It’s the start of a new year and a new decade and like many self-employed people you’ve probably been thinking about how to have a good year despite the sluggish economy.

The one thing you must do this year for your work to take off…

I’ve been advising people for 5 years on how to make their own business work and whether they’re a freelancer, consultant, coach, speaker, or internet entrepreneur, I’ve discovered one defining factor that consistently separates those that succeed from those that struggle.

The factor I’m talking about isn’t having a fancy website, or masses of web traffic, or the smartest marketing, or even the best sales skills. It’s something more fundamental than that. The distinguishing trait of those whose businesses really take off is that they sell the right thing – they have a killer offer.

Until you’ve got a killer offer – something a lot of people really want – all the marketing in the world won’t help you. So how do you create one?

Three keys to building your killer offer

• It must be based on something you love doing. Firstly, it takes a lot of time and effort to build a successful business so you have got to choose something that you will enjoy working on and will hold your interest. It just won’t work otherwise. Secondly, if you build a business around the things you love doing a lot, you’ll already have a competitive advantage. It’s hard to compete with someone who loves what they do. You’ll be happier too and as recent research shows, happiness leads to success.
• It must be something you have real talent for – but understand that most people’s idea of talent is far too narrow. Your greatest talents might be things that never show up on a CV: the ability to connect with almost anyone, your endless supply of creative ideas, an obsession with getting the details of a project just right. Focus on those things that come easily to you. As marketing guru Seth Godin says, do what you’re best in the world at, quit everything else.
• Your offer must meet a pressing need – it should solve a problem or address a pain that lots of people have. When you work out what this is, you’ll find you connect directly with the people you want to work with and dramatically reduce the time to win business. To find the pain you address, think about this: What’s the biggest concern for the people you work with right now that you can help with? What do they wake up in the morning stressing about? What often irritates or frustrates people in the area you work in? Once you know what it is, you can start to speak directly to what is at the forefront of your prospects’ minds. Get all this right and you’ll find you gather momentum quickly – you’ll generate word of mouth referrals and attract more and more business. You’ll be doing work you enjoy and you should find you can raise your prices too!

Want to find your own killer offer?

This January I am leading a small group of people step by step through a process to find their killer offer and tell the world about it. It’s packed with tools, tricks and blueprints to show you how to finally get paid well to do the work you love doing – whether you’re just starting out in business or you’ve been self employed a while and would like to get better results with less struggle.

Learn more about the programme here

John Williams is author of Screw Work, Let’s Play: How to do what you love & get paid for it to be published by Pearson in June 2010. He is a former Senior Managing Consultant at Deloitte and has consulted independently to the BBC, Siemens and Accenture.