Being oversubscribed is the way for you to do your best work and spend more time with your existing customers than endlessly chasing new ones. It gives you more downtime to innovate your products rather than running around selling them.
Oversubscribed allows you to build your brand rather than blending in with the crowd.
7 Principles for Oversubscribed
Principle #1 Demand and supply set the price.
“Why do markets go up?” in short, they do because the demand rises. There are three ways the demand equation can play out of your business:
- Oversubscribed – demand is outstripping supply (result in profits)
- Balanced – demand and supply are relatively even (result in wages, not profits)
- Undersubscribed – excess supply is available above demand (result in losses)
Principle #2 Separate yourself from the market.
You don’t need everyone. Don’t be afraid of FOMO (fear of missing out) on anyone. Be all things to a small group of people. If you’re a personal trainer, consider appealing to unfit male who are always on the go and who have an income over 400k, instead of blindly selling to the general public. Your market should be made up of people who really care about what you do. They place a high value on the results you bring in on them.
Be famous for a few. Here are key ingredients for being famous.
- Consistent and repetitive message
- COntent
- Commercial ecosystem
- Continuity and visibility
- Collaboration
Principle #3 Pay attention to the four drivers of market imbalance.
There are four drivers of market imbalances which you can use to create more buyers than sellers.
- Innovation (innovate in terms of product, services, internal systems and your brand)
- Relationships (do your best work and spend time with your current clients)
- Convenience (find a unique distribution channel, automation and market information)
- Price (invest, refine and systemize to lower costs)
Principle #4 Buying environment creates buyers.
People don’t buy what others want to sell. They buy what others want to buy. Never go to the great lengths of showing how badly you want to sell something. Your job is to celebrate the people who are already buying from you and hold them in the highest esteem. If you do so, they’ll tell others what they bought from you, and eventually you’ll be on your way to oversubscribed.
“Treat your clients like they’re celebrities and let them pull a crowd.”
People don’t buy what they need. THey buy what they ‘want’. Take for example, Singapore is one of the most expensive places to buy a Ferrari (about four times more than in the UK). So why do so many people have them? It’s because they ‘want’ one. It doesn’t matter how poorly suited the car is or how expensive it is. In the end, what they ‘want’ reigns supreme.
Principle #5 It’s OK to be different.
When you develop your clear philosophy and put it out to the world, you’ll begin to create your own market. You’ll also realize not everyone will agree with you but if 1,000 people feel strongly about it, you’ll have 1,000 people who are your market. If you have no philosophy on why you do what you do, you’ll end up blending in with the rest of the crowd and become another commodity.
“Warren Buffet has a philosophy when it comes to investing. Oprah has a philosophy on television content. Richard BRanson has a philosophy when it comes to building his team and his brand. Elon Musk has a philosophy about why it’s important to go to other planets.”
It’s okay to fail. Remember Twitter’s pouplare ‘fail whale’. Does it make you want to use them less though? Maybe, but for the majority, it’s strangely not. The failed whale signaled to the market that the platform was in such great demand that almost everyone wanted to use it. In short, Twitter was oversubscribed.
“Tell people there’s a problem caused by too much demand. Let them know you’re working on having it fixed as soon as you can and they should try again soon.”
Finally, it’s okay to uck the truend. If everyone in your industry charges by the hour, try selling at a fixed cost. If everyone else sells components, sell bundles. If everyone is showing off their heritage, be a thought leader and a disruptive brand.
Principle #6 Value is created in the ‘ecosystem’.
Don’t be afraid of giving away ideas. Focus on charging for implementation. If you’re a yoga apparel brand, consider building a blog or social media profile where your market can read, listen to or watch free tutorials. Better yet, you can even invite them to a free yoga class.
“In the information age, you must remain conscious of the value shift from information into implementation.”
Over the years, LEGO has extended their brand and partnered with others in highly innovative ways. But one thing they stay true is their ‘brick system’. It’s the core of who they’re and they know not to mess with it. Expectant mums and dads all over the world look forward to playing with LEGO bricks when their child is old enough. Where would the magic be if LEGO decided to take away that tradition to welcome a new toy in the world of rapid change?
“Innovate but don’t mess with a winning formula.”
Principle #7 Nothing beats being positively remarkable.
Cut your marketing budget. Replace it with a remarkable budget. Imagine an electronics company takes out an ad that says “Take Amazing Photos with our New DSLR!”. You read the ad and remember holiday season is around the corner. Your next move is to splash out on advertising and instead, open a browser and start looking at DSLR reviews. The company paid advertising fees to get you consider their DSLR but it ended up driving sales to the other companies. Daniel suggests you take at least fifty percent of your marketing budget and transfer it to a ‘remarkable’ budget.
“Being remarkable is not about offering stupid gimmicks or pointless stunts. It’s about being the best in your niche or micro-niche.”
Gone are the days when a company of any size could survive as a faceless corporation that exists as a set of logos, colors, symbols and sounds. Today, people want to know who the founder is, the CEO’s background and what sort of beliefs the founding team holds. Companies that become oversubscribed leverage the personal brands of the people inside the organization.
11 Build Ups to Being Oversubscribed
- Signal the power (use the power of authority)
- Name your terms (be willing to disqualify prospects and fire bad customers)
- Don’t ask for the sale (ask for the signal of purchase)
- Be transparent
- Think mobile and media first (harness the power of visuals and simplicity)
- Educate and entertain (if your focus is on education, throw in a bit of entertainment too and vice versa)
- Wait for 7-hour before you talk business (Japanese businessmen rarely talk business until after a round of glass or two. It can actually blow the deal to bring up the topic of business too soon.)
- Be visible offline and online (brains can hardly tell it’s digital).
- Start at the end (build products for prospects, not the other way around).
- Underpromise and overdeliver (keep quiet about some of the good stuff you know you can deliver).
- Up your energy (enthusiasm and excitement drives loyalty, trust, connection and purchase decisions more than anything else).