You are a commodity: Make Yourself Scarce!

I love Seth Godin. My bookshelf is crammed full of his works (my virtual bookshelf, too). But I think today I read the best little blog post he ever wrote.

Seth talks about creating true scarcity and leveraging it appropriately. This hits at the core of what attraction marketing is all about.

You are the most important product your company has to offer. There's only one of you, and you have a limited amount of time and space to share with your clients. How do you create demand for yourself?

Scarcity.

You have built-in scarcity just because there's only so much of YOU to go around. The problem is, because there is more than one consultant in your company, many people think that there is no scarcity in direct sales. That's simply not true.

IF you're leveraging your scarcity properly.

If you're equating yourself with every other consultant in your firm, you're NOT leveraging your scarcity. You must have an advantage. There must be a substantial reason for your clients and customers to WANT to do business with you over the others in your organization. That's the first step in validating scarcity in your client's mind. The age-old trick is to keep one calendar and mark down all your personal appointments so that even if you don't have a single show on your calendar, you look busier than a bee. It's psychological, but people still use it because it works.

But it only works when people SEE your calendar.

Other methods of developing scarcity? There are plenty, and Seth offers some retail ready ideas that can be easily adapted to the network marketing arena.

1. Use the internet. I've raised this point time and again. You need to get the word out about your uniqueness and the internet is one of the fastest ways to make that happen. Use an e-zine/newsletter, a blog, or some other method for keeping in contact with your clients. Then make sure you're keeping in contact with them regularly. Friends keep in touch. Make your clients your friends. If you don't want them as friends, you probably don't want them as business associates, either. Why make life more difficult?

2. Reward Your Customers. Seth talks specifically to the "early adopters", those who take you up on your offer first. Give a gift to the first person at each party to book (and hold) a show. Reward the big spenders. Create a VIP club and spend your "advertising dollars" there. Statistics show that it's more cost-effective to keep a customer than it is to attract new ones, why not spend that money on people you already know are enjoying what you have to offer?
3. Give people a reason to talk about you. There are those in the Internet Marketing community that would say it's smart to polarize people - so that they either love you or hate you. I leave that decision to you, but I will say that it's important that they're TALKING about you. Word of mouth is the most tremendous form of promotion, but it's also hard to measure. Who cares!? get them talking about you and they'll be more likely to forget about everyone else.

Mark Joyner offers the notion that "the frame" from which a person hears about you will be a good indicator of whether or not they will become a customer. What can you do to get your customers talking about you in a positive frame, so that more people want to learn more about you, work with you, and propel your business forward?

Here's a hint: Make yourself scarce! Let testimonials and other positive commentary do the talking for you. Ultimately, the less they see of you and the more they see ABOUT you, the more in-demand you'll become.