So many people never get to enjoy their success, their magnificence.

Why?

Because an Inner Gremlin that’s addicted to The Doom Loop gets terrified every time you stand out and receive the spot light.

Why? Because The Doom Loop knows that its days may be numbered and the only way to stay alive is to drag you back down into disappointment and gloom.

Know the feeling?

You looked forward to giving that training for your department team. You worked hard on it - it was even fun to do.

And then you really grabbed the spotlight with all your smarts and humor mixed together.

You were really, really fabulous!

Everyone said so.

But, driving home after work you felt miserable. All you could think about was the left over cake (alllll of it), or getting tanked, or crashing as soon as you walked in the door.

Why? Because The Doom Loop, your unconscious addiction to keeping yourself caught in The Fear of Being Fabulous - is running the show. Not you.

That’s the issue that comes up over and over with our coaching clients — and most coaches haven’t a clue how to work with it. But it’s our specialty.

Working with a client on Overcoming The Fear of Being Fabulous is one of our most rewarding and fun pursuits - because we really, really know this stuff!

That’s why we created our 12-CD program “Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous” http://overcomingthefearofbeingfabulous.com

Compassionate Internet marketing is one of the spiritual gifts you - as a Soft Sell Internet marketer - bring to the sales platform. It’s your sensitive awareness that daily life is filled with ongoing challenges and emotional pot holes - for everyone that makes you special. That’s what allows you to respond to those people who are searching for what you provide with first - your compassionate heartfelt care and concern - and your marketing message coming second.

And that’s why your customers are so relieved to find you or hear from you – because you understand and embrace them – for the real person they are.

Yet, all too often when you listen to the hard sell marketers it sounds like they are beyond self-doubt, beyond financial concerns, beyond procrastination, and certainly beyond anything you might be scrambling to deal with in your own business. And it sounds like they wouldn’t even be able to relate to the issues your customers are scrambling to deal with in their lives.

So - what happens in their marketing messages?

All too often they make their program or product sound like it’s the perfect “Prince Charming” to the rescue for anyone and everyone’s problems – no matter what the real person they’re addressing is actually looking for.

AND . . .there is no compassion in their message, no compassion for the very real life challenges everyone struggles with every day.

So when you come from the genuine heart of marketing, rather than focused on “gimme me the money”, then you can share your very real humanity as part of the relationship your ideal customer is looking for.

Because who you are, who you truly are — that’s the best gift you can give to your customer - through your compassionate Internet marketing. Because when your potential buyer feels that you are someone who loves the real person, not just the buyer with a wallet, then that person can trust you to help solve their problems.

And if you want more support for your Soft Sell marketing, be sure to get our book by clicking on the book cover to the right!

Living Your Love Every Day -

Reviewed By Steven Svoboda
Living Your Love Every Day: How to Keep Romance Alive from Beginning to End. By Judith Sherven, Ph.D. and James Sniechowski, Ph.D. 3-Volumes $24.97. www.judithandjim.com/livingyourlove.

Married psychotherapist/author couple Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski have produced another book to help men and women to survive and thrive in their relationships with each other. As far as I know, Living Your Love Every Day is only available through Judith and Jim’s website page given above.

As with all their books, now numbering a half-dozen by my count, Living Your Love Every Day provides much value. While they are both therapists with doctorates and are excellent writers, in the end, their most valuable skill is their ability to sift through their own experiences to find material that will translate to and even enlighten their audience. And their most critical qualification is not their degrees but their success at fostering happiness and renewal in their own marriage despite their own differences and challenges. Living Your Love Every Day parcels outs its wisdom and insights in bite-size pieces, usually two pages long.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whale Hunting Women, Volume I, by Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith, celebrates how women do big deals in business and community.  It’s about the unique talents that women bring to whale hunting–doing big deals–, such as a preference for collaboration and cooperation, a willingness to mentor their team, and an ability to empower others.  It’s also about the special challenges that women sometimes face, such as a reluctance to claim their expertise, a lack of confidence, or the feeling that their organization is too small to hunt.Big deals are big sales.  They are big projects.  They are big events.  They are lofty goals and big ideas.  How you go about accomplishing a big deal is the same whether you are a salesperson, a business owner, an executive, a board member, an educator, a community leader, or part of a team that does big deals.

