If we take a simple look at anything, marketing included, for you to succeed then you need the below 3 factors to be right:
- How you are (outlook and attitude)
- What you do
- How you do it
Let’s look at this in detail:
1. How You Are
This is simply the attitude and outlook on life you have and express. If you give out a negative view, have low self-confidence and are convinced that you are going to fail then you almost certainly will.
To be successful, you need to have good self-confidence, be willing to talk to and get on with people and be able to envision success.
When you are networking or telemarketing then you definitely need to project these.
Some people think a sunny disposition with a healthy helping of self-confidence is all you need. While these are important, you also need the other 2
2. What You Do
To get or achieve anything in life, you need to do something. You won’t ever make a sale if you don’t tell people about your business.
You actually have to do the actions that create success and in the right amount.
Many people when marketing under-estimate the amount they have to do something to get a result. It may take a day or two or even more of telemarketing to get an appointment. It takes a lot of tweets to develop a healthy following. You have to go out networking a number of times before you start finding business.
It takes repeatedly doing any marketing action from direct mail campaigns and flyering through to blogging and pinning to produce results and success.
You also have to do these things in the right way.
3. How You Do It
Finally it is important that you know the best techniques to get the best results from your behaviour. There is an art to everything. In marketing there are many skills you have to be good at, all of which have techniques you need to master. This can be anything from client profiling and copywriting through graphic design and photography to building web sites and SEO.
These 3 factors do tend to influence each other but it can be hard to determine in what way without knowing the underlying cause.
If you have no technique you won’t succeed and this may damage how you feel as well as how often you do the behaviour. On the other hand, persistence and experience could lead you to develop a technique that works for you and then you are on your way.
I have a good real life example of this from the past. I was a member of BNI- the largest international networking organisation in the world. BNI focuses on giving members behaviours (attending the weekly meeting, doing one-to-ones etc.) and techniques (e.g. how to network, do 60-seconds etc.). It is not set up to deal with personal view and attitudes.
They do take on members who feel they will find it difficult to network and make referrals on the assumption that these fears exist as the individual does not know the right behaviours and techniques.
This is sometimes the case and the member finds they can be, using what they’ve been shown, a successful networker.
However, when this is not the case, it does not work out for that member. Their viewpoint and attitude may stem from many other factors ranging from personal and family problems to long-term stress and anxiety which knowledge of networking techniques and behaviours won’t address.
So you need to get all 3 right and generally the one that takes the most work is outlook and attitude. The other two are just knowing how to do something and then doing it but these remain vital.
