In about an hour you can completely transform how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your business. In an earlier post I mentioned how I was going to help a client find some opportunities by going door-to-door in a local business park today. We started about 9:40 and were done by 10:30. We intentionally chose to go prospecting on the day before Thanksgiving because it is a good time to catch decision makers who may not have front desk support staff working.
My client started with the approach of introducing himself and then saying, “I do graphic design work, redesign websites and layout brochures. I was wondering if there was anyone in the office that I could speak to about that.” Easy to say and straight to the point. Most visits were 5 minutes or less.
About half the time the gate keeper introduced us to someone else in the office who takes care of marketing.
We came across one doorway and my client stopped dead in his tracks. “I did that logo! I’ve worked for these people before. They were my clients about 2 years ago.” The office was closed for the holiday, but he made a note to check back with this long-lost client.
Towards the end of our hour my client said, “Everyone’s been so nice. There hasn’t been one person who said, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?'” That has been my experience as well. Most people are polite and receptive. Makes me wonder why people who want to build their business don’t go door-to-door more often.
“Everyone’s been so nice. There hasn’t been one person who said, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?'”
Wins
We found one former client that is ripe for re-opening conversation.
Received permission to come back to one prospect with recommendations for how he would improve existing communication pieces (web, brochures, logo, etc.).
Found one big fish prospect. We have good rapport with the gatekeeper who invited us back.
Opened discussion with one medical practice who welcomed more conversation.
Discovered one key-man office space that could be a door to her existing 25 clients.
If public speaking is the number one fear of people, then making door-to-door sales calls has to be a close second. In just a few hours I will go with a client of mine to try to drum up business for him. Like you, this client has a great set of skills, great talent and a great portfolio. He just needs to get his stuff in front of more people, and this is one of the most direct ways that I know to help him develop relationships.
My Approach
Here is what I have learned in the past when doing door-to-door canvassing in a business park.
The purpose for this visit isn’t to barge right in to see the owner because that is really off-putting to most people. Instead I make the purpose of the visit to learn what I need to do to get an appointment. I know that a lot of trainers/coaches would not agree with me on this point, saying that I move too slowly. I’m taking more of a long-term view here rather than a high-volume turn-and-burn approach.
Nine times out of 10 I meet a gatekeeper at the front desk (Always be nice to these people or you are sunk). The people in these front desk positions are quite attuned to fielding salespeople, so I usually do not take the tact of asking to see the person in charge.
I ask what the process is for getting to speak with the owner / person in charge. You learn a great deal from the answer to this question.
I also ask what days of the week are good for getting a short appointment, and I emphasize that I am usually looking for only 10-15 minutes. The important part here is that I’m not looking to give the owner my life story. All I want is a simple face-to-face meeting where I have a chance to make a connection.
Why Not Use Social Media?
Given all the hype on using social media, email marketing and networking events to generate business, you might ask why not use one of those methods. Simple, for small businesses that have only 1 or two people, I have found that there is just no better way to quickly get the ball rolling than phone calls and face-to-face conversation. You can send out emails all days long, but you won’t get far unless you follow up the emails with a phone call.
“Yeah, I got your email. You know we were just talking about [insert your service here — redoing our website, remodeling the kitchen, buying a new copier]. Why don’t you stop by the office sometime next week?”
For the small business owner I have found social media is a great tool that you want to use with a more traditional sales approach such as follow-up phone calls or walk-ins.
Stay Tuned
As long as there are no last-minute complications today I plan on posting an update this evening of the results of what happens during today’s walk-ins. Stay tuned.
Editors Note: I found this article so valuable because it links to a string of eight other articles where a very successful author discusses how he learned to deal with rejection. I’m offering this to my readers because I know that developing thick skin is a very important part to growing your confidence. Read more in Cecil Murphey’sAbout Rejections series.
Early in my writing career, I sent a manuscript to Christianity Today and within weeks I received a rejection. Inadvertently, I sent the manuscript back to the same magazine. Two weeks later, the same editor not only accepted my article but also asked if I wanted to write paid book reviews. (Not being stupid, I said yes.)
I’m not encouraging writers to follow my example but only to point out that rejection is a subjective response. The cliché holds true: “What one editor hates another one loves.”
Here’s another truism: If you’re going to submit material for publication, you’ll receive rejections. That’s a guarantee.
At a writers’ conference in North Carolina in 2001, the speaker asked those of us who had received more than ten rejections to stand. More than half the conferees rose. “How many have received twenty? twenty-five? thirty?”
As the numbers increased, fewer people remained standing. At the end, I was one of only three left. All of us admitted to having received more than a hundred rejections. I’ve been writing longer than the other two, so I assume I had more rejections. None of us felt embarrassed. In fact, one of them said, “Rejections are our red badge of courage—we had fought the battles and turndowns are our wounds.”
Rejection is an unwanted-but-necessary part of professional writing. If you can’t handle rejections, don’t submit for publication.
