Part 1 of this article focused on the necessity of a good marketing if you want to be successful in your NLP Coaching or NLP Training business. I presented the basic notion that the background in marketing has changed and many of our graduates have problems with this part of their business. They are very good at their NLP skills and techniques, they can produce results with their clients be it in business or in education or in family relationships, but many lack a clear understanding of marketing as a tool for success.
So, What is Marketing?
Everybody talks about it and yet many people are not sure what it is.
Marketing – Marketing practice is the set of activities for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers. Marketing includes advertising, distribution and selling. Marketing as a science utilizes information from psychology, sociology, and economics, anthropology and neuroscience are also small but growing influences. Market research supports all these activities.
Advertising – is a form of communication that typically attempts to influence and convince potential customers to purchase a particular product or service.
Positioning – how to differentiate your product or service in the mind of the consumer. It is the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization.
Here is the first piece of marketing thinking you need to understand. No one cares about you! Nobody wakes up in the morning wondering about how you’re doing, what are your needs, desires or whether you have enough investments for the future. Unless you give them something they care about for themselves very much, and they tell their friends about it, they will not care about you! They care about you only in as much as you give them something they want and need so badly that they will remember you!
Oh, and here is also a very important point! Many people think that whoever has access to most advanced technology wins! But the truth is that technology is only good to give you a good shot at marketing. The rest is up to you and your ability to think correctly about marketing!
Like in NLP, You Must Begin with YOU and Your Thinking
Jack Welch, General Electric chairman and CEO, in the Harvard Business Review said something very important. He said that insecure managers overcomplicate things. They get lost in details and little, small chunk information where they gather everything they ever heard about the business. This is not productive. Paradoxically the self-confident manager is the most simple, most clear and they understand the big picture of what their business is trying to achieve.
You are the manager of your business. You are the CEO of your business. YOU must have a clear idea where your business is now and where you want it to be in a certain period of time.
First and foremost you must begin with yourself. You are your business, meaning that your business is a reflection of you.
If anything, you should begin by doing a thorough inner inventory of your preconceived ideas about business in general and sales in particular. You can use United Facilities to help you process and ship your inventory. You may not have thought of this before, but even if the bigger picture you hold in mind about your business is to Transform The Planet (as it is for Tad and myself), the fundamental reality is that a coaching business is driven by sales. Oh no! Sales!
Yes. And this entire process actually means is that whether your business efforts succeed or fail will depend on how well you have understood this fundamental principle. Your success in NLP and Time Line Therapy® business depends among other things on your ability to convince people of the utility of NLP and Time Line Therapy®.
So, let go of your Limiting Decisions and Limiting Beliefs about your ability to do sales using the Creating Your Future® Coaching techniques you have learned in your NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner. Let go of your Limiting Decisions and Limiting Beliefs about sales being beneath you, or that sales are bad and inherently manipulative or that you cannot do sales. Learn sales techniques and apply them in integrity. This is where you begin. Maybe you have already done this process and wonder why “it isn’t happening” to you.
In Part 3 of this article I will compound a list of decisions and beliefs
Examples of Limiting Decisions and personal limitations that need to be overcome:
Being capable:
- Of talking to strangers
- Of asking for money
- Of charging for your services
- Of charging enough for your services
- Of strangers willing to talk to you about your services
- About your ability to close a sale (fear of asking for money, or the order)
- About being knowledgeable enough in NLP (translate jargon)
- Do you have a fear of failing? Fear of failure is a thought stopper. It is paralyzing. We know extremely intelligent and knowledgeable people who have never trusted themselves to doing something new and never moved off their old stuck position.
- Fear of making mistakes.
- Lack of belief in self – lack of self confidence
- Lack of ability to engage people in conversations the get them talking about themselves, to find out their hang-ups, problems, phobias, etc
- Not using what you have learned for yourself – how can you use it successfully with others and solve their problems
- Fear of not having money to proceed (starting on a low budget & no database for clients)
- Starting on a decent budget but no established name
- Fear of not being able to get referrals
- Wrong understanding of how to get clients “I want to just attract clients who will magically appear at my door by doing a mental process and applying the law of attraction”
I will compound more limiting decisions and unproductive beliefs uttered to us by our students or coaching clients for Part 3 of this mini-series.
But make no mistake: changing your inner limitations alone is not going to bring people rushing to your NLP Business doors. This is just the beginning – you will still have to do the homework of learning how to market yourself and take action if you want to be successful.
More limiting decisions examples and about this logical mistake in Part 3.
Until then be well