blog [blawg] -noun 1. short for weblog - (world wide) web + log; 2. an on-line diary; 3. a chronological log of thoughts or information that is posted on a web page

Have you ever heard a word you’ve never heard before, and then it seems like you hear it all the time? Or what about when you bought your new car? When you got it, it seemed pretty unique because you hadn’t seen any or very few of them on the road. Then you saw a dozen of the exact same car – same kind and color – from the time you drove it off the lot until you pulled it into your driveway for the first time!

Well, it’s been that way lately with blogs. I’ve been working on and updating mine more and more. I’ve been receiving more and more questions about them lately. And I’ve been learning more and more about the benefits of having and maintaining a blog. So this week, we will look at the many benefits of blogging for your business.

Whether or not you have a website, a blog carries many benefits for your business. Next week we will look at the benefits of a blog as a complement to your website. But for this week’s article, we will look at the benefits purely based on the merits of a stand-alone blog:

· Quick and easy – Setting up the blog template can take a little time, both to learn how to set it up as well as the time it takes to actually do the set-up. However, once the blog template is set up and published, it is very quick and very easy to add content to your blog in the form of thoughts, information and communication as well as advertising specials, promotions and new product announcements.

· Very inexpensive – If you do not have the time nor desire to set-up your blog, one can be set-up for you for as little as a couple hundred bucks. From there, the only investment you have is your time as there are no monthly or annual hosting fees you have to pay to keep it active.

· Become a friend – Because you are writing in your own voice and in your own style, your customers and prospects that are reading your blog can connect with you in a unique way and in a unique tone that cannot be felt through a static website or brochure. Even the prospects that don’t know you, will soon feel as if they do.

· Become an authority – When you verbally tell someone something, you are a resource. However, when people read something that you have published, you become an authority.

· Provide immediate information – If you have something that you need to broadcast to your customers and prospects, the quickest way to do it is through a blog entry. Many people that follow your blog will subscribe to it. As a subscriber, they receive notification whenever you post a new entry.

· Accessible and approachable – When people read your blog, they connect with you on a different level than through a website or your company brochure. You have a one-on-one conversation with every person that is reading. If they have a question or a thought about your entry, they can post a comment which further establishes a sense of accessibility and approachability.

· Gain insight – When your customers and prospects read your blog and leave comments, you begin to obtain a better understanding of what they are thinking and in turn what they expect. You can also track the number of hits you get on each post which digs even deeper into the mindset of your customers. This kind of information is priceless and is very difficult to track with most any other medium.

· Build awareness – The rule of thumb is it takes seven contacts with a prospect to make a sale or become top of mind when they think of your product or service. With a blog, you can have dozens if not hundreds of contact opportunities with your customers and prospects in a very short amount of time.

If you’ve never seen a blog, you can view mine here: http://sellingu.blogspot.com. Starting out, I am using the blog to post my weekly newsletter articles for people that do not subscribe to the newsletter. (Shame on them!) As it grows in followers, I will begin to add additional posts with other tips and ideas.

Once you decide to get into the Blog world, here are a few tips and resources for you to use to start your blog and to successfully and effectively use your blog to grow your business.

· A couple of good blog sites that you can use to set-up and host your blog are Blogger (www.blogger.com) and WordPress (www.wordpress.com). Personally, I like Blogger as it seems to be a little more user friendly, but I’ve heard others say the same about WordPress.

· Don’t get too carried away with using countless gadgets/widgets. (You’ll learn what these are when you set up your blog.) My advice is to only use those that add value to your blog.

· Speaking of value, and this is VERY important, be sure that your blog entries are thoughts, ideas or information that provide value to your readers. It is ok to plug your products or services, as long as each post isn’t a blatant commercial. You’ll gain a good following by being a resource, not a pitchman.

· Be consistent and be patient. The growth, success and power of your blog will not happen overnight. It might not happen in a month. It may even take half a year or longer for it to build momentum and really take off. But the key is to build it, feed it, promote it and allow it to work for you. Make a commitment to post at least weekly. Eventually, a couple of short posts a week with valuable information will be great. Again, the key is “valuable content.”

Well there you have some good stuff to get you going. Good luck with your blogging adventure and journey. Let me know how it is going and when you got it up and running, send me an e-mail with a link to it.

slump [sluhmp] -noun 1. a period of decline or deterioration; 2. a period in which a person performs slowly, inefficiently, or ineffectively.

A couple weeks ago we looked at your Confidence Journey from building a foundation, becoming passionate and creative and finally entering an altruistic state of confidence. As a result of much positive feedback and a few reader questions, this week we will look at how to handle one of the biggest challenges you’ll face throughout your Confidence Journey - a slump.

The following is one letter in particular that pretty much summarized and echoed the questions from the others.

Hey Scott,

I’m very confident and comfortable in the product I sell because I know it works and I know we’ve got a quality team. My question is this - do you have any tips for keeping that confidence UP in a slower market? I went through a really slow month (May) and it got me in the dumps and made me begin to question my abilities, but now all of a sudden, I’m on fire again! All through May I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out what I needed to tweak, what I was missing, what I needed to do better to get my numbers up and I couldn’t see what I was doing wrong, so then the self doubts and the questions started. But now the confidence is way back up. So at any rate, any tips for keeping confidence high through the lows?

Thanks,

Angela

This question and the others are excellent, excellent questions. However, let’s focus on Angela’s as the basis for how to keep your confidence while working through a slump. Starting out, she appears to be on the right track with reviewing the things she was doing in order to get better and break through her slump. This can be an effective course of action when dealing with many situations as it can help you identify where you may be slipping and get you back on track.

