Fix Your Marketing —
By Changing How You See Things
How effective are your marketing efforts? If you're like most business owners, you see room for significant improvement.
And if you're like most business owners, this condition has lasted for quite a while. You know improvement is necessary, but you're just not sure what to do. And this uncertainty creates a kind of paralysis.
Let me suggest an exercise to break you out of this condition. As a starting point, let's consider a couple of facts:
First— if you're a professional of some sort, most of your customers aren't able to determine whether your services are very good. Your customers, who don't have your expertise (that's why they hire you), assume general competence, until you show them otherwise. What drives buying decisions, then, are other attributes that customers use as substitutes for determining your ability. These "proxies" include such things as how phone calls are returned, appearance, frequency and quality of personal contacts, and many other items that have little connection to your actual abilities.
Second— lots of second-rate and third-rate performers achieve great success. You've inevitably seen examples of this. This outcome is made possible because of what we discussed above. Customers often can't determine ability, and they make buying decisions on the basis of other factors — that are sometimes employed skillfully by second- and third-rate performers.
What we should understand from these facts is that a high level of ability or quality will not naturally make you a success. I'm a huge fan of high quality, and I'm not endorsing lower standards. But I'm making the point that quality alone doesn't guarantee you any success. As you've likely observed, many highly-talented individuals and businesses achieve no success at all.
This brings us to our exercise, which is to: Assume that you aren't very good at what you do, and identify the steps you would have to take to be successful in spite of your lack of ability.
Taking this exercise a step further, I suggest that you create a hypothetical strawman to help you see your situation more clearly. Imagine this strawman is a local competitor who claims to offer the same services, products, or other benefits that you offer. This competitor is like you in nearly every way, with the exception that this competitor is not really any good at what it claims to do.
Now consider how this competitor is going to absolutely kick your butt in your target marketplace over the next year. Make a list of all the things this skilled marketer will do to succeed in the way you want, but haven't yet. Imagine this competitor's appearance, demeanor, business location and layout, marketing position and message, communications, contacts and relationships, networking efforts, organizations and associations, interactions with prospects and customers, and everything else that may enhance this competitor's success.
Examining this list, you should be able to create for yourself a new action plan for meeting this challenge, and achieving a level of success similar to what you've imagined for this hypothetical strawman.
One of the benefits of imagining the successful behaviors of a hypothetical competitor is that it liberates you from your own hangups and imagined limitations. I expect that the list you've created for your competitor includes behaviors and attributes that are a bit inconsistent with how you currently see yourself. But through this exercise you've probably recognized that some of these potentially uncomfortable items could have a substantial impact on the success of your business. For example, an introvert who shies away from social getherings might realize that networking in these environments is important for business growth and success.
This exercise should alter your perspective somewhat and reveal a number of new activities you can pursue to promote your success. The question you may have to resolve is how much change you're willing to embrace that may take you out of your comfort zone.
[But note that I would never endorse any inappropriate activities, even if they might provide a competitive advantage. This exercise is not intended to identify or encourage any inappropriate activities, even if your strawman might appear to benefit from such activities.]
To learn more about a simple approach for building a successful, high-performance business,
see How Business Really Works.
