Are you thinking about putting more energy behind marketing efforts?
Perhaps you have a plan you thought about one Tuesday, made a few notes about it, and now it resides in your desk drawer.
Maybe you had a plan and started doing some of the action items, only to get a couple of big jobs. That marketing activity you were doing is now farther down on the list, isn’t it?
Now you are frustrated at yourself and then you get more frustrated because there isn’t enough work coming in the door. Once you get frustrated, it is easy to start looking for a quick fix that you hope will get you back on track.
The hard thing to see when that happens is that a clearly defined target audience + consistent marketing effort + consistent business delivery is the equation for success.
Frustration leading to shortcutting – THAT is your competition. The message is: Don’t play down to your competition.
We have all seen highly-skilled teams in every sport on the planet that lose to inferior teams because they get “taken out of their game.” There are players who lose to less-talented competition because they lose focus and make bad, short-term-focused decisions.
Do you know of anyone who always plays solidly no matter who the competition is? Have you ever seen a team that executes their game plan so well that it doesn’t matter what the other team does, the better team always makes the right decision, or the correct adjustment?
In large part, these are examples of mindset and focus issues. The same issues apply to you in your struggles surrounding marketing, business development, and your business.
Don’t Play Down to the Level of Your Competition.
Sometimes it is hard to realize this, but your competition is NOT another company that happens to sell the same thing you do. YOUR competition is distraction, action without planning, and inconsistent effort.
Some thoughts on how to stay focused, plan for success and sustain your efforts.
1) Train Past the Finish Line:
Another sports analogy that lends itself to business. Great players become great and sustain themselves at that high level because of their effort and focus. Natural ability only goes so far.
Instead of doing just enough to get by, ask yourself what you can do EACH DAY that will take you past your monthly, quarterly, and annual goals. Setting BIG goals forces you to set small goals which then force you to set up Action Item lists that get you to your goals. “Training” past those goals means not being satisfied with “good enough.”
2) Make Your Goals Public:
This is one that I have stolen from the Zenhabits.net blog. Peer pressure, public questioning and shame go A LONG way toward making sure you are doing what you need to be doing.
Putting your goals and plans out in the public eye is a great way of creating good, positive stress around a goal.
3) Develop a Support System:
Business and personal support “teams” or contacts are essential for small business people. Maybe you are in a tight-knit networking group. Or perhaps you have two or three long-time friends you can set up a regular breakfast “meeting” with. Or maybe you need something more formal like coaching or a mastermind group to focus on your business. Whatever “IT” is, building a system of people that help you and you help them as well, can be very useful when you are working on your own or in a small business setting.
4) Consider the Marketing Action Club.
We don’t usually put a DIRECT appeal for the Marketing Action Club program in the blog, but THE REASON we write this blog every day and THE REASON we have set up the Marketing Action Club is because each of us is passionate about helping business owners. So, we help small businesses that struggle with marketing. We are here to help, and we hope you will consider including us as part of your training and as part of your support system.
Please take a little time to review the Marketing Action Club Program.
And if you are curious about us and want to better understand what we are all about, please consider listening in on our upcoming MAC Teleseminar: Fearless Networking – Secrets of the Highly Successful on May 19th at noon. We hope to meet you there!
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