Wherever you work, your potential for winning new clients follows this equation:
[lead-generation potential] = f ([product excellence], [word-of-mouth]) + c
where by word-of-mouth, I mean your company’s “reach”: how well you’re known, how well esteemed, how unique you are, how much you’re spoken about.
It’s not a linear equation because potential sometimes increases suddenly, jumping to new levels of excellence or uniqueness, but also because word-of-mouth is often, in turn, a function of the excellence of your products.
The “c” factor doesn’t represent the “luck” component but rather “external factors” such as market conditions.
If you think about it, all of your marketing efforts are focused on these two factors:
1. How to do things better than others, how to be different
2. How to meet others and make yourself known
It’s a challenge that seems to be “you against the world”, a journey that’s often discouraging because marketing is tough, with few ready-made solutions and in need of lots of practice…it’s a question of feeling more than a question of strength.
In this search for the best, sometimes you need to think about not doing things all by yourself. You need to raise your head and take a look around, understand who is already great at doing what you do and find in that person a valuable ally. And in my opinion, you need to do that early, well before deciding to spend time and resources to continue alone!
An ally can make you grow much faster and you can “inherit” part of his greatness…speaking of which, I’m going to tell you a personal story and a textbook case history:
