Stand Up 8 Times Blog ~ Diana Schneidman

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What If You Were Wrong about Marketing?

February 6th, 2012 · Marketing

GUEST ARTICLE BY C.J. HAYDEN

Lately, I’ve been playing the “what if you were wrong” game with my coaching clients. It goes like this:

Client: Jane at XYZ Company hasn’t called me back. They must not want to hire me.
C.J.: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: Hmm, maybe I should call her and ask what’s up?

In this example, a moment’s consideration about the possibility that his thinking might be off base transformed my client’s discouraged paralysis into productive action. Examining where you might be wrong about marketing can be an extremely useful exercise for any entrepreneur. Consider these examples:

Client: I don’t want to limit myself by choosing a target market. I think I’ll market my business to anyone who might need my services.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: I might be spreading myself too thin if I market to everybody. Maybe it would be a good idea to narrow it down a bit.

Client:: The economy is so bad right now, I’m never going to get any big-ticket business. I’d better concentrate on small contracts until things pick up again.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: I guess that could be a mistake. I’ll never get any big-ticket business unless I ask for it, right?

Client: I introduced myself to all those prospects already. They’ll call me if they need me.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: They could forget about me if they don’t hear from me in a while. Maybe I should try to keep in touch.

Client: I heard that social networking is the best way for solopreneurs to market themselves. I’m going to stop my other marketing and put all my effort into Facebook.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: Maybe I should ask some other solopreneurs what their experience has been first.

Client: I don’t like making follow-up calls. It should do just as well to send emails instead.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: I could lose out on a lot of sales if people don’t read my emails. Maybe I should make a few calls, too.

Client: I got a great offer from my professional association to run a display ad in the conference program. I bet it will bring in lots of clients.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: Perhaps I should call my friend who advertised last year and see what results she had.

Client: Now that my website is up, I should start getting plenty of business online without having to do much about marketing.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: Well, I think pay-per-click ads would be a great way to attract more clients to my website.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that, too?
Client: Maybe I shouldn’t let go my offline marketing until I see how well I do online.

As you can see, questioning your assumptions about marketing can lead to designing a much more solid strategy. You can try asking yourself what if you were wrong, but it can be even more powerful to have a friend, colleague, or coach ask you. And, as in the last example above, keep asking until you feel satisfied with your new conclusions.

There’s one more type of assumption about marketing you might want to question – not what you’re planning to do, but how you feel about doing it:

Client: Marketing is scary. It’s uncomfortable, too. I’ll never be any good at it.
Coach: What if you were wrong about that?
Client: I guess I can learn to do it better. Maybe then it won’t be so scary or uncomfortable.

The next time you decide to do something about marketing – or not do it – take a moment and play the “what if you were wrong” game. You may discover an entirely new perspective, and ultimately, be right more often.

Copyright © 2012, C.J. Hayden

C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” at www.getclientsnow.com.

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Freelancing and consulting: Enjoy the game!

January 31st, 2012 · Feature Article, Running a business, freelancing and consulting

Last week I wrote about call reluctance for freelancers and consultants and how it is impossible to prepare adequately for everything that may come up in the sales conversation.

In response, one reader commented that phoning for assignments is like playing chess. You have to play on the fly; you can’t plan too many moves ahead.

I’m no chess expert, but I know that the experts do look ahead and calculate the moves back and forth that may proceed from the very next move.  With more experience, they become skilled in predicting what will happen and in applying this knowledge to the upcoming move.

So experience does help!

However, we gain experience over time. We can’t figure it all out before we start; we have to learn as we go.

This is especially true as we make our first move. When we sit down at the chessboard, we have little insight as to how the other player will respond to our typical first move.

So my first observation is that it’s best to jump into the game rather than sit on the sidelines as we attempt to master the whole thing before we make our first move.

And now for another observation on how to freelance and consult: Let’s stay in touch with the gaming aspect of our career.

It’s so easy to lose touch with the fun and excitement of our professions and instead get uptight about everything that may go wrong.

When we depend on our work for our livelihood, the uncertainty of the future can be maddening. What if we don’t get more work quickly? What if the proposals we have submitted don’t pan out, or worse yet, never get a response? What if the client doesn’t pay, or at least, pay promptly?

Or for really moody days:  What if I never get any work again? What if I starve to death? Am I doomed?

If we keep at our marketing, we will get work. Terrific assignments. The stuff we most enjoy doing. Fascinating projects that take us in new, unanticipated directions.

Let’s try to conceptualize our businesses as games. We play by the rules and we test new strategies as well, analyzing what works best and putting it to work.

