If You're Like Me, You Like To Save Time By Learning From Others
I've been in the marketing business my whole life, or so it seems. I've had a lot of successes along the way and my share of failures.
In those 35 years since college, I've learned what works and what doesn't in the areas where I specialize. Some things I studied and tried on my own, some I had to learn the hard way, and some things were pointed out to me.
If you’re like me, you like to save time by learning from others who have “already been there.” Why reinvent the wheel when it’s already been invented.
Here are some ideas that can help you save time and make more money.
1. One Small Step Can Change Your Life
The number one thing I've learned in all my years as a marketer is that one small step can work wonders. It's all about learning a new habit, a new way of being.
You've got to ease into any new behavior gradually and then keep at it.
I knew a woman who wanted to quit smoking. She'd tried many times but failed. She just couldn't get up in the morning without having a cigarette with her morning coffee, it was that deeply ingrained in her.
She couldn't do it on her own, so she took a program at a local hospital. She was taught, over the course of eight weeks, to gradually wean the cigarettes from her life.
The first morning, she had a whole cigarette with coffee, the next week, she only smoked ¾, the week after that, she had ½ a cigarette at breakfast.
She followed this regime, and at the end of eight weeks, she didn't want to smoke at breakfast. She had quit smoking with no withdrawals, no cravings, no hair pulling.
It wasn’t easy, but she did it.
Ease into your new behaviors gradually, in increments that you can handle easily.
Don't start contacting 100 people on the first day. Start off with 10. Move up to 20 the second week, 30 the third week and so on.
Before you know it, you'll have developed a new, constructive habit that will help you grow your business to amazing heights.
2. Nothing Substitutes For Experience
Nothing beats experience. And the only way to get experience is to get out there and DO IT.
You can only read so much about maximizing profits, driving more traffic to your site, and having successful affiliate programs. At some point you've got to experience it for yourself, see what it's like to set up you own site, and start the ball rolling.
Just get out there and go for it.
Remember: I'll always be here to help you through the tough spots.
Think of this site as an oasis of support. Come back here with your questions (and believe me, you'll have questions) and I'll get you the answer as soon as possible.
Leave comments here on my blog – I read them all and comment back. Let the community know how you're doing. Tell us about your successes as well as the things you'd do differently next time.
And if you find you want MORE help, maybe you’re ready for my next website with Dr. Marc Kossmann: PersonalSuccessMarketing.com – Click Here To Learn More!
3. Copy Successful Businesses
Is there a website that you admire? One that seems to be successful, one that provides a valuable service, one that you'd like to imitate?
More on Charlie Seymour Jr's 10 Tips for Marketing Success
The Fourth Key: Relationships – Apparent Expertise
I have a long family history in theater: I know what it takes to "play the part."
Have you ever seen a politician on TV delivering some really sad news but he seems to be smiling? YIKES… what mixed signals that delivers!
We must be careful in our businesses to deliver a consistent message in everything we do… and then we must "look the part."
We must have the real expertise AND the appearance of the expertise.
For example,
- A very overweight person might look like a great chef, but perhaps not the dietitian.
- A young woman with bright orange hair and a pierced eyebrow might be a terrific rock singer, but she'd have a tough time convincing middle-aged woman that she will deliver a decent haircut.
- A doctor can dress in a sportshirt on a TV show, but studies have shown that most of us have more confidence in our doctors when they dress in their white lab coats (with their names embroidered on them).
Silly?
Perhaps.
But the expression, "You can't tell a book by its cover" came about because that is exactly what people DO.
We all make judgments all the time. And when the physical look equals what we expect, we feel more confident in the person delivering the service to us.
Keep that in mind next time you meet a client. Do you look the part?
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 082The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 4. Apparent Expertise
The Fourth Key: Relationships – Speed
Speed kills – on the highway, anyway. And put a bit of ice on the road, and it doesn't even have to be all that fast.
But in business, sometimes speed is needed.
You know: when a client wants an order right away… or a proposal… or a referral.
In today's Internet world, people often expect things at the speed of light.
So when someone sends you a fax or an email, they often want the answer immediately.
Whoa – Set Proper Expectations
How Available Are You To Clients?
Clients learn from me very quickly that they cannot "get to me" at a moment's notice. Some of my friends are horrified at that, but once my clients understand that if I allowed everyone with a whim to interrupt me, then they'd see that I wouldn't be able to get THEIR work done.
Phone calls are scheduled.
Email is answered twice a day.
I don't give out my cell phone except to clients with paid agreements (who must know how to contact me in case an appointment or meeting out of the office is changed) and to my family. Others can leave messages on my main number (610.572.2581) or email me (Charlie @ 'CharlesSeymourJr.com)
It used to be when people could first send a fax that they'd press the "send" button and then begin to wonder why I hadn't called with the answer. It didn't matter that I was out of the office and never saw the fax, they wanted their answer.