If you do big deals, or if you want to do big deals, this is the book for you! 

 Purchase your download copy now! 
25% discount throughout the Virtual Blog Tour!

The Buzz about Whale Hunting Women
Whale Hunting Women Summit, Indianapolis, June 4 2009
Read an Excerpt: Hanging from Your Own Rope
Table of Contents
Dates and Places:  The Virtual Blog Tour for Whale Hunting Women

The Buzz About Whale Hunting Women

Visit with Joyce Anthony, Books and Authors Blog
Interview with MaAnna Stephenson for Just the FAQs
Interview with Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World

Book Review by Wayne Hurlbert Blog Business World

“I highly recommend Whale Hunting Women: How Women Do Big Deals by Barbara Weaver Smith, to any women business owners or managers who seek to transform their companies from small bit players to major sales and marketing organizations. Through practical and hands on advice, the author shows a clear path for landing those major corporate whales, and growing a small business into a much larger company.

Read Whale Hunting Women: How Women Do Big Deals by Barbara Weaver Smith, and discover the power and importance of devoting a small percentage of the sales and marketing budget on pursuing very large customers. Simply landing one of these whale sized clients will change a business bottom line overnight. Stop thinking like a minnow, and go after and land the whales.”  Wayne Hurlbert

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
How Women Hunt Whales
Only A Minnow (In A Sea Of Whales)
Small Fish Hunting Whales
Radical Culture: Take A Rival To Lunch
Radical Culture: Money Is Cheap
Radical Culture:  Kill Some Commandments
Who Do You Trust?
Hanging From Your Own Rope
Fast Times
Whale Hunting Resolutions
Conclusion
Whale Hunting Glossary

EXCERPT FROM WHALE HUNTING WOMEN, VOLUME 1.

HANGING FROM YOUR OWN ROPE

“Commoditization”  represents a massive shift in today’s economy.  It’s an ugly word that reflects an even uglier situation.  Many whale hunters are struggling to fight it.

A commodity is a product for which there is market demand but that is relatively undifferentiated by brand.  Think of unprocessed produce like rice, corn, soy beans.  Market price fluctuates on the basis of supply and demand, not features and benefits.  There’s nothing wrong with commodities-markets need them and companies make money buying and selling them.

The trouble comes when a product or service that was once considered “premium” loses its cachet, and buyers start treating it like a commodity. 

All kinds of companies in all kinds of markets are fighting this trend.  Products and services that were once highly differentiated based upon their value proposition or were in short supply are regularly undercut–”commoditized”–by innovation, new supply, and cheaper methods of conducting the transaction.  Within any industry vertical, you will find companies struggling to avoid the commodity trap.  Perhaps you are one of them.  The ubiquitous “solution sale,” [sell “the solution” - not the product or service ] a typical method to fight commoditization, is becoming a commodity itself.  Not that there’s anything wrong with providing a solution to a customer’s problem, but if everything is promoted as a “solution,” the term becomes meaningless.

