Yearend. How does it come so quickly?
It seems like just a few days ago you were looking at the year and thinking, “This year will be different!” This would be the year you actually did make a marketing calendar, try new strategies, and consistently get the word out about the good work you can do.
Or you find yourself at the end of the year, possibly in slight desperation and defiant hope, thinking, “Next year will be different!”
And you really mean it.
What if marketing was a game? Something you can play at, play with. A game without winners or losers, just different outcomes.
Would that make marketing feel easier? More fun?
I see many business owners treat marketing as something serious, saying things to themselves such as, “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it,” “It must be done correctly, or it won’t work,” “I’ll look foolish if I make a mistake, and I’d hate to have it look like I don’t know what I’m doing — it’ll be embarrassing in front of my peers and my clients.” The idea of doing marketing the correct way can be a hurdle that feels hard to overcome.
Do you want your clients and prospects to love you? I think most of us self-employed professionals would. When your prospects love you, closing sales is easy. When your clients love you, they keep doing business with you, and refer others to do the same.
Yet the language often used for marketing and sales reveals perspectives that don’t have much to do with love. The path to closing sales is to “overcome objections” or “don’t take no for an answer.” You’re supposed to write “killer copy” to use for a “marketing blitz” or “promotional blasts” so you can “blow away” your “targets.” You should “hone your weapons” so you can “battle for market share,” “fight for sales,” and “smash the competition.” When you succeed, you are “killing it” or “crushing it.”
A desperate self-employed professional contacted me recently. “I need to get clients immediately,” she said. “I’ve been trying for months with no success, and I’m almost out of money.” When I asked her how she had been marketing herself all this time, she gave me the following list of what she had been doing:
If you’re answering calls, replying to emails and notes, responding to invitations, and receiving referrals and leads, it probably feels like you’re taking a lot of action to market your business. But it may be that a good deal of what you’re engaged in is actually RE-action.
Waiting to hear from the right prospects is nowhere near as productive as proactively taking steps to seek them out. And a stream of incoming communications can take up time and energy, but doesn’t always lead to closed sales.
Consider these suggestions for getting out of reaction mode and becoming more proactive in your marketing.
Why is it that some people seem to be naturals at selling, while others struggle to close every sale or even fail completely in a role that requires them to sell? In 1982, psychologist Martin Seligman, PhD, set out to answer that question for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Seligman had been studying optimism and pessimism in the laboratory for almost twenty years when Met Life heard about his research. Could Seligman help them learn how to hire more effective salespeople, they asked?
As it turned out, he could. In a series of studies for Met Life that analyzed the relationship between successful selling and the personality of the salesperson, Seligman confirmed in the field what his laboratory research had predicted — optimists make more sales than pessimists.
In working with successful business owners, one of the traits I see come up often is that of being a leader. Some are natural leaders, comfortable with being in charge; others have reluctantly taken on the role. If you seem to have leadership in your bones, fantastic! However, if you find yourself more of a reluctant leader, you’ll want to develop your leadership skills so you can step more into the role.
Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean being a take-charge, my-way-or-the-highway type of person. Being a leader means being willing to say the buck stops here and hold yourself, and those you work with, accountable.
You’ll often hear me say that the secret to finding clients is to make effective choices about what to do to market your business, then do those things over and over. While that advice is absolutely true, implementing it sometimes runs into some roadblocks.
What happens when you deliver what you think is a dynamite 10-second introduction, but your prospective clients don’t seem impressed? Or you have several lunches with potential referral partners that seem to go well, but no business results from them?
I was talking with a good friend and business colleague over dinner recently about being busy. She has very little free time: busy personal life, plus her business to run, and I the same. We both felt pinched for time and were longing for some space, literally and mentally, from those things that are required just to keep our businesses running on a daily basis. We agreed it seems as if there’s a giant mountain of things that we need to do that can sometimes feel like a heavy weight, and only when that work is complete do we have time to do other things.
There you are, sitting at your desk, ready to get the word out about your business. Trouble is, you not sure what to say, or how to say it. Adding to that, it seems like you’ve said everything 100 times before. Bottom line: you’re feeling a distinct lack of inspiration. Sounds like the perfect time to fill your marketing well!
What does it mean to fill the well? It’s a phrase I learned from reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The book is a guide to uncovering your creativity, and one of its first suggestions is to set aside time each week to replenish your well, the source of your creativity.
