Growing Sales Using White Space With Linda Fanaras [Episode 158]

Growing Sales Using White Space With Linda Fanaras

I have a great guest. Her name is Linda Fanaras. We’re going to talk about claiming your white space, which is the space within your business that you have not yet claimed. This opens up revenue, growth areas, and sales opportunities for you. Before I bring her in, I wanted to let you know if you’re looking to get super ultra clear on how to double your sales, who is your ideal client, the ideal buyer, what makes them tick, or what makes your influencers tick. 

If you think, “I’m getting opportunities, but they’re not closing the way I want them to,” “I’m getting too many objections,” “People aren’t seeing the value in what I’m doing,” or “I’m not sure how to differentiate myself within what I’m in today,” we’re running a program called CORE. This program helps you find and understand everything you need to know about your ideal buyer, the right fit buyer, and the right fit influencers. It also teaches you how to communicate with and influence them in a positive manner to close sales faster.

If you’re interested, go to www.CEOSalesStrategies.com/CORE. If you have any questions regarding this, just reach out to YouMatter@CEOsalesStrategies.com. Don’t forget, if you’re looking to double your sales and grow your revenue, we can help with that as well. Let’s go talk to Linda right now and learn how to claim your white space. 

— 

Hi Linda, welcome to the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. 

Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. 

You are in beautiful, sunny Boston, Massachusetts right now, right? 

I am. I’m in the Seaport area, which is great. I wouldn’t say it’s sunny right now, but it has been sunny more frequently lately. 

I’m bringing that up because, for those who don’t know, Linda and I live an hour from one another. I’m looking outside and it’s as cloudy as can be. I know you have an office in Boston and an office in New Hampshire as well. Linda, why don’t you tell everybody what you do? We’ll set the frame for this and then we’ll go into what we talked about. 

Sure, Millennium Agency is a B2B branding firm, a web development firm, and a growth strategy firm. We’ve been in business for about 25 years and we work with technology companies, manufacturing companies, and healthcare. Although we handle all B2B clients, we primarily focus on those industries. 

White Space

I was very excited to have you here because when we first talked, you wrote a book about claiming your white space. It’s one of the things that I think a lot of companies overlook. Why don’t you define what claiming your white space is so that everybody knows? 

What happens with companies over time is they become stagnated as far as new business is concerned. They may need new strategies or wonder what they should be doing differently. Should they release a new product or build out an extension of their existing product line? This process helps companies identify the white space or the untapped space in the market that they can take advantage of. 

We take our clients through a process to achieve that end goal. That can range from launching a new product that fits into an emerging market to a brand extension where you retool a product and release it as a new brand or strategy. It could even be rebranding or repositioning your company in a different way in the market. There are many ways to uncover untapped markets. It’s about identifying the white spaces and figuring out how to enter that space with fewer competitors.

Claiming your white space is not just about marketing. It is also about business strategy involving new products, brand extensions, or repositioning your company in the market. Share on X

It sounds like a Blue Ocean Strategy in itself. You’re looking for that Blue Ocean within the Red Ocean you’re in today. For those who don’t understand, Red Ocean means you’re in a highly competitive market, like shark-infested waters. Blue Ocean refers to untapped markets where you can avoid competition. Is that similar to what you’re talking about?

That’s a good example, although it can also be simpler. For some companies, such as an insurance company selling the same products repeatedly, there may be no way to retool those products. In that case, you might reposition the company or the insurance brands to be different from others in the market. We don’t want to sound like everybody else.

Some industries sound very similar when they go to market. How can we uncover what’s different? We’ve done market research to uncover white space and developed strategies, which could be marketing or campaign strategies, to give clients an upper hand and a niche in the space. It can be complicated or very simple. 

We’re speaking with Linda Fanaras, the owner of Millennium Agency, about white space. I want to ask why this happens. People are well-connected in their industry, yet I’ve never gone into a company, looked at their sales processes, and not found potential to make money. It’s almost like blind spots they can’t see because they’re on the inside. Why do you think it happens? 

