The More Clients Blog

Beating the Competition

I was paging through one of my business magazines last week, when I came across a small ad that made me smile.

The headline read: "Everything You've Ever Learned About Marketing Is WRONG!" But it was the subhead that really gave me a chuckle: "Beat Your Competition into A Demoralized Quivering Pulp."

Yes, you read that right. And the offer was for a free 2-CD Program. The picture in the ad was of an angry looking man (named Bill, apparently) wagging his finger at me.

I'm not sure the kind of response he got, but it was very clear who he was targeting: Angry, fearful people. People with so little sense of themselves that they would actually find this ad appealing.

"Yes, crush the competition. I kind of like the ring to that. Then I would be the KING OF THE WORLD... Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!"

The sad thing is that he just might get a decent response to this approach, if only out of curiosity (yeah, I sent for a copy). And the reason is that there's a lot of people out there with this twisted mindset.

But I assure you that there are mindsets that work a whole lot better, are much easier to live with, and leave you feeling happy and fulfilled about your marketing.

Let's see what Bill might have said about that:

"What? Are you daft?" Bill screamed. "Marketing is a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog business. It's either you or them. Kill the competition, Grind them to a bloody pulp and come out victorious!"

"Brilliant," I replied. "And what will this actually get you except a few more dollars in your pocket? Will you (or your clients for that matter) really be better off? How about all the enemies you create?"

"That's the problem with all you bleeding-heart liberals," sneered Bill. "You come across with all this win-win B.S. But I'll tell you, it's the last man standing that counts. Don't you watch the reality shows like Hell's Kitchen and Survivor?"

"Well, I admit I've watched an episode or two of The Apprentice with Donald Trump but after awhile it wore thin. It pretended to champion excellence but the underlying theme was 'win at all costs or die.' Don't you think that's kind of limiting?"

"Limiting, are you kidding?" Bill's eyes were filled with fire. "It's ALL about WINNING. What else is there? You have the winners and the losers. And I want to be a winner. Trump is my hero, my god."

"Hey, I don't have a problem with winning the game of marketing. I'm all for that. But my biggest competition isn't out there, it's me. It's my resistance, my procrastination, my indifference. When I've conquered those, there's enough business to go around for everyone."

Bill, with a perplexed look replied: "Man, never admit your weaknesses. You'll be eaten alive for lunch by the big guys. You need to show strength no matter how weak you feel. Make no mistake, your enemy is out there."

"Well, Bill, then I have a question for you. What kind of person would be so worried about the competition? What kind of person would have to succeed no matter what the cost?"

"What do you mean?" said Bill with a dirty look.

"Wouldn't it be someone who deep down was very unsure of himself, who had something to prove, who didn't feel confident that he had a great service and value to offer?"

"Are you saying I'm weak, Middleton? This is war, buddy. Watch your back, because I will crush you to a pulp. When I get through with you, you won't even recognize your business."

Bill stormed off, muttering and cursing to himself. I managed to get in the last word: "Well, OK Bill. Enjoy your day. I have some clients to go take care of."

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The More Clients Bottom Line: The "beat your competition" mentality is, at best, severely limiting; at worst, it's evil and destructive. You don't need to go there to be more successful than you can possibly imagine.

Have you learned how to work creatively with your competition? Please share on the Blog.

Fearless Markeing

It seems I really hit a nerve last week with my eZine on "Ruffling Some Feathers." The point I made was that those who disparage marketing and selling tend to be those who most fear marketing and selling themselves. (Fear of X means X is bad.)

My main point wasn't to make these people wrong.

My real intention with the article was to hold up a mirror to those who have problems with marketing and selling. Hopefully it was a wake up call. (Not to "them" - to "YOU!")

If you saw yourself in that mirror, great, that's a first step.

But I'm not done.

The resistance, antipathy and downright fear you have about marketing and selling yourself is probably hurting your business more than you realize.

(Note: If this is a non-issue for you, great. Skip this eZine and get out there! If it is an issue, pay close attention.)

You know the symptoms:

- A tendency to avoid picking up the phone
- staying away from networking activities
- putting off writing a letter or an article
- not closing at the end of a sales interview
- avoiding speaking in public at all costs
- not promoting or selling in your eZine
- neglecting to ask for referrals

When I used to work with clients as a marketing coach, you'd think their main question would have been, "How do I do these things more effectively?" But no, the question was, "Why don't I get around to doing these things, even though I know I should do them?"

A lot of my time was spent working people though their resistance and fears to marketing and selling themselves. In fact, many of my clients called me their "marketing shrink!"

A big part of my work consisted of taking my clients slowly, step-by-step, through the marketing process. I demonstrated that if they picked up the phone and said the right thing, people would actually not yell at them. I showed that if they wrote an article, they would likely receive more praise than scorn.

