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What the Rat in my Garage Taught Me about Marketing!

 


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As you reach out to your target market to share with them about your services, you’ll want to connect to their “pain.”  Their pain is the area in which they are struggling, and the area that you have the solution to their problem.

 

Here is a really great example of how my pain met up with a service provider’s solution … beautifully.

 

One night recently, as I was taking some trash to the garbage can which is stored in my garage, I saw a BIG rat crawling above the top of the garage door.  I hurriedly opened the garage door about a foot, and left it open for some time,  praying that the rat would run outside.

 

EEEEUUUUUWWWW!!!

 

Living in South Florida, rats are a part of the lifestyle here, and they get into people’s homes all the time.  Who can blame them?  It’s warm, safe and a great place to raise their young.  Still, this was MY home!  (My pain, right?)

 

I immediately looked on the internet about what to do, and I discovered that you have to rat-proof your home because there are myriad ways for them to get in.  I called a guy from a website, and he immediately called me back. (Score one for him!  Immediate response.)

 

He gave me more information which intensified my fears (or pain):  maybe I have rats in the attic or walls.  Listen to see if I hear scratching or movement.  Do you think I was listening that night?  HECK YEAH!  (I didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t anything.)

 

When he came the next day, he checked our attic (nope, no rats, thank God!).  He then looked at our roof and took pictures of all the places rats could get in, and showed me how the rat had gotten into the garage.  Seriously, there was a 3/4″ x 3″ gap at the bottom of our garage door.  THAT was how it got in.

 

My pain had increased significantly!  I was so grossed out, and was now horrified that I could have a whole bunch of rats living in my garage.

 

Then, he took me through his sales process.  He could fix the places in the attic, set traps in the garage, fix the garage door gap, and just as a matter of caution, set traps in the attic – just in case.  (Score two for him!  Great service.)

 

Do you think I was ready to sign my credit card to him?  ABSOLUTELY!  While it was only $600, I would have paid more, believe me, to get out of my pain.

 

So, here’s the point:  My pain met up with his solution, and I readily – even happily – paid.  He set the traps, fixed my open areas in my roof, and now I feel MUCH safer.  (Score three for him!  Problem solved.)  My peace of mind was worth that and so much more!

 

We talked about his business, a little, too.  He said it’s pretty much recession-proof, which I can believe.  And he did all the “dirty” work.  I didn’t have to do anything.  (Score four for him!  Easy-peasy.) Was he of service to me?  Absolutely!  Will I tell all my neighbors?  Heck, yeah!

 

You see, pain is not a bad thing. And for your clients, their pain is not a bad thing.  We all go through pain of a various nature, depending upon our situations.

 

When I went looking for someone to solve my pain, I was clear that I wanted someone who specialized in this field, someone who could take care of my problem (and even tell me what my problem was, i.e., openings to my attic via the roof), and who would do it quickly.

 

When we market ourselves, we truly need to connect to someone’s specific pain, and be clear with them about our solution to it.  Once we do that, we invite them to take the next step in resolving their pain: hiring us.  If your solution meets their pain, I promise you, they will happily work with you.  Your job is to be clear about what you offer, and what your prospective client’s pain is, and then ask them for the business.

 

Score a BIG one for me!  I learned the lesson!

 

Hugs, Anne

 

 

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How Do YOU Rise Again After Crash & Burn?

Yesterday, I had a splendid crash and burn. Publicly. You see, my social media coach and dear friend, Mande White, and I had decided we were going to create a Blog Talk Radio (BTR) show called “The Business Bitch.” (We do it, so that we aren’t.) Catchy, right?

Our intent in creating this was to normalize the process we all go through in this walk we are on as solopreneurs. (That’s an entrepreneur who is working alone.) As solopreneurs, we have some pretty unique experiences. There’s the delicious joy of experiences gone right, and then there’s the exasperating frustration when they don’t … and there’s the feeling of overwhelm that occurs frequently.

So, we set the date, created the page of information on the BTR site, and then began to announce it on Twitter and Facebook. Only we didn’t practice. You see, BTR will only allow you to schedule one thing per day, and by the time we realized this, well, we were at the day of the show.

Uh-oh.

Mande’s intuition was warning her. In my usual optimistic way, I said “Look, even if we mess up, it’s our first time, and we’ll learn, right? It’ll be fine. We’ll do great.” Of course, I was thinking she was worrying about us not having enough to say or nobody showing up, or something like that.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to use the switch board (or that there even was one!) and that I wouldn’t be able to even get Mande on the call! Yep. That’s what happened. We spent half the time trying to figure out how to both be on the call. Live. With listeners. Actual listeners.

We laughed about it later, but oooohhh, boy, did I ever feel foolish when the laughter was over.

Crash and burn.

So, how do we recover from crash and burn? How do we rise like a phoenix after humiliation, hurt, frustration, and all those other “lovely” experiences?

Well, here was my process:

1) Share your pain: I immediately called my husband and my mother – the two people who love me most in the world, and wanted to share with them. Unfortunately, they weren’t available when I needed them. I then called a friend. That helped, a little.

2) Do something you love to do: I next saw that my ducks were all waiting for me to come feed them and that the bird feeder was empty, so I went outside to feed them all. (We live on a lake and the ducks – and the turtles – have become dear little friends of mine.)

3) Get quiet and listen: After feeding the ducks, turtles and birds, I sat at the edge of the lake for about an hour. Just being. I felt the earth beneath me, the breeze around me, saw the life in the lake around me, and heard the quacking of the ducks, and the call of the Blue Jay telling his friends that food was there. I absorbed the energy of Mother Earth, and allowed my disappointment and frustration to flow out of me as I received the message that all is well.

4) Tap: When I realized that what I needed someone to say to me was that everything was fine, and that I’d do better next time, that this is a learning process and I’m learning – and that I wasn’t hearing it from anyone outside of me – I knew I had to say it to myself.

So, as I tapped, I told myself these kind things (all true, by the way), and I began to integrate their truth into my being. This is a really important step, because we often will not hear what we need to hear from others. Once we become aware of what it is we need to hear, we must give it to ourselves (and most of us have never learned how to do this).

5) Take care of yourself: When my husband came home, I told him, “I don’t want to do anything tonight. I just want to relax and watch TV.” Later, I took a bath with candles and soft music, listened to my Unlimited Wealth CD, and went to sleep early.

6) Turn lemons into lemonade: By writing this article, I am turning my lessons into an opportunity to share, to grow, and to help others.

We all have experiences of crash and burn. It’s what we do with those experiences – how we handle them – that matters.

Which of these steps do you use? Which work for you? Do you have others that I didn’t include here? What are they? Care to share?

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” The Dalai Lama

 

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