Email and texting has made that even more complicated.
Here's My Advice In The 21st Century Of Communication
Set expectations.
Tell your clients WHEN they can contact you and WHEN they can expect a reply.
Teach them to respect your time – if your work is excellent AND they understand the ground rules, they will quickly learn how to comply.
Oh, sure: perhaps the old saying "Under Promise and Over Deliver" is still good. But be sure to set expectations so that you can deliver on what you promise.
Forget that faxes and email and texting are immediate; forget that FedEx and UPS can deliver over night.
Decide how you want YOUR business to act, and then live up to that.
Set your guidelines, communicate them well, and stick to them. You'll have loyal clients when you do.
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 081The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 3. Speed
The Fourth Key: Relationships – What Produces Trust? Protectiveness
Everything that happens between you and a client must remain just between the two of you.
Think of it like the doctor-patient confidentiality. (Do I REALLY want all the neighbors to know what prescriptions I'm taking? No way…)
If a client is to be happy with you and trust that what he says remains between the two of you, he will open up and tell you what you need (so you can do the best job to help him) when he completely trusts that you will protect that information and not give it to anyone else.
However, if he does NOT feel that confident in you, he will hold back and you won't be able to do your best work.
Think of THIS too – when you tell details about some of your other clients, you can be assured that your client is thinking "If he will tell me about his other client, who is he going to tell about ME?!"
You NEED for your clients to be open with you, so treat everything they say as confidential, and you'll be safe!
And so will they!
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 080 The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 2. Trust
The Fourth Key: Relationships – What Produces Trust? Integrity
Integrity – keeping our word AND maintaining our quality.
Have you ever taken "stock" of all the promises you make people when running your business?
-
Producing work on time
Delivering the BEST work possible
Creating a product or service that they can depend on no matter how many times they hire you
Generating great work for all the leads they give you, so that THEY look good in the eyes of their friends and clients when they recommend you
What's MOST important is delivering the SAME great quality every time.
When we buy a car, we expect the quality to be as good or better as the last one.
When we ask our accountants to do some work for us, we expect the same high quality of work (there are NO excuses for "fair" work)
When we get our hair cut or a portrait photograph created or need our house painted, we come to depend on the same quality time and time again from those people with whom we do business.
And if that quality slips, it's easy for us to take our business elsewhere… JUST as it's easy for our clients to walk away from us.
So – do GREAT work EVERY TIME and build up the trust your clients have in you.
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 079 The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 2. Trust
The Fourth Key: Relationships – What Produces Trust? Predictability
My younger daughter is planning her wedding (as I write this).
It's never easy to tell someone how to get things "to work out" between any two people, but I found myself giving her a bit of advice the other day.
I told her how Mom and I just started taking responsibility for certain things around the house… and it's been working pretty well for 28 years of marriage.
Pam, for years, has worked OUT of the house and my office is IN the house. So I told her than no matter how much of a super woman she is, she isn't SuperWoman.
She just could NOT do all the (to some people) typical female activities around the house.
Every Monday, I do the laundry – wash and fold and put it in a basket on our bed so when she comes home, she can put her clothes away. Her pants are hung over the railing outside the laundry room next to our bedroom so she can put them on pants hangers.
Pam does the grocery shopping and when I'm here, I help her put it away.
She usually cooks one roast or chicken a week and we both then prepare our own dinners and salads (and usually eat them together). And if she cooks, I clean up (well, most of the time – especially for a dinner like Thanksgiving when we host our extended family).
I vacuum the upstairs weekly – my office, the hallway, our bedroom, our bathroom, the walk-in closet. That way any cat litter the cat has tracked into our room will be cleaned up. And any dog hair on my office carpet will be vacuumed before my computers suck it into their processors.
So… what's the point here?
If either Pam or I one day just STOPPED doing what has fallen naturally to us OR if either of us gets erratic in how we accomplish our chores, we'd lose faith in the other one and we'd lose all sense of predictability.
This doesn't mean that Pam brings home the same food every week or that I have to clean exactly the same clothes every week.
We still have choices in what we do… but we've come to rely on the other to get things done.
Makes for a good marriage, good partnership, and good client/owner relationship.
I THINK that helped my daughter understand our relationship better… time will tell!
I HOPE it helped YOU!
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 078 The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 2. Trust
Soar Above The Rest By Design
[Note – Please know that I am NOT against college or graduate level education. I have both a BA and an MBA myself. But if you do NOT, don’t let it hold you back!]
So you're thinking about joining the world of the self-employed but you're concerned because you don't have a college education. How can you compete against people who have gone to some of the best business schools in the country? In the world?
