Jim's Marketing Blog

Marketing tips and ideas to help you grow your business

Are you paying attention? Or are you just listening? The difference is hugely important.

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decision making, paying attention

There’s a big difference between paying attention… and listening.

Yes, listening is indeed one way to pay attention.

But commercially, we learn a lot more about a person, a company culture or a company as a whole when we pay attention to what they do. Their actions reflect their motivations, beliefs and priorities with much greater accuracy than their convincing, carefully polished words.

Here’s what one of my mentors taught me when I started out in business. It’s saved me from making bad decisions countless times over the past 25 years or so.

What people say, is what they want us to think they will do. What people do, is what they actually do.

I’ve found that advice to be enormously valuable, before making any important, commercial decisions. I hope you find it equally useful.

Image isn’t everything. But it matters

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business image, branding, clues

Image: Andre Hunter.

In business, the image you create isn’t everything.

Not even close.

But your image does matter. It matters a lot.

That’s because people are paying attention. Your prospective clients or customers, your marketplace and your competitors are watching. They’re looking for clues, pointers, tips and hints on how to judge your personal brand and commercial brand.

They want to know why, how or if you should matter to them.

Here’s the thing… when you take time to give them a hint, they’ll take the hint. No, not everyone. And no, not always. But a significant number of people and often enough.

With that in mind, there’s an all-important question worth pondering.

What kind of hints are you giving and are they attracting the right responses from the right people?

When you’ve run out of all possible options

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Get unstuck, problem solving

Image: Ian Schneider.

… you haven’t!

There’s always an answer. A way forward. A way to turn things around. A way to get the outcome you need.

  • Often, the answer you need is already within you, but you need to dig a little deeper in order to uncover it. Start by asking yourself a better version of the question you need answering; because better questions will always lead you to better answers. Try taking your challenge for a walk, something creative people have done for centuries, with great success, in order to find the answers they need.
  • Sometimes, another person already has the answer you need. So talk to people. Especially those with specific, expert experience in the relevant area you’re challenged with. Your answer could be literally, just one conversation away.
  • Other times, the answer you need is in a book, a blog post, an article or newsletter. Thousands, maybe millions of other people have already had and resolved, the same core challenge as you. Many of them have shared how they overcame it. So do the reading.

The key thing here, is that once you’ve accepted that there is an answer, you’re now free to focus 100% on finding it. And knowing this makes all the difference.

Think.

Talk.

Read.

You’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll find exactly what you need, my friend.

Mini marketing campaigns: Let your clients grow your business

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mini Marketing campaign, client referrals

Many of the most effective forms of marketing, don’t feel much like marketing at all. The mini marketing campaigns idea I’m about to share with you, is one such example. I hope you’ll find it as useful as I did, when I initially uncovered it.

Let’s go.

Often, the service we receive is really good. And in fairness, this happens a lot more often than not. The reason we tend not to remember it, is precisely because it happens so frequently. There’s a lot of forgotten, really good service around.

Today’s post is about what happens when we crank things up and offer a service that’s even better than really good. It’s about what happens when we’re providing a level of service that our clients (or customers) WILL remember. A level of service that’s better than it needed to be, which delights our clients and gives them a story to share.

And that’s just the start!

Mini marketing campaigns

When we do more than expected, more than we need to, we transform our client interactions (work flow) into an extremely valuable series of mini marketing campaigns. Each of these campaigns helps us to grow our business on many fronts. And without even knowing it, we’re growing our business on multiple levels all day, every day.

Multiple levels?

Yep.

As you’d expect, when we consistently provide a service where we do more than we need to, it motivates our clients to tell their friends about us.

And that’s great.

But the benefits are way bigger than that!

  • It deepens our client’s trust in us.
  • In addition, it vastly increases the value of our services to our clients.
  • Plus it earns greater loyalty from our clients.
  • And as a natural consequence, we’re likely to retain them as clients for far, far longer.

And it’s so easy to do

This part may come as a surprise, given the many, huge benefits of this approach. The extra effort required is actually, surprisingly small.

That’s because like every pattern of work, doing more than we need to soon becomes a habit. It becomes our natural way of working. And we don’t need to remind ourselves when something is a habit. In fact, habits can be a lot harder to break than to acquire.

It takes a little while for everything to gel, but think in terms of days or weeks, rather than months. Once it becomes habitual, you’re not even aware you’re doing it.

The effort required is tiny. Because by simply going about your typical working day, you’ll be automatically marketing your services in multiple, valuable ways.

Let’s look at closing the sale

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Closing the sale, sales closers, closers

Image: Linkedin sales solutions.

When I started out in sales and marketing, it was all about closing the sale.

