Business Is Like Dating

As most men realize, especially in today’s arena of romantic relationships, one must ask a woman out to get a date with her. And most of us men realize that one must ask out several women before he is successful in getting one date.

 

What about marketing for one’s business? Do you think it is different?

 

No it is not, except that you better continue like hell to use business, public relations, medical and dental advertising to attract people to become your clients, patients, etc., even after you have acquired a few. You must continue adding customers, patients, etc., to your fold.

 

Compared to dating, where you stop dating other people after you have met that right person, you never stop creating new “dates” for your business.

 

And just like with dating, where you might have to take some awkward steps in order to secure a date, the same can be said with engaging marketing methods that might feel uncomfortable.  

 

Here is what famous author and business/marketing consultant Daniel S. Kennedy once said: “You can’t do business sitting on your ass.”

He also included these two anecdotes:

 

“A few years ago, a favorite restaurant of mine failed during its “summer slump.”  But at no time did its owners get up off their butts and go out into the community door-to-door to hand out coupons or flyers. Or go to the phone and make telemarketing calls. Or do anything else that was proactive. They just sat there and died.” 

 

“In the same community, that same summer, a young chiropractor got ready to open his new practice – with at least a dozen competing chiropractors surrounding his office already established in the area. He spent one full month prior to opening going door to door, house-to-house, introducing himself, asking the residents about the area and their health interests, and making friends. He knocked on over two thousand doors that month. And from the first day he started seeing patients, his practice has prospered. In its first year, it out-performed all the established practices in the area.”

 

Though, it’s not a terrible idea, I’m not advocating that you should go and knock on a thousand doors when there are more efficent ways to be utilized.We are fortunate, that in today’s world, there are inexpensive and fully automated dental marketing and public relation tools available.

 

Like Mr. Kennedy’s aforementioned example about the chiropractor, you must pick up the available tools and use them. There really is such a thing as being in “the right place at the right time.” However, a large percentage of people never reach their career or financial goals because they didn’t bother to pick up and use the tools that were available to jettison them to that next level. Some people even see the tools, but will try to justify why they think the tools are broken or involve too much effort to use.

 

If it is too much work to the point that you are overwhelmed to do it on your own, then hire people to help you do the work. Think about it. Do really you think Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs does all of the work to maintain their empires… themselves?

 

No money to hire people? Then burn the midnight oil and do it yourself for a few months until you can hire people.

 

Well, you might think that Mr. Kennedy’s writing or my comments above might not be anything new. But they are. Or at least, they must be; otherwise why is it that 98% of all businesses go broke and that 97 % of all America is dead or dead broke at age 65?

 

Once you have managed to haul yourself up from sitting on your ass, it doesn’t matter whether everything you do turns ut perfectly, because guess what? It won’t. It’s simply not the way the world works. What you really need to achieve is to be right more times than you are wrong to ensure success.

 

So please do not make the mistake of only getting off your butt when you are 100% sure that what you are about to engage in will work. You will never ever know 100% and all you will be doing will be sitting on your butt while the competitions runs away with all the money.

 

If your new idea just has a slight chance of succeeding and if it does not totally, I mean totally, ruin you in case it fails, then do it. Do it, brother, because everything else is called sitting on your butt. Do it and you will never join the majority — the majority being the dead or dead-broke ones.

 

Your life will never be the same! It will simply take you on the road to success.

 

In these days (there always were) there are hundreds of great marketing tools which are cheap, not time consuming and very effective.

 

So get off your butt to learn what marketing tools you could use to supplement or create highly profitable opportunities for your business, whether you possess the knowledge of a doctor, plumber, restaurateur, car mechanic, real estate salesman, insurance broker, writer, etc.  

 

HELMUT G. FLASCH
Dental Consulting Specialist, Doctor Relations, Inc.