The sky is (not) falling!

Dear friend,


Mark Holm here, your favorite promotional products specialist. I hope you and your family are staying safe and well in this challenging time.


This week I want to talk to you about the elephant in the room. Maybe you’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks. maybe it just hit you. But chances are that a tingle trickled down your spine, or the butterflies began flying sorties through your esophageal canal and you thought to yourself….


“How the heck am I supposed to do my business during the COVID-19 crisis?”


“I mean, every time I go out of the house I take a risk…every time I need to see a customer I am thinking ‘Could this be it? Is this how I get COVID-19?’”


Truly, our whole country is struggling with how to move forward right now. To some extent, it will be each individual person’s choice about how to go forward from here.


But that’s really what I want to talk about today – how to go forward from here.


When this whole thing started people began talking like R.E.M. – “It’s the end of the world as we know it!”


Well, maybe, for awhile….but to be frank, I am often shocked at how short our collective memory is.


After all, it seems like just a few years ago that the bottom fell out of the mortgage market, investment banking imploded overnight, and suddenly the economy was in free-fall.


I remember seeing headlines that said “Is this the end of capitalism?”


It sure felt like it at the time, but clearly, it wasn’t. Clearly the things that people said were going to change, sorta changed.


After all, in 2011 mortgage bankers began packaging and selling unusual mortgage-backed securities again…just with different names.


And remember – we’ve had the biggest bear run in the last 50 years since 2008….


So Has The “Whole World Changed”?


the answer is yes and no.


Here’s another one. One of the best books ever written on selling anything (but particularly life insurance) was How I raised myself from failure to success in selling, by Frank Bettger. He sold life insurance during the 1940s, and was not drafted because of an elbow injury that, in fact, ended his Major League Baseball ambitions a few years earlier.


Anyway…he tells the story in the book about having a meeting with a guy, and the guy was all wrapped up and depressed. He asked him why, and the fellow said “Well, Frank, there’s a war on. The economy is terrible…who knows what this will do for America? How could anyone be happy when things are so bad for our country?”


Frank relates that this meeting really bothered him, and that the pessimism, the doubt, got into his head. He said for the next three weeks he was a shell of his former self…”After all, what’s the point,” he thought to himself, “there’s a war on…who’s going to buy life insurance?”


So of course, his prospecting activity and his business plummets over the next two months.


While he’s stewing about this predicament he got himself into, he suddenly has an epiphany.


“Wait a minute!” he says to himself. “Half an hour before I met that depressed gentlemen, I was doing just fine. I was calling my prospects, I was seeing my people, and I was writing business. The only thing that changed after that meeting was that I believed that suddenly there was no business to be had. But I was doing just fine, just like I always did, before I talked with that man."


So he went back to his old activity, and sure enough his business picked back up to where it was before, war and all.


The moral he brings us: “Pay little attention to news of doom and gloom. For most people, life is still going on, and there is still plenty of business to be had.”


Or something like that. I haven’t’ read the book in 10 years but I never forgot that little vignette.


So what’s the point?


I guess it’s this: Sure, things are different right now, but there’s still plenty of opportunity out there to go and sell and do your business.


Even when they say “Bookings are down 30%” well, that also means 70% of people are still buying. Now your job is to go get that business.


Will it be harder now, with more people saying no?


Probably – by about a third.


But here’s the flip-side: most of your competitors are probably sitting on their hands right now, like Frank Bettger’s depressed prospect. They look at the news, and look at how it’s going, and say “Oh, what’s the point? No one wants what I have right now anyway…”


Chances are, there are 30% or more of your competition who simply isn’t even looking for any more business right now…


Don’t be that guy!


The economy will recover – it always has. As Warren Buffett says, “I bet on America over the long term”, and if anyone is interested in knowing about what’ll happen over the long-term, it’s Warren Buffett.


People keep buying things – the economy is still moving.


Just slower, more haltingly.


But it is also reorganizing itself…shifting…wealth is already changing hands in the once-every-ten year silent maelstrom that creates fortunes overnight.


Don’t you want part of that harvest?


Then keep the pedal down, work a little harder, be more creative, and relax knowing that you are one of the few who is out there hustling right now while most of everyone else is covering their head.


On that note, call me if you need ideas for getting more calls, or getting more customers to interact with you right now.


This is the golden age of promotional products because we can’t meet in person like we used to.

But we have Zoom.


And Facebook Live.


And Google Meet.


And the telephone.


And email.


And Facebook.


And UPS, FedEx, and the good ol’ Postal Service.


We can still get….it…done.


And promotional items, used wisely, can crack open those hard cases and get the dollars flowing again.


A brief example: a dermatology office that needs to be booking tele-medicine appointments now (instead of in-person sessions) might send a small magnifying glass to their upcoming appointments with a relaxed, catchy letter saying something like


Dear Tom,

I am just writing to remind you of your annual dermatology checkup appointment with us next Tuesday at 3:00pm.

I included this magnifying class as a fun reminder that we’re always examining things closely, plus, you may be able to use it around the house. And if you ever need us, just call the number on the magnifying glass.

See you Tuesday at 3:00pm.

Regards, Jeanie in the office


You see? Not so hard after all…


The point is – stay in the game, and believe there’s still business out there to get – because there is! Once you believe that, you’ll get creative about how to go and get it.


And chances are, you’ll have much less competition than normal.


Thank you


Thanks for reading, and call me if you want some more helpful ideas for generating more business during this national crisis.


I wish you peace and health in these challenging times.


Warm Regards,

Mark Holm

Contacts


Ideal Printing Promos & Wearables

2795 East Bidwell Street #100 #246

Folsom, CA 95630

t. 916.990.3502 | f. 916.983.5021

[email protected]

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