Negativity in business. A poison that corrodes money

01. Apr, 2010 0 Comments

Running a business, a community, or anything, takes a lot of dealing with other people. Advertisers, customers, staff, contracters etc.

A key to being successful is getting the most out of all your relationships.

I was conversing with Brent Hodgson from Market Samurai about ways of getting people on board to become affiliates and/or promote a product. Brent is super smart and has loads of experience. He said to me “1) Find the people you want to promote you; 2) Get them to like you; 3) Do whatever they want. ”.

I think it applies to more than just finding affiliates.

In any relationship, being positive and getting people to like you is key to building mutually beneficial relationships.

Getting prospects to like you makes it easier to close sales.

Getting advertisers to like you makes it easier to sell advertising.

Having a positive attitude towards relationships and opportunities equals better results.

Earlier today, I received a newsletter from a certain photography forum. I emailed the owner of the forum to ask if he would be interested in an advertising arrangement where I could advertise to his newsletter members. He responded and said that it was against his privacy policy and that I couldn’t. Fair enough, no problems there.

He went on to check my account on the forum, and found that I had done one post in two months, and that post was an answer to a question where I put a link to one of vec3t’s products, Photography Orders.

He said this was against the terms and conditions, and that he’s removed the post and banned me from the forum permanently.

Fair enough, it’s his forum, he can do what he wants, and I did break his rules.

From a business sense though, what an idiot!

Here I am, asking to advertise on his site, and instead of trying to sell some advertising, he bans me.

Why would he do that? The only thing I can think of is that he’s become jaded after managing a community for so long. He’s fed up with illegitimate spammers trying to post shit on his forums. He’s fed up with going through loads of spam. He’s seen so much of it, he just assumes everyone is like that. He’s seen so much of it, he’s formed a negative approach to anyone that contacts him about promotion.

You see this all the time if you hang out in an industry forum long enough. On pretty much any type of freelance forum, you see stuff like “people are cheap, people don’t want to pay fair prices for “.

Back to our photography forum guy. What would have worked better?

Instead, if he had of said, “only advertisers can promote on the forums, and here is a link to a page with some information on my advertising rates and benefits. You’ll need to sign up for one of these packages or I’ll have to take down your post as it’s against the terms and conditions of the forum.”

He could have taken a positive approach, and probably made a sale.

The point is, if you take a positive approach to relationships, you’ll get more positive results for your business.

If you approach every relationship and opportunity with negativity, you’re leaving money on the table.

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