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Secrets to Success
Deborah Cole Micek
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Look at folks as friends, not customers
Today's marketplace is a radically new world for sales professionals. Making sales requires a different vision and marketing mindset. New media has created a whole new paradigm in the world of marketing. If you can embrace it, there's hope for you and your business.
But some, I fear, have been inflicted by the "Sick Sense" and are suffering as a result.
Have you ever noticed how some sales people (network marketers more often than not) suffer from the Sick Sense? Instead of seeing dead people (like Haley Joel Osment did in the movie "Sixth Sense"), they see something very similar. They see everybody and anybody as a prospect. This is an illness that immediately kills their chances of gaining more clients.
They look at a room filled with people and immediately think that there are 200 potential customers in the room instead of seeing 200 friends. They have been afflicted with the Sick Sense from past
old-school marketing training; cornering people, high pressuring them.
What's the cure? Think of people as real human beings and friends; it shifts our energy and conversation.
I was recently asked if there is a shortcut - an easy path for people who don't have the marketing fundamentals, have not read any books on marketing, and are new to entrepreneurship.
Resources, software, and coaching programs are out there that certainly reduce the learning curve. The programs from reputable business owners who have been successful in their own business - aside from just selling information - are the ones I have found most valuable.
Ultimately, though, you still have to put more energy, effort and action into your efforts than the next guy (and use resources to clone yourself and multiply your efforts) in order to be successful.
Personally, here are my thoughts on "easy money" versus "paying your dues" for long-term, lasting success:
If you think you can actually work a four-hour work week and somehow grow a very new business, you're misguided.
For me, it's adding more and more team members, creating a software system to do work for me, and implementing systems that have helped me grow my business - and have a life. It was not without its sacrifices, time, and effort, at least in the beginning stages of my business.
Now I have lots of short cuts working for me, but that did not come magically overnight.
How's that for an unpopular, unmarketing, and un-Internet pitch? That was me talking to you as friends, not prospective clients.
A friend of mine wrote these pearls of wisdom:
"Today, more than ever, it's about value exchange. People give you money when you provide value to them. But, the funny thing is, that's always been the business fundamental.
Deborah Cole Micekis a business coach at RPM Success Group Inc. Reach her at
Deb@RPMsuccess.com or toll-free at (888) 334-8151.