The Shy Marketer

Welcome To The Shy Marketer!

Whether you are a salesperson with call reluctance, a small business owner who is scared about doing her own selling, or a network marketer who can’t bring himself to approach prospects, you have found a home here!

I’m definitely a shy marketer. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to have my own business. When you are a kid you don’t have a lot of money or options for starting business other than direct selling. So my saga began. I tried selling a weekly newspaper door-to-door, taking orders for personalized greeting cards, selling trinkets from mini-catalogs, and more. When I made a sale I was on ‘top of the world’ and couldn’t imagine an easier way to make money, but when I had to actually walk up to a house and knock on the door I couldn’t imagine anything tougher. My mom helped a bit by sending me to her friends houses first but even then it was far from easy. Eventually the fear would overcome the desire for for success and I would quit selling. Then I’d get the business bug again and start looking for my next opportunity. Hence my induction into the opportunity ‘junkie’ club as I went in and out of the direct selling business like a cart wrangler bouncing in and out of the sliding doors of your local grocery store. As an adult I even tried professional selling of insurance, vacuum cleaners and a home food delivery plan. I did some telemarketing too. All without much success.

The ironic thing about my ventures is that I actually found the whole sales process very fascinating. Whether it was the delicate dance between the seller and prospective buyer or the ad copy in a catalog or magazine ad I found it all intriguing. I really liked sales, just hated the initial contact and approaching of people. Go figure. I wasn’t lazy, just shy. I later found out that the whole process of approaching and acquiring customers is actually called ‘marketing’ and there were, and are many ways to market.

Then I discovered network marketing (also known as MLM). What if instead of doing all that direct selling myself I could just get a few motivated salespeople under me and earn from their sales? This sounded like the ultimate answer to my fears, no more targeting prospects as customers, just let my ‘downline do the selling’. Was I ever wrong! I never got anywhere doing that. I think a lot of people come into network marketing thinking the same way I did and fail just like I did. The truth of the matter is that network marketing is selling too. Some people will downplay the whole selling thing but the bottom line is you are either selling your MLM product or you are selling your MLM concept to somebody. Either way it’s finding and contacting people and the making a sales presentation whether you are trying to get recruits or customers. Actually I like the name ‘network marketing’ as it really is all about building a social network of customers and/or salespeople. Sounds pretty accurate to me.

So is there hope for us shy marketers? I’m here to tell you there really is hope. I’ve discovered, and continue to discover, many ways to market that don’t scare the living daylights out of me (or my prospects). I’m having fun and finding ways to make money too. In this blog I’d like to reveal some of those. I also look forward to learning from you. Let’s swap ideas and bounce some concepts off each other. Are you ready? Lets get it going.

Blessings & Success,

Ernie Geeting

http://erniegeeting.com