Let’s enjoy our businesses. Let’s turn down the pressure we place on ourselves by a notch and turn up the fun. After all, we have chosen our work so let’s choose to do it with glee.

Agreed?

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Call reluctance in freelancing and consulting: Damaging self-talk and how to conquer it

January 23rd, 2012 · Feature Article, cold calling for freelance and consulting

What does your brain whisper to you (or even scream!) when you try to start phoning freelance and consulting prospects? Is it:

I must always be perfectly prepared before I have the right to initiate contact with any prospective buyer.

George W. Dudley and Shannon L. Goodson name this the career-damaging theme of over-preparation in their book, Earning What You’re Worth: The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance (1992).

This self-talk message can totally talk us out of reaching out to possible clients, according to the authors. We convince ourselves that we aren’t sufficiently prepared and that the person we reach on the phone will ask us a tough question that will reveal us to be incompetent and even stupid.

So the solution appears to be more study. Read more books and take additional courses on what to say on the phone. Study article after article and scan the websites of multitudes of experts to learn the secret phrase that assures success.

Or we decide that we can’t make calls until we have established our expertise by completing more assignments. But how can we complete more assignments until we obtain more customers?

Alas, this thinking leads us right to the very lowest paying assignments that reside on Elance, Guru and similar sites. When we don’t have the confidence to go after the clients we want and to say our price without choking, it’s easiest to prospect online and take what we can get without risking interaction with others.

If we don’t say anything, we can’t say anything wrong. Right?

The antidote to the over-preparation syndrome

The answer is to understand that we can never be perfectly prepared because we can never know everything a prospect may say to us. Therefore, we must push on and get started all the same. Because the sooner we start, the sooner we experience new challenges and devise ways to handle them.

One solution is not to start with the most likely prospects. Start with those who are a little removed from our specialty. This reduces our stress and if we come off a little unpolished, c’est la vie.

Another solution is to determine what we absolutely must know or do in order to be minimally qualified to make a phone call. Be honest here. We don’t have to know everything. We only need to know the answer—or an initial, temporary answer—to whichever question we most fear will be asked of us.

Understand that over-preparation self-talk is a confidence destroying practice that we must face.

We must allow ourselves simply to be adequately prepared. And if we are building on past self-employment or job experience to develop a freelance and consulting practice, we are adequately prepared.

So let’s get to the phones.

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Maintain your momentum!

January 17th, 2012 · Feature Article, Marketing

How freelancers and consultants can keep our marketing muscle toned up

Lately I’ve been in marketing mode for my freelance writing practice, which reminds me of lessons I’ve relearned (alas) repeatedly: Marketing is easiest when I establish and maintain momentum.

Some people establish a regular weekly schedule. For instance, they mark off Monday mornings on their calendar and consistently market on that day only from 9 till noon.

That’s consistent but it wouldn’t work for me. I need day-to-day consistency to keep my marketing muscle toned.

Here are four  guidelines I’ve established for myself and attempt to stick with as much as possible.

First, get a strong start. Whether phoning, emailing, postal mailing or engaging in strategic social marketing, it takes time to enjoy first results, whether in the form of requests for proposals or even nailing down assignments. So if I start a campaign with large numbers of activities the first few days, I begin to see encouraging results before my fatigue and blahs kick in.

I remind myself that I want to hear from those I reach out to right away, but I am lower on their priority list than they are on mine, especially if they didn’t do the first reach-out. But reason can give way to discouragement as the hours tick by. So I need a lot of activity at the start.

Second, I favor making a few contacts every day rather than a larger number on a weekly or even more scattered basis. Marketing doesn’t seem to rise to the top of my to-do list because it isn’t a promise to a client or other outside party. No one gets on my case if I don’t get it done, so I’m inclined to let the bigger self-assignments slide.

The longer the interval between efforts, the more I need to reacquaint myself with what I’m doing. This may mean refreshing my memory on where I am identifying people to contact, how to research them, what to say or write, and in general, simply rebuilding speed.

When I turn off the treadmill, I’ve got to start out slow again before I can return to last week’s speed.

Third, I try to do each day’s follow-up that very same day. This includes recording any notes on who I contacted, phone numbers, email addresses and other pertinent data. When I put this off and try to interpret my scrawled notes, it’s a miserable chore.

And the more I put it off, the more miserable the chore becomes. Until sometimes I can’t remember quite what I was doing and take shortcuts in record maintenance.

Also, I respond to requests for information (but not customized proposals or price quotes) within the hour. Of course I’m working with copy I’ve already written, so all I have to do is review it to make sure it fits the receiver in all particulars and send it on its way.

