Don’t you love it when you read a blog post somewhere and you feel like the writer is speaking to you? Today, when my alarm went off on my iphone, I skimmed through my favorite blogs. Seth Godin’s blog was perfect. He spoke about the importance of makeing a dent in the universe vs. being a cog in the wheel. It is definitely not the easiest road but hopefully, well worth it. If you don’t read Godin, you should be:-)
Yesterday, we were trying to make a dent in the photographic universe by creating a FREE way to help many photographers survive this economy. Education that can take some from not being able to stay in business to being able to do what they love. Unfortunately, we stumbled. Maybe it was a case of “be careful what you wish for,” but we invited so many people that our massive server couldn’t keep up. After an hour of struggling, we made the decision to reschedule the event for this coming weekend (and to share it an hour each day for the next 10 days). We spend the day working with one of the largest server companies out there to migrate our site. Our web team emailed me at 3:45 am that the migration was successful. While I know many of you had cleared the day and are disappointed, we are hoping that many of you who couldn’t make it yesterday, now can. Check out the details and register here.
And, here is a little nugget of inspiration from a recent interview with one of my favorite sales gurus, Brian Tracy. I asked him what he would say to the small business owner who is panicking because the phone isn’t ringing and they don’t know what to do, so they immediately have a 30-50% off sale. Here was his brilliant answer:
They have to look at the fact that the phone works both ways. You can actually make outbound calls, as opposed to just waiting for inbound calls. What people have to do is keep their funnels full all the time. Sometimes people get busy so they stop prospecting and developing new business, then the funnel becomes empty and they are in a panic. Lowering your price is the lowest form of salesmanship. It basically relegates you to a commodity and says you’re no better and no different than anybody else who can point a camera. Whereas, the point of developing business and makeing clear why it is you charge what you charge and why this is a benefit of the client to pay more, because of the work they get.
That’s the essence of successful business.
If you haven’t checked out Brian Tracy, seriously, he is one of my favorites!!! Here are some free resources on his site – go now and start selling!