The Road Most Traveled
A Story

B2B? Try Real-ationship Marketing, instead.

In a meeting yesterday, with one of the largest and most successful web design and internet marketing firms in this area, the point that business is done people to people was brought home as if the room filled with heavenly illumination. I read those words last week in "How to Turn Words into Money" by Ted Nicholas. Of all the magical words he offers readers, those words--that we do business with people NOT businesses, struck me as profound.

I knew when I read it that it was one of the most powerful statements I'd ever come across on sales and marketing. Knew it because it's the prime reason women are online. Women are into the 'people' thing on a level most men cannot understand. Men gather in groups, indeed. They also have meetings and form networking associations. I've worked with some great salesmen; men who were successful because their focus was on the customer, not the product or service. They met with "people" not "companies."

Of course, most of those people were of the same gender. That generally meant there would be a lot of back slapping going on. Talk of sports. Maybe cigar smoking. Martinis at lunch. All stereotypical images of men in business meetings, but not without a hint of truth. In our scramble to compete with that, many women tried to emulate that image. We learned golf, and watch football. For a time, women smoking cigars was the 'in' thing. We learned to drink Manhattans and martinis, even if we wanted sloe gin and orange juice. Then, sometime during the last decade, we said, "This isn't me. This isn't working." And we threw it away. We looked at the world, at the people in it, at the people in our lives, at our business partners, and said, "Opportunity is knocking. There are ones and zeros out there beckoning me to turn them into millions."

That thinking brought us to the online arena, where we are tackling ecommerce with a vengence. Oh, we're not out to prove we're better than men. (well, not all of us.) We're not out to prove we can do it despite the hardships of still shouldering 70% of the workload in the home. And we're not out to prove we can talk techie with the best of them (because many of us can't, so what?). We're out to be successful and to help others be successful. We support other women with a fierce dedication. We welcome men into our fold with open arms. We're in it for the team. Real-ationship building, as I call it in my book.

In my climb to success, I've met so many people, male and female, that have gone beyond expectation with help and support, I cannot image why I didn't recognize the people to people value of their help before reading it in Nicholas's book. Which brings me full circle, to the start of this post. The people, not businesses, not companies, not skilled workers, or any other name demographic reports slap on them, continue to make my point better, by far, than I can make it.

After my illuminating meeting yesterday, Tony Parinello called me to chat about the interview on his show last Friday. During our conversation, Tony referred me to other women in the field of promoting women's issues. He sent me to Linda Hollander's site, The Wealthy Bag Lady, where I learned about "girl-power to the max." He also advised me to check out Jill Lublin at Guerrilla Publicity, where my Google search took me to page two before I actually got to Jill's site. The first page was taken up with places to buy her book!

At the Wealthy Bag Lady's site, I was treated to an introduction to the Women's Small Business Expo, a place to learn solid success strategies.

This is not B2B. This is not B2C. This has everything to do with B and nothing to do with 2B or 2C. It has to do with P2P; people to people. People do business with each other. Women do business with people. No matter what you sell, if you can get your head around the concept of treating women as people (I say it often in my book--- reach out to women as mothers, wives, sisters, friends, unique individuals that want the human touch in your sales message) you will get our attention. Once you get our attention, Lip-stick your message with sincerity. Build a real-ationship and you'll get loyalty in return.

What's not to like about that?

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