Your E-Business
Strategy: Is It Love ... Or Fear?
I read recently that every human thought originates from
either love or fear. The more I thought about it, the more
true it became. I began to apply it to business - after
all, every business success or failure originates
ultimately from human thought. This article examines the
effects that love or fear can have on your e-business - is
it love, or is it fear, that dominates the way you do
business online?
If it's fear, you fear you're missing the 'one big thing',
and so you attempt to try absolutely everything in case
that's the thing you're missing. You read every email that
comes in promising business success, and attempt to follow
what they suggest.
The only problem is you are attempting to follow several
strategies at once, but there's only one of you and not
enough hours in the day. You end up barely touching the
surface of each strategy, and you become disillusioned and
despondent. You tell everyone who will listen that
everything you have tried simply doesn't work, and that the
Internet is a money-making myth.
You are constantly fearful of your competition. You worry
they are doing more business than you, that their offer is
better than yours, that they will drive you out of
business. You try to copy them, and emulate their style,
but somehow it just doesn't work and your heart isn't in
it. You feel like you're always following some way behind,
rather than out in front, leading the pack.
You have no idea where your sales are coming from, and when
you have a couple of 'dry days' with no sales at all,
you're panic stricken, and all you can think about is
business failure. You've been running your business blind,
you have no idea what's been working well and what hasn't,
so you have no foundation on which to base your decision
making, and no faith that what you are doing is working.
You begin to feel unfulfilled, over-worked, over-stressed,
and you can feel yourself burning out. The motivation for
your business begins to disappear, and you soon end up with
no business.
Instead, if it's love, you concentrate on Strategy A fully,
before even considering B or C. You do your homework first
- you read all the literature, you know it's been very
successful for many people, and you believe you can do it
too. You studiously, deliberately and methodically follow
the strategy. Rather than diluting your energy by pouring
it into many different moulds, you pour all of it into this
one, persistently and with considerable dedication.
You don't see much happening at first, but you still have
faith, and you re-examine the strategy to ensure you are
maximizing the possible outcome. Over time, you begin to
see the positive results. This reinforces your energy and
motivation, and increases the beneficial effects you
experience.
You tell everyone who will listen how well it works for you
- others try it too, and begin to see positive results for
their own businesses.
You look for ways in which you can work with your
competition for mutual benefit. You think about a JV, and
approach your competition with it, even ensuring that the
benefits for them outweigh your own. Your competition can
see how much benefit your proposal could be for both
parties and agree to it. The end result is a highly
positive outcome for both sides, and you agree to work more
closely together in future.
You concentrate on your own USP, and inject your business
with a sense of your own style, confidence, and overall
business strategy. You see others beginning to emulate you,
which you take as a token of admiration, boosting your
self-esteem, and thereby further improving the way you do
business. You find yourself leading the marketplace.
You have a couple of dry days, but you know that
occasionally this happens for whatever reason, that your
targeted traffic comes from multiple sources, which show
excellent conversion rates. Instead of fearing business
failure, you quickly check everything is okay with your
merchant account or payment processor and check your site
is functioning normally, and you know sales will pick up
normally again very soon. You concentrate your energies
instead into new avenues of promotion.
Instead of running your business on fear, and consequently
witnessing it shrivelling up and dying, you run it on love
- you have a passion for what you do, you always take
positive action, and the more successful you become, the
more it fires that passion.
Your business expands and becomes more successful. And the
positive energy from your own business begins to rub off on
others.
Can you see how a simple change in approach could transform
your business?
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Steve Shaw develops software and systems for effective
e-marketing. For example, his PopUpMaster Pro software
allows you to add popups to your web site that beat the
popup blockers, and vastly improve your response rates. For
more information please go to http://popupmaster.com.
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