What's your greatest challenge?

Good morning my blog loving friends around the world and how are you on this glorious morning? Well I do wish some of you would tell me. I notice that a few people read this blog every day but nobody ever posts a comment. It doesn't need to be anything life changing, just something like "I've read your blog and I found it interesting". Now I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or anything, but it seems that some people believe that comments are only there so that readers can insult writers, followed by insulting the other readers of those writers, followed by insulting the mothers of the readers of those writers, followed by going off on some obscure tangent. But we all have to start somewhere.

In my travels through the world of sales training and marketing blurb, I like to take note of the more interesting questions that get asked. One of my favourite sales gurus - Jeffrey Gitomer - regularly points out that the best sales relationships come from asking the best questions. Indeed, I'm always pleased when I hear the reaction, "That's a good question," because those are the only ones really worth asking.

And so we come to the title of this week's blog. What's your greatest challenge? Now this doesn't have to be a universal answer covering every aspect of your business. You could break it down into your biggest challenges in sales or, to bring things into my arena, marketing.

Some of the challenges we hear are obvious - people don't know what we do, too many time