I think businesses over time get comfortable with what’s working. If they’re generating revenue or getting a small bump in revenue every year, it’s enough to keep them going and happy. Most companies are not wired to innovate, meaning they lack forward-thinking individuals internally. Many are focused on getting their job done, not on what could be done differently or innovatively. Building a company with values that incorporate innovation helps claim white space.

Complacency is the enemy of growth. Do not get too comfortable with small revenue bumps. Always look for ways to innovate and expand your business. Share on X

That’s a biggie. I wrote that down, “Not wired to innovate.” Because it’s well said. Is it because the culture of the company is set up that way? What might be some common causes of not having an innovative culture, if you will? I know you just alluded to one earlier. 

No, I think a big factor is when a company becomes mature. You see companies that launch, go through a growth stage, and then become mature before they technically start to decline. What you want to do while it’s in that mature stage is start to think about innovating. What does that look like? That’s when the company needs to do a deep dive into their business – practices, products, services, messaging, strategy, and all the pieces that go with that to find out what might be an opportunity they can take advantage of. 

That makes tons of sense. This is like human nature, what I’m hearing. I’ll just say as a guy, you’re growing up, your buddies and you are working out all the time. You’re trying to impress the girls, trying to stay physically active. Then you get a little older, a little more mature, you get into a mature relationship, and you stop going to the gym. Do you know what I mean? 

You’re like, “I just put on a few pounds. That’s not that big of a deal.” Then it’s like, a year goes by, you put on a little more weight. All of a sudden you get to a point of, “Whoa. I have to do something about this.” Maturity for a company, what I’m hearing, doesn’t mean you’re super big. It’s not like you’re Apple or something like that. It’s just that one’s been doing this for a while and we get complacent. It’s almost like being comfortably uncomfortable in a way.

I know some people are cringing right now reading “comfortably uncomfortable.” What you’re doing is you’re coming in with a fresh set of eyes saying, “Look, you have this space here that can be capitalized on.” As human beings, one of our needs is to grow and so we constantly want to grow a business. 

That’s why we set a goal in business. We hit it and we say, “That’s the next goal.” “We need a next goal.” It is because we have to grow. It’s a human need. That’s why goals sometimes aren’t that big of a deal when we hit them, “I just made an extra million dollars. Yay.” “The plan is there. Now how do we make $5 million?” “How do we make $10 million?” 

You’re saying that that’s just untapped revenue or untapped profit that’s just sitting there. This could be due to a lack of innovation in the culture, but certainly not being able to see something, and you’re coming in and saying, “The emperor has no clothes.” Whatever the line may be, but more importantly, here’s how we dress the emperor for success in getting to the next level. Are you doing this just from a marketing perspective? I know you mentioned branding and other things. 

Yes, it’s from a business perspective. Usually, if you are uncovering something, it could be in, as I said, a product opportunity, a service opportunity, or a rebranding opportunity. Usually, marketing is integrated into that in some aspect. What you were saying earlier, when a company becomes mature, it’s just like any industry.

If you think about the cell phone industry, it hit the markets and everybody was buying cell phones. Now, you’re kind of seeing, “It’s just simply time to buy a new cell phone.” Apple’s upgrading, you get more battery life, a cool camera, and all these exciting features. That’s how they’re uncovering opportunities that they can add to their product line because they don’t charge you less. 

With their technology, I’m sure you’re paying more every time you upgrade your phone, you’re not paying less. They’ve been able to do that in a way that consumers are hooked frankly, and they’re willing to pay more. They’ve done a good job innovating and it’s an impressive process. That’s an example. 

That’s a great example because the cell phone industry is pissing me off right now. I say that because we just upgraded the company from S21 to S24 Ultras. I was expecting this big, “Whoa, upgrade.” It was a “Yay, upgrade.” It was tiny – it’s a little bit faster, and a little better in the dark to take pictures. It has a little more memory, however, we recognize that the operating system is older in the 21s and the 24s have the most up-to-date operating system.

