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Baby Chicks in the Nest!

Baby Chicks in the nest!

Are you busy? I hear lots of people say,” What do you think, we’re in recession? No, fees and sales are well down and the phone’s not ringing like it used to.”

I hear this so much and depending who I’m talking to I sometimes suggest they ought to be busier than ever…marketing. You should either be earning the fee or making the sale or taking action to find more work and create more sales. By way of a summary Ask yourself.

1. Who your target market is?

2. What you are offering and how your clients and customers will benefit as a result of doing business with you?

3. What is your marketing message? This is what you say to your target market about your defined service to get them interested and wanting to know more. The message must be crystal-clear and promise a clear and valuable outcome.

4. Do you have effective marketing materials? This can be a good website which can include audio or video. Are you involved with social marketing to ensure you raise your profile to a global market place? Do you keep in touch with your existing clients to ensure they remember you’re still in business and what new offerings you may have.

5 Are you attending the appropriate business events to get your message across and build new or on existing relationships?

When you do none of the above your business behaves like the baby chicks in the nest!


If ever there was a time to be very busy and more proactive than ever, now is that time

Change Your Thinking

There are lots of people who consider selling and marketing as essentially dishonest and manipulative. If that’s how you think, the chances are you will resist change with all your might. This resistance is expressed in sentiments such as:

• I feel uncomfortable talking about myself and blowing my own trumpet
• I sound phoney when I write about the benefits I offer
• I'm just not the marketing type
  I can't sell myself

It's no wonder many professionals and technicians not only struggle with marketing, but feel uncomfortable and inauthentic when communicating with prospects about their services. Marketing becomes a "necessary evil."

The best way to get past these quite understandable feelings is to look at marketing your services from a new perspective. The negative feelings are bound to make you feel dreadful about marketing. Thinking in a completely different way should make you feel good. Let’s explore.

OLD THINKING

Marketing is manipulation intended to get people to buy things they don't really need.

Marketing is uncomfortable because it talks about me and what I can fo and how I'm better than other service providers.

Marketing is dishonest because it depends on hyperbole and making false promises while charging high fees.

Marketing is egotistical and self-centred, focused on me, me, me.


Marketing is highly competitive, so you need to make sure other professionals don't know what you're doing.

Marketing needs endless amounts of creativity and cleverness in order to get attention and response.

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NEW THINKING

Marketing is about making people aware of a service that could make a real difference in their lives and businesses.

Marketing is a valuable service in itself because the primary activity of effective marketing is to give away valuable information.

Marketing is honourable because it offers to solve problems or assist with challenges that are costing the client time and money.

Marketing is helping with needs and wants, focused on them, them, them.

Marketing simply requires an understanding of clients’ problems, challenges and aspirations and your ability to respond accordingly.

Marketing offers great opportunities for co-operation and creating joint ventures with other professionals.


So which thinking suits you? Only you can decide.