Discover the Secrets of Effective Marketing
Marketing is an essential part of any business. But it’s not always as simple to do as you might think. It requires a deep understanding of psychology, market research, and the competition. As a result, marketing has become one of the most challenging aspects for businesses to get right—even for successful ones that have been in business for decades.
This article will give you a proven system to help you make decisions and reach your marketing objectives, including:
• How to gain a competitive advantage and outshine your competitors.
• How to understand your target market.
• How to develop effective marketing strategies that will lead to greater sales.
• How to avoid common mistakes that prevent business owners from achieving the maximum results from their marketing campaigns.
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Contents
Part I: Competency Secrets #1: The Importance of Being a Great Person
Chapter 1: The Importance of Being a Great Person
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Why it's important to be a great person
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The importance of being a great person...
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Who was the best salesperson you ever worked with? Was it someone who had an uncanny ability to comprehend the complicated issues in a complex situation, or perhaps one who held an impressive understanding of your company's products and services? Or could it be one who was respected for their character, for consistently delivering great customer service, or for taking care of every detail of her job to ensure nothing went wrong? Let's face it. We all know how important being a great person is.
Why is that so? Because there's simply no substitute for it when it comes to success in business. I'd like to mention a few of the most important traits that successful people have in common. In my experience, they're:
1. They are able to meet and exceed their customers' expectations.
2. They are comfortable speaking with strangers and making them feel like they're valued members of the team.
3. They are in the right place at the right time and don't miss out on opportunities for new business because of it.
Imagine what would happen if you were one of these people...
All of these traits are the result of being a great person. When you possess them, you can be certain that everything else you need to succeed will soon follow.
We live in a time of instant access. New clients can find us and order our services online within minutes. If we want to succeed and grow as businesses, we have to earn their trust, respect and loyalty and sell them on how great it is to do business with us. Their willingness to deal with us is dependent on how well we communicate, how quickly we respond to their needs, whether or not we understand their issues and concerns, our honesty, integrity and transparency with them, and much more besides. The list of traits that people want and expect you to have is long. It's no wonder that it's becoming harder and harder to succeed in business, because unless you're the top dog in your market, you have competitors whose skills and traits are almost identical to yours. If you're going to win them over and make them want to deal with you, then you need to be a great person.
Being a great person requires more than just being friendly. It requires that we know how other people think so we can anticipate what they need from us before they ask for it. With that in mind, let's look at some of the most common things that good people do:
1. They maintain a positive attitude throughout each day.
2. They accept criticism as constructive feedback and learn from it.
3. They get along well with their direct reports and colleagues in a team.
4. They know how to find ways to improve what they're doing, even when they don't feel they can ever get it right the first time.
And here are some traits that people don't want you to have:
1. Negative or combative attitudes or bad moods or a lack of being able to deal with criticism constructively or appropriately
2. A failure to get along with direct reports or colleagues in a team
3. A failure to be self-aware and make the necessary changes needed to improve
In your business, you want to be the person who's great to work with. You want your clients and customers to remember you for your great attitude, friendliness, willingness to help and willingness to go that extra mile when it's needed. You want them to believe in you as they would in a close friend or relative – someone they feel comfortable approaching at any time of day or night.
And don't just think about your clients; think also about the people who work for you. The best people to have on your team are those who genuinely care about you and will go to great lengths to help you.
The most successful people are those who can be trusted, can be relied upon and can make you feel comfortable discussing your issues with them because of their positive attitude, honesty, transparency and integrity. Those traits also set these people apart as having an inner drive to succeed as they're always looking for ways to improve what they do and how they do it.
Of course, you may currently not possess the traits that make you a great person or believe that it's impossible for you to become one. In that case, the only way for you to overcome that issue is through awareness of it.
Conclusion
"To be a great person, you have to think of everything that happens to you as a challenge."
-Gabrielle Bernstein2
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Chapter 2: The Importance of an Authentic Identity
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What's in a name? An identity crisis!
Our identities are formed by our names...and yet it's not always obvious why. I recently spent some time working with one of my clients who structured their business by offering completely different services to different potential clients. A healthcare company, they'd developed software that could provide the ideal digital communication between doctors and patients.