Relax.
Some of the world's most successful businesspeople grew their empires without the benefit of higher education.
Let These People Inspire You
When you think about it, one of the big things you've missed is paying 100 grand (or more) to have some professor tell you how to fit into a box. Perhaps for YOUR life, you're much better off being a free-thinker like the following movers and shakers:
Diana Spencer never attended college and wasn't a very good student, but there was something about her that grabbed the attention of the world.
Diana supported charities that brought attention to health matters such as AIDS and leprosy. She was a patron of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and that work still goes on today in her name.
She was kind, beautiful, and empathetic, and when she died in the Paris tunnel, a little part of all of us died with her highness.
Peter Jennings, the urbane ABC news anchor, dropped out of a Canadian high school at the age of 17. That didn't prevent him from becoming one of the most famous foreign correspondents in the United States.
After over ten years abroad he returned stateside to act as the anchor of ABC Evening News. Who can forget his coverage of the World Trade Center collapse, or the night he announced lung cancer was forcing him to retire?
Wanna travel into space? Well, you might give Virgin Galactic a call. That's one of Richard Branson's companies. Sir Richard never went to college, but Virgin is one of the most recognizable and popular brands in the world.
And he's a Knight of the British Empire. Not bad for a high school dropout.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of our most celebrated novelists, dropped out of Princeton because he wasn't a very good student. That didn't stop him from writing The Great American Novel.
Although not very popular when first published, The Great Gatsby is number two on Modern Library's list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th century. Another of his books, Tender is the Night, is number 28 on the same list.
Another great American writer, William Faulkner, dropped out of high school in his sophomore year.
Faulkner, too, has two books on Modern Library's list: The Sound and The Fury at number 6, and As I Lay Dying at number 35. (By the way, number 1 on the list is ULYSSES by James Joyce.)
In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pretty good for a man with no formal education.
When Henry Ford landed in Detroit, cars were built by hand, one-by-one. He figured out how to speed up the process using an assembly line and interchangeable parts.
He also advocated high wages for his employees, which lessened turnover and improved the workers' quality of life.
More on Successful Entrepreneur – No, You Don't Need A College Education to be Successful
Soar Above The Rest By Design
You're familiar with the myth of the phoenix, the legendary firebird that dies every 500 years only to be reborn from its ashes, more beautiful and resplendent than ever before?
That's what you're looking to do, isn't it? Rise from the ashes of your old life and be reborn as a successful businessperson?
Fortunately, the way has been traveled before. Many folks have had to start from scratch and grow a business from the ground up. I call them the Phoenix Entrepreneurs.
The Phoenix Entrepreneur Rising From The Ashes
Just like the bird, Phoenix Entrepreneurs rise from the ashes of an old life, a life that was no longer viable.
In the beginning, they felt just like you probably do now: scared, unsure, and probably pretty alone.
Yet they made it.
They created businesses that have withstood the test of time and nourished not only their own families, but the families of hundreds (if not thousands) of employees. If you don't believe me, just read No, You Don't Need a College Education to be Successful And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
There are Phoenix Entrepreneurs all over the place. It's an illustrious group and one you can join! All it takes is following a few simple steps and thinking a certain way.
If you need a point clarified, just ask. Leave a message on the blog and you'll get not only my years of experience, but the experience of all the others who respond to your question.
Ready?
Keep reading to find out how Phoenix businessmen and businesswomen think and act to grow a successful business.
Think Like The Phoenix Entrepreneur To Succeed
More on Successful Entrepreneur – The Phoenix Way to Unlimited Success And Happiness
The Fourth Key: Relationships – Faux Relationships
It's amazing to me how much good information some companies have about their clients and customers but how poorly they use it.
I'm pretty good friends with the owner of a large car dealership in my area. I admire him, his family, and what he's been able to do with building a good business. (And to preserve this, I won't identify him specifically – HE is not what matters nor does his dealership; what matters is how he responds, which is similar to what many businesses do… so I hope you can see the lessons here.)
I get my car serviced in his shop, I've purchased several cars from him, and I've recommended him to others (which has resulted in more purchases).
But I can't get him to send me a personal note no matter what I tell him.
Understand this: the "itch" cycle for someone in the US (for buying a new car) begins around 30 months after a purchase.
That's right – people start thinking about a new car after about 2.5 years of driving their present car.
[OK... so in the 2008 - 2009 Worldwide Economic Meltdown timetables have been stretched as the economy is tight... but go along with me so you can see the point I'm making.]
Don't get me wrong: I get LOTS of mail from the company (the manufacturer of the car). Brochures, mass-produced mailings, even some letters and postcards that pretend to come from the dealer, but it's so clear that everything is sent from corporate headquarters, not my friend.
