It is easy to focus on what remains outstanding and not see what you have accomplished or how you have grown over
past year. Even marketing experts have difficulty nailing down time to market. I too fritter away time at trivial tasks like organizing paper clips, shuffling paper from one stack to another, updating my computer and watering plants. On worse days, I prefer doing laundry and making my kitchen even cleaner.Is that you? Procrastination does directly affect how much revenue you make and bank account doesn't lie. Throughout years, I've found ways to kindle excitement for tackling my marketing and funneling procrastination bug. Let me share seven steps to help kick start your marketing for new year.
1. Acknowledge with Truth
You can't change what you don't acknowledge and you can't acknowledge what isn't truth. Find truth by determining whether you're dragging your feet or simply need an incubating period. As an avid writer and marketing consultant, I receive many ideas. At first, I lied to myself thinking I will remember them. For years, I recorded them in idea journals. Attached to that, I always felt guilty because I didn't do much after documenting them. Later, I began allowing myself free write whatever thoughts were connected to those ideas as well. The guilt still came. When I gave myself permission to allow myself to fail all heck broke loose and I allowed myself to go in any direction it took me. Sometimes I began in East and finished in West. I gave myself permission to not have all answers.
Unexpectedly, I started to create 101 and top 10 lists on various ideas. Sometimes, idea emerged and I only got to five, sometimes 30. When flow slowed, I taped list to wall. Every morning I reviewed wall and added more. Throughout day, answers came from tons of different sources and lists kept building.
The lists circulated. The guilt for not following through disappeared, process became easier, creativity and productivity skyrocketed.
Do you need all answers before you start? Do you need an incubation period or wall system? Try new things and explore your way to success.
2. Identify What You Loathe
What do you hate to do in marketing process? Make cold calls? Follow up? Write web site content? Create flyers? I didn't like cold calling and editing. And creating new web content and planning ranked very low on my list. Identify what you procrastinate. Pinpoint why. I put off cold calling because I felt I lacked "right" language. When I asked myself "why," I remembered a marketing seminar and how I bought into presenter’s beliefs about cold calling.
My fear seemed powerful. To dance around it, I began writing mini-parts of a phone script, created a list of questions I wanted to know about them, and then a list of points I wanted to leave them with about me. I made a list of possible call to actions -- what action I wanted from call. One action was to get them to my web site and subscribe to an ecourse or ebook. When I finished, I had a strategy that made sense. It was easy to initiate calls afterwards. If they weren't interested, they didn't visit my web site and I didn't feel rejected. I refined script and calls after first ten calls to reflect my natural language.
What whys do you have for each reason on your list? What solution possibilities are there? Ask others to brainstorm with you if you are stuck. Are there some solutions that are only a one-time action? If yes, consider outsourcing. Find one "mini" step to start and leave next step unknown until you are ready. Keep mini-stepping until you are dancing.
3. Find Something Good
Maybe your incubation period deepened your knowledge or passion on subject. Look for good in why. It could be that while you procrastinated your vision became clearer. Be honest with yourself otherwise you aren't acknowledging it (#1).
