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“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

I like that quotation. And the message here is simple as it applies to marketing your business.

You don’t have to know everything there is to know about marketing and do it perfectly to be successful at it. You just have to do a couple of things others aren’t doing to make yourself more attractive to potential clients and give yourself a competitive edge. That’s because advantage is a relative thing.

You just have to be able to see what others don’t see and translate those insights into results.

When it comes to marketing yourself, here are two big things so many people are blind to that I want you to see clearly.

People want to do business with professionals they feel comfortable with and have confidence in. And it’s pretty hard to instill a high degree of confidence and create the requisite level of comfort in someone if they don’t really know you.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? And yet, so many people rely on marketing that’s impersonal … arms-length … what we call “low touch.” 

No! It doesn’t work. You have to give people a personal experience of you. That means you have to get out there and make contact with folks.

Look, I get that putting yourself out there can make you uncomfortable. Don’t think that I’m always all that comfortable. I’m not. Some level of anxiety and discomfort simply comes with the territory. But your job as a marketer is to make connections at a human level, and you can’t do that by hiding out and expecting a tweet, your Facebook profile, your website, or a brochure to bring in business.

Insight number one: Your marketing needs to be high touch.

Insight number two: You don’t need to sell people. You need to serve them.

If you think that marketing and sales is about talking people into something, you’re missing the point entirely.

Sure, that’s the dominant mindset that still prevails today, but it’s so old-school.

You’re in business as a professional to make a living by serving people, by finding out what they want and need and helping them achieve the results they’re looking for. Well, that process shouldn’t start once somebody becomes a client. It should start when you first meet them and they express the first bit of interest in what you do.

You want an example of how serving differs from selling?

Well, if we were interested in selling to you, we wouldn’t give you these insights in a newsletter … for free. OMG. No way. We would tell you there are secrets that we have and you need to know, and if you just sign onto our program and pay us the low low price of X, we’ll tell them to you, and you’ll be magically successful.

Instead, we give you information we know you need, and if you like us and want more, we offer you the chance to learn more.

We don’t really sell you anything. And guess what? Not only does this approach yield better results, it’s infinitely easier, more comfortable, fun, and wholesome-feeling. It’s so cool, because everybody wins and nobody feels creepy as the result of having to “sell” or being sold to.

Do we offer individual coaching and marketing programs? Yeah, and we promote them, so you know about them, but we never try to “sell” them to anyone. Two different things. If they fit your needs, great. If not, great.

Here’s what low-key promotion looks like:

If you’re interested, we offer a six month marketing program that walks you through what you need to know and the skills you need to master, so you can attract clients to you in a way that’s comfortable and pretty easy. Yes, you have to do the work, but that just involves getting yourself in front of people and talking to them … not selling to them. 

We not only expand on the concepts of high touch vs. low touch and serving vs. selling, we give you dozens of other critical insights, large and small … and a comprehensive program you can follow, where we work with you every step of the way.   There’s a program starting this spring.

If you’d like to learn more, call us at 828-693-9573 to schedule a complimentary session. We’ll do it over the phone. It’s free, and there’s no obligation. And we promise you’ll get something of value. We just ask that you’re serious about building your business.

See how it works? We give you something of value. If you want more, we help you get it. How simple is that? And yet, most don’t get it. Most can’t see it.

When you’re able to, it makes all the difference.

Best Wishes,
Denise

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Meet Denise: Denise Hedges is a Business Development Coach and Speaker Coach for small business owners who want to be more comfortable, confident, and successful with their sales and marketing efforts. She specializes in helping them use speaking as a way to dramatically improve their results!

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