My clients discuss their marketing or business issues with me. Their problems are often different, but one thing I have found common that stops many marketers from achieving their potential.

A printing agent came to me and said, “I can have 10 times more clients than I currently have. But I don’t like to suck up to people.” Another client, a real estate agent, told me, “I am not selling as many houses as the top guy. People have unrealistic price expectations, which are just not achievable in today’s market. And there’s no way I can convince them.” The third guy, an insurance broker, had a different challenge, “People don’t mind spending thousands of dollars on building a patio for summer, which will be useful only for three weeks of the year. But they won’t spend a few dollars on health insurance.”

It will be hard to see any commonality in these business problems. They are from different fields and relate to different areas of business.

But look close: there is one common theme – in all the above situations, the marketer believes that the barriers are insurmountable. And that’s the problem.

The problem is in the thinking.

As long as you “think” that there is a problem that you cannot overcome, you have a problem.

Your self-image determines your degree of success in marketing, whether it is insurance marketing,  restaurant marketing or even dentist marketing.

In fact, I know two dentists who graduated from the same college in the same year. One is running a highly successful practice with celebrity clients, while the other is running an average practice.

What’s the difference?

The difference lies in your self-abasement or self-image. If you think you can’t sell to a particular audience, you certainly won’t. As long as you believe your have a weakness in a certain area of life, for example, selling health insurance to single men under 30, you will continue to have that problem.

How do you know whether you have a low self-image?

It’s not that hard.

When you get up in the morning, look into the mirror, and ask yourself – How much do I like myself?

Do you hear a resounding, affirmative answer?

If your answer is “may be”, or “sometimes”, or “yes but”, then you have low self-esteem.

Those who like themselves will hear a resounding YES. They always have a very high self-esteem and this will reflect in their marketing or business.

A friend of mine, a recruiter, once said, “I can tell a winner from a loser purely by the way a person dresses.” That’s so true. If you like yourself, you will always dress well. You will enthuse confidence in others. Just like laughter, confidence is highly contagious. Ask any political leader.

The higher your self-esteem, the more likely you are to visualize a successful outcome of a marketing campaign. If your self-image is of a successful marketer, you will find ways to live up to that self-image.

However, if your self-concept is low, you will reflect that in all your business dealings, and you will find it hard to get leads, or convert leads to customers.

If you are with me so far, your next question is: How do I improve self-esteem?

It’s not very hard.

You become what you think about, said Earl Nightingale.

If you can get in the habit of thinking highly about yourself, you will inculcate high self-esteem.

There are three ways in our brain learns something and forms a habit:

• Association
• Repetition
• Imagination

Use one of these three methods to increase your self-esteem.

Association: Think of a moment you felt most-confident. Any moment. It could even be from your childhood. Recall that moment as vividly as possible, as if it was happening right at this moment. Now create an anchor for that moment.

An anchor is any physical action, such as pumping your fist in the air like a sportsperson, or simply saying a thrustful “yes” to yourself.

Now, whenever you are low on self-esteem, just pump your fist in the air. That physical anchor will bring back the memories of the successful event and you will notice an immediate improvement in your self-esteem.

Repetition: Repeat to yourself as often as you can throughout the day “I like myself and I am a successful marketer or salesperson.”

Imagination: Use vivid imagination. Imagine yourself as a successful marketer. Use this imagination as often as possible. Almost like a day dream.

Go on. Create your success in sales and marketing with a high self-image.

Often, at conferences, I run into a skeptic of the Internet. Yes. He comes to me and says, “Internet marketing is a hype. We have a flourishing business and we have nothing more than a basic website.”

Yes and no.

Yes, you have a flourishing business, as a landscape architect, as a lawyer, as a plumber, or as a real estate agent. Yes, your clients are entirely happy with the skeleton website you have.

But no, internet marketing is not a hype. There are certain industries where online presence is absolutely mandatory. For example, if you have buyers or can have buyers from around the world, you need online presence. Or if you deal in digital products.

And no, even if you are not in one of those industries, you still need to take internet marketing seriously. And that’s the more important part.

Why?

You can have a successful offline business without online presence today, but not tomorrow.

With every passing day, the internet is adding to the number of internet users. The growth of internet users is faster than the world population growth. By many times.

To be in front of this growing group, you need an online presence.

Then, there’s a small group of these internet users who have web-exclusive attention. That is, if you are not on the net, you don’t exist for them.

When I explain this, the skeptic often says: “It’s not difficult to have an online presence. We’ll cross the bridge when we get there.”

The skeptic is in no hurry.

Even if we assume that the number of internet users isn’t really growing, there’s still one more reason to build your online brand.

That reason is currency.

You can buy a domain name, and get a functioning website up and running in less than an hour. That’s not the hard part.

Building an online brand is the hard part.

There’s a traditional Indian wisdom: “You can’t start digging a well when you are thirsty.”

This applies to marketing. You can’t start building relationships when you need them. You can’t start building your online presence when you need it.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither will be your online network.

It needs to be built over time. It takes time for people to trust you. It takes time even for Google’s sprawlers to first find you and then trust you.

It takes time for other people to trust you enough to put your link on their website (this is crucial for traffic).

You are racing not just against your competition. Your racing against time too.

With time, you build credibility. With time, you build your online presence.

It takes time to learn what is working and what isn’t. It takes time to build user-friendly interface. It takes time to have customer-focused online strategies.

Also with time, the share of the pie that internet marketing occupies is going to grow. There will be a time when internet marketing will occupy a major part of marketing efforts.

If you wait till then, it will be too late.

Do you remember: just untill few years ago, internet marketing was optional, almost like an after-thought? Only in few years, it has occupied a major chunk of consumers’ attention.

I launched my fist website back in 2004. It took a lot of time and efforts in the initial years to build traction for the website. Today, the website has a Google Page Rank of 6, which means it has a lot of clout in my industry. I continue to reap the benefits of the hard work put in almost six years ago.

If you haven’t taken internet marketing seriously, it is time to do so now.