Every Failure is a Stepping Stone to Success

To be a successful entrepreneur you are going to have to learn to deal with failure. 

There is no way around it. 

With participation trophies and merit based achievement being demonized, we see today, less and less people do not know how to fail. It's life ending and end up a victim of some unseen evil doer oppressing them.  Let's explain why that will make you not successful.  

Thomas Edison tried over ten thousand different experiments before he finally demonstrated the first incandescent light bulb on October 21, 1879. Bill Gates' first company, Traf-O-Data, was a failure. Michael Jordan was once quoted as saying: "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot; And missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

In my short stint as an entrepreneur I've failed more times than I can count. I have also had my share of success, but it’s not even close to equal. The failures far outweigh the successes, and I’m sure I have a lot more failure ahead of me. I’m OK with that because I know that as soon as I stop failing, I have stopped trying to innovate. It's the nature of the business of being an entrepreneur, and of success in general.

If it were easy, everyone would do it. It is naïve to think that every good idea that you have will result in a successful business venture. I have yet to hear an entrepreneur say "every single idea I come up with seems to work." More likely, you hear something like "I failed at my first five businesses before this one took off."

Think about that for a second. Five businesses. Sometimes the number is three, sometimes it's 20, but the important point is that most entrepreneurs don't hit a home-run with their first company. It really does amaze me - how many people have the stones to fail five times and still start a sixth business? You have to be supremely confident and treat those previous five times as a learning experience for the sixth. And if number six fails, you have to do the same and move on to number seven.

In my opinion, the most important thing is how you deal with failure. Once you accept that it's inevitable, you are able to learn from your mistakes and move on. It's easy to let the failure consume you - not so much because you are pessimistic, but more so because it is hard to see something that you poured your heart and soul into be ignored or rejected. As soon as possible you need to come to the realization that your business is what they are ignoring or rejecting, NOT you. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can objectively analyze why you failed and learn the things necessary for improvement in the future.

Failure isn't easy and is extremely frustrating, but it's a necessary part of success. 

Don't believe me? Ask Thomas Edison, Bill Gates or Michael Jordan! Ok, asking Thomas Edison might be a little tough, but you get the idea.

Get 100 Free Marketing E Books for Subscribing!

Email*

8 Dynamic Marketing Tips to Change Up Your Sales Team

Give sales-list.com a shot

Here are 8 dynamic marketing tips to help you increase your sales and profits fast.

1. Don't Just Sell Benefits

Don't just tell prospects what they gain when they buy your product or service. Tell them what they lose if they do not buy it. Most people fear loss more than they desire gain. Customers want your product or service to enjoy the benefits it provides. They will want it even more when you remind them of what they lose by not buying it.

2. Use Pleasant Surprises to Close Sales

An unpleasant surprise can kill a sale. But a pleasant surprise can help close a sale. For example, adding an unexpected bonus immediately before your prospect takes the last action to complete a sale will eliminate any last minute hesitation.

3. Provide Fast Delivery - Even When You Can't

The faster you can deliver your product or service the more sales you will get. If you cannot deliver all or part of your product immediately, add something to the purchase that you CAN deliver immediately. It could be as simple as a series of helpful tips related to your product posted on your web site ...available only to new customers.

4. Make Buying Easier

Every non-essential action in the buying process is an opportunity for customers to reverse their decision to buy. Look for ways you can make your buying procedure easier and faster. For example, many marketers use a multi-step shopping cart to get online orders when a simple online order form would do the job with just 1 or 2 quick clicks.

5. Improve Your Offers without Lowering Your Price

You don't have to reduce your price to improve your offer. Instead, simply load it up with bonuses. Make sure your bonuses have a high perceived value to your customers ...even if they cost you little or nothing.

6. Keep Your Advertising Up to Date

If you never make any changes in your advertising, your sales will eventually decline. Don't abandon advertising that's working - but do keep trying to improve it. And regularly test new advertising to see how it works for you.

7. Outsmart Your Competitors with Alternative Marketing

Look for some alternative marketing methods your competitors are overlooking. That's how one internet marketer discovered direct mail postcards. They proved to be a highly effective and very low-cost way to generate traffic to her web site ...while concealing her marketing activity from competitors.

8. Neutralize Customer Complaints Quickly

Handle customer complaints quickly and with a positive attitude. Strive to preserve your relationship with the customer instead of your immediate profit from them. They will reward you with repeat sales and referrals instead of punishing you by telling everybody they know about their unhappy experience ...causing you to lose future customers.

Each of these 8 marketing tips reveals a proven low-cost marketing tactic many other small businesses have used to boost their sales and profits. Integrate them into your marketing program now and you'll quickly start enjoying the same results too.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make some residual income online. If you use your affiliate marketing properly, you can actually make a fair amount of money. But you have to market your affiliate programs and utilize the Internet to its fullest potential, otherwise your affiliate marketing will be a bigger waste of time than raking leaves in the fall. Here are some tips to help you take advantage of the Internet when you’re affiliate marketing.

