Two Ways to Make Direct Contact Easier
When thinking about the best way to get new business, it’s often good to remember that contacting a prospect directly can be the most effective tactic. However, this can sometimes seem too scary: the thought of picking up the phone, or meeting someone for coffee, or even sending an email can send a wave of fear through your business heart.
Here are some common fears you might experience when considering reaching out to someone directly:
- They’ll think I’m bothering them.
- I don’t know what to say.
- I’m not a good salesperson.
- I’m an introvert.
- I’m not good with words.
- They won’t remember me.
- I’m not sure how to make an offer.
How to Overcome Your Reluctance to Make Sales Calls
As a professional selling your own services, you may believe that your discomfort about calling prospective clients on the phone is because you’re not a “real” salesperson. But studies reveal that up to 40% of full-time salespeople experience episodes of call reluctance that are serious enough to threaten their careers.
Breaking the Logjam of Asking People to Work with You
When it comes to having a sales conversation, you may find yourself melting into a puddle. You might hear yourself say things like, “What’s the big deal about asking people to do business with me? I know it’s just a conversation between two people, and that people don’t bite, so why can’t I seem to do it? I wish I could just get over myself.”
There are two fallacies that contribute to these inner critic conversations; understanding these lies can be a lifesaver because only then can you get over yourself and become the sales pro you’re meant to be.
Video: Defining Success in 2020
What can I say — 2020 turned out to not be the year most of us were looking forward to. Which begs the question, what does success look like when things have changed so much?
Can Follow-Up Actually Be Fun?
When you think about following up, does it seem fun to you, or does it seem more like something you wish you wanted to do? It’s probably not so surprising to learn that following up is something that quite a few of us don’t love doing.
Making Time for Marketing and Selling
“I don’t have time to market my business.” It’s a common complaint from self-employed professionals. When you are the only one who can serve your clients, manage the business, keep up in your field, and perform all the sales and marketing functions, time becomes the most precious commodity you have. How can you find time for marketing with so many other important priorities?
You have many time management techniques at your disposal, of course. You can defer some tasks or delegate them to an assistant, chunk down big projects into smaller steps, and set aside blocks of time on your calendar for making calls, writing emails, or updating your social media channels. But perhaps you have already tried all those approaches and discovered that time is still scarce.
Four Consequences of Using the Wrong Marketing Strategy
Perhaps these questions sound familiar:
What happens if I use the wrong marketing strategy?
Is there such a thing as a wrong marketing strategy?
These questions are common if you’re a service-based business looking to market your services; it’s easy to think you’re doing marketing all wrong.
And maybe you are.
While there is no real right or wrong way when it comes to marketing your business, there is such a thing as choosing a marketing strategy that isn’t the right fit for you and your ideal customers – strategies that can make marketing feel harder – and this can have negative consequences.
Advertising Doesn’t Equal Marketing
I asked a new client recently what he had been doing to market his professional services. “Everything,” he said. “I’ve been running pay-per-click ads online, I hired someone to write a sales letter and mailed it to a list of local companies, I have a banner ad in my professional association’s directory, I’ve even been posting flyers around town… and I still have almost no business.”
“Ah hah,” I replied, “I think we’ve uncovered your problem. You actually haven’t been marketing your business. What you have been doing is advertising.”
Laying Your Marketing Foundation
Some marketing elements are foundational to your business. They function as the building blocks on which everything else is constructed. If you were building a house, this would be like pouring the concrete to make a solid foundation which you build everything else on top of.
These elements are things like having business cards, a good answer for what you do for a living, a website, a free giveaway, or a go-to speech. As a business owner, you’ll want to figure out what’s foundational for your business, and how to get those things done.
Figuring Out What’s Foundational to Your Marketing
What foundational items you choose is completely dependent on the type of business you have. In my case, most of the people I work with have a service based business, which lends itself to foundational items such as:
How Do You Get Things Done?
What’s your way to get things done? Do you feel you’re an achiever who enjoys checking off boxes? Or do you see yourself as more laid back, getting to things whenever you can? Whatever your style, the truth is, if you’re in business for yourself, you need to get things done, and chances are, no one else will jump in to save the day. Which begs the question: how do you do things most easily and in a way best suited to you?
What’s your style?
In working with clients, I see two typical categories of doers: 1) those who love making a list and working through it, some going so far as to draw their own little check boxes next to each to-do item in a notebook, or 2) those who take a looser approach, writing items on the backs of envelopes, on their hand, or random sticky notes. Both approaches have their merits.
