Step up

I’ve just finished reading Mike Zipursky’s recent article on the importance of relationships in marketing… it definately hit home for me and I’d like to maybe share a part of my experience.

When I initially struck out on my own, I had a fair whack of my own personal capital so I threw a lot of money away on inexperienced sales staff (who never actually managed to sell anything) while I sat behind a desk “marketing” my business by bashing off e-mails left, right and centre and convincing myself I was “strategising”… yeah right.

18 months later, the money was gone, the staff were history and I was kicking myself because the brands had finally started to get the entry level traction they should have had a year and half ago. The traction was growing because I had taken responsibility for personally using my experience and contacts to improve the offering.

It sounds so simple but you as the entrepreneur are the biggest asset the business has when it comes to marketing. It is YOU who understands why your product is the best and why it is so important to make the sale… for your employee it’s simply a job.

Those entrepreneurial businesses that stand out are those driven by “visible” personalities. I’m not a particularly gregarious person and I know there are plenty of other entrepreneurs who don’t have the “people factor”. This means that you’re going to need to find a way to maximise your entrepreneur personality.

It might be by taking potential clients to lunch and charming them over a bottle of wine, it might be expert commentary on a certain subject through media channels or it might even be presenting at workshops or conferences. Different strokes for different folks!

I guess my message to entrepreneurs who are tying themselves behind a desk is to step up to the plate and find ways to make them and their personalities more visible when times are tough.

We’ll cover this in more detail in future posts.

Marc Ashton operates the Bad Entrepreneur blog.