START AFFILIATE MARKETING WITH YOUR OWN WEBSITE

The obvious starting place for an affiliate marketing campaign is your own personal website. Whether this is a blog, an online portfolio or an online business, affiliate marketing can make your site a bit more profitable. As long as you have some site traffic, affiliate marketing can work on just about any kind of site that you have. When you’re choosing affiliate programs for your site, do your best to make sure that they correlate to your content, or try to skew the link names so that they do, and make sure that the links that relate most closely to your content appear first. The object is to make sure that people go to the links, so make them as enticing as possible.

FIND MESSAGE BOARDS FOR YOUR AFFILIATE MARKETING AND MAKE POSTS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS

If you can, find message boards to post your affiliate marketing links on that, again, relate in some way to the link. If you can, include links both at the end of message board posts and in the content. Gear your posts to the link, so that they seem like a natural extension of your topic. Before you start posting on all kinds of message boards though, make sure that the board allows affiliate programs in posts. If they don’t, then your post will be deleted, and if you break these rules often enough, you might be blocked from posting again on that or other message boards, especially if you are operating in a specific niche. Not only that, but people are less likely to click on links on a message board that frowns on affiliate marketing.

DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE POWER OF CHAT ROOMS AND SOCIAL NETWORK GROUPS

Chat rooms are a great way to get in touch with a number of people who already spend a lot of time on the Internet. Many chat rooms allow you to create a guest user profile or a one time only user. You can go in and promote your affiliate programs and convince people to visit the links in real time. This gives you the benefit of being able to respond to any questions or hesitations people might have immediately. You can really act as a salesperson, much more so than if you were to simply paste an affiliate program on a website somewhere.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE PYRAMID STRUCTURE OF SOME AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Many affiliate programs will give you partial profits of people that you sign up to become affiliate marketers. This can often be more profitable than using your own actual links, if you’re good at getting in touch with people. If you dedicate most of your affiliate marketing time to finding other marketers, then you can establish an organization that functions without a lot of input from you, leaving you time to grow your base instead of trying to find places to post your links. Of course, you should not neglect to work on your tier of the organization, both to make sure that you get some income from yourself, and out of respect for the person who brought you into the organization.

Expand Your Business with 3 Easy Steps - GET ORGANIZED!

 It's difficult to reach your business goals if you don't have the right materials and/or the information to help your business reach the success it's capable of.  These three insights will help you generate the business you've always dreamed of.

1.  Find Your Niche

Chances are, you already have a target audience that you are marketing your products to.  Let's face it, you're probably looking for ways to increase your market audience and profit...or you probably wouldn't be reading this article.  Here's the real facts... you don't have to find a wider audience to increase you sales.

Have you noticed similar characteristics that groups within your target audience have in common?  Maybe you have a group of businessmen, a group of young mothers, and a group of retirees that frequently make purchases.  That is just the set-up I'm talking about.

Pay attention to the individual characteristics of each group, and divide your advertising into similar segments, or niches.  Focus on the specific needs of the group in the advertising products you put out.  General advertisements are not as effective as more specific ads.  Hey, we all sit up and pay attention to someone who recognizes our specific needs and desires!

2.  Create A Unique Selling Point

Why should someone buy from you and not your competitor?  I hate to deal a blow to your ego, but it really has nothing to do with you , your product, or your service.  Yeah, its a little self-centered, but customers are attracted by offers that point out the things that benefit THEM.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, create a unique selling proposition that stresses the benefits the customers will receive from doing business with you.  Will they get faster service?  Go ahead and dramatize it, but keep the customer at the focus..."Get free overnight delivery!"  Hey, it tells the customer...you get quick service and a discount on shipping.   Two definite benefits in one statement.

Don't go out on a limb to create new products and services to get attention.  Just, add a special benefit to the ones you already have... maybe it's quicker service.  The most effective things to emphasize are benefits that your competition cannot or is not willing to give.  

3.  Offer Your Way To Greater Profits

How many times have you began manhunting?  Sure, as a marketer you scrounge and search for brand new or ancient methods of drawing brand new faces to your place of business.  The fact of the matter is that you don't have to find new customers for your sales to grow.

No, in fact you can take the current business you have and send your profits to the moon with one easy technique... make an offer.  

Greet every sale with an offer of an item that is related to the purchase.  The offered product doesn't even have to be yours.  The Internet is wonderful for affiliate marketers who can make great profits selling the material of others.  

Making your business grow doesn't have to be a stressful, backbreaking or frantic process.  Simply implement these three strategies, and watch it boom!