However, this can also have you spinning your wheels wondering what is going wrong. The downfall here is when you are looking for what is going wrong with what you are doing, it starts chipping away at your confidence. And when you don’t find anything to tweak or change, your confidence really starts taking a hit! My good friend Lisa would refer to this as looking at your situation from a “deficit” perspective.

Conversely, a shift in perspective may help not only break through a slump, but keep and strengthen your confidence along the way. This paradigm shift moves away from a deficit perspective to focus positively on your situation from an “asset” perspective.

(Keep in mind for the purpose of this article, we are focusing purely on “how” you can keep and build your confidence during a slump. The “what’s” that you can do is for a different article.)

Digging a little deeper into the asset perspective as it relates to making your “tweaks,” rather than look at what you may have been doing wrong or what you were missing (mentally processed as a weaknesses), look at what you have done or are doing great that led to your successes (mentally processed as strengths) and make your tweaks and reinforcements off of them. This will strengthen and build your actions and activities to push through a slump. This will also keep you focused on positive actions and feed your confidence.

One last thing on confidence… Remember that confidence and attitude is a state of mind. It is something that we can consciously control despite what we are going through. It may be tougher at times, but we can choose to persevere and take actions that build our confidence. With time, effort and attention, sustained confidence and positive attitude will eventually become second nature. If you have not yet seen the movie “Pursuit of Happyness,” it is an excellent example of pushing through your slump and maintaining your focus that in turn keeps and builds your confidence - even among the bleakest of times.

Wrapping up, your circumstances may make it more challenging sometimes, but remembering to look at those circumstances from an asset perspective keeps you focused, energized and confident. It is then - with focus and confidence - that you will be able to see the opportunities and the doors that are opening up to you, rather than the road blocks that are being thrown at you.

confidence [kon-fi-duhns] -noun 1. belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities. 2. The state of mind characterized by one’s reliance on himself, or his circumstances; a feeling of self-sufficiency; such assurance as leads to a feeling of security; self-reliance

Successful sales people share many of the various sales traits; however there is one that you will find in every successful sales person - Confidence. This week we will look at this key characteristic in its various forms and stages and how confidence, if developed effectively, will help you to continually grow and become more and more successful. This article may be more applicable for someone getting started, but may also have an A-ha or two for anyone.

Confidence comes in many forms; confidence in product, confidence in service, confidence in delivery, confidence in performance, confidence in warranty. But the confidence that propels someone from just being in sales to succeeding in sales is confidence in self.

It’s been my experience that the confidence cycle grows through four stages: foundational, passionate, creative and altruistic. Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages.

Whether you just got started as a commissioned sales rep, are a small business owner that also wears a sales hat, or an entrepreneur that is an expert in your field, no one gets paid until a sale is made. Getting started requires a lot of time studying your product, your service, your market and several other items that will build the confidence foundation you will need for your ability to make a sale.

While you are building your confidence foundation, you will encounter some challenges and road blocks that will try to crush your confidence. The biggest is rejection. Realize that as you are growing in your confidence, you will be rejected. However, that rejection is vital in building a strong, solid confidence. Going through the rejection gives you a basis to look back on and see that in spite of it, you were able to grow. Don’t welcome rejection, but embrace it as something that is typical at this stage and is helping you get to the next level.

This foundational type of confidence is needed to talk intelligently about your product or service. Without it, your prospects will not develop confidence in you, let alone your product or service. Once you have this foundational confidence, you begin landing a few sales here and there. As a result, you build momentum, your confidence grows and you land more and more sales.

Now that the foundation of your confidence is built and is strong, you no longer speak intelligently about your product or service. Instead, you begin to speak passionately about your product or service.

Your prospect senses your passion and the manner in which you speak about your product or service and the absolute belief that what you have is the best solution available. Your passion is transferred to your prospect and his desire to work with you and buy your product is significantly increased. As a result, you now begin to close more sales more frequently.

Now comes the fun part. Wait a minute! You’re making sales hand over fist and that isn’t the fun part!? Nope. Now you’re brimming with confidence and ready to go to the next level. This is where your creativity kicks in. Not creative? Baloney! You know your product or service inside and out, you’ve spent the last several months or years building and strengthening not only your confidence but the relationships you’ve made along the way, and you’ve worked through countless scenarios that have built the experience capital that you can draw upon.

With your creative confidence in place, you now begin creating more sales rather than making new sales. Your experiences and relationships present opportunities that you were never aware of before. You use those experiences and relationships to manufacture creative ways and opportunities to sell more and more.

The final stage of your sales confidence is altruistic, where your concern is no longer how or when you will make your next sale, but whom and how many people you can truly help by providing the best product or service. The rush you get is no longer from blowing away your monthly sales goal by the end of the second week. In this stage, the rush you get is from knowing your customer is truly better off because of what you provided.

In this final confidence stage, you also not only look for opportunities to provide to your customers, but also look for opportunities to help others in your field. The experiences and opportunities you’ve had over the years is something that you look to share with others that are growing through their own confidence cycle. The joy you get here is in seeing others coming up behind you grow, succeed and eventually join you in your confidence.

Here is the exciting part - the confidence journey is there for anyone willing to take that first step. It’s not as easy as just taking a first step, you need to commit to the journey and work your tail off along the way. But the end is definitely worth the means. The journey does not discriminate and there is plenty of room for as many people that want to go. So what do you say? Want to take a trip with me? If so, shoot me an e-mail and let me know - the more the merrier!