If you were a product would people pick you off the shelf?

First of March is coming fast. The end of March will mark the end of our first quarter for 2012. Make sure your goals are set, your strategies are created and your action steps are complete.

If you were a product, how would you market yourself?

Would you be high-priced or marked down? Would you advertise yourself as the "best" or the "best alternative"? The "fastest" or the "longest lasting"? The "most convenient" or the "most exclusive"?

These are not idle questions. If you were introducing a new product or service, you could easily spend months and thousands of dollars trying to come up with some answers to insure success.

That's why it amazes me when genuinely talented people do not apply the same principles to an even more important product-themselves.

The more I deal with top producing sales professionals, the more I appreciate how personal marketing-and more important positioning-helped them get there.

The most successful real estate sales professionals not only do the right thing at the right time (or even the wrong time), but they know how to turn it to their advantage. Ask them about their success and they'll tell you they not only worked hard and did a good job but they were always focused on positioning themselves correctly in the market.

This sort of "positioning" requires neither brilliance nor scheming, just a little honesty and objectivity about how you are packaging yourself in your market and what your long term personal promotion plan is.

Think of yourself as a product and create a plan to position your product and get more people to buy it.

Thought for today: The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong too be broken!

Have a productive day.

BF