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We have all had the experience of being pitched and it’s not a pretty picture. Pitching is all about having someone force their message on you whether you want to hear it or not, and whether you’re interested in their product or service or not.

Pitching involves such methods as:

1. Buying leads and cold calling with your pitch about your business opportunity, your products, a service you have to offer. Frequently, in this case, the “pitcher” will then add the “pitchees” into an auto-reponders so that they will continue to receive pitches into the foreseeable future.

2. Running around parking lots placing pitches (flyers or business cards) on the windshields of people’s cars and going door-to-door with door-hanger pitches in various neighborhoods.

3. Going after one’s friends and family to convince them become your customer or join your business and to give you referrals of other people you can approach with you pitch. After all who should care about helping more than your family and friends?

4. Using the “3 foot rule” (which you likely know about if you’re involved in network marketing) to pitch to anyone within a 3 foot radius of where you’re standing. There’s supposedly a numbers game involved here; namely, if you talk to enough people you’ll eventually find someone who’s interested, even if their interest is just to get you to shut up!

5. Creating websites whose only purpose is to deliver a pitch, sometimes cleverly disguised, but a pitch nonetheless. These are often replicated websites from the company whose products or services are being pitched so everyone involved with the company basically has the same website with a few minor places for customization.

6. An obsession with “closing the sale” when pitching another person. There is little concern for the other person’s need, wants, or desires. But so what if you make the sale?

I know I’ve been on the receiving end of each of these methods many, many times, and I’m fairly sure you have too. How does it make you feel when you’re pitched at?

I feel angry. I often feel like I’ve been manipulated or in some way violated because the other person didn’t care at all about me, the problems I was trying to solve or the challenges I was facing.

The New School - “Teaching vs. Pitching”

Now let’s turn to the other possibility - the new school - teaching not pitching. This is often called “attraction marketing” because it’s goal is to attract people to you who want to hear your message - people who are genuinely interested in what you have to off.

You’ll notice a HUGE difference here!

1. Attraction marketers are passionate about helping people solve problems and deal with challenges they’re facing in their lives. They get to know the other person - their hopes and dreams, their goals and desires. They want to know what the other person is looking for, BEFORE they ever open their mouth about what they have to offer.

2. Attraction marketers provide tons of value-based Information, usually at no cost. The goal with the content they produce is to genuinely benefit the recipient of the information, whether it be an eBook, a special report, an audio recording, a YouTube video, a Podcast, etc. They only share information they know will bring value to their prospect.

3. Attraction marketer are involved in “permission-based” list building. They want to have a large list of people who have indicated a desire to be contacted and receive information from them.

4. On the internet, attraction marketer are usually actively involved in “Web 2.0″. Web 2.0 is the interactive, social networking phenomenon that is taking the worldwide web by storm.

Basically this involves getting active on such sites as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, Reunion, LinkedIn and some 150+ sites which are first and foremost about building relationships with other people. If you do it right (without constantly pitching them!) you can create lots of interest in what you’re doing and what you have to offer, which will result in sales!

5. Other parts of Web 2.0 that attraction marketers take advantage of is are blogs, their own content-rich websites, and sites for posting their value-based content on the internet, such as Squidoo, Hubpages, EzineArticles, Article Marketer, and many other content marketing sites.

6. “Pre-selling” is a big concern with attraction marketers. Pre-selling is basically continuing to provide enough value-based content to your prospects that they sell themselves on what you’re about and what you have to offer. You don’t have to convince them about anything. They’ve sold themselves!

I really believe that anyone, who is serious about building a successful business in today’s marketplace, will just say “NO” to the old school, pitching approach. It alienates people. It turns them off. Nobody likes to be backed into a corner and pressured for a sale - even if the whole process is very subtle - we hate feeling manipulated by a clever sales person!

What Can Teaching vs. Pitching (a.k.a. attraction marketing) Mean For Me And My Business?

Think about this for a moment. Just let your imagination run wild for a moment:

- What if you were the “hunted” rather than the hunter. What if prospects were calling you because they wanted to work with you and be part of your business team?

- What if you were making money from your recruiting or prospecting efforts. What if prospects paid you to talk with them? No this isn”t La La land - it’s attraction marketing.

- What if you had an automated internet marketing system which, once set up properly, will automatically market your products and services for year to come, without you having to be involved on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. I’ve done this in my own business and you can too!

- And finally, what if you could simple stop calling leads who are less than serious, who are just “tire-kickers”. How much time have you already spent calling people who are not really serious about changing their financial future, they were just messing around on the internet.

Well, I’m here telling you you can end that forever when you commit to implementing attraction marketing in your business.

David Lazear, author, trainer and business coach, provides training workshops for corporations and educators. His coaching services involve working with home business owners and people looking for work from home opportunities. Find out how to turbo-charge your business here @ Home Business Smarts.

Contact David Lazear
Phone @ 773-525-6650