The truth is you’ve probably had enough marketing ideas and tips from me in my emails and blog (and all the other newsletters and blogs you read) to last a lifetime.
Yes, it’s always nice to hear the latest clever tweak or a new twist on marketing.
But the real reason most people aren’t getting the clients they need isn’t because they’re short of marketing ideas or suggestions.
It’s because they’re struggling to implement those ideas.
Sometimes the issue is not knowing, out of all the different things you could be doing, which are the critical few that will bring the biggest results. I’ll be talking about this in a few weeks time.
But for now I want to talk about a problem I see many people suffering from. One I’ve always struggled with myself.
It’s where you know what to do. You even know how to do it (at least well enough).
But for one reason or another you just never find the time to do it.
Client work gets in the way. Or those important emails. Or expenses. Or maintaining your presence on Linkedin by answering questions in groups. Or keeping in contact with people on Twitter. Or any one of a host of things which in truth is nowhere near as important as the marketing thing you’re avoiding.
For me, I’ve found that the root of this type of avoidance behaviour is because I find some elements of marketing just – well – harder than others.
Writing is fairly easy for me. And I’ve learned to enjoy playing with websites and online stuff. But picking up the phone and calling someone: not something I relish.
And the kind of deep thinking you need to do to create new products and services and figure out what exactly your clients need, while not exactly painful is certainly very hard work.
And so often it doesn’t get done.
Not that I don’t realise I have to do the tough stuff eventually. But I manage to convince myself that I don’t have to do it now.
Keep telling yourself that every day and pretty soon that important task just hasn’t got done.
You might find the same with some of the marketing tasks you know you should be doing but just never manage to do. The ones you feel the least comfortable doing.
What I found helped me break the cycle was to clarify for myself the impact of that task and link it to my overall goals.
So, for example, when I found I needed to make a bunch of calls to potential clients that I didn’t feel so comfortable doing I calculated how many of those calls I would need to make on average per day to hit my revenue goal (assuming a certain percentage turned into clients).
I then wrote that number down in thick marker pen on a post-it note and stuck it above my computer.
Every time I thought about checking email or doing something easy instead of making those calls I just looked at the post-it note and got a stark reminder of what I needed to do to get something I really wanted.
In fact the post-it technique worked so well I still use it today for all my critical-but-not-so-easy tasks.
Give it a go yourself. Just clarify for yourself the connection between what it is you need to do but keep putting off and a big important goal. Then stick that note prominently within sight where you work.
You’ll be surprised at just how effective it is.
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