Cecil Murphey is a New York Times’ bestselling author and international speaker who has written or co-written more than one hundred books, including the runaway bestseller 90 Minutes in Heaven (with Don Piper) and Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (with Dr. Ben Carson). His books have sold millions of copies, have been translated into more than 40 languages, and have brought hope and encouragement to countless people around the world. You can learn more about his work at his website, and read his valuable advice for writers on his blog.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 20, 2010, and is used with permission.
Exercise more. It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Lose weight. Get in shape. Feel better about yourself. I haven’t belonged to our local YMCA for several years. I think we let our membership expire about a month after our daughter was born. She’ll be five soon. This time it isn’t about losing weight. It is about something far greater. It is about being the best that you can be. You don’t have to go the macho route here, running 50 miles or lifting more weight than you should. Start slow. Make small changes. Show up. All change can be good.
A business coach that I admire (Dan Sullivan) once said that there are 6 billion people on the planet; you are not going to please them all.
Seth Godin reminds us that you (and I) aren’t going to be liked by most people, and that it is ok because you aren’t trying to sell to most people. You are trying to find your tribe, the people who really click with you and who find you amazing.
As entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs this should free us from any feelings of not being good enough or not having what it takes. Don’t let The Accuser get in here and play with your head. The ‘net gives us so much power to find those people who resonate with us. Check out the book The Long Tail for an excellent treatment of this (or Chris Anderson’s article in Wired magazine that spawned the book). Godin believes that many people want to find you, and the net makes this possible.
I had come to grips with not everyone liking me when I was on the road doing Salesforce consulting. I love Salesforce a lot more than the average person, so this makes me a bit of an anomaly to start with. When I’m in front of a group of 200 or so people for a big room presentation, I get really excited. I know the world of financial advisors quite well (my client was a Fortune 500 financial services firm), and I get excited about the many ways that Salesforce can help an advisor in their practice. This excitement obviously comes through in my presentation. My boss received some feedback from one (that’s right folks, only one) manager who thought I was too over-the-top. I was really taken back by it. What’s the right thing to do in this case? Dial it back a notch?
I asked my leader how I should respond to the criticism. “Well, that guy isn’t happy about much anyway.” In the end I didn’t completely dismiss the criticism. It was a good wake up call, and one that I probably needed to hear. I didn’t let it shake my enthusiasm, though. In fact, it only bolstered my confidence. I had several managers at the client location and many, many individual users thank me for providing high value content, so I felt secure that I was doing a good job for my client.
Some of you may caution me at this point. You might recite the maxim from an older study performed on government agencies. This one was really popular in the quality movement during the late 80’s and early 90’s: For every person who complains there are 26 unhappy people who don’t complain. I really wish I could find a reference on that study so I could investigate the legitimacy of that statement. For now let’s take the statement at face value and run with it.
So my presentation style didn’t resonate with more than just this one manager who voiced his opinion. I’ll agree with that. I’ll also look to the remainder of the data – the positive feedback given directly to me and the positive feedback given to my manager. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Why? Because I had found my tribe. Right place, right technology, right presenter. I had hit the sweet spot.
Now it is time to go find yours. Let me encourage you with this thought: When you hit the sweet spot — and you will find it someday either in your current venture or in the next — it is the best feeling in the world. It makes all the waiting, struggling and hoping worth it.
Go find your tribe. They are out there waiting for you!
Sometimes the best way to increase your confidence is to make a stand and declare to the world who you are.
Yet this simple thing can be so difficult. It can leave you feeling exposed. Naked. It is too easy for self-doubt to creep in.
What if people don’t like me?
Worse, what if the people who like me now stop liking me?
What if no one buys the painting, the book, the (fill in the blank) into which I have poured my heart and soul?
What if I get criticized?
How To Stay Confident When Stepping Out
You are made to follow your calling. Feel good about having strength to take the steps you are taking.
You are not made to play a small part. To hide. To shrink from greatness.
Planting your flag somewhere, anywhere, means that you have a great deal of confidence in yourself.
Most people are looking for someone to follow, to read about, to find interesting. The person they follow doesn’t always have to be the other guy. Why can’t the interesting person be you?
Commit fully to your path. No waffling!
Run. Hard work creates its own luck. Nothing builds self esteem more quickly than a prospect saying “yes”.
At some point you have probably had some type of personality assessment. There are about 100 different flavors out there. My favorite so far is the Strengths Finder. I took this test, and it illuminated my top 5 strengths:
Learner
Strategic
Achiever
Intellection
Ideation
Take a look at my top strength – learner. I have always loved learning new things. School has always been fairly easy to me, but this post isn’t about me, its about what you can learn from my experiences.
Since I like learning, and it comes easy for me, it is so easy for me to lose focus by the lure of another opportunity. Sometimes I find a project that looks just way too irresistible, so I take it. “I can learn so much from this,” I rationalize. Meanwhile my more strategic endeavors stall. Eventually I snap to my senses and get back on track. Sure, I’ve learned plenty on my detour, but I have lost precious time on the very accomplishments that I said were so important to me.
