Politicians, when racing for the biggest prize in the political land - The Presidency of the United States - go on the road, shake hands, hug babies, and show their faces. No other alternative to that. Even with all the television, talk shows, blogs, news, YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace; they still understand that there is no substitute to showing your face to the people who will matter to your win, making campaign stops, going to different places where you don't go usually. But when there is an election in play, a win to be had, they would go wherever it is needed to do it.
All small business owners and entrepreneurs run a perpetual campaign. A small percentage understands it. Most don't. Our campaign is to get rich, to have a profitable business, to extract wealth, to get cash, to get to a point where you ONLY work with people you like working with, doing things that you want to do.
This campaign runs continuously in our businesses. There is no date in November where it ends and really good politicians never stop campaigning. Obama was campaigning for the presidency long before he was elected Senator. McCain has been campaigning now for the last thirty years.
Us entrepreneurs need to make some regular campaign stops also, this came up yesterday. In a conversation with two of my good friends who are doing very good in their respective businesses in Michigan. We all agreed that all three of us are failing to make enough campaign stops, not hugging enough babies, and not shaking enough hands. We are becoming complacent a little.
Getting used to technology doing it for us. Webinars, websites, blogs, videos, emails, conference calls and that has to change. Not enough to truly build a bullet proof business. No matter who's busy all three of us are, we got to get out more. Meet more people. Face to face. Knees touching. Handshakes and espresso. Make a calendar to go out every single week no matter what hell is breaking loose.
So one way of measuring progress in your business is to count the money, the deals, the checks coming in, the traffic to your website, the phone calls to your hotlines, the followers that you got on Twitter, the friends you made on FaceBook. Another one, a new one to add to the mix could be how many people you saw last week? How many hands you shook last week? How many campaign stops you made last week? To introduce yourself, your business, your goals to people who don't know you.
We are all running a campaign. Good idea would be to be aware of it and do something about it. I don't want to lose and go home. Neither should you.
Mark you are so right. I am just starting to see the effects of a grass roots business campaign. People talk and not everyone responds to electronic greetings! I vow to do more meeting and greeting in the next 5 months!