Eventually, they stop supporting certain things in operating systems, just like Windows or Apple have done over the years. Apple’s a master at this and you’re right, with an Apple product, it’s not, “I just spent $18,000 bringing the company up on this technology.” Two years from now, it’s $30,000 or $300,000. Apple does not drop their prices.

One of the reasons they’re the most profitable company on the planet is because of this innovation. As people are reading this, they might say, “We’re not an Apple.” “We’re not this.” “We’re not that.” Let me try to take a shot at something that happened yesterday and see if I’m on the right track with the white space. I just bought a new motorcycle. 

I’m not going through a midlife crisis or anything. I’m past that point. Some days, you just want to get out and detox your brain a little bit. Riding around the countryside with a motorcycle – good idea, so I bought one. Took a year to get the bike because of everything that’s going on in the world. I got a new 2024 one and I’m talking to the service manager because I needed a cover for it. Right now, I had to put it outside the garage because they just redid the garage at the house. For three days, I can’t put it inside.

It’s raining around here as you and I both know. I go up there and I’m talking with the service manager. He and the other service manager own an auto dealership as well. A Ford dealership. They were talking about putting their sales team to work and calling back people who bought 3 or 4 years ago and haven’t done business with them. It’s a fine thing. 

That could be a white space type of thing. Regeneration of your previous client base. I was listening to the conversation. I think their script is off and they’re calling and saying, “Hi, Linda, geez, you bought from us three years ago, time to upgrade your car, isn’t it?” It was that type of message, and I’m thinking, “We’ve got an economy that’s thinning out right now with inflation going on.”

That pitch is only going to hit like one out of whatever, it’s going to be long odds. I said to him, “Guys, take me with the motorcycle. You had no upsell, no cross-sell, no extension of the sale. You never asked me about referrals. I’m happy with my purchase but if you had offered me something like a service maintenance plan, a Gold Star plan, or something, you could have easily bumped me by 10% on the sale of this bike.” 

To me, that’s kind of what you’re talking about with white space. If one out of five people buy an extra maintenance plan, two things happen. 1) I come back for service. I find new things to buy because I’m going to keep upgrading whatever is on the bike. Maybe I want a radio installed or need a new jacket or something like that. I’m going to buy more. The buying frequency increases. They get more out of me over time. 

2) Now every three years when it’s time to upgrade my bike, I’m no longer a cold lead to them. These are the types of things we’re talking about because I know auto dealers are terrible. They don’t even call back on leases until 90 to 120 days before the lease might be up. In the meantime, if you had a four-year lease, the person who sold you the car is probably not at the dealership anymore. Somebody else is calling. There’s no relationship whatsoever, and there’s no continuity engagement to further the sale process with them. Am I getting this correctly? 

You could look at some strategies around that. Those are more like opportunities to take advantage of versus a white space market. But to your point, on auto dealers, I think a lot of them have certain processes. We know how they sell. Selling an automobile from 15 or 20 years ago is a lot different than trying to sell one today. The consumer has got a lot smarter. The process has changed substantially. Being able to allow the consumer to either buy a new vehicle or take advantage of a service program can be instituted to achieve growth and growth strategies.

I’m getting it a little deeper. See? I’m not always that smart on these calls. That’s why I bring experts like you. Let me take another shot at this. We’re speaking with Linda Fanaras. She owns a company called the Millennium Agency. We’re talking about how to claim your white space. In the case of that auto dealer, the person who’s buying or the company buying from that auto dealer now is smarter because they’re more educated. The internet has made it that way.

The information dissemination makes it easy to find out everything about a vehicle before you go. Now, if we took the concept of white space and rebranded to tell the client potential buyer they are the smarter buyer and we’re the smarter buyer support system for Chevrolet, Mercedes, or whatever, is that a white space? 

Yes, that’s a better example. 

Cool. That makes total sense because that changes not just the opportunity within but the whole fundamental way we’re being perceived. This gets us now into a Blue Ocean Strategy versus just opportunity strategies, which was what I was exposing. 

