– The man who has more keys is more powerful!
– So said the janitor.
We do business in a market where an often encouraging message to young freelancers seems to be: ”get YOUR practice into your own hands”, ”get NOW what you deserve”. Thus, self-confidence seems like the key to getting external recognition. Sometimes, self-confidence seems justified by the superior quality of the products, services, or ideas that we offer. Still, too much self-confidence, even justified, can be a dangerous trap.
Here are such dangerous limiting beliefs that some freelancers or entrepreneurs dealing with marketing and/or sales might have that could self-sabotage them in the business processes.
1. What I love about sales business and marketing on your own is the fact that you can be your own boss!
2. I don’t understand why I need to hire and pay so many different minions to do all this small legwork on social media!
3. I hate babysitting my assistants to manage the marketing tasks that I give them. I’m afraid that some of them might not be doing their job.
4. I’m too important to follow up on customers who previously bought from me. This low-grade task is for my assistants!
5. I’m too important to deal with sales!
Let’s go into each of them!
1. What I love about sales business and marketing on your own is the fact that you can be your own boss!
Wow, I wish I’d get a dollar for each time I heard this! Your boss is every buying customer with who you create a relationship. The more bosses you have, the merrier you should be as a freelancer or entrepreneur. Of course, it is true that unlike being an employee, you may fire some of your “bosses”. Still, in degrees of freedom compared to the status of an employee, starting up as a freelancer comes with less freedom and increased responsibilities in some ways. Trying on the shoes of your boss would be a necessary step in the direction of independence. Some entrepreneurs who realize they aren’t able to manage their own business actually hire managers to manage them and their business! If you don’t know how to run your virtual assistants, then you’re also subconsciously asking for them to manage you as well.
So, if you don’t know where you are and want to go, there is no obvious right direction for you. You either work for your goals or for someone else’s.
2. I don’t understand why I need to hire and pay so many different minions to do all this small legwork on social media!
The increase of the internet marketing sector implies the enlargement of high specialization in various areas of social media networking. This has become necessary in the past 10 years. Therefore, you can either pay the needed results in social media with time or with money. If you have money, it’s better to pay this way.
Mozilla Firefox changed its multiprocessing core feature since 2016 and can now support a load of 5-6 GB of RAM without crashing under the burden of so many tabs opened in social media. Still, you can’t say the same with the attention span that a human being needs to: schedule, post, like, publish, republish, select, boost, interact, ad target, share, connect, add, tag, hashtag, follow, comment and message with all the possible prospects, on all pages, groups, communities, profiles, and platforms. Does this make your head spin? It should, if you don’t have the knowledge and the tools to do it strategically, effectively, fast and reliable.
Being present in social media is a must that costs money and/or time. It makes sense that different virtual assistants get specialized in some tasks and not in others. Therefore, you need to outsource to several people the social media presence. That is, if you want to use it for increasing sales within the internet marketing strategy. If you get a specialist who knows it all, it’s very possible that it would cost you a fortune to pay him or her to do everything for you.
The bad part of all this is that you don’t notice any results unless you are willing to:
– implement a strategy instead of just trying out techniques;
– professionally outsource the social media marketing and PR to competent assistants who can do the right job – you have to recruit the right persons;
– wait for the ROI (Return On Investment) at least a couple of months after you’ve implemented a correct strategy.
If you want to get robbed, it’s enough to be convinced by the first dude who tries to sell you the idea “buy likes on your Facebook page!”. You don’t need a bunch of minions (may they be educated or not), to do this.
3. I hate babysitting my assistants to manage the marketing tasks that I give them. I’m afraid that some might not do their job.
This is a management and personality issue, but it can be fixed through technology. To do that, you have to:
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learn how to use collaborative project management software
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apply tools to automate much of the monitoring
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provide the possibility of having a clear vision about (1) what got done, (2) what needs to be done, and (3) what needs to be changed.
Using such a system or even enterprise resources planners could make your life easier. What if you use such a system but still have this fear? Then you’re probably not using a good enough system or you haven’t taken the time to properly learn it.
Now there are all sorts of technological solutions for managers which don’t necessarily fix the problem, but minimize it enough so that each can concentrate on more important things and it’s not such a hassle.
The true cause of this limiting belief is partly managerial and partly psychological. For the management issues, you may use some software. For psychological issues, you may use a psychotherapist. Combining them might provide an excellent answer. Of course, working with assistants requires initial training, preparation, and relationship management. Contact is important, but it’s not necessary to be stressful, it can even be fun!
4. I’m too important to follow up on customers who previously bought from my company. This low-grade task is for my assistants.
I must recognize that out of different excuses I was guilty of this one, too. The trouble becomes even more relevant when you can’t afford any assistants (anymore). Another issue I’ve been confronted with is that the assistants might not have sales skills. In this case, they might hurt or even ruin the business relationships you have with the buying customers.
Business networking is a challenging topic for salespeople who easily get overwhelmed with unimportant but seemingly urgent tasks. In most cases, an already acquired customer is much more valuable in the perspective of making new sales than acquiring a new customer. This is depending upon the field you are working in. If you’re not doing business with technology hardware or phone services, chances are you might make your life significantly easier by keeping in touch with at least some of your previous buyers.
It might come as a shock, but this advice comes from a person who thought he didn’t need to pay advertisements for getting new customers for more than four years. The power of relationships can make a sales business work around the clock based only on recommendations/referrals from present customers and keeping in touch with past customers.
I would rather say that following up on customers is mandatory, one of the most important tasks for a freelancer because it might be the source of new business and even bring some unexpected friendships.
5. I’m too important to deal with sales!
Everybody works in sales. It’s not enough to have a super clever funnel and some assistants that do the selling for you. If when you sell the product or service you don’t manage to deliver what you’ve promised, it’s all for nothing.
Selling is done in steps:
(1) the decision to buy is taken at the promotion,
(2) in the acquisition process,
(3) at the delivery and
(4) in the service.
Neglecting either of them can be deadly in sales for any person involved in the process, especially if that person happens to be an entrepreneur or a manager who is very busy (what can be more important than sales?). Dealing with sales is something that may hurt the ego of some who could be disturbed by the perception of failure in case of rejection. Taking rejection too personally without investigating the underlying causes of it deprives any business of the appropriate feedback which may be needed to improve the sales process.
So, there you have it. Keep in mind that the most important limits you need to break through are those in your mind! If you’ve liked this article, in two weeks I’ll publish a follow-up, especially for business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs. Marketing specialists and professional salespeople might be interested, too!
If you liked this article, I also invite you to read:
7 Key Questions Before Assuming Tasks
New Media (vs) PR? – The Flea Circus Illusion
Get Over Entitlement in Marketing, Management, and Business
Copyright © Marcus Victor Grant 2017-present. The Series started in 2017 and was updated for publishing in 2020. Copyright © Marcus Victor Grant, all rights reserved.
The materials on this blog are subject to this disclaimer.
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