This week I participated in a two-day holiday event in the Wine Country. And one of those days was “black Friday”, typically a great day for retail sales. But I only sold one five-dollar note card. At least that covered my Golden Gate Bridge toll!
Now I could be very discouraged. And if I am I can’t ignore those feelings. But if I remain discouraged I won’t increase my sales. So I have to decide. Do I want to continue to experience feeling discouraged where my negative emotions will prevent me from thinking or do I want to choose to evaluate the event and inform my next steps?
What will I do? Well, the first thing that I will do is send a hand written thank you note to my host. Then I will send an email to each person who signed up to be on my mailing list. Thanking them for signing up will engage them further and hopefully entice them to collect at annrea.com. One thing I know is that there are a certain number of people who will buy later if I stay in touch with them via email.
While I was idle at the event I made a mental list of action steps to take this week to book more lucrative events, to get additional press, improve my sales techniques, and a way to help my host sell more of the merchandise they purchased from my company. I’ve also written it off as a “marketing” effort and the more qualified events I participate in the more my sales will increase.
It also forced me reconsidered the demographic match of this winery’s profile customer and the physical positioning of my display relative to the traffic. The focus of this two day event was a crowd moving from winery to winery to taste. This audience was not oriented to linger in one spot for very long and that did not work to my advantage.
Obviously, I can’t guarantee my sales but I can increase my chances. And that is a simple choice.
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Thank you Tobias.
The fact is that my experience of exploring the right sales venues is just the normal course of business.
The only problem comes when we take it as failure or rejection.
-Ann
Hi Ann, thanks for that – wise words and a wise response to a frustrating situation. In fact that kind of sums up much my artistic life right now – not just the frustration part but what I am trying to do about it – as opposed to wallowing in discouragement and all that goes along with that. It’s so easy to get annoyed at ourselves for making ‘mistakes’ or putting ourselves in situations that don’t seem to be moving us forward… but in fact mistakes are our greatest teachers. If we are afraid to make mistakes, we will never learn much at all.
Thanks again for your perspective…
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tobias tinker
https://www.cliffjump.net – a blog about fearlessness and creativity