February 2012

When it comes down to it, success in sales and marketing is dependent upon how successful you are as a leader. Sure, effective marketing strategies and sales skills are extremely helpful. But, if you are not seen and respected as a leader, these strategies will fail every time.   Assuming a leadership role, and maintaining that posture by attitude and behavior, will lead you to success every single time.

How do you ‘assume a leadership role’, you may ask.  Great question.  If you are perhaps shy and timid, it does not mean that success in sales and marketing will be off-limits to you.  Rather, you need to stretch and grow yourself into the person who can be seen as a leader.   Many strong and effective leaders today were once extremely shy and timid people decades ago.  These people understood that becoming a leader was what was necessary and they made the commitment to take action every single day to evolve into the type of person who possesses leadership abilities.  This is the same journey I invite you on today.

First, it is extremely important for you to ‘buy in’ to the idea that being a leader is something that will indeed deliver you toward your goals of enjoying marketing and sales success in your business.  Please do not be wooed by the false promises that are frequently offered stating you can build a successful business by sitting quietly behind your computer and by rolling out passive email-based campaigns.  Sure, those strategies have their place.  But, you will not achieve everlasting success by those strategies alone.  You will need to build yourself up as a leader others will choose to follow to truly achieve long-lasting success.

Another thing that is important for you to grasp is that people choose to follow YOU, rather than choosing to follow your product or your business.  This is critical to really understand this concept.  Too many people getting started out in the business fall into the trap of thinking it is all about the product, all about your company, or all about the business opportunity.  This is wrong!  If you try to sell people on these ideas, they will walk or run away from you.  For, people do not want to be sold on such things.  Instead, people are quite happy to buy.  People will buy into you, if they feel that you add value to their lives.  This is exactly the challenge you have — growing yourself into the person who possesses so much value that you can generously and strategically share that value with others.

So, to bring this full circle into the world of health and wellness, as an aspiring leader in this industry, you must first possess the qualities of vitality, energy, and excellent health so that others will immediately look toward you as a role model.  By serving as a role model, others will naturally, even magnetically, be drawn to you to see exactly what it is that you are doing that has created such radiant health.  If you have also developed yourself into a leader, you will then be able to share with them ways in which they too can achieve such levels of health.  If you also have increased your own personal value in the world of marketing, you will then be able to offer to them marketing strategies and systems that will make their ‘decision to buy’ from you a slam-dunk.  This is the precise scenario you want to create, over and over again.

So, there you have it.  The entire recipe for achieving success in the health and wellness arena.  Re-read this short article if the system isn’t crystal clear.  The framework has all been laid out for you.  Now, it is simply time for you to take action!

Being authentic is certainly something you seek, right?  You’ve likely heard and read about all of the tremendous benefits of living a truly authentic life.  Perhaps you’ve even heard people sharing stories attributing their business turn-around success exactly to the realization that until that point they had been living an inauthentic life.  Once they got on track with their authenticity, the business began taking off.  If you have indeed heard some of these stories, perhaps you are filled with some questions…

What are these people really talking about?

What is this ‘authenticity’ that suddenly accelerates their business success?

How can I know if what I am doing qualifies for being authentic?

If you are indeed asking these questions — Good for you!  These are exactly questions that can lead to powerful self reflection.   It has always been my personal belief that the person who self reflects the most actually dominates in his/her chosen field or profession.  So, kudos to you for beginning the self reflection process on this important concept!

First, let’s tackle the idea of defining ‘Authenticity’.   Most definitions revolve around the following words:  genuine, real, or not false/coped.   In the manner we are speaking of here, these words perfectly describe the quality of authenticity.  You are to be the person who you truly are.  For, in reality, you can never possibly be anyone else!  While role modeling can be extremely powerful, you need to role model behaviors and attitude of a person, while ensuring you add your own personal ‘twist’ to everything you do.  For, as hard as you may try, you will never ever be able to exactly duplicate that person you are modeling.  It is impossible.  It is a universal law that every single person is unique.  And, that is the beauty of it all!  Don’t for a moment think that this is pure philosophical mumbo-jumbo.  Each and every person was created to be unique and each and every person has a unique offering to give the world.  It is your challenge to self reflect enough to deeply understand yourself and be confident what your unique qualities and offerings are.  Once you have embodied this understanding, and only after you have truly embodied it deep into your being, only then can you truly be authentic and share your gifts to others.

Does this sound too overwhelming for you?  It certainly doesn’t have to.  There are  a number of fantastic tools available to help you self reflect and discover your true unique gifts.  I will share more of these with you in a subsequent post.  Please recognize the importance of this initial step of self discovery.  For, I can assure you, the many stories of failures in home-based businesses are nearly all due to the fact that the individual was trying to do something not aligned with his/her true gifts and/or was trying too hard to duplicate or copy someone else.  We can never ever become a true success unless, and not until, we are fully aligned with who we really are and we present that to the world.  Showing up to serve the world while wearing a costume may work for some people for a very short time, but long-term success (let alone happiness!) will evade them every single time.  Rather, showing up to the world (to your office, to your prospects, to your business partners) every single day confident in who you really are is the most honored and respected avenue toward success.  True happiness also is a welcomed ‘side-effect’ to this recipe, too…

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