A major challenge for business owners is lack of a clearly defined ideal client persona.
Brandon Bornancin, founder and CEO of Seamless.AI, says that might be keeping you from prosperity.
“I believe that you have to pick a niche and get rich. You just have to pick a niche to get rich!” he told Freedom Media Network founder Curt Mercadante in a recent interview.
After generating more than $100 million in sales while selling for IBM and Google, Bornancin founded Seamless.AI, which boasts the first search engine created for business professionals to find key contact information for sales leads.
He told Mercadante that failure to target your message to your specific niche audience can result in your ideal clients missing your message.
“For example, you were like, ‘I help anyone in the world work less, spend more time with family and make more money,’ that's like walking into an airport or a train station and yelling, ‘hey everyone, look at me, look at me. I'm Curt. Look at me. Hey, everyone, stop what you're doing. Look at me, look at me!" said Bornancin. “But when you pick a niche and get rich, it's like going into the same airport and announcing more specifically, "hey, Mike Stafford, who's headed to the Memorial Tournament in Columbus, Ohio for the PGA golf tournament, I've got something for you.’ And then he turns around, and he's like, ‘hey, what's up? Do I know you?’
“That's the ability to cut through the noise, connect with your prospect, deliver value, and light them up like a Christmas tree or Hanukkah tree, whatever you celebrate.”
Mercadante agreed, telling Bornancin, “when you speak to everyone, you speak to no one, because your message is so vanilla and watered down.”
Bornancin also discussed the importance of being authentic and true to yourself.
“It took me years to figure out, ‘be Brandon’, and be authentic, and be who you are in branding,” he said. “Because IBM and Google, you got to be perfect; corporate, perfect, respectful, governed essentially. IBM, I couldn't disagree with my bosses. It was very locked down. And then Google, it was like, okay, you can kind of have personality and be yourself. And that was when I really kind of started to be me and built Seamless and became an entrepreneur.
“And then when I launched Seamless, I just really recognized the power of 100% authenticity, and then overcoming and branding.”
He added that “people will either love you or hate you” no matter what you do.
“But I believe that if you stay 100% authentic, you don't quit, and you just have to recognize that in branding and in marketing and in advertising and in selling half the people are going to love you, half the people are going to hate you, and just don't worry about the other half,” he said. “If you realize that you're delivering value in what you do in your branding and your content, the 50% that decided to not like you for whatever reason, are going to lose, because you keep delivering value that could possibly change their life.”
Bornancin is also podcast host and author of the forthcoming book, Sales Secrets From The Top 1%, and author of a 15-part book series, "The Seven-Figure Sales System.” The latest book from that series is Seven Figure Social Selling.