How to Grow Your Customer Base and Increase Sales

The Thriving Artist

Steve Pruneau serves as the Chairman of CHF's Board and is the founder of Free Agent Source Inc., a management consulting company that applies sharing-economy principles to client engagements. In this episode, he and host Daniel DiGriz discuss how to use the 'best practices' employed by successful entrepreneurs. If you’re struggling to identify the next step in your business, or find direct-to-audience selling a challenge, you’ll find this episode illuminating. Read on for highlights, and download the hour-long episode now to enjoy this conversation in full.

Sales Myths and Realities:

• "Selling is finding a solution for someone---a solution that they welcome into their lives."
• "Most people come to organizations like CHF because they get it: they need to grow an audience, and they want to know how."
• "The bottom line is, sales get done on that emotional sense of confidence we inspire with our audience."
• "My emotional hang-up was this myth that people are natural salespeople, which put a dependency in my life. In modern life, survival skills include selling."
• "The last step of the journey is acknowledging 'ok, now I get how to employ these techniques and grow my audience'---that’s when the thriving starts to happen."
• Direct-to-audience selling “gives you a way to influence and control how you’re presenting yourself to the world."

Engage to Develop Your Customer Base:

• "There’s always an opportunity to engage…questions will start to illustrate patterns with the people who are buying your art and with those who aren’t buying your art."
• "In the art world, we’re looking for our people, who feel something from the art and find the work meaningful."
• "I don’t believe there are stories out there of somebody just going viral---there's a backstory of someone doing the work, developing the story, asking the questions, finding a pattern, and using that work to grow the audience or customer base."

Identify Milestones to Move Past Uncertainty:

• "Shift out of the concept of ‘I’m working on this’ to ‘this is really done’."
• "If you don’t know the solution, break the problem down into the things that you do know, and point out the steps that you don’t know."
• "Follow your instincts and pay attention to programs like CHF, which are going to put you in a mindset to stand your ground, look after yourself, and understand clearly what you want to accomplish."
• "For an artist, we’re looking for a verifiable, completed task, as well as a focus that drives momentum."
• "Preparing an IGP clarifies the mind so now you’re starting to focus on what’s consistent with your goals."
• "It doesn’t matter what your art is, if your intention is to earn a living from it and thrive in your art, that proposal will help you figure out how you’re going to get there.”