I called it "jumping off the diving board" marketing: Start with a low board. Don't worry about getting it perfect, just jump. Then gradually go higher and improve a little each time.

This approach is actually quite effective. It's how we learn things. It's how we improve gradually and let go of our irrational fears until we are fully competent and confident.

In fact, this is the approach I took in the InfoGuru Manual and the Web Site ToolKit. If you take it one step at a time, and do the action plans at the end of each chapter or section, you'll begin to understand the underlying principles and practices of marketing, and start to get some results.

Many of you have used this approach to become better marketers.

However, being by nature an impatient person, I never felt that this approach was enough. Sure, many of my clients would take things step-by-step and ultimately get great results.

But many others would never get past first base. Their built-in distaste for marketing was stronger than their will to succeed.

So I started to build "belief work" into my marketing coaching. I used it in my Marketing Action Groups, and integrated it into the Action Plan ToolKit, which includes exercises for changing beliefs. For many, this made a huge difference.

The first step is to recognize the limiting beliefs underlying some of the symptoms I listed earlier. Here are some typical ones I discovered:

- a tendency to avoid picking up the phone
(People don't want to be bothered. I'm an interruption.)

- staying away from networking activities
(I'm just not a people person who is comfortable meeting strangers)

- putting off writing a letter or an article
(I'm not a good writer. And who would be interested, anyway?)

- not closing at the end of a sales interview
(If they want to buy, they'll let me know. I shouldn't be pushy.)

- avoiding speaking in public at all costs
(I'd probably make a fool of myself. Nobody wants to hear my ideas.)

- not promoting or selling in your eZine
(If I promote myself, people will hate me and unsubscribe in droves.)

- neglecting to ask for referrals
(If they're happy they'll give me referrals when they're ready.)

I'd be willing to bet a buck or two that you hold several of these (or similar) beliefs very dearly. And if you hold them strongly enough, you're not even going to take the small steps necessary to improve in that area of marketing. You'll give up before you start.

So what works best? Taking the small steps or changing beliefs?

Both are equally important. If you don't have any big issues about writing, for instance, get started now, one step at a time. But if you're terrified of speaking in front of a group, doing some belief work first will make the process a whole lot easier.

But no matter what your situation is, make that commitment to being a fearless marketer, and you'll find a way.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Fear of marketing and selling is a big issue for a large percentage of Independent Professionals. The key is to recognize that fears are holding you back and then find the support you need to get past them.

What works for you to get past your fears of marketing and selling yourself? Please share on the Blog.

Ruffling some Feathers

My mother, who is an avid reader of More Clients, commented last week that the number of subscribers to my eZine was lower than the previous week. As you may have noticed, I list the number of subscribers to the eZine at the top of every issue.

And in the past week I lost a few hundred subscribers.

Why? Because I committed the unpardonable sin (in the eyes of some subscribers) of trying to actually sell them something!

When I do a special promotion (which I did two weeks ago), and send out a few follow-up emails, a lot of people unsubscribe. I even get comments from people who are infuriated that I would stoop so low.

"You should just give away free information and then let people decide for themselves if they want to buy something from you." is often the tone of these emails. Or, "If you didn't promote anything in your eZine, we'd like it so much better."

What these subscribers fail to grasp is that More Clients is written for Independent Professionals who want to grow their businesses and are looking for ideas and strategies that will help them do that.

Anyone with half a brain knows that if you only give away free information, you'll soon be out of business. But nevertheless, this attitude of aversion to selling in any way, shape or form, persists.

And inevitably, those who recoil when someone tries to sell them something are, without exception, people who are afraid to sell themselves. Selling is characterized as "beneath their dignity."

Of course, all of this is self-deception and blindness.

If you dig just a little deeper, people dislike selling because they face rejection when they attempt it. And being rejected is one of the most unpleasant things you can experience.

A little bit of honesty on this topic would be refreshing:

"Selling is terrifying to me, therefore it's an evil thing. I wouldn't be caught dead selling, and those who sell are clearly pawns of the devil."

Well, maybe not that extreme, but close!

You'd think that people who went into business for themselves would be somewhat beyond this view of selling. Of course, many are. They understand that selling is simply an opportunity to share the value they offer to the world.

They realize the upside of sharing this value greatly outweighs any possible rejection they might experience.

But when you lose a few hundred subscribers in a week it can shake your confidence a bit. It can make you act irrationally, if you don't take an objective look at the results that really matter.

Me thinking:

"So let me see... The week I held my sale was the biggest volume of sales for the whole year so far. But a lot of people unsubscribed. Hmmm... I wonder what I should do?"

Remember Babe Ruth?

He hit more home runs than anyone else. But he also held the record for the most strikeouts. If Babe had been careful, trying to never strike out, do you think he would have been the home run champ? Not a chance.

