I'm A Great Marketer But.....
Recently I received a call from a woman who told me that for some reason her business was just not taking off. She had great products. She had no problem going out and calling on prospective new vendors. She was out in a business sharing her frustrations at getting her venture going and wondered if she should quit. How did she find me? Well, you know how women talk at the hairdressers. She was at the same Hair Salon that I patronize.
They gave her my card …… that lead to this conversation. She assured me that her products were great, she had a web site, the products were very popular, and she had absolutely no problem going out and promoting herself. BUT she was having trouble paying her bills.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Assuming she is not reckless in her spending or that her margins are not too skinny, one has to assume that for some reason or other she is not selling enough product. She was too close to the problem to see what was really going wrong in the process. I challenged her on a few things that she said, gave her some insight into what was going on and asked her to be accountable for her actions. We agreed we would connect and meet the following week.
Instead of meeting I received an email from her saying: “Guess what? I sold lots of product. Enough to pay my bills. Thanks for the chat last week. I just want to say thanks. After our talk, I just put it out there. I made a deal with someone to have exclusive rights to one of my products.”
From my perspective,…you never know where your business referrals will come from so it's good to have lots of champions out there. From the clients perspective …sometimes you are too close to a problem to have a true insight into what is really going on and it just takes a nudge from someone detached, someone with experience to set you on the right track.
Have you noticed that storytelling is coming back in a big way? Life Caching is something that Generation C (stands for anyone that uses technology to be creative) is into in a big way. Camera phones, digital photography and movies, and the ability to easily manipulate those photos once taken, Xingtone that lets you produce your own musical creations or Blogs that allow the posting of thoughts..as they happen. If you watch TV you are seeing the result of this trend. Ordinary lives are documented and sold back to us as programming, companies buy advertising on these shows, and we watch them. Opportunities to capitalize on this trend are only as limited as your imagination!
