Fishing is Still a Good Metaphor - Part I

I went fishing yesterday. It was the wrong time of day and, I suspect, the wrong lure and lake. But that's ok, I had fun anyway. I knew ahead of time that my goal really wasn't catching a fish, but spending a little relaxing time out of doors.

That approach: wrong time of day, wrong lake, wrong lure and not serious about catching a fish, that doesn't work so well when you are trying to build up your business. It is important to be important to be casting into the right lake (market segment), the right time (budget, growth, season, time of day), with the right lure (what will get your customers excited?).

But there's more to the story than calculating the right time, place and pitch for the right customers. Your information can only be so good and people, well, they're people. They make decisions for any number of reasons and you won't land a fish on every cast. If I catch a fish every 50 casts, that's pretty good. I enjoy fishing, so it doesn't bother me to keep trying. Marketing a small business is much the same in that you need to be casting a lot and knowing it's ok to come up empty (a lot). By being strategic and positioning ourselves based upon our information and experience, we increase our chances greatly, but the bottom line is that we need to wade out into the water and make a lot of casts or we will catch little.

Happy Fishing!

(c) 2005 Shaun Jamison, All Rights Reserved