In fact, good salespeople were often referred to as good closers.

Decades later, I still see sales recruiters asking for candidates who have a proven record of closing.

Here’s why we need to be extremely careful before adopting the closing mindset, or any of the countless closing tricks and techniques.

Closing for business?

The challenge with the closing mindset, is that it positions the prospective customer as little more than a barrier. A hurdle between you and the sale. An obstacle to be overcome. Little wonder so many closing techniques are based on psychological tricks.

The use of long, uncomfortable silences at key points in the sales process, for example, is used to put pressure on the prospective client. So is refusing to accept a “no” from them, by asking what they need additional clarity on, each time they clearly just want out.

In a nutshell, the focus is on outmanoeuvring your opponent. It’s them against you. A confrontation.

Here’s a very different approach, along with why I strongly recommend you use it.

Opening relationships

I built my reputation in sales by adopting the polar opposite approach. Instead of focusing on closing, I focused on opening.

Opening relationships, to be exact.

I found (and still find) the idea of closing to be self-defeating. I discovered that you can achieve a great deal more, by opening relationships with people. This means taking time to listen to them. And then learning about their challenges and what they want / need. If our marketing is targeted correctly, we’re automatically only speaking with people who are our ideal profile of client.

When handled correctly, and preceded with effective marketing, this means there’s no need to close anything (or close on anyone).

The whole process becomes a naturally-flowing conversation, where we seek to help people overcome a challenge, with the products or services we provide.

It’s a beautiful, fulfilling way to do business.

It also means refusing to sell anything to anyone, if we believe it’s not what they need.

Too passive?

This approach may sound passive, but consider your friends. Consider the people you like. The people you trust. The people you love to have around you. Are they aggressive towards you? Confrontational? No! That’s because we prefer those who respect us and are open and honest with us.

We like people who are open and honest.

We buy from people who are open and honest.

We trust people who are open and honest.

We recommend people who are open and honest.

In short, the more open we are, the more opportunities we’re open to. And yes, the more sales we make, the more deals we make and the more referrals we get.

The right way to write. Is wrong!

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How to write wrong

Some general advice is extremely useful or at least broadly correct. It applies to the majority of people in the majority of cases. You know… like, brush your teeth regularly.

Other general advice is a lot less helpful. It may work for the majority of people, but not for the rest of us.

The general advice on the best way to write is absolutely in that latter category. And as I get asked about this a lot, I thought I’d share some ideas with you.

The right way to write

When I started writing commercially, the general advice at the time was to get into a routine. This routine then became your recipe for writing. It was one less thing to have on your mind, so you were free to focus on your writing. From memory, some of the advice included.

  • Having a set time to write each day.
  • Writing from a familiar location; your office desk for example.
  • Avoid distraction. This one was huge.
  • Use the same keyboard, pen, paper, notebook etc.

I lasted about 2 days.

My recipe for writing turned out to be almost the exact opposite. For me, the most creative way to work is to mix things up. Some examples of how I do this includes.

  • I write from lots (and lots) of different locations. What Andy Ihnatko calls field offices. These range from my studio, my local coffee shop and Sherwood Forest, to a bench in the grounds of Lincoln Castle and a table on the canal that goes through the village where I live
  • I write using different devices. These include an iMac in my studio, my phone, an iPad Pro, a really old MacBook Air (used for the very last time to write this post) and a MacBook Pro.
  • I write in the morning before the world wakes up (often). In fairness, that’s when around 60% of all my writing is done. However, I also write at lunchtime (here’s a recent example) and in the late afternoon.
  • I write best with background noise. This is why I do so much writing outdoors. Even when I’m in my studio, I have instrumental music playing. I find lyrics distracting.
  • I always have a pen with me and a notebook. However, the pen could be one of a dozen or more that I use regularly. The notebook depends on what’s on my production table in the studio, what’s in my back pocket, my bag or my car. I have notebooks everywhere.

My recipe for writing is also wrong

Rest assured: My recipe for writing is just as wrong (for you) as the advice I was given when I started out.

So what’s my point?

I’ve discovered that with any kind of creative work, we each need to find what works best for us. Our unique blend. Sometimes this means ignoring whatever the prevailing wisdom is. Just because something worked for one of those creative professionals selling online courses or books… it may not work for you or me.

If you have a set way to write (or do anything creative) and you’re keen to improve, here’s a suggestion. A general suggestion, which applies to almost as many people as, “brush your teeth”.

Try something new.

Mix it up (just a little).

This is especially the case if you’re struggling to create. It’s possible that a few minor revisions regarding the tools you use, the locations you create from and times of day you create, could improve things.

Good luck with discovering the right way FOR YOU to write. I Really hope you found this useful.