Q25: Will I Ever Learn to Love Marketing & Selling?

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Gentle Reader, prepare yourself. I think this might be the one you most need to read but least want to. Nothing sells itself. Which means you do have to learn both marketing and sales, yes. And, in my considerable, experience almost no-one wants to do that. It brings out more bonkersness than almost any other type of question in my work. Marketing accounts for about fifty percent of the work I do. If I didn’t market myself, no-one would ever find me or become a client. And they don’t just need to discover I exist to become a client. They […]

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Selling and Biscuits

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My clients think they don’t like selling. There are a few exceptions. But what surprises them all is how often you don’t have to do what you think of as orthodox selling, i.e. how often you don’t have to persuade people to buy your stuff. People just want it anyway. They’re funny like that! Excitement and Enthusiasm My first thought is about excitement. One client told me that she’d noticed that people so often didn’t look at the lovely printed materials, synopses and presentations she creates for those opportunities where she showcases her work. Instead they look at her, and […]

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Thoughts About Selling

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I love selling. My clients mostly do not. Here are some thoughts about selling which might help. The only thing we cannot control is when. When a client will buy. They will buy when they are good and ready. And their reasons for making that decision are not only about money. They are about how much desire you have created for the thing you are selling, product or service, and if they have enough room in their lives to focus on using well and enjoying their purchase from you. Yes, I know you CAN get them to buy within a […]

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Still Iffy About Selling? Watch Hot Tub Britain!

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If you are still iffy about selling, you have about three weeks left to watch Hot Tub Britain on ITV (see link below). I got so many useful and business relevant thoughts as I was watching this, particularly about how to make an easy sale. Britain has apparently gone mad for hot tubs and the programme shows the UK’s only hot tub superstore, a family-owned business based in Blackpool, turnover £10,000,000. People drive from all over the country to the superstore to buy a hot tub. They love shopping. They have a budget in mind. They pretty much always all […]

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Patience, Persistence and Perspiration

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So the players in the 30DC are feeling the mid-month slump, somewhat disillusioned when they discover that just because they have banged up an Etsy shop  or a website, they haven’t become wealthy overnight – yet. This is the point at which it becomes my job to encourage them simply to Push Through. Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. Napoleon Hill They are finding themselves distracted by things such as the design of their website, the strapline and various other petty annoyances, anything so that they don’t have to do what we all have to do – […]

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Creating Desire: I Want One Of Those

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In the midst of this Great Depression II, cheery news can be hard to find and the newspapers don’t offer much to lighten my mood. But if you look really, really hard amongst the grim stuff, there are still reasons to celebrate and stories of people doing well. A point very well made by Bill Bonner in Money Week is that it isn’t possible for everything to be going down. Thanks to Einstein and Newton, we know there are laws about such things. Alongside what’s going down, something must be going up as a point of reference otherwise everything would […]

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Sell How You Buy

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Lots of my clients get their knickers in a knot about selling, so what I encourage them to do is look at how they buy. And when we do that we realise that most of us love to buy things and have lots of experience of buying, even if we have little experience of selling. So, how do you buy? How do you make a purchasing decision? Are you one of those who spends hours on the net, researching the cheapest model or the best value for money and doing price comparison tests? Do you then go to the shop so […]

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Learn How To Like Marketing and Love Selling

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I love both marketing and selling as it happens but my clients tell me they don’t like marketing and they hate selling. Feel this way too? Let me see if I can find a couple of ways to improve that a tad for you. Let’s do marketing first. It is simply your job to tell enough people in the world about you and what you offer, provide and sell until you hit such a critical mass that the metaphorical phone just rings all the time and often enough to keep you in the lifestyle to which you intend to become […]

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Tips For Getting A New Business Off The Ground by Luke Johnson

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Over the weekend, in The Week, I read these start-up tips by Luke Johnson which were originally published in the Wall Street Journal Europe.   Luke Johnson, chairman of private equity house Risk Capital Partners, has made a success of businesses as varied as Pizza Express, bingo and dentistry. Here are Luke’s tips if you are contemplating going into business for yourself: Consider moonlighting or going part-time. A steady income to cover personal overheads can be a life-saver while you develop your concept. Do what you know. Don’t plunge into a new sector without doing extensive homework. If you start up in […]

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