Marketing sucks!
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: One Ramblin' Ranter!
At the current moment my chosen career hinges on one important detail and that is marketing. All of it is cold marketing meaning I introduce myself and try to get them to listen long enough to set another appointment. There are various methods to this form of marketing the face to face intro and the phone marketing. The face to face has several approaches: the direct approach in which your whole goal is to talk to the person in charge and set an appointment, the corporate drop where you go buy drop off information and if you can meet the head person cool if not thats fine you get a name and a number and call them the next day. The phone is basically a bucking bronco you try to get in and hang on long enough to get permission to bring information by. I have not done any phone marketing as of yet but I think I am ready to try it. In my travels I have found the face to face go great for me if I have a partner but the minute I try by myself I tend to allow myself to skip places and when I fail too often I allow myself to call it a day. I need to figure out how to overcome that and one of the ways I am thinking about trying is by making calls asking if I can drop by the next day while I am in the area. I figure this will help me stop feeling like I am not invited which is one of my hang ups. I figured with as much sales experience under my belt this would be something I could overcome but I have found it is not so. I allow the newness of face to face interaction to discourage me before I even begin. I have tried pep talks but it's not really working.

So I talked to my mentor and he said he will try to come up with some more clearly defined rules or plans to follow for me to get started and get comfortable doing this for the rest of my life. He also said we would set a day to do a 3 - 4 hour blitz of phone calls so I can see how he does that. In the meantime I am doing online courses to better familiarize myself with the products I offer because that is essential to building my confidence. I need to know how to respond if I get a question adn until I started doing the online courses I was a little lost the brochures they had out are hard for me to pay attention to. Knowing I will be tested helps me learn better and also helps me identify key areas to know a little better. Things are starting to get better in that part of my life, now all I need is for the call center to hang onto me a bit longer. At least long enough to start making sales witht he insurance side.

I had a bit of good news the Oregon department of insurance finally made my affiliation with Action Insurance official and I will be getting my own logins soon for the 4 insurers I do not have yet. If you reside in Oregon you maybe getting a call about a quote and hopefully I can save you some money. To all the Phoenicians it will be a little bit before I can afford my AZ license and when I do I will be giving you a ring as well.

Anyways drop me a line and let me know about your world. crazedlunatik@gmail.com

Ps. Father's Day is June 18th!!!! DO your shopping at my store! Http://www.cafepress.com/cldholiday