Marketing Procrastination is Sales Avoidance in Disguise

Are you still working on your website? Or marketing copy? Or designing a new service offering? Or deciding on what to charge?

Whatever it is you are still working on in your marketing, do you understand the real reason it’s not done?

I can only tell you because I am guilty of it as well. As the saying goes, “if you can spot it, you’ve got it.”

Marketing procrastination is sales avoidance in disguise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe it is a skillset issue. If you’ve never really had solid training in sales, the face to face moment of truth can be really scary. A lot safer to churn on marketing copy, or your logo, or your packaging, or whatever.

But even people with good sales skills find themselves in this situation. I even find myself here from time to time until I jog myself out of it.

Here’s what’s going on:

Imagine you decided to open up a hamburger restaurant to sell your special secret-recipe hamburgers.

But for months you delayed in getting your menu printed so your store couldn’t open.

The cost? Months of lost potential sales and mounting expenses while your store is not able to take orders.

The upside? You protect yourself from the worst case scenario in the moment of truth: people hate your hamburgers.

This risk is always present in business. Even product ideas that seem great fail because the customer doesn’t actually want what you are selling. I’ve seen it happen many times.

But when the business is YOU — that risk touches very close to home — right in your heart and soul.

So we avoid sales to protect ourselves from the possibility of rejection of our business — which is a deep expression of our gifts and talents and who we really are.

The specific mechanism at work is that your subconscious mind is protecting you from the fear of rejection or failure.

Your subconscious mind has one job and that is to keep you safe. It does not want you to get hurt.

This self-protective mechanism is very strong.

The subconscious mind is also very sneaky, even insidious, in that it will create a seemingly rational story to convince you that your marketing just needs a few more tweaks.

The unfortunate consequence here, however, is that by not being engaged in sales activity, you won’t reach your ultimate goals.

Imagine I could wave my magic wand and voila!, your website is done perfectly right now. (Or your logo, or copy, or whatever it is you are procrastinating on.)

Then what would happen?

You would have to actually talk with prospective clients.

And you are afraid to do it.

I get it. I’ve been there.

If your marketing is not done, what is really going on is sales avoidance in disguise.

If you are not actively in the game, offering your services on a daily basis, then this dynamic is at play.

So knowing this dynamic, make the decision to get a mentor who can keep you in the game.