But the most dangerous position of all is when you unintentionally “commoditize” yourself, as I see clients do all too often.   It can happen like this:    

• “Free consulting.” Give away too much of your wisdom up front and your buyer will not value what you have left to sell. This is the biggest danger in writing proposals and responding to RFP/RFQ requirements. You run the great risk of giving away your methods, processes and prices , enabling an unscrupulous buyer to implement without you or hand off to your competitor.
• “Cut rate.” The buyer will not value your product or service more than you do. If you lead with a discounted price, you seriously undermine your value proposition. Buyers may want a discount and may even expect a discount, but if everything is “discounted” you have no real price point. The buyer will continue to want it for less, and you will become very disgruntled with that customer, perhaps providing lackluster service, which further commoditizes you. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer products or services at various price levels if that’s part of your sales plan. But they should be differentiated, not simply discounted. If the buyer is going to select a vendor based solely on price, you don’t want to win that business unless you are selling a commodity.
• “Earn It.” Accept a contract for a small piece of business in hopes of “earning” the right to do more. In our experience, this strategy usually leaves you pigeonholed in a small vendor space from which you can’t escape. The kind of work you accept teaches the customer who you are and what you provide. If you are inadvertently teaching “small”, “local,” and “niche,” that’s how the buyer will identify you. National firms don’t buy from the companies that make small sales to their local outlets. It is very hard and therefore very costly to move from one silo to another inside of a large company.
• “Not on target.” When you violate your target filter by going after business that is wrong for you, you devalue yourself and what you are selling. It means you don’t trust your strategy, you don’t trust the image you intended to present to your market, and you don’t trust your ability to sell the right things to the right customers. Every client has stories about the “killer whale” - the one you landed that was all wrong for you. Most of the time, if you’re honest with yourself, you knew it wasn’t a good deal for you.

If you suffer from commoditizing yourself, what can you do about it?

1. Understand it as a danger and take active steps to avoid it. Be sure you are clear about the steps in your sales process and what you need to learn from the whale at every step. Be sure the whale understands how you sell and that you learn how the whale buys. Vigorously research who is at the Buyers’ Table and get to know how they make decisions. If it’s not a good fit, send it Back to Baja.
2. Be very choosy about answering RFPs. Be sure you understand how the RFP will be handled and how your rights and intellectual property will be protected during the process. Do your best to know the solicitor and determine whether it is trustworthy. Test the RFP against the “Dirty Dozen” flaws that spell trouble for you.
3. Review and if necessary revise your Target Filter. Be certain that you have the right criteria that will lead you to the best possible whales. Each time you consider a new prospect, compare it to your target filter Don’t put it on your Whale Chart if it doesn’t fit.

Markets are constantly commoditizing products and services-it’s a natural outcome of innovation and globalization.   If you sell something unique or differentiated, make sure you’re not helping the market commoditize you.

Watch Out for Internet Dating Dangers

Most people who sign up at dating websites are usually clueless about Internet dating dangers — whether they pay to join an Internet dating service or it’s a totally free Internet dating site — it doesn’t make the experience any safer if you don’t know what to watch out for.

So, be on the look out for these common Internet dating dangers:

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Last week we launched our new book –

The Heart of Marketing - Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back (Morgan James Publishing)

with an Amazon Best Seller Campaign!

And a Best-Seller it is!

*** It hit #59 on Amazon overall (which means that only 58 books sold better than ours)

AND . . . The Heart of Marketing was . . .

#1 in Marketing
#1 in Marketing & Sales
#1 in Direct Marketing
#1 in eCommerce
#1 in Web Marketing

Be sure to take advantage of this Book Launch Special if you are in any way involved in sales, marketing, and/or business.

AND get your choice of 62 Free Bonus Gifts when you go to -

http://TheHeartofMarketing.com

ALSO. . . Please tell everyone you know who would also be blessed by this book - and would enjoy nearly $10,000 in Bonus Gifts when our book is purchased for less than $11.00.

The beauty is that everyone comes out ahead!

Because It IS All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim

Today! Get your copy of The Heart of Marketing - Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back (Morgan James) at

http://theheartofmarketing.com

And get 62 Free Gifts from leading marketers around the world at the same time.

Do it now! We are heading toward #1 best selling book on Amazon - along with #1 in all the marketing categories!

And tell your friends! Thank you from Judith & Jim

How can you tell if you suffer from the fear of success? Most people think they’re afraid of failure, but the truth is that the fear of success is really the issue.

