predictable buyer’s journey which leads to a repeatable revenue engine.”
The goal of this process is to create a predictable buyer’s journey which leads to a repeatable revenue engine. Optimization comes once the engine is working.
Day 5: Identify budget, tools, and team members to deliver your buyer’s journey.
With your proposed content locked and loaded and an estimated sequence length for your buyer’s journey, you’re ready to figure out three critical questions:
- How much do you need to spend to acquire new customers?
- What tools do you need to execute and measure your engagement with the buyer’s journey?
- Who do you need on your team and what are their roles and responsibilities? If you’re not sure how to answer this question, our guide to building a one-page marketing plan can help.
From the Find your why step in the framework, you should have a pretty good idea of your customer acquisition cost (CAC).
You should also know what team members are needed to turn a prospect into a customer and then keep them happy. Note: if you work with an agency, substitute their team members for yours.
And you should know the tools your team (or agency) needs to measure and execute.
If you have these answers from your initial planning, then building a budget and identifying tools and people will go fast. If you don’t have these answers at your fingertips, you might need a day or two more than we recommend. In order to stay on track, the most important thing to identify is your customer acquisition cost. And you can figure this out on your own. Here are some great tips to learn how to calculate your customer acquisition cost.
Once you have a rough idea of your current customer acquisition cost, you can figure out how much you need to spend to acquire new customers. And that’s enough to help you plan a realistic budget.
If you don’t have a handle on tools or know who on your team needs to do what, we can help you sort this out quickly. Contact us.
Next Step
You’re done with step 2. Not bad for a week’s work. It’s time to celebrate before moving onto the final step of the our three step framework: Execute your how.
Before you dive in, we recommend you give yourself at least a day or two of recovery.
The third and final step begins with a project planning session designed to help you and your team get organized and execute. It’s where all of your planning in step two gets translated into actions and tasks to transform your messaging and supporting content into concrete tools and assets to share with your customers.
Next up. Execute your how. We’ll cover step three of our framework in part three of this guide: Execute your how.
Here to help
If you find part two of our framework helpful but are not sure how to apply it to your own business, let’s talk.
Request a free one-hour consultation ($850 value). Let us demonstrate how we can help ignite growth in your company.
What we cover in your free consultation:
- What’s preventing you from growing your business?
- What have you tried before, and why didn’t it work?
- Where do you want to go or be? What’s your vision?
- What resources do you currently have available?
- What’s your timeline?