And yet, that's how we approach promotion or selling:

"I'll be as careful as possible, making sure I don't offend anyone. And then maybe they'll like me and ultimately buy from me."

Boy, don't you wish that were true? But it's a fantasy.

No, if you're going to make a difference, it's inevitable that you'll push some buttons and get people unsubscribing to your eZine.

It's when nobody unsubscribes that you should be worried.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: Marketing and selling yourself isn't about being careful and nice. It's about sharing something of value with real passion. And in the process you'll ruffle some feathers.

What are you doing to ruffle some feathers? Please share on the Blog.

Oh, by the way, you might want to order something from Action Plan Marketingat this link.

New Paradigm Anyone?

Every day I take a look at the recent posts in the online InfoGuru Support Forum. Here are the kind of things InfoGurus on the Forum are focused on right now:

The ins and outs of tradeshow booths
Advice on tracking incoming ezine subscribers
Mindset of a successful marketer
Recommendations for "pithy" business books
How to get in front of audiences of business people
Search engine optimization strategies
Feedback on logo/tagline
Consulting retainer do's and don'ts
Fear, reluctance and procrastination
Quick audio expert question
Poll: HTML in your email newsletter

So far there hasn't been a topic or question that doesn't get half a dozen or more responses. In fact 20 or 30 are not unusual. Some, such as John Williamson, Sean d'Souza, David Feller and Geoff Bryan (our most stalwart Forum contributors), often give several pages of ideas, feedback and resources.

What's my point?

Getting the information you need to market your services is not the problem. It has never been the problem and will never be the problem. The answers are out there, readily available and actionable.

Books, manuals, teleclasses, eZines, online discussion groups, forums and, of course, Google. You name it. You can find the answer you want, often in a few minutes.

But if that's the case, why doesn't everyone have as much business as they can can handle? After all, with a little research, you can find the ideas, resources and how-tos you need and apply it to your business.

Can't you?

You'd think so, but au contraire. No matter how much information we have, we tend to get stuck in putting it into action.

This past week I led my new MAPP Program in a large professional services firm. Half a billion big. The division I worked with was doing $100 million in sales and not making a profit.

They had all the talent, information, resources, and ideas they could possibly want to help them figure out how to be profitable. But they weren't. They were struggling. And they really had no idea why.

The first part of the MAPP Program is about paradigms and how they limit us. We all have our own limiting paradigms. In marketing it's things like "Marketing takes too much time," or "Marketing myself is an interruption," or "I'm just not the marketing and sales type."

Sound familiar?

Organizations, like individuals, live within their own limiting paradigms. This organization had an interesting one: "It is what it is." Sounds pretty innocuous, but what that meant was that nothing could change or improve. It was just the way it was. Forever.

The resignation in the room was palpable. Any initiative to make changes within this paradigm was bound to simply produce more of the same. Efforts to improve profitability weren't going to come out of this old paradigm.

Remember the Einstein quote: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Another way of putting it: "No problem can be solved within the paradigm it was created inside of."

In the InfoGuru Forum today, I read a post by George Huang who dramatically turned his business around. He went from someone with an allergy to marketing to someone who is addicted to marketing (his words).

Essentially he shifted his paradigm:

"If I could boil the shift in my marketing mindset down to any one thing, it would be the shift in my being that led to a shift in my thoughts and feelings about marketing, which in turn led to a significant shift in my actions and results."

In the MAPP Program the firm shifted their paradigm from "It is what it is," to "We work together to make it right." It wasn't a slogan or an affirmation, it was the expression of a new reality. By the end of the program, this paradigm was being expressed through a new level of participation, cooperation, commitment and action.

What paradigm do you have to shift to take your business to the next level? What thoughts or attitudes are currently limiting you? What negative things do you keep saying about marketing? Where do you feel stuck, hopeless or frustrated?

Identifying the paradigm is the first thing, and the second is realizing that the paradigm or mindset is not YOU. It is not real. It is simply a creation that you bought into, and that has shaped you.

The rest is pretty easy. I ran my group through the five questions of Byron Katie's Work and the shift happened very quickly.

1. Is this paradigm true?
2. Can you absolutely know it's true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought (or think from
that paradigm)?
4. Who would you be without that paradigm?

Now turn the paradigm around (create a new, more empowering one).

With a new paradigm to work from you'll discover that business and marketing ideas come easier. It will be less of a struggle to implement what you already know. And you'll have fewer barriers to getting the information and resources you need to produce great marketing results.

Paradigm shift anyone?

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The More Clients Bottom Line: More information isn't the key to success in marketing. That information is everywhere and easily accessible. You've got to apply it. But you may find that application is a struggle if you're living from a paradigm that says, "Marketing is a struggle." Change your paradigm and end the struggle.

What limiting marketing paradigm are you stuck in? Please share on the Blog.

Learn about the new MAPP Program.