That was more like sales. The sales teams are always coming up with new ideas, “Let me try to sell this extra thing.” If you’re thinking about bundling or rebranding, it’s filling an untapped space in the market. If everybody else is offering it, then maybe it doesn’t make sense. A good example is one of our clients who happens to be an auto dealer called off-lease auto. 

They sell off-lease vehicles. That is not typical because they’ve taken advantage of a strategy where you go to a car dealership, and they either have lease or off-lease models. People want to sell their vehicles, their trade-ins, or it could be a new car, but this is specifically off-lease. This benefit and value to off-lease means lower miles and usually better conditions. They can push some of those unique selling propositions that help them differentiate themselves.

That makes total sense. This is more of a strategy or strategic point of view on how to change it versus a tactical opportunity. 

That’s just an example, yes.

Claiming White Space

It makes sense. Most people are going to think opportunistic. They’re not going to think Blue Ocean, which is strategic like being an off-lease type of process. What would be a couple of other examples? Now that we’re on track, do you have a couple of other examples? 

Another example would be if you think of Elon Musk or anyone who comes out with an electric vehicle. Where you’re innovating or coming up with an idea that hasn’t hit the market, like some sort of new thing. That is a huge opportunity. A lot of companies take advantage of that because you can look at specific niches in the market. 

As an example, you’re in the market, but you see a niche in the market and that niche can hit a very specific target market and solve a very specific problem. Within that, you can maybe retool your existing product or develop a new product that allows you to go into that market because it’s an untapped market for a specific product. You almost want to look at many products and services out there in the market today and find what isn’t touched in a way that you can do something a little unique.

There are many products and services in the market today. Find out where you can do something that’s a little unique or different. Share on X

When I was in the DJ business early on in my life, I got married and invited my wife to come with me to the DJ events. I was doing weddings and corporate events. Brides and grooms and the moms and dads of brides and grooms were coming up to us at these events saying, “I love the fact that you’re a married couple doing weddings.” My little brain said, “Let’s see if we can market this.” We were specializing in husband and wife teams doing only weddings for people who wanted a husband and wife team. If you weren’t married, you couldn’t compete with me in that regard. 

That’s unique enough, yes. 

Got it. For the people who are reading this and smiling from ear to ear, thinking, “I’ve got some opportunity,” pulled their car over, and are crying on their steering wheel right now, thinking, “My gosh, I’ve been missing this all my life.” Just remember folks, happiness is a warm puppy. You can always keep it calm. What would be the first step? What do these people want to think about? How do they want to go about it?

They should do a deep dive into their own company, get a handle on their brand, their brand identity, the products and services, and everything that they sell, who they sell it to, what markets they’re addressing, what problems they’re addressing, and pain points. Then they can start to look at their competitors and see what they do. The products and services that they offer and how they are reaching the market. This is a simplified way of speaking about it because it is quite a bit more complicated than this. 

If you were to look at your competitors, look at yourself, and determine that nobody’s tapping into this market with this particular product, you can go after it within your existing customer base while also taking advantage of your competitors’ customers because they need this too. That would be a really simple way of breaking this down because it takes a lot longer to get to that point, but that’s an example. 

If we look at brand name companies who have had no name before, they’ve done exactly what you said. Apple did what you said, even Zoom. We don’t even call it web conferencing anymore. We say, “We’re going to zoom or whatever.” They have carved that unique positioning that zoom was for the average person doing this. 

Episode Wrap-up

It’s no longer going to meetings, webinars, or whatever, that was the big corporate thing. They found that niche play within. Of course, the pandemic helped proliferate that for them, but the reality is, they were positioned in the right place at the right time based on the strategy you’re talking about. Linda, how do people reach out to get to know more about you, the company, and more about white space? 

Sure. I’m happy to share that. They can connect with me on LinkedIn. They can also go to my website, which is Mill.Agency, and if you’re interested in the book, I also have my website, which is LindaFanaras.com, or you can go to Amazon. One is called Claim Your White Space: Why It’s Critical to Your Business Success. I do have another book called Passion and Profits. It’s basically about building a powerhouse brand. I would suggest Amazon. If you Google my name, you’ll probably find the books easily.

