My thoughts today are about my lack of experience in marketing and selling my company’s services. The problem is how to get started, because I don’t know how deep I’ll have to dig before I’m done.
Fortunately, this isn’t a totally new experience for me, so I have some aids to help me navigate through this swamp.
The most important thing I do, first, is to admit that I have a big gap in my knowledge and abilities. Trying to fake it isn’t going to work. So next is to line up resources that I have available to me:
- Books, websites, and other static resources
- Other coaches I know who appear to have worked past this stage
- Communities that I can connect to where I can learn from other experts
I started organizing my work by going to a class at the local Small Business Development Center and writing down my thoughts in my business plan. Even though it’s sketchy, it’s helping me to get a feel for how large this area is.
More on a whim than anything else, I’ve started reading a book on B2B marketing. I love reading, but oddly enough, I seem to learn more from discussions with people. So I’ve started making a number of contacts with others who can share their expertise with me. I also went to a couple of networking meetings last week, one of which was for small business owners in the area.
But finally, in the end, I have to put some trust in myself to just get started. Learning and planning are great, but I need to move into DOING marketing and sales. That’s what I’ll be focusing on this week.