And here’s just one way to check it out . . .

What do you do when someone gives you a compliment? Do you smile, thank them with all your heart, and continue on with your day feeling a little better about yourself?

Or maybe instead, you shrug. Or deny it. Or claim it’s a lie.

Maybe you don’t say anything at all, but silently tell yourself that it’s
not true. You say “They’re just trying to make me feel good”, “They want to get on my good side”, or even “I wonder what they want from me”.

Did you ever stop and think, “Wow, someone just took a little bit of time
out of their day to pay me a compliment”? They didn’t have to say anything. They could have easily nodded at you and continued on without a word.

That person obviously noticed something extraordinary about you and felt they needed to let you know exactly how wonderful you really are or how well you do something. They wanted to express the way they truly feel about you.

What happens when you compliment someone and they blow you off? For example, what if one of your friends got a new haircut and you thought it took 10 years off? You tell them they look amazing, and they say “Yeah, right”. You protest that you really think it looks great, and they tell you to quit lying.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’re single. You’re lonely. And you’re fed up with the dating games that nearly everyone plays. So you decide to look for your special love partner online.

But how do you go about finding the right type of dating site? Lots of dating sites are expensive so you don’t want to join up with a bunch of them at the expense of your wallet. And lots of them cater to people with values that don’t match who you are.

So when you’re looking for love and romantic relationship online, and you’re serious about not playing a bunch of dating games yourself, you have to be cautious and careful. You’ll want to join a dating site that caters to people who hate all that dating game stuff - like all the people who lie about their age, their weight, their marital status — all that kind of thing.

So you’re going to want to join singles sites that attract more conscious singles, people who are interested in smart dating, dating with self-respect and respect for those they meet and date.

And it’s even better if you can join dating sites that are free. That way you can join several sites, check them out, and do no harm to your wallet.

Then you’ll want to be as honest and as specific as you can be in your own profile in order to stand in your own integrity— AND attract the right kind of person who is looking for you.

Also, make sure you have some important and serious questions you want to ask prospective partners who reach out to you online. That way you encourage their honesty and their integrity right from the start — and you establish that you’re only interested in a serious, grounded relationship with a love partner who wants the same thing!

For a Free Singles Site devoted to supporting you with Free Smart Dating Gifts when you join, be sure to create your profile at “LoveLife Express” http://www.lovelifeexpress.com

Keywords - love partner, dating games, singles site, dating site

When you are open to real romance as an every day part of your love life, often, what seems to be insignificant on first blush, takes on powerful meaning for both of you.

Imagine it’s early morning, and you have time to snuggle and cuddle with the one you love. (We write this from the point of view of a man, but it applies both ways.) Your lover rolls over and places her head on your shoulder and drapes her leg across yours. It’s delicious! But you know she can’t stay there very long, no matter how much she might want to, because the she will shortly become uncomfortable. Your shoulder is as hard as her cheek bone. And you won’t be able to keep her there for the same reason.

Now, don’t get impatient or say forget about it, why bother! All you have to do is activate your creativity and inventiveness! That’s so often the key to making the little moments truly memorable expressions of your love for one another, the deep romance you enjoy.

In this case, all you need to do is take her pillow, cover your shoulder with it, and she can remain near you almost indefinitely and your shoulder and arm won’t fall asleep.

More important, she will know that she is kept close in your onsciousness. You are thinking about her, aware of her well-being, as well as wanting her near.

And don’t be surprised if breakfast together is infused with special creativity and care. Perhaps she’ll decide to use the “company’s coming” dishes just for the two of you. Or you’ll open the last jar of Aunt Mabel’s plumberry jam just because.

What could be sweeter than making love out of bed after such a sweet time in bed!? That’s real romance and you can have it all the time!

To enjoy more real romance in your relationship, learn to receive more of what love has in store:
http://www.judithandjim.com/receiving