Marketing or Football… Which is Harder?5 min read

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Being a professional football player is a hard job. But you’re more likely to succeed as a professional football player than you are at marketing your professional services.

Let’s look at what it takes to become a successful football player. You’d engage in the following four core practices:

1. First of all, you must be in peak physical condition to play football. If you’re out of shape you’ll get hurt, often seriously.

2. Then you must master the rules, the strategies, and tactics of football. You must know them by heart to play the game well.

3. Next, you must practice the moves of football – throwing, catching, running, blocking, and tackling until they become natural to you.

4. Finally, you must have a support structure and system to give you direction, encourage you, and correct your mistakes.

If you are engaged fully in all of the above practices, you have a good chance of becoming a successful football player. Without them, you have no chance whatsoever for success.

Notice that I said must for all of these steps. They aren’t optional for success.

Now let’s look at playing the game of successfully attracting clients to your business. You’d need to engage in the following four core practices:

1. First, you must be in peak mental condition – able to think creatively about how to market your business effectively.

2. Then you must learn the rules of marketing, understand the process of how marketing works, and have the ability and drive to implement what you learn.

3. Next, you must practice marketing activities such as writing, networking, and speaking until they become natural to you.

4. Finally, must have some support structure to give you direction, encourage you, and correct your mistakes.

Now, when it comes to professional football players, they all have access to and engage in all four of the core practices that increase their chances of being successful.

However, it’s not unusual for self-employed professionals to attempt to market their services without engaging in any of their four core practices.

And this is why most marketing attempts by self-employed professionals are unsuccessful. They don’t know the game, don’t study the game, don’t practice the game, and aren’t supported in winning the game.

There is one hopeful note in all of this. Ultimately, marketing professional services is not quite as difficult or challenging as playing professional football.

And you don’t have to be at a professional level to get results and attract clients consistently.

But you do need to be engaged to some degree with all the four core practices required to market your professional services effectively.

Let’s look at what you can do and where you can start.

1. You need to start by thinking about marketing. You should live with the question, “What do I need to do to attract more of the right clients to my business?” This can’t be a casual hope or dream. You need to be determined to find the answer and you must also be realistic, understanding that, like becoming a professional football player, there isn’t one single thing you must know and do, but many things you must learn and apply.

2. You need to study the rules, strategies, and tactics of marketing for professional service businesses. You can start with articles online (there are a million of them), graduate to a few books, and then continue with some courses. These ideas are not going to come to you by osmosis. You must ingest them deliberately over time.

3. You need to practice what you learn. And you need to be patient with yourself, understanding that your initial attempts will be less than perfect. Learn something, create a basic plan and then try it out. Then learn some more, fine tune your approach and try again. There is no shortcut to mastery. It’s all about trial and error. And breakthroughs only come after a tremendous amount of work.

4. Find a source for direction and guidance. As an independent professional, it’s part of your nature to go it on your own. But, plainly stated, this is shortsighted. The big problem is that that you don’t know what you don’t know. You have no way to judge how effective your marketing plan will be. Without a support structure, you extend the time it takes to get something right.

On Saturday, I was talking to my friend and client, Patrick Summar. Patrick started his coaching business at $25 per hour. Then, by engaging in these four practices over a period of years he has as many clients as he can manage, paying him $2,500 per month, and he’ll earn more than $300K this year. This stuff works… if you work it!

So, now you know the situation. I don’t think I can state it more clearly and plainly.

The question is, what action will you take? If you are committed to growing your business, it’s essential that you become a better marketer of your services. Of course, I invite you to explore what Action Plan Marketing has to offer to support you in accomplishing that. I recommend you check out the Club below and consider joining.

“I’ve been making a lot of progress following the materials in the Club, more progress than I’ve made with any of the other higher priced programs. What a fantastic value!” – Linda Howard

Cheers, Robert

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