Linda, I want to thank you for being on the CEO Sales Strategies podcast. Thanks for bringing this great information to people. Folks, everything will be in the show notes for you. If you want to claim your white space, please grab the book for sure. Reach out to Linda. She’s a very nice person. I’ve had numerous conversations with her. She hasn’t altered one bit from the nice person she was the first time I met her. Linda, thanks again for being here. 

Thank you for having me.

— 

Did you get the difference between opportunities and white space? White space is more strategic. It’s that area of your industry that is unclaimed, that you can capitalize on. Then you can use opportunities or growth strategies within that once you claim that white space. It’s that blue ocean within the red ocean, or maybe it’s just a blue ocean that nobody’s ever discovered. 

You’re going through a path and you open up and there’s this beautiful blue water there. No one’s ever tapped into it. You’re like, “Haha, I found you first.” It could be that as well, but it’s on that strategic level of how do you take what you have today, as she said, doing your self-assessment, then looking at your competitors, understanding what the market is still looking for that no one has claimed yet, where you can open up revenue growth and sales opportunities for yourself. 

I hope you took a lot of notes and I hope that this is coming in clear for you, that you can pick up different areas of revenue growth and sales areas. Then when you apply what we teach here, the metrics, the accountability, and the tactical and strategic outcomes that come out of what Linda was talking about in claiming your white space, that’s the one punch of happiness for your side of the business.

I hope that makes a lot of sense to you. If you love this episode, I’d love you to please go up and give a review. I would appreciate that. If you’re looking to claim your white space, please reach out to Linda and grab her book. Again, everything will be in the show notes for you. If you’re looking to find that ideal, right-fit buyer, understand who the buyer and buyers are, because usually today there’s more than one decision-maker in a sale, and there’s usually more than one influencer in the sale. There’s usually a team going on behind the scenes. Even in smaller sales, there’s usually more than one person. 

If you’re looking to find out and understand who that right-fit buyer is, who that ideal client that we should be going after, we want to scope into there and start spending our prospecting and marketing money on things that aren’t converting. If you’re saying to yourself, “I’m getting a lot of opportunities, but they’re just not closing the way that I want them to.” “I’m getting objections that I shouldn’t be getting.” “I am running into situations where I thought the sale was closed and then it’s not closed.” If I want to stand out amongst all other competitors, how do I do that? One of the biggest factors is first taking the step to understand who the right-fit buyer is. 

If we’re not dealing with right-fit buyers, we’re going to run into more and more challenges. The reason behind that is the sales process has changed. It is no longer that they’re relying upon you very much for the expertise as the sales channel. They’re relying more upon you as, I would say, an acquisition process of operational process in the decision-making process of actually who they’re going to choose to work with. 

If you’re interested in learning how to get into that right-fit buyer, we’re running a thing called Core. It’s a live program. You can ask questions interactively. You can find out more at www.CEOSalesStrategies.com/CORE. Again, if you have any questions on that or you’re looking for somebody to help you double your sales process, reach out to us at YouMatter@CEOSalesStartegies.com to see how you too can double your sales over the next twelve months. 

This is Doug C. Brown with the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast. As always, go out and sell something today. Help everybody that you can. Play win-win. Sell a lot of it. The more you sell, the more you’re helping people with their problems or you’re helping them with a future problem or an opportunity they’re looking to gain. It’s the most noble thing you can do. Until next time, this is Doug C. Brown saying to your success.

Important links: 

• Linda Fanaras
• LindaFanaras.com – Website
• Mill.Agency – Company Website
• Millennium Agency – Facebook
• Millennium Agency – X

• Claim Your White Space PDF Cover
• Claim Your White Space, Why It’s Critical to Your Business Success
• Passion and Profits 
• www.CEOSalesStrategies.com/CORE
• YouMatter@CEOSalesStartegies.com