If you’re hustling in sales or business, you’ve probably dreamed of spotting that next killer trend — the one that catapults your career and bank account.
It’s not rocket science. It’s about smart habits and keeping your ears on. I’ll lay out three main points to get you started. Follow these, and you’ll be ahead of the pack.
Points for spotting business trends
Point 1: In all likelihood, none of us are going to start a competitor to Elon Musk going to Mars. A few of those “moonshots” are out there of course, but I see a lot of wasted motion with entrepreneurs spending lot of brain cycles thinking at that scale. According to UBS, America has about 22 million millionaires. The vast majority are entrepreneurs doing something in what most would consider a boring niche. Most of the successful people I know got very good in one area of business and eventually figured out a way to buy or start a business in that field and became financially free. That is the tried-and-true way to “make it” and does not require any inventions.
Point 2: Dive into the data and trends. You can’t find the next big thing if you’re flying blind. Start by becoming a data junkie. Track what’s hot in your industry through tools like Google Trends, industry reports or even podcasts from pros. Most of these reporting services will show new trends but they will be so small compared to the current situation that people will ignore them. Find the early trend and that could be your way to the promised land. Start small and see how it works.
I have seen this with the popularization of personal computers in the 1980s, the internet/web in the late 1990s and now artificial intelligence.
Spend 30 minutes a day doing your homework, and you’ll start seeing patterns that scream opportunity. I remember my partner, Larry Blackwell, used to read PCWeek magazine weekly cover-to-cover and he would always be smiling as he saw the adoption rate of PCs in business keep rising — he knew our business software was going to have more and more customers.
Point 3: Test, iterate and take smart risks. Spotting the next big thing is useless if you don’t act. Once you have a hunch, test it small. Prototype a pitch or run a pilot with a few clients. We iterated on maintenance software by running small ads to see how many people replied asking for more information.
Keep risks calculated. No need to bet the farm; allocate 10% to 20% of your time or budget to experiments. Use metrics like conversion rates to decide if it’s a winner. If it flops, pivot quick.
Finding your big opportunity boils down to focusing on your core area, keeping up with the data and trends, and testing. Implement these three points, and you’ll not only spot trends but own them.
And if you do find a way to beat Elon to Mars, let me know and I will tag along.
John Sterling is the Amazon bestselling author of “Sales for Noobs” and CEO of NOOB School, an online resource for new salespeople. Previously, he helped build and sell Datastream for over $200 million. He has trained and hired hundreds of sales reps globally. Subscribe to his YouTube channel for new sales content every week. noobschool.org
