Where Should I Network?
Building business relationships through networking is a great way to build your business. The caveat? It's a slow process. What are some of your options? There are many leads groups, different chamber mixers, other focused networking events and even online networking where you can meet people. What's the best route for you? It depends. Make sure that the groups you attend include your target market or the type of businesses that you can build a strategic alliance with. I recommend a mix of face-to-face and online networking. Most groups allow you to attend one or two meetings before you're required to join. Check out a few. Make sure the group feels right and fits with your overall business goals. Once you've decided on the appropriate groups, get involved! It's the best way for people to get to know you and your business. A word of caution. Remember, networking is about relationships. Don't expect to walk into a new group and start slapping your brochure and business card into everyone's hands (unless that's the meeting format). In an unstructured networking environment it's a sure fire way to turn people off. Denise O'Berry is a small business expert who helps small business owners take action to grow their business. Learn more about how to be a successful small business owner at http://www.smallbiz-bootcamp.com
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As much as you love those long-term clients or established products, because of their longevity, it gets harder and harder to come up with the next brilliant product.
But never fear. Here are three ways to get those creative juices (and new ideas) flowing.
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The key word is modify, not copy. I don't want anyone committing copyright infringement. What I'm talking about is using an existing ad to jump-start your own ideas. Maybe you really like the use of an evocative photo with a single caption. Or the use of repetition in Mastercard's "Priceless" campaign. Or the idea of turning the "money can't buy everything" on its head (which is essence of that campaign). Can you use that concept in your campaign?
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2. Check out what a completely different industry is doing. For instance, let's say you sell software products to computer professionals. Techy market, right? So, pick up a yoga magazine. See how that industry communicates with its audience. Now try selling your product using the same language and concepts. Take it a step further and brainstorm ways your software product is similar to doing yoga.
This is a very powerful way to jolt your own thinking and start your muse down a completely different path you might never have discovered before.
3. Force a connection. With this idea, force a connection with a random object rather than an entire industry. You ask yourself, how is your software program similar to a stuffed dog? Write down everything you can think of, no matter how silly or foolish. Sometimes the foolish ideas are the ones that lead to the great ones.
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First, some background on today's topic. I've had a terrible week. Not
terrible as in I got nothing done because I did actually get quite a bit done.
But man, I struggled. And I didn't even really understand why.
I have to admit, most of what I got done happened between Thursday and Sunday.
Have you ever had a week like that where you struggled to get things done?
Or worse yet, struggled and didn't get anything done? Or maybe it just FELT LIKE
you didn't accomplish anything?
I hate weeks like that and I rarely feel that way. So why was this week
different? At first, I couldn't put my finger on anything specific. Looking back
and replaying my week in my mind didn't cause anything to stand out either. In
short, nothing really clicked as the cause for the way I was feeling and acting.
So then I decided to do what I always do when I am trying to solve a problem. I
just kinda let it go for a while and did something else.
And THEN, I finally figured out what the problem was!
It wasn't anything specific about THIS week. It was related to something I had
done several weeks ago. And it's very ironic that this was the cause of my
problem.
You see, several weeks ago I had drafted my 90 marketing plan. This document
describes what I plan to do in my Big Ticket Marketing efforts over a 3 month
period.
It's actually not that hard to figure out but it is something that you need to
track closely and see which weeks of marketing effort have the biggest payoff.
In other words, you want to track which things you did that resulted in the
biggest payoff in sales, opt-ins by potential customers, joint ventures,
branding, etc.
Basically all the stuff we need to do to as part of our Big Ticket Marketing
efforts. We want to repeat those things that give us the largest payoff in our
next 3 month marketing plans and drop those things that didn't work out. And of
course we always try new things that we think will work, as well.
Anyway, the reason that I was struggling and feeling like I wasn't accomplishing
this week was because...
I was in OVERWHELM!
I had a lot of tasks I wanted to accomplish, because I'm an ambitious guy. I
want to do well and I have a lot of goals I want to reach. This is all fine, but
the point of having a 90 day marketing plan is so that it will be easy to focus
on the specific set of tasks that I need to accomplish each week by focusing on
ONLY ONE main area each week.
And normally, this system is very effective at keeping me focused. But,
ironically, the act of creating the 90 day marketing plan made me look at
everything I had to accomplish in the next 3 months and I was sort of stuck in
that mode. I wasn't being effective at focusing on this weeks tasks because I
was in OVERWHELM thinking about everything I had to get done, overall.
