All About Consulting Others

By Janice Jenkins

One of the worst things you can do in marketing is assume that you are doing better than you actually are.

Usually this comes from a person deciding they know what is going to work without actually doing any research to back it up. It might be about some design aspect of their marketing or it might come down to the type of marketing they will need to use. No matter what it ends up being there comes the risk of overestimating the success your marketing is going to have, or assuming far more than you have evidence to support.

On a small scale this is a lot easier to do than you might imagine, and I see it happen all the time. It is not as if people are going out of their way to boost themselves up a lot, but they merely make a miscalculation that might cost them quite a bit in the long run.

To make my point here is a mistake I made myself a few years ago and did my best to learn from. I was going to a tradeshow and I had just recently gotten a new batch of business card printing done. Now, I thought my card was incredible at the time. I had done a variety of things with it that I had never really tried before, and because of that I just assumed everyone else would view my card in the same way.

This led to me bringing less material with me than normal because I decided to rely more heavily on my custom business card to get people talking and start up my sales.

Well, things did not quite turn out like I was expecting. Sure, my card was interesting, but it just was not enough to match the kind of material other people had to hand around. When all I had to give out was my business card it looked as if I had not prepared at all, because I had just assumed too much rather than take the time to understand what was actually going to be the case.

A lot of this could not certainly been avoided if I had talked to someone else first to see what their opinion was. The fact that I designed the business card myself made me more inclined to think it was amazing, because to me it really was. Now I understand that I needed to do more than business card printing and bring along other material, because what I thought was not necessarily what actually happened.

You need to make sure that your expectations are not getting in the way of good planning. I think a good idea would be to not only have someone else look over what you are doing for a second opinion, but to also assume and underdog status. That way you know you are always going to be working to go that extra mile, rather than taking for granted that everything will be perfect.

About the Author: Janice Jenkins is a writer for a marketing company in Chicago, IL. Mostly into marketing research, Janice started writing articles early 2007 to impart her knowledge to individuals new to the marketing industry. http://www.printplace.com/printing/business-card-printing.aspx

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