BEHAVIOUR DOES CHANGE

Welcome!  It is week four already!  How far have you gone in your quest for the dream life?

Behaviour does change so stick it out... don't give up when you get the shock that some do not think that your product or service is the best thing that happened to mankind since fresh air!

Before the launch of Effectual Magazine I stumbled around both with excitement and trepidation .  My creative genius was going on display at a level I could only have dreamt of, I was excited because finally my dream is flagged off and released for the benefit of mankind, and I was nervous because I didn't know how mankind will receive its 'salvation'. 

At the launch I remember that a lot of people requested for copies of the magazine for onward distribution.  They were so optimistic that they were going to sell every copy and remit funds to me, I was ecstatic that we had such great buy in from the get go, and I was so sure we had been accepted by the market and will begin to soar in sales from that point on.

However, that was not the way it all unfolded as three weeks after all the copies of the magazine that had been collected by people with the promise of helping us distribute were returned to the office except for about fifty copies.  Imagine that you sent out two thousand copies of the same thing and one thousand, nine hundred and fifty were returned to you… ouch! For me it was one very painful manifestation of rejection.  For every copy of that magazine that was returned to the office, I felt a fresh stab of rejection and couldn’t understand why the people couldn’t see the great product we were offering them…

Now four years later and still going strong, people still call to ask for that specific edition, and unfortunately, we do not even have a copy to spare. More importantly, I have come to realise that nobody rejected me personally, but that they needed time to adjust their behavior to accommodate our dream.

The point of today’s post is to bring to the fore the fact that we cannot predict the behavior of our target audience and therefore while we expect a miracle at the beginning, we should be open to let those who may need more time, adjust before they commit to us.  In the case of Effectual some of those people came back months and years later to subscribe to the magazine and even become distributors of the same magazine they had said the first time was not a product they wanted to market or even spend their money on.

So what changed?  Their behavior did change, they probably grew up, or the season of their lives changed and they suddenly realized that they needed what we had on offer. Or maybe even their mood changed from what it was. I cannot tell you specifically, but I can sure let you know that with time, most of them came round and we are grateful to do business with them today. 

Even as you go marketing and introducing your product or service today, recognise that saying No to you is not a rejection of you, and secondly that because they said No today does not mean they will not say yes tomorrow.  Behaviour does change and hopefully theirs will change in your favour.  

However,  a few of them wanted us to change what we had to suit their dreams before they got on board, but as we were convinced we had a good product we stuck with what we were doing. So watch out for those ones.

My encouragement for you today is to keep doing what you do the best way you can, keep reaching out and who knows one day soon, they will come calling to ask for what they had initially said they didn’t want or need.

Today, Effectual doesn’t do fifty copies each edition, as a matter of fact we have individuals who do that number of copies now.  So it is all a matter of persistence and recognizing that if your product is as good as you believe it is, then maybe what to do is wait for their behavior to change rather than change to suit them.

But then again, are you sure your product is the best that you can do? Is it possible your own behaviour needs to change first?

Till next week, you will make it NeverTheLess.

Hugs 

Sistar B