He has never once asked me to buy another car from him.
His service technician is the person I've stayed most closely in touch with, yet this guy isn't compensated in a way to encourage his asking me about buying a new car, so he doesn't.
How easy it would be for my service writer to tell me about some of the improvements made to the most recent version of my car – he doesn't need to "push" – I have great faith in this guy who continues to get my car to the front of the line when I need service.
And every time I get one of those "corporate" letters that "seems" to be from my dealer, it gets me angry – "Do they really think I'm so stupid that I can't tell that this wasn't sent to me by my friend," I think.
And that's what YOUR clients think, too, when you personalize a mailing (in name only).
Send a brief note to your best clients to stay in touch.
Building PersonalTouch relationships takes time and care – hey, that's how YOU want to be treated, right?
Do the same for your clients and they will reward you with years of doing business together.
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 077 The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 1. Natural Affinity
When You See Something Magic: Tell People
Brad Ross is that unique combination of performer, salesman, marketer, and carnival barker. Up close and personal he's a helluva guy: to his audiences he's a master.
Just watch this short video to see how well he markets to his audience of magician, requesting that they join us on a Webinar to talk about how to set up themselves online.
Brad is a guy to watch by MORE than creative performers.
He's a guy to watch if you want to be successful!
Brad Ross – Go to MakeMagicMoney.com to learn more about Brad – Click Here Now!
More on The Magic of Marketing to Magicians – Watch Brad Ross To Learn!
The Fourth Key: Relationships – Enough About You – Let's Talk About Me
I'll keep this pointed at "me" the way Harry Beckwith does in his book The Invisible Touch, so you can see how this feels to YOU (and then I'll change it at the end of the post… stay focused for that!)
When I worked for Jackson-Cross Company selling investment real estate, one of the messages I was told to communicate (when I was the Vice President for Marketing and Planning) was that the company had been doing business since 1876.
Wow… that's a long time.
And the files were filled with photographs from earlier in the 20th century to prove much of it.
And some of the work done around Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA USA (like appraising lots of houses so they could be torn down to make way for the National Park Services's Independence Mall area) was legendary.
And in later years, the company appraised the Penn Central Railroad in the largest real estate appraisal assignment in history.
But who cares!??
Do YOU care? Would you care if you had a property to sell or an appraisal assignment you needed finished?
Do you care about those who are no longer with the company, many of whom are no longer even alive?
OR… do you want to know what the company can do for YOU?
Hey, when someone wants to provide ME with a service, I want them to talk about ME… not some dead guys from the previous century.
And do I care what their president said in his last Thanksgiving proclamation OR that they keep all their profits in the local city and don't send it back to headquarters miles away?
Nawwwww… I ONLY care what they can do for ME. Tell me about ME, please. Show me why I'm important.
And don't you see that that is how ALL clients really feel?
They don't want to be a number. They don't care what your logo font is or the color palate you select to help with the graphic image of your company.
So THAT is what is meant by Let's Talk About ME!
Put yourself in your clients shoes, know he wants you to talk about HIM/HER.
Do that, and you'll create a good relationship. Talk about something he/she doesn't care about, and you might as well be talking to the wall.
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 076 The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 1. Natural Affinity
The Fourth Key: Relationships – Embracing The Inevitable
Have you ever worked with someone, your results were great, you got along well, but SOMETHING – something just didn't seem right?
I've often known people like that.
It's how we approach life or how we respect the time we share together or how important we see each other's abilities.
SOMETHING just isn't right.
I had a boss once (back in my "corporate" days) who seldom found time for the work I was doing. He told everyone else how important the work was, how everyone had to jump to it and get their work accomplished, but every time I wanted to talk with him about our progress (and how the rest of the team was coming along), he had no time available.
Several times he said, "Hey, walk with me to the men's room and we'll talk about it." The first time I did it… after that I'd say, "Nawwww… when you have some time to chat, let me know, ok?"
I quickly saw that if this work wasn't important enough to HIM, it sure wasn't important enough to ME.
I learned from that that I will only work on a project that is important. OK… it doesn't have to be finding a cure for pediatric cancer, but I'll never work with anyone who doesn't share my passion for the work I'm doing.
No client will hire me if he/she doesn't feel the work is important, no matter HOW much I am paid.
It's inevitable: none of us will get along with everyone.
We may not be able to put our finger on WHY we aren't in sync with a certain person, but when we find that to be the case, we must move on.
And so, I moved on from that corporate job and haven't looked back.
How many of YOUR clients should you move on from?
And now – leave me a comment here to tell me what YOU feel about this!
More on 075 The Invisible Touch – The Eight Keys to Lasting Relationships – 1. Natural Affinity
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