Then I note in my Franklin Planner when I should follow up with a phone call or email.

How steadily I can adhere to these three pieces of advice depends on the rest of my schedule. It also depends on the quality of my prospecting list—when it takes substantial time to research people to contact, it’s only natural to make a smaller number of outreach efforts per day.

If we are already busy with assignments or other responsibilities, we must adjust the marketing demands we place upon ourselves or we’ll become frustrated and beat up on ourselves despite all our hard work.

Now for piece of advice number 4: The most important step in marketing is to do something! Reach out now!

Daydreaming doesn’t get the job done. Nor does endless planning inside our heads. Which is essentially the same thing as daydreaming.

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Is it time to stop blaming the economy?

January 4th, 2012 · Get Clients Now, Marketing

Guest article by C.J. Hayden

Every day, I hear self-employed professionals blaming the economy for their business woes. “People aren’t buying right now,” they say. Or, “With the economy this bad, I can’t…” Or, “When the economy improves, I’ll…”

But what if the economy doesn’t improve any time soon? What if the conditions we are experiencing now are the new conditions for the foreseeable future? What might that suggest about how you should be marketing your business?

At the close of 2007, the U.S. and many other countries began experiencing recessionary conditions. According to the economists, the U.S. recession ended in 2009. But it seems that no one has noticed. And why should they? Unemployment is high, consumer confidence is low, home values have not recovered, and national debt now exceeds GDP in numerous countries, the U.S. included.

If a set of conditions persists for years, at what point do you simply accept them as the way things are? Perhaps that point should be right now. Instead of waiting for an economic recovery to turn your business around, you could begin to turn it around yourself. Here are some thoughts on how to get started.

1. Set sales goals and make a plan to reach them. This sounds simple, but I’m always surprised by how many professionals set a goal without making a plan, make a plan without setting a goal, or neglect both.

Establishing a goal is the only way to know what sort of plan you need. When you don’t declare the level of sales you want to reach, your marketing can stray off track. Spending time online to sell a $29 ebook, for example, instead of pursuing leads for a $10,000 contract, because you keep hearing that “companies aren’t buying.”

When you err in the other direction, and set a goal without building a realistic plan, it’s too easy to be deterred from going after what you want by thoughts like “I’ll work toward that after the economy picks up.” A slower economy indicates you should plan smarter and sooner, not later.

2. Sell got-to-haves instead of nice-to-haves. In lean times, people and organizations spend only to get what they need, rather than on what they want. To make sales, you have to sell what people are buying.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change what you sell, but you may need to change how you sell it. Get specific about the results you produce or value you provide. Help your prospects see how what you offer can help them earn more, spend less, or overcome their current challenges more readily.

An unemployed manager will hire a coach to improve interview skills when she wouldn’t pay for coaching to build confidence. A downsized company will bring in an expert to increase efficiency when they wouldn’t consider hiring someone to improve job satisfaction. In both these examples, the person being hired ‒ and the work being done ‒ may be exactly the same, but the client believes interview skills or efficiency are needs, while confidence or satisfaction are merely wants.

3. Take action on facts, not on fear. The next time someone tells you “no one is paying for marketing help right now,” ask them how they know that. (A survey released by Doremus last month indicates global corporate spending on marketing was up 10% in 2011, and 29% of companies plan to increase their spending on marketing in 2012.)

Or if you hear that “people don’t have money for alternative medicine these days,” request to know the source for this claim. (A recent Deloitte study shows that U.S. families spent $28 billion on alternative medicine practitioners in 2009, in the middle of the recession.)

If 9% of the workforce is unemployed, then 91% of workers still have jobs. Corporate spending may be lower than before, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent. Do your own research on who is hiring and spending, and take your guidance from data, not doomsayers. Then target the people and organizations who can pay.

4. Eliminate blame from your vocabulary. The state of the economy may indeed be someone else’s fault, but spending time blaming politicians or bankers or real estate speculators can stop you from taking responsibility for your own success. It doesn’t matter to your business who else may be at fault for the way things are. What matters is what you plan to do about the situation at hand.

In Nov 2008, I wrote: In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in his inaugural speech, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He described that fear as the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” FDR’s message was that the real danger was not the economic conditions themselves, but the prospect that we would become immobilized by our fear of them.

Is it possible that your own fear of failure or rejection, or blame of conditions you can’t control, or resentment of the people responsible for this mess, has in some ways immobilized you?

It’s time to let all of that go. Take charge of your marketing, find out who is buying, determine what they need, set a clear goal, and make a plan to get there. The sooner you do this, the sooner your own economy will improve.

