Have you been keeping an eye on all of the Black Friday and holiday offers coming out? Have you noticed any that you enjoy?
Notice which ones leave you feeling good and bad, not just make you want to buy something. Yes, ultimately, marketing needs to turn attention into dollars, but…
It’s not always the right time for someone to buy and we have to realize that’s ok too. We can’t forget about those people.
If the only message a business is putting out is “buy my stuff,” they’re leaving a lot of money on the table. More than ever, people care about who they do business with. Just notice the rise in influencer marketing and how the right endorsement can change a company.
Today you have to put as much or more focus on building relationships with your prospects before money ever changes hands. (I know it’s easy to forget this time of year.)
Keep an eye out for businesses that are still making an effort to have fun and build that relationship, even if you don’t buy. Study them and see which ones you might want to emulate and which ones to avoid. You can save yourself a lot of time and money by learning from others.
Learning from others is one of the best skills you can develop in business.
I call it a skill because it doesn’t come naturally for entrepreneur types. We like to do things ourselves and try to figure it out on our own. And we always think we can do it better.
This helped put it in perspective for me…
Imagine you’re trying to get to a village, but you have to go through a dense jungle. Would you rather cut your path or follow the one that someone already cut? Which way do you think will get you to the village faster?
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather follow someone else and get to the village faster. That leaves me more time and energy to explore beyond the village, and that’s the point of learning from someone else.
Maybe you can do things better, but why not give yourself a head start by learning from others?
So study what other businesses are doing during the next few weeks and months and learn from them. That’s what I’ll be doing as the holidays ramp up.