How to Combat The Weakness of Your Strength
When an opportunity comes your way run it through the following filters.
How far am I willing to go down this rabbit hole?
Can I bail out of this so called “opportunity” easily if I find it is taking me too far off track?
What is the signal or trigger event that will tell me it is time to move on?
I’m writing this post just as much for me as I am for you. I’m going to print these three filters on a card and tape them somewhere on my dashboard so I can see them every morning as I take my kid to daycare. Following these easy to use filters will keep my confidence high and keep me on track to reaching my goals.
Comparisons are great when you are shopping, but comparing yourself against others is a no-win situation. In this article I’ll tell how comparisons used to wipe out my confidence. Plus I’ll show you what you can do to break the cycle.
I remember my first year as a business coach. This was back in 2003 before many people even knew what a business coach was or how helpful one can be to a person’s business. I was really insecure in my early days. I was in very new territory and I didn’t know how to compete. I knew that I would do a good job for anyone who would engage my services, but I still had some lessons to learn about prospecting. There weren’t many of us business coaches / consultants around at that time, but I remember comparing myself to the ones who frequented our local chamber of commerce. One had graduated from a very prestigious school with an MBA and another one had deep ties to the community. I was a newbie in the area. I had no network to speak of, and I felt really outgunned by my competition. I can’t tell you how many times I let this insecurity keep me down.
Years later when I was running a business as a financial advisor. I vowed not to allow comparisons to play with my confidence again. It is quite common in sales organizations for there to be a scorecard that ranks each salesperson by the number of sales credits he or she has earned. At the time it was quite possible for me to find such a scorecard on our company’s intranet. If you are at the top of the list you look like a hero. Keep in mind that this list named everyone in our region, so if you are on the bottom, you look like the goat. Being a bit of a data hound I was taken with this list as soon as I discovered it.
Being new in the industry I realized that I didn’t have the chops to beat the big guys, so the next most logical thing would be for me to measure myself against my peers who entered the business in the same class as I did. One of the guys in my class had a big deal come through right off the bat, so he was beating me. I logged in each week to see if I was closing the distance. I landed a couple of smaller deals and began to catch up. The two of us were leaving the rest of our class far behind. I landed another few deals while my friend went into a dry spell. I took the lead about 5 months into the year and never looked back.
Notice that this is healthy comparison compared to the unhealthy comparing I did when I was a business coach. There’s a huge difference. One builds up and encourages us to do better and be better. The other simply tears us down and drives us to inaction. There’s always a bigger fish.
I’m not in a race against them. I’m in a race with myself. My race has nothing to do with how they are doing. Some people can benchmark against others without bearing any damage, but most of us just don’t come hardwired that way.
How to Break the Comparison Cycle
1) Stop it before it starts
You are wise enough to realize when you are about to get into a comparison situation. For me, I finally stopped looking at the regional scorecard. It had become a demotivator instead of a motivator. I had to back away from it. Now in my own consulting business I have to resist the urge to compare myself and my content to others. This is my new edge, and I have to stay away from the cliff of demotivation.
2) Stay busy
Remember the old proverb – An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Keep moving. Don’t give yourself time enough to dwell on what you don’t have. If anything spend time thinking about all the assets you do have:
health
some place to live (no matter if you are living in a tent, renting, or in your own place)
an education (no matter if it is a high school education, only some college classes, perhaps a degree from a “bad” school, etc.).
family
friends
3) Get in a group
I know that it sounds cliche. You have probably heard this all before, but I will echo it here — There is tremendous power in being in a group. Check out Keith Ferrazzi‘s Whos Got Your Back and his myGreenlight for more on this. The thing with groups is that they take time. I have been in and out of so many groups that I can’t name them all. Do not stop searching for a good match of people who want to help you. They are out there. Keep looking.
I was reminded here recently about the importance of sticking to one’s story. Due to some scarcity thinking on my part I allowed myself to get taken off-center in my confidence. Stake your claim. Stick to your story. You’ll be glad you did.
I first had the idea for a confidence blog about four months ago. I was quite happy to find a good domain name in short order, so I took this as a sign from the heavens and decided to buy it.
One of my primary intentions with the site is to use it as a means of monetizing my research. I figure I might as well start earning some money on this large investment I’m making in my doctoral work. One other huge driver for me is that this site may become the means through which I can give heavily to the community at-large. Ever since college I have felt some type of ministry calling on my life (for lack of a better way to phrase it), and I have wrestled with how to fit this into my life. I spoke to my pastor about this always-present feeling and he recommended that I do a Seth Godin — go build a tribe. In essence, that’s exactly what I am doing.
In addition to plenty of free (and hopefully good) content, I plan on creating a membership portion of the site. I know of a few examples of individuals who either own or moderate membership sites, and it seems to be very rewarding psychologically as well as financially.