Copyright © 2012, C.J. Hayden

C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now!™ Thousands of business owners and independent professionals have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” atwww.getclientsnow.com.

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What’s a better name for cold calling?

January 2nd, 2012 · Feature Article, cold calling for freelance and consulting

I’ve been puzzling over a fundamental issue for months—or truly, years now—and I’d like your input: Should I call “cold calling” by some other term?

I use the term to label the activity of phoning the people most likely to become clients of my freelance and consulting services. I’m totally comfortable with the term and that’s why I’ve used it in my book (Start Freelancing and Consulting), on my blog and everywhere else.

People seem to understand what it means and in that respect, it communicates clearly.

Another benefit is that it makes a good keyword in Google, Ezineartices.com and other databases. It’s a ready hashtag for use on Twitter.

Because people think they understand the concept, it’s a nice, handy way for people to find what I’m writing about. For those who want to learn more, here I am, immediately findable and accessible online.

On the other hand, I suspect that it turns off some potential readers—or even fans—immediately because the concept of “cold calling” has such bad press. It’s used as the straw man for everything uncomfortable or even distasteful about marketing.

It generates an instant “oh no, I won’t do that!” from many people before they can find out that my understanding of the concept is much different from theirs.

To me, cold calling is a highly personal, helpful, honorable way for us to reach out to those most likely to want our professional services.

  • The people we call (and recommend you call) are typically in businesses, so this is a type of B2B marketing.
  • They are the individuals most likely to purchase such services.
  • We make the calls ourselves. We can explain our services and answer their initial questions on the spot.
  • Our messages are informative and clear.
  • We space the calls out so they do not resemble harassment.
  • Calls are supplemented by emailed info, website links, etc. to provide additional information and marketing.
  • Calls are made during work hours because the calls are B2B.
  • People aren’t tricked into calling back through vague messages.
  • In practice, people are very rarely ticked off because our calls are intended to be useful, not a bother.

So I am entertaining the use of an alternative term to position the marketing approach that I advocate in a much more positive way.

Here are some of the possibilities:

Phoning. It’s honest and succinct, but it’s not particularly attractive.

B2B or Professional Cold Calling. I could insert some modifiers to clarify that this isn’t about calling apartment dwellers at home during the dinner hour to sell them in-ground swimming pools.

Prospecting. Almost everyone offering a business service understands they need to prospect. The term is sufficiently vague that readers don’t immediately click away. Also, it obscures what I’m going to teach and leads people to stick around . . . but maybe feel they have been taken for a ride when they get the real story.

Outreach. To me, teaching cold calling for freelance and consulting services is a form of outreach to help other professionals accomplish the work they want to get done. However, to other people it may suggest entirely different offers or even religious proselytizing.

Love Calls or some other label unique to me that I could even trademark. Too corny?

What do you think? Which of these choices do you prefer? Do you have any better ideas?

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Why freelancing and consulting are like McDonald’s fries

December 26th, 2011 · Feature Article, cold calling for freelance and consulting

Ever stepped up to the counter at McDonald’s, ordered your sandwich or salad and the counterperson has said, “Want fries with that?”

Did you ever say “no”?

If you did, what happened next?  Did the guy burst into tears at your rejection and flee to the back room to cry?

Some freelancers and consultants claim to be so afraid of rejection that they can’t phone potential clients and ask for an assignment.

However, if you don’t ask for the sale, the answer is always NO.

On the other hand, even if you ask, the answer is not always YES.

It is far too harsh and unrealistic to label every “no” as rejection. Rejection is deeply personal and painful. No is simply, well, no.

Furthermore, it’s unfair to the people we phone. It makes them out to be insensitive when saying no is a completely acceptable answer to our question.

And let’s not delude ourselves into thinking our sensitivity makes us superior people. It’s simply an excuse to avoid the necessary work—marketing—that is intrinsic to freelancing and consulting.

“Good” sensitivity is the sensitivity to help others and recognize the beauty around us and get in touch with our soul and spirituality. Stuff like that.

No way does wimping out on our marketing mark us as more profound and sensitive than other people.

So let’s hit the phones.

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My “Happy Everything” letter, 2011

December 23rd, 2011 · Uncategorized

Once a year I share what’s going on in my life (and husband Wayne’s and our six children’s) with readers of my newsletter and blog. Not surprisingly, its’ that time again.

I’ve enjoyed writing these articles and more important, I love to help people land great freelancing and consulting opportunities that build on past career accomplishments.

In addition, I continue to write for my own clients and I’d like to write websites, articles and more for you as well. See my writing website at www.DianaWrites.com for more info and sign up to receive my free report on thought-leader writing.

