Fishing Off the Back Porch

First: love the picture and I want to sit there (for a long time). Secondly, I agree that we get comfy. Referrals come in and when we have the leisure (and gift) to be able to pick and choose the business we take, we often start looking. Something I’ve recently committed to doing is attending at least one event each month that’s so far out of my bailiwick that I’m forced to get some new perspective. And when you add social web experiences in the mix, we occasionally get the sharp end our the double-edged sword: we build our community, but often, it’s all we hear and see.

Good day, sir!

Chris, I take a “you’re marketing 24-7″ approach, so fishing is an every-minute awareness for me. Whether I’m standing in line at the grocery store, at the hockey rink, visiting an event out of town, whatever, it’s an opportunity to connect, compliment, offer solutions and simply smile.

It’s a shame to see that the beauty of technology can tunnel-vision some people into forgetting: we’re people! Look at others, smile at others, engage with others all the time. When madly texting, tweeting, and being focused only on the “tool”, we miss opportunities to engage human to human.

I fish well beyond my social media porch, and it’s not difficult. When you’re yourself, happy, and seeing opportunities to “ease someone’s pain”, solve their problem or simply offer a helping hand, that connection is gold.

To fishing far and wide! Kaarina

I like the illustration because, when you put it like that, it’s so blindingly obvious.

But just like trying to overcome a negative belief we’ve lived with our entire life, it’s not obvious to see that we’re making these obvious gaffs until someone comes by and shows us a silly yet powerful example (e.g. fishing off the back porch, underwater fish, etc).

So please, keep up with these creative illustrations because it helps land the idea deeper into my brain… more so than just ‘go where the money is’, which is so obvious that my brain discounts it until it’s been shocked by the illustration!

Chris,
Some valid, albeit rather elementary points, to your post. You do indeed gotta fish where your best prospects are. People look at the internet/social media and they see a giant ocean of prospects – the whole world in their hands! They begin the ABCs of social media: “engaging” on twitter and facebook, setting up a blog, videos on youtube – all in the hopes they start reeling in the customers. I think many of them come to find that for all the effort they invest online, the “return” doesn’t add up.

There are a number of reasons for a stale prospect stream online, some of which you touched on in your post (not effectively identifying the “who” & “where” of possible buyers). But sometimes, we fail to realize that there are indeed plenty of fish in our own backyard. Not our enormous online community but the considerably smaller community outside our front door. People forget that in the community that they live are living breathing prospects. We tend to hope for the IRL opportunities online and ignore them in our own communities. Chambers of Commerce, Networking groups, volunteering with a local charitable organization, joining a church group or a bowling league.

Why? In a recent article from Entrepreneur.com called “What’s Important When You Refer People?“, not surprisingly, “knowing a person’s character” ranked No. 1. It’s pretty hard to really know someone’s character via 140 characters or one’s facebook posts. But if I can look you in the eyes, shake your hand, read your body language, and observe how you interface with other people – you’re probably not gonna fool me.

Not everyone gets written up in the Boston Globe or has a a best-selling book sitting in an airport bookstore or attains the title of “Social Media Guru” (congrats on all three). But you just might find real-life qualified prospects at your local Chamber of Commerce business mixer once they get to know you. I agree, get off the porch. But don’t overlook your backyard…

PS – I like how you created the problem (lack of buyers) with the first 3/4 of the post, then introduced a solution (Kitchen Table Companies) with the final paragraph. From one sales guy to another: nice.

PS2 – Did I just write all this? Dang!

Even though I cannot use this information for my own business, as a student I love the analogy. Recently I have been “dipping” into new forms of social media. This will help me find and build my career in Human Resources or Public Relations. This analogy helps me visualize why all of my hard work maintaining social media is going to pay off! We do get comfy when we think that what we have is good. We just need to go out there and find something better!

Interesting post. Thanks.

Powerful insight Chris, thanks for sharing.

My one caveat with this post, however, is that you don’t give enough examples of how to find other pools to fish in. It takes a lot of exploration and discovery on a personal level, but you could at least show us a few more examples of how you go about finding other pools to fish/swim in. Maybe that’s a post entirely for another day though, right?

Thanks again!