Have you ever experienced that?
I think we all have at one point or another.
However, I am disappointed that I didn't recognize what was going on sooner. My
background as a software engineer for Microsoft forced me to be pretty
disciplined about focusing on what I needed to do and what our team needed to do
every week to accomplish our goals. And sometimes the ship cycles lasted between
1.5 to 2 years.
Plus I have a black belt in Hapkido (a Korean martial art like a cross between
Tae Kwon Do and Aikido), which requires a lot of training discipline, patience,
practice and long term view. But at the same time requires you to learn and work
on smaller portions of the entire body of techniques, patterns, because that is
the only way you can really learn what you need to know.
Anyway, my point is that I should know better and yet I still fell into the fear
from OVERWHELM. And I think everyone experiences not only overwhelm but other
fears about what they want to do as well.
The title of this article promised you a simple secret to keep your fears from
holding you back - from selling Big Ticket Items. Can you guess what the secret
is?
I'll give you a hint. It's not really a secret at all. In fact everyone knows
about this but unfortunately not everyone knows what to do especially in a case
like overwhelm.
Ready... the secret is ACTION!
Yes, ACTION. Now you are probably wondering... "Hey, wait a sec, you just said
you were in overwhelm, how can action possibly be the secret for that?"
Napoleon Hill, in his book "Think and Grow Rich" said, "Action is the real
measure of intelligence". Thomas Huxley said: "The great end of life is not
knowledge but action." Intelligence means nothing, action means everything.
I knew what I had to do this week and yet I was struggling to do it. I even had
a 90 day marketing plan with each week spelled out for me and yet I was stuck. I
got unstuck when I realized I was overwhelmed and decided to do something about
it. What I decided to do was to take action. But the type of action I decided to
take was influenced by my precious experience both in software development and
martial arts.
Have you heard of Kaizen?
Kaizen is a Japanese word which basically means 'continuous and incremental
improvement'. The word came from when the Japanese were introduced to the work
of W. Edward Deming when he was stationed in Japan to help them rebuild after
World War II. While there, Deming introduced them to what later became know as
Total Quality Management.
What I like about Kaizen is that it takes small action steps over time to solve
problems. The beauty of this approach is that you can take something that
currently seems daunting or puts you in overwhelm and start by only focusing on
one small step that you can take to help improve the problem. The small step is
so easy that you bypass your overwhelm and fears and just do that one small
step. Then after a little while you introduce another small step and
continuously improve the situation or problem until it is solved.
So in this way you CAN take action, even if it is very small, and slowly over
time each action you take has an effect that builds on all the others and
creates an unstoppable force until your problem has been solved. The fact that
the action is so small makes it easy for you to do SOMETHING and not focus on
how much you have to do.
Maybe a short example will help. One of my goals is to increase the readership
of my articles and to get more people exciting about Big Ticket Marketing. One
of the best ways to do that is to get my blog and my articles out to as many
readers as I can. So this week, I wanted to get my Blog and my articles listed
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software to help me do this.
Guess how many directories and list locations there are?
Well... there are over 1000 just in the built in database in the software I am
using.
I kept putting this off, because I had a bunch of other stuff I needed to get
done as well. But this was a major focus for me this week. Finally, what I
decided to do was to just add my information to ONE directory or list every time
I finished another task. Breaking it down so that I only had to worry about one
entry every so often REALLY helped me make some progress in this area, without
worrying about how many there were.
I still have a long way to go, but my initial goal was to get listed in 20-25
sites and I'm currently sitting at 17. A few more sites and I will have met my
goal!
Plus, Kaizen is really how I study martial arts so the process is very familiar
to me even when applied to something else.
Ok, so the one 1 simple step you need to take anytime you have a fear to conquer
or an overwhelming situation to deal with is to decide on one simple action that
you can do in a very short amount of time that will ultimately help you solve
your problem. Do this, and then increase what you are doing in that area by a
little bit each time and before you know it you will have your problem solved.
Try this! It works amazingly well with very little effort. And you get a huge
amount of satisfaction knowing that you are taking steps to accomplish what you
want to get done... and you'll be doing it almost effortlessly.
By the way, if you want a great little resource on how to apply Kaizen, you
should get The Kaizen Way - One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert
Maurer. It's a relatively recent book and a quick read at 182 pages. You can
find it on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble online. Maybe this is your first small
action step.
Also, check out the resource box below for some websites that will give you some
resources you can really use related to your Big Ticket Marketing efforts!
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