Patience ...
The Best Kept Secret of Success
patience: quiet, steady perseverance
Patience allows prospects to become clients...helps satisfy clients...and generates repeat and referral business.Instant Results?
In our instant age, many of us want things done and done right 5 minutes ago ...if not earlier.
We want to achieve our goals sooner...not later.
Realistically, every process...including implementing the plan to achieve our goals...requires time to unfold and bring about the results we desire.
And this takes patience, a quality that appears to be in increasingly short supply.
As human beings, we are part of the natural order of things.
Like every living thing, our lives are a gradual process...gradually moving from stage to stage...from conception ...to birth...to infancy...and so on.
In many respects, successfully running a business is like successful gardening...each requires effective planning and nurturing.
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Growing A Garden
If for example you would like a vegetable garden, before putting a shovel in the ground, some preliminary planning is necessary.What do you want to grow? Where do you want to grow these plants?
What is required to grow these plants in this location?
Once the planning and preparations are complete, the planting, nurturing and patience begins.
With proper care and
attention, the seeds will turn into plants...and the plants will
produce the results you expect...but not until the fruits or flowers
are ready to mature. You can no more force the plants to mature and produce faster than you can sit back in a lawn chair and do nothing, confident that everything will work as planned.
Gardens need nurturing in the form of watering, fertilizing and weeding. They also need time...in the form of patience....to mature and produce results that can be enjoyed.
Businesses need maintenance in the form of management, administration and marketing. They also need time...in the form of patience...to develop and produce your desired results.
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Impatience Raises Problems
Regrettably, the natural approach...allowing plans the time to produce results ...represents the ideal way of doing things. It is usually ignored more often than it is honored.Pushed by the urgency of producing results, we often experience impatience because events do not unfold as quickly as we would like.
Once again using nature as a model, when we push too hard to move forward, we invariably find ourselves moving backwards.
If you give plants too much water or fertilizer, instead of speeding the growth you can damage, perhaps even destroy the plants.
Similarly, if you push prospects too hard to become clients, you will chase them away.
Prospects need time to understand how you can help them.
When you push clients too hard to accept an offer, they will resent your aggressiveness, and probably neither hire you again or refer others to you.
Unquestionably, from a marketing perspective, the most serious consequences of impatience is asking for referrals too frequently, too aggressively or both.
All of these actions make you appear desperate...a certain turn-off for clients and network contacts.
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It Takes Time To Achieve Results
Success in garden, business...and indeed life itself...never happens quickly. All need patience...the time to grow and succeed.
It really is true that good things come to those who wait.
But waiting does not mean doing nothing.
Good things start with a sound plan and continue with ongoing and effective implementation.
Patience...in the form of quiet, steady perseverance...turns good things into better things.
It is quiet steady perseverance that converts prospects into clients...converts clients into satisfied clients...and converts satisfied clients into repeat and sources of referrals.
A key success factor, patience allows your marketing plan the necessary time it needs to achieve your desired results.
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