A large part of the secret sauce for marketing is your mindset.
Not sure if you can be a good networker?
Not sure if you can write a blog?
Not sure if you can represent your company at a trade show?
You can!
When it comes to marketing, the odds of success will be stacked disproportionately in your favor if you have a positive mindset. This means believing in yourself, remembering why you love your business, and taking inspired action.
It seems that a considerable amount of marketing and sales advice to self-employed professionals is aimed at extroverts. “Go to networking events and meet new people,” the authorities say. “Speak in front of groups.” “Call people up and chat with them.”
If you are an introvert, these experts might as well be telling you to fly to the moon. What if you don’t enjoy public gatherings, dislike being the center of attention, and hate to call strangers on the phone? Can you still do well at personal marketing?
When it comes to getting your marketing done, you may have the best of intentions. You’ve set aside time on your calendar, outlined the actions you want to take, and called an accountability buddy who’ll check in with you in a few hours. And yet, here you are, stopped in the face of getting things done, wondering what the heck happened.
It’s likely your old friends fear, resistance, and procrastination have come to visit.
When this trifecta hits, it can be unsettling. You’re an accomplished person, running a business and taking care of those you serve. How can it possibly be that you’re finding it hard to do the marketing you said you were going to do? Especially when you actually want to do it?
To the average self-employed professional, following up with prospective clients feels awkward or even scary. You hate making phone calls that might not be welcome. You think you might be pestering people. You worry about being rejected. You aren’t sure what to say. After all, how many times can you ask, “Are you ready for us to work together?”
I get it. My clients and students share concerns like these with me all the time. I’ve even had them myself.
“I don’t know how to market,” one of my coaching clients said. “I hate marketing,” declared another. “The marketing thing feels so unnatural to me,” claimed a third.
My response to statements like these from my clients is to reply (gently and compassionately), “I don’t think that’s true. I think you’ve just misunderstood what marketing is, and how it works.”
When You Think You Don’t Know How to Market
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.
The number one complaint my clients and students — self-employed professionals — bring me about their marketing is that they aren’t doing enough of it. You would think this would be easy to fix. I could just tell them to spend more time marketing and selling, and that would solve their problem. But like so many other challenges in life, knowing what needs to be done doesn’t necessarily make that thing occur.
Consider losing weight, for example. If it were as simple as being told to eat less or exercise more, we would all be as thin as we wished just by deciding to make it so. Since that doesn’t happen very often; it’s clear we humans need a bit more help.
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:
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.
Is there really a secret formula for marketing? Yes.
The secret formula is this:
Find a marketing strategy that you like, that you’ll use, that’s enjoyable for you, that you know how to do, that reaches your ideal client, and that produces results. Then do it over and over until you have the amount of business you want.
Pretty simple when you look at it that way.
Fear may start to creep in, though, when you break that sentence down.
What if I don’t like any marketing strategies?
What if I don’t know how to “do” marketing?
What if I don’t like doing any kind of marketing?
What if what I do doesn’t reach my ideal client?
What if what I like doesn’t produce results?
