Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

"We often talk about ourselves as if we have permanent genetic flaws that can never be altered."
-- Marshall Goldsmith

This snippet from America's preeminent executive coach (and founding director of the Alliance for Strategic Leadership) speaks volumes about where most people are today, and where they COULD BE.

My wife was on the phone a while back with a friend who runs a video production business. She asked him, "So, Ron - do YOU have the sales gene?" Turns out that neither one of them believed they had "the sales gene." Problem is, HE was in sales and my wife wasn't!

Guess how robust his sales are?

Exactly.

Although I'm a marketing speaker and not a sales trainer, I can tell you that this mindset WILL hurt your bottom line.  

And the term "gene" - as in the creativity gene, the leadership gene, the money-making gene, the happiness gene - is as FLEETING in reality as it sounds BIOLOGICALLY PERMANENT when we talk about it!

Thomas Watson, Jr. of IBM weighed in on this issue when talking about excellence (or the 'excellence gene' as we might call it in this context):

"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work."

Try this version on for size: If you want to achieve X (sales, dating, marketing, whatever), as of this second, start believing that you DO possess that gene -- and then ACT on that fact!

As a marketing speaker and marketing coach to other professional speakers, CEOs, and business owners - and certainly from my own experience - I can safely say that too often, we get caught up in trying to get everything just perfect.

While you are working on “perfect,” someone else with “just okay” is raking in all the money. 

Face it - Reading the next book, attending the next seminar, or trying the latest software alone will do nothing for you. This is the classic "Ready, Aim, Aim, and Aim" syndrome. Always aiming and never pulling the trigger.

The key lies in taking action. I would like to invite you to try a technique suggested by my colleague Michael Masterson—the Ready, Fire, Aim technique. Do something; even if it is wrong, go ahead take the shot -- screw up.

At the very least, you are moving in the right direction.Fellow speaker and prosperity guru Joe Vitale says, “Money loves speed” those who take the swiftest action make the most amount of money.

Go ahead -- DO IT, and once you're moving, then worry about making it perfect.

Let's take the specific context of internet marketing as an example. And we'll start with your e-zine or blog...

In its simplest form an e‐zine or blog is all about information. Give your reader the information he wants to read about, and he will reward you with his trust and eventually his money.

There are five phases for any Internet marketing entrepreneur. In phase one, you read and study Internet marketing, go to conferences, devour e‐books and courses. At this stage, you are thinking about internet marketing all the time, yet you are not actually in it yet—not actually doing it. You don’t have a list, product, or the infrastructure in place to do business online.

In phase two, you dip your toe in the water—developing a product and making a few sales. The income is not significant. Except now, the idea of making money online is no longer merely a dream, an idea in your head. It’s reality. Making your first few sales will energize you and propel you forward to phase three.

In phase three, you develop more products, build your e‐zine subscriber list, and start making a significant spare‐time income online. Maybe it’s a thousand dollars a month in sales. Maybe it’s a thousand dollars a week. It’s not enough to live on, yet. But the extra money allows you to buy nicer things and become more financially secure.

In phase four, you reach a point where your Internet business makes enough money for you to live on—enough for you to quit your job and leave the rat race behind forever. For some people, this might be $2,000 to $3,000 a week in net online revenues.

In phase five, you double or triple the size of your list, add more products make more deals, and start making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, or even a million dollars or more. You become an Internet millionaire.

The problem is that the large majority of people who explore Internet marketing never get past phase one. They get addicted to reading “make money on the Internet” materials and attending conferences and tele‐seminars on the subject. But they never actually do something.

No matter what the marketing strategy, tactic, or business development effort - get going with baby step... RIGHT NOW.

You want an inbound link back to your blog or website? Great - leave a comment below with your reactions to the "Ready, Fire, Aim" technique - and you'll have DONE something to build your business. Do it!!!

By three methods may we learn wisdom: First by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is bitterest.
-- Confucius

Let's examine these three methods a little more closely.

Learn by reflection: My friend and mentor, Michael Ray, believes that the question, "What should I do?" is not really a question of action - it's a question of information.

When it comes to small business marketing, whenever you find yourself asking, "What should I do?" there's something you need to find out first: it could be information about yourself, your capabilities, your prospects, your marketplace, your goals, your resources, or your intentions, but there's some piece of information that is missing.

When you have all the information, you will know exactly what to do.

The best way to access this information might be to take 10 steps back from the problem - zoom way, way out - and spend some time on a mental "retreat." The retreat could be as short as an hour, or as long as a week, or even more if you have the time.

Take the time you need to re-examine the situation and your relationship to it. Look inward and explore your intuition and your feelings. If you need more external information, go find it - talk to people, do some research, get out and about.

But always bring that information back and examine it introspectively and holistically to put all the pieces of the puzzle on the table. Then, allow what you see and feel to help you decide what
to do.

Learn by imitation: Best practices are dead. So that's not what I mean by imitation. But if you see something that works in one company or industry, see how that might apply in a cross-pollinating way to your organization - and specifically to the marketing challenge you're trying to acquire wisdom about solving.

For example, what can you learn from:

Southwest Airlines flies to a limited number of cities that are profitable for them. They choose where they want to compete.

AOL used to send out countless millions of subscription CD's for people to try their service firsthand.

Sony prides itself on the speed with which they can take a new idea and prototype it in order to get feedback from internal groups. Their average time to prototype: 5 days.

As composer Igor Stravinsky put it, "A good composer does not imitate; he steals."

Learn by experience: People sometimes make the mistake of assuming that learning by experience is the same as learning from your mistakes. That's only part of it.

Perhaps more important is learning from your successes.

Look for what went right in the past; what successes were easy, effortless, and enjoyable? What did you put into motion that "just clicked" and turned out even better than you expected?

It is these successes that are some of your most powerful teachers in business and in life.

I'm not suggesting that you try to replicate past successes - you can't.

But you can replicate the conditions under which those successes came to be. You can look back and recall the tools, the skills, and the resources that you mobilized. You can start to inventory your strengths, personal preferences, and your own best ways of working.

And those things, if used intentionally and with clarity, are much more likely to serve you well in the future!