Now here’s the link to the annual Schneidman holiday card.

Wishing you an inspired, love-filled and successful year.

Diana

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Charge what you’re worth . . . enough already!

December 13th, 2011 · Feature Article, How much to charge

Looks to me, based on what I’ve been seeing in my inbox for years now, that the most consistent, evergreen marketing topic aimed at freelancers and consultants is “how to charge what you’re worth.”

Apparently our freelance and consulting fees broadcast our self-image to the world. The higher our fees, the healthier our respect for our own talents.

According to the “experts,” that’s the sole measure of our worth.

Their latest advice is to take our current rate and double it. Right now.

Did you hear me? I said RIGHT NOW!

Lately I’ve been hearing this advice on free teleseminars that I’ve downloaded for later playback while I drive. It’s astonishing how these people know what I should charge, given that they don’t know who I am, what I do and how well I do it.

The last time I heard this advice, my MP3 player hit a glitch and started replaying the same teleseminar. Does this mean that Source wants me to quadruple my rate?

Here’s what makes the whole thing more amusing: Most solopros are offended if someone challenges their rates.

But even though solopros are encouraged to—and probably are—raising their fees because everyone else supposedly is and because they would never admit to themselves or others that they don’t deserve the best, how dare prospects challenge their rates. Or attempt to negotiate lower fees.

Not only do I sell my freelance and consulting services to others, but I also purchase services and coaching from others. Apparently I am in the minority of service users because I say no when their rates struck me as absurd.

Yes, I know that it’s an “investment” and that Source allegedly rewards decisiveness and punishes those who discuss with their spouses if the financial returns may be inadequate to justify the charge card debt before they click on “buy now.”

Yes, I know that Source returns our investment with a matching investment in our services . . . and that this takes place within days or at least weeks, say those in the know.

Yes, I know that our service is so infallible that consumers should obey us like Svengali because it is for their own good.

At the same time that gurus recommend boosting our rates till they’re out of sight (we are worth it, aren’t we?), they themselves often go with the lowest-priced virtual assistance. Thank Source that karma totally overlooks this inequity.

The more you commit, the more committed you are. The more committed you are, the more money you make, say the experts.

So it all works out.

Yea!!

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Enliven your work!

December 7th, 2011 · Feature Article, Living life well

Do you have certain tasks on your to-do list that never get done?

You copy them over from day to day or week to week. Or they sit on some master list for an eternity. Or they’re part of your annual plan though you know you’ll never get around to them.

Here’s an act of extreme bravery: Why not take them off the list?

Banish them. Or if necessary, relegate them to a special list of dead ideas that you can return to for reconsideration sometime in the future.

This is something I am trying to work with right now.

I practice one useful habit that is a little different from the “dead” list referred to above. It is an idea list. Whenever I see an ezine or blog or whatever with an idea I don’t want to lose, I record it in an ongoing Word document I have on my computer. Sometimes it’s a major concept, such as for a YouTube video or an idea for a book. Other times it’s a random website on which I could register my blog or a handy tool I could use to measure my Twitter presence. (These last ideas are also called BSOs, or Bright Shiny Objects.)

Once I save it there, I can delete it from my mind and feel confident that it is at hand if I ever look for it.

But that does nothing to delete all the tasks that never make it to the top of my daily schedule but make the mountain of chores ahead of me stack up before me like Everest.

So I’m trying to be more stalwart in crossing out whatever I can. Or adding them to the future to-do list so they no longer loom before me every day.

Some tasks seem dead because they’ve been sent to kill me, figuratively speaking.

For instance, I recently talked to a marcom executive at a major insurance company about freelancing for her. She didn’t have any upcoming needs but forwarded a link to the purchasing department’s database so I could fill out an online form and make myself known (supposedly) to anyone in the company who may need my services.

Dutifully I moved the duty forward on The List from day to day, putting it aside as a boring and pointless task. I don’t believe anyone looks at the database, and if someone does, I don’t believe he’d choose a writer or other freelancer from this cemetery.

After two weeks of ongoing postponement, I took the time to open the template. I filled out the form against my better judgment. Then I looked around to figure out how to save my response.

Couldn’t find anywhere to click.

My own darn fault for not opting out of this drudgery right from the start. I’ve applied to such corporate databases in the past and have never received any calls from them . . . ever.

This is quite different from working through record-keeping details with Accounting to assure payment for my work. When that’s the story, the client and Accounting provide assistance to actually get the job done.

Let’s stop the deadening, go-through-the-motions, throwaway tasks. To life!

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