Page 64 - Social Media Marketing

44 Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

benefit from a more systematic approach toward cultivating their
farms-that is, their marketplaces.

Business consultant and visionary Terry Brock refers to this as
R-commerce (relationship commerce). Instead of focusing your mind
and energy on the quantitative aspects of selling, such as gross
sales and your bottom line, you focus on the qualitative aspects of
selling-building mutually beneficial relationships. This approach
requires a significant investment up front, but it pays handsome
dividends over time. By establishing productive relationships, you
sow the seeds that produce a bumper crop of business for many
years to come.

Choosing Your Farm

You are going to be spending a lot of time on your farm, so choose
it carefully. You want it to be an area where you enjoy living and
working and that you know very well.

When I was starting out in my business, I chose my
hometown-the place where I grew up and had gone to high school.
I think it would be impossible for me to have been so successful in
an area that I didn't know as well. When my customers mention
a particular street or what such-and-such house might sell for, I'm
the expert. I know every street and almost every house on my farm,
even though my farm now includes a market area of more than
100,000 households.

If you were a dentist, would you live in one town and locate
your office 25 miles away? That would be silly. You want to live
near your customers. You want to be able to see them in the grocery
store, park, or video store. If you're selling insurance, you need to
live near your customers, for both their convenience and yours. The
same goes for network marketers of all kinds. So pick your market
carefully, because you're going to be spending a lot of time there.

Leverage the Built-In Customer Base

Another advantage of picking a farm/market that I had lived in
was this: I already knew a lot of people there. That gave me a head