No Bull Marketing Advice For Business Owners, Entrepreneurs and Sales Professionals In Chicagoland And Beyond

I learned my lesson in more ways than one from a recent holiday gift buying experience…

BEFORE: One of the Christmas gifts my wife asked for was a “couples massage.” That sounded like a simple enough request, so I set out on what I thought would be a quick mission to make her wish come true.

First, I thumbed through a local, upscale “advertiser”-type publication, certain that I’d come across a few “Holiday Special” offers, from which I’d make my choice. I was surprised when I didn’t find anything special there, so I picked up another similar ad-filled circular – but again I came up empty.

3 1/2 years’ experience working for a major yellow pages publisher taught me that there was practically no chance of me finding even a half-decent offer in any of the ads there, so I didn’t even bother getting up from the living room couch to walk the whole 20 feet to get my local directory out of the back cupboard.

Finally, I fired up my computer and typed “couples massage Barrington” into my favorite search engine, hoping I’d be bombarded with irresistible offers to choose from.

No such luck.

I found a few local business websites with some mention of a “Holiday Special” for a couples massage – but they were the weak, run-of-the-mill, plain vanilla, anything-but-compelling offers typical of most small businesses.

The most compelling offer I found, along with the easiest-to-navigate website (hours, driving directions, menu of services, etc.) was a local location of a national chain of massage centers. So I hopped into my car and drove to the nearest clinic to check it out and make my purchase.

Lesson learned: Undoubtedly there were at least a dozen better massage therapists closer to our home, but none of them did a decent enough job of making that fact known (“marketing”) to get me to spend my money with them.

DURING: About a week after Christmas, we went to the clinic for our “couples massage” experience. We were running a few minutes late en route from another appointment, and called on our way to let them know.

Apparently, that didn’t matter, because when we got there we were told that our massages would still end at our originally-scheduled time. A pair of young, inexperienced and impersonal massage therapists then rather mechanically performed our services, finishing 5 minutes before the end of our originally-scheduled hour and telling us to take our time getting dressed (as long as we were out of the room by the top of the hour!).

My wife complained that it was the shortest massage she’d ever had (it was for me, too – but that’s because it was my first). She also told me about her first-class treatment at some of the luxury resorts we’ve stayed at, explaining that every other time she’d been told to take her time getting up off the massage table, the masseuse really meant it. She also questioned why I chose the clinic I had, letting me know that her regular masseuse would have provided a much, much better all-around experience (who knew she had a “regular masseuse”?).

Lesson learned: Small business owners can’t assume that shoppers will magically know that they provide superior service to that of their competitors. They must do as excellent a job of marketing – conveying a powerful message to a hungry audience interested in their product or service – as they do of delivering the goods.

Sadly, local business owners almost always hide out working in their businesses and fail to sufficiently work on their businesses – which, while less comfortable for the vast majority, also happens to be where all the money is in any business.

AFTER: It has now been a little over two weeks since we had our massages. Have we gotten a single phone call, thank-you card, postcard, newsletter or even one lousy email? Nope. Not one bit of after-the-sale follow-up whatsoever.

Do they just expect that everyone who comes to one of their clinics will automatically be eager to return? (Or do they somehow know that people will have such a thoroughly disappointing experience that it’s not worth any attempt at all to invite them back?)

Lesson learned: Business owners spend a lot of money to acquire new customers, clients or patients. One sure way to increase revenue and profits is to maximize every single lead and customer with excellent marketing and overall business practices – including, but in no way limited to, first-class service – before, during and after the sale.

Learn how to do that well, and you’ll find growing your business much easier than otherwise – regardless of the overall state of the economy.

Oh, and here’s one bonus piece of advice for this week: Make sure not to rely on me to select a massage services provider for you!

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If you have, you’re not alone.

In 2007, FranklinCovey surveyed 15,031 of their customers about their New Year’s resolutions. Surprisingly, they found that 35% of people break them before the end of January, with another 42% breaking them at some point after that.

I’m surprised, because I would have thought those numbers would be higher.

In my 30+ years’ experience working with over 2,000 small business owners, entrepreneurs and salespeople, I’ve found that people who only set goals once a year just because it’s the socially-accepted thing to do are not truly goal-oriented – or results-oriented – people.

I personally don’t believe in making “New Year’s Resolutions” that are, for the most part, either casually made or routinely broken – or both.

I believe in getting serious about setting goals and making plans all year long, and I work with my clients to do the same.

It takes discipline and forethought, but for me it’s the key to massive, sustained achievement and success.

Here’s my own personal system…

First, I block off all known dates in an annual calendar – events, projects, tasks I get done on a regular basis.

Then I add in all related tasks – including the marketing, planning and follow-up for each of my scheduled events, projects and tasks.

I include time for non-business interests, such as recreation and relaxation.

This alone gives me “something to do or get done” for about 80% of the days of the year. Then, I look for ways to fill in the remaining dates with other opportunities that either come along or are purposefully pursued.

For each event, project and task, I write “To Do” lists. Throughout every day I am constantly crossing items off my list. Then, at the end of each day, I prepare my schedule for the next day, listing each task and the time I allot to it. Most importantly, I stick to my schedule.

As the world’s #1 small business-building expert, Dan Kennedy says:

If you don’t plan your day, someone else will plan it for you.

That goes for your week, your month and your year as well.

We live in a world where people are constantly fighting for our attention, with most people choosing to be vulnerable to near-constant interruption by way of any number of technological means, including email, cell phone, text messages and social media – just to name a few.

But at the same time, most of us know that single-mindedness and focus are the keys to getting the most out of our time and talents.

So the question is: How do we stay focused in an ever-increasingly fractured world?

In my opinion, one of the most effective ways of ensuring that we stick to our plans – and therefore accomplish our goals – is to dedicate ourselves to constantly setting, evaluating and updating our personal goals and action plans to get us to where we want to go.

Not to make vague, casual, once-a-year “resolutions” out of thoughtless habit or just because “that’s what everyone does this time of year.”

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We’re going to talk about the inner game of building your business. I believe that the inner game is simply all-important. “The inner game” is a new term for a classic idea explained many different times, many different ways by virtually every success educator, and even philosophers.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill reveals the secret using the words, “thoughts are things.” Dennis Waitley has worked with U.S. astronauts and Olympic athletes on their inner games. Author Tim Galloway explores the ideas of his books, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Selling.

Interestingly, there is a never-ending connection between the inner game in sport and the inner game in business, allowing experts like Waitley, Galloway, ex-quarterback Fran Tarkenton and golfer Arnold Palmer, among others, to step back and forth between expounding on success techniques in the athletic and business worlds.

In all cases, these people speak much more about attitudes than aptitudes for a good reason. Surveys, studies and research consistently reaffirm that 85% of your success will depend on attitudinal factors, 15% on aptitude.

Yet in your formal education and in most continuing education, the emphasis is on the opposite – 15% on attitude, 85% on aptitude.

Certainly technical knowledge and skills are important. In your profession, you must deliver excellence based on your staying up to date in techniques, products, materials and ideas.

However, such excellence alone will never build a successful, growing, profitable business. The excellence that will is an excellence created and sustained in your own mind. This is the most difficult, least tangible aspect of building your business that we’ll ever talk about, but it is also probably the most important.

Yeah, but what is it?

So what is the inner game? The way I see it, the inner game can be broken down into four major components:

• Self esteem
• Self image
• Self confidence
• Self discipline

Quality in these four areas is a necessary foundation to personal and professional success.

Self Esteem

Self Esteem is essentially your feelings of worth. How much success do you deserve? How much money should you make? How much is your time worth?

Here, briefly, are seven ideas for strengthening self-esteem:

1. Establish worthwhile, meaningful goals and values.
2. Take massive action to get your own financial house in order if it isn’t now. Reduce debt, bring expenses under income, and invest every single month.
3. Give yourself recognition for each and every accomplishment.
4. Manage your time productively. Procrastination and disorganization rob many people of their self-esteem.
5. Associate with positive-minded, happy people who encourage and motivate you. Don’t hang out with folks who are negative, unhappy, critical or jealous.
6. Continually acquire new know-how in you profession and in the areas of business, sales and communication.
7. Regularly invest in improving your office and home environments, tools and equipment, wardrobe and other external things that impact on your attitudes.

Self Image

Self-image is how you see yourself; it’s who you think you are. Your self-image is controlled mostly by self-imposed limits. Very few people ever perform beyond those self-imposed limits.

A salesman whose father never earned more than $25,000 a year in his life may well see himself as a $25,000 a year guy. And he will subconsciously screw up the opportunities to earn more that come his way.

In the financial area, the controversial Reverend Ike calls this a money rejection syndrome, and I am convinced that such a thing definitely exists. One man I know, who made over $100 million in his business in its first three years from scratch, had gone broke in business several times before. After the three years of remarkable success, he said, “Making $100 million is about the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Believing it could happen to me was the hard part that took 20 years.”

Your self-image was created and is sustained through self talk, the use of affirmations – and that is also the method you can use to alter and modify your self image, literally as you wish.

I call the process self-image goal setting, because most people who set goals set only “to get” and “to have” goals; they fail to set “to be” goals. I encourage you to balance your approach to goal setting by including some self-image modification.

Self Discipline

Self-Disciple, the fourth component of the inner game, is quite possibly the most important.

The late success lecturer Jim Rohn said that most people do not associate lack of discipline with lack of success.

Most people think of failure as one earth-shattering event, such as a company going out of business or a home being foreclosed on. This, however, Jim Rohn said, is how failure happens.

Failure is rarely the result of some isolated event; rather, it is a consequence of a long list of accumulated little failures, which happen as a result of too little discipline. I agree. I find that most people understandably tend to look everywhere but in the mirror for the sources of their failures as well as the victories.

I’m here to tell you it’s not the town you’re in, not your location, not the economy, not the weather, not your competitors – it’s your own discipline that makes the difference between excellence or mediocrity, between getting by or getting rich.

It’s interesting to observe professionals. I often say to my associates, “Let me watch the professional’s behavior before, during and after the seminar, and I’ll guess his annual income within a few thousand dollars.” It’s actually pretty easy to do.

Jim Rohn says that discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment.

I’d encourage you to take the self-discipline challenge very seriously.

Select those areas that you know are your weakest links – timely paperwork, punctuality, daily self-improvement study, being happy and enthusiastic first thing in the morning, whatever your personal stumbling blocks are – and apply new, tough, demanding disciplines to yourself in those areas.

You’ll find that success in these particular areas of your day-to-day life will roll over into greater success in all parts of you life.

For example, let’s look at the ultimate game players – professional football players. A pro ball player knows that every single moment of his on-the-job performance is recorded on film, to be replayed and reviewed later in stop-action slow motion, for critique by his superiors and co-workers.

If your day was filmed and reviewed, how would you feel during the replay?

Of course, the professional football players who have to put up with this sort of thing are highly paid.

Yes, the inner game stuff is tough. If being a big success were easy, everybody would be one. You’ve got to decide what you really want to be, do, have, accomplish – and decide whether or not you’re willing to adhere to the disciplines necessary to get it.

In order to have the opportunity to accomplish virtually any goals you honestly desire, you must accept the related responsibility for everything you get.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up. His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.

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