If I can get just 1 dollar for every person…

Whenever I hear the statement, "There are 100 million people in that market... if I can just capture 1% of the people and get just 1 buck... I can make a million." The problem is that that is not a definition of a target market. There may be a way to get the word out to those 1 million people. The tools are available, but in order to get those one million people to buy, you have to be compelling to a larger number than those 1 million people. Seth made a great statement. He says that is "far easier to make a thousand dollars from each of a thousand people, or even $10,000 from a hundred organizations. You can focus on a small hive of people, a group that talks to itself. You can push through a smaller dip and reach a level of recommendation and dominance that makes incremental sales far easier." If I can spend 100 hours on one $10,000 deal with 25% of profit... I would be better off than spending 1 hour on one $75 deal with 25% profit. Of course, you have the risk that you lose the larger deal and all the time, but with a $10,000 deal, you are also working on other $10,000 deals during that same 100 hours and may land two or three of those deals.

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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.