MARKETING Vs. GETTING CLIENTS

David Steele generously offered his seminar on
"How To Get Clients" and one of the
many things he pointed out is the essential distinction
between "marketing" and "selling."
As I got it, marketing is about letting people know you
exist. It's about telling them who you are, what you do,
and helping them really "get" your expertise. It's about
branding your name and reputation; it's about creating
positive buzz about your and your business.
Marketing is a good thing! It's a skill and it can be
learned. Every business MUST market!
Marketing, however, does not generate sales or revenue
and that is a HUGE distinction!
As David says, "You can market until the cows come home and
never get a single client!" You can market so people know
about you, and know what you do. You can market with a
catchy slogan and a distinctive logo. You can market "until
the cows come home."
But only sales is sales!
Now, obviously there are good and bad ways of selling.
There are styles of selling and some sales techniques are
just plain repugnant!
Fortunately, however, there are skills and tools that are
both comfortable AND effective for selling. Many people ask
questions to help the potential customer decide for
themselves whether to make the purchase. Others use a focus
on the benefits or some other ethical tool to MAKE THE
SALE.
In the end, your business must do marketing, AND you must
make sales. Understand the distinction and develop skills
in both areas!

ARE YOU COMPETENT IN YOUR WORKPLACE?

Only the truly competent individual can be free of politics in an organization. When you're really good at what you do, you can rise above politics. Think about it. It's the mediocrities at work who have to play games and every study shows that although they sometimes succeed in the short-term, they invariably fail when everyone figures them out.

Do What You Have To Do

Select your work carefully and if you don't love what you're doing enough to want to be the best at it, get out! Flee from the boring or unsatisfying job as you would from a burning building. Working at something you don't care about is the very best way to waste your life. Remember, this life is not a rehearsal for something else.

Look for Pay for Performance

One key to getting onto the fast-track is for you to work for the right company and the right boss. The right company is one that respects its people and practices pay for performance. The right company is dynamic, growing, open to new ideas, and full of opportunities for people with ambition and initiative.

How to Make Progress

Brian Tracy share; "A woman spoke to me at a seminar recently and reminded me that she had asked me a question at a seminar about two years ago. She had told me that she was very ambitious and hard-working but that she wasn't making any progress in the large company where she worked. She felt it was because most of the senior executives were men in their fifties and sixties and that women had a hard time getting into positions of responsibility. What could she do?

Change Jobs When Necessary

I told her quite frankly that there was nothing she could do. The senior executives and the company were not going to change. If she was really as capable as she said, I told her to find a job with a young, growing company that wouldn't care whether she was a woman as long as she could do the job.

A Success Story

She told me that she had followed my advice, quit her job, much to the disapproval of her co-workers, and found a job with a small growing company - and it was exactly as I had said. She had been promoted twice in the last 14 months and was already earning 40% more than her best year with her previous company".

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do to assure that you are in the right position.

First, make sure that you really enjoy your work and that you do it well. You will never be successful at a job that you don't like.

Second, be sure that there are lots of opportunities for you to grow, develop and advance in your company. Your future is too valuable to waste where there is no future.

THINK YOUR WAY TO THE TOP!

The longer I read about highly successful business leaders,
the more I see the distinction between those who understand
the REAL source of wealth, and those who think merely in
terms of sales and profits.
Recently, a television news show did a story about a
software company in South Carolina where the owner
understands that "my most important assets walk out the
door every night (they go home), and my most important job
is to be sure they all walk back in tomorrow morning."
I love that!
He understood that while plants and equipment and brand
recognition and marketing ALL play a critical role, in the
end it's our people and how well they THINK that determines
our long-term success. High achievers invest in themselves,
their training, and in taking time to think clearly.
Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, talked
about the need for leaders to "out-think" the competition.
Bill Gates takes time away to think, renew and reflect
every quarter. So should you! You cannot lead if you do
not maintain a clearer vision and a stronger sense of
direction than your employees AND your competition! If you
are lost in the swamp of daily crises, you will see neither
the golden opportunities nor the fatal threats to your
success.
You MUST "out-think", out-strategize and out-maneuver both
your competition, and the thinking of the past. As we
emerge from this economic slow-down, the next boom will NOT
be led by the companies or the methods of the past.
Invest in your education, but just importantly, create
opportunities to USE what you know in fresh and creative
ways. Expand the boundaries and stretch the possibilities!

THE CONCEPT OF OPPORTUNITY COST

Have you ever played The Game of Life? The classic board game has since been adapted to all sorts of different versions, including iterations on video game consoles. The basic premise of the game is simple. You make your way through your fictional life, getting a job, getting married, having kids, and hopefully reaching retirement with the most money possible. That’s how you win.

It’s obviously a gross oversimplification of how real life works, but the board game very clearly illustrates the notion of opportunity cost. The first decision you make in the game, right off the bat, is whether you want to go to college or you want to start working right away.

If you choose to go to college, you skip out on a few turns while you “go to school,” but you are afforded a better chance at a better salary when you graduate. That’s loosely accurate when it comes to real life, because college graduates on average do out-earn their non-college educated counterparts. If you choose to start working, you don’t miss any turns, but the salary you get will likely be less than the player who chooses college.

In real life, I chose college. In the board game, I always pick work because the guy who choose college usually ends up losing. Like I said, the board game is necessarily representative of real life, but it illustrates an important point.

By choosing to go to school (in hopes of getting a better salary), you lose the opportunity of the first few turns of the game. The players who choose work get a “head start,” even if they start out with a lower salary. By choosing one, you lose the other. That’s opportunity cost. Everything that you choose to do has an indirect cost, because it means you are foregoing all other possibilities. By choosing to turn left, you necessarily lose out on everything that turning right could have provided you (and vice versa).

Above all else, the most valuable resource you have is time. How you choose to spend that time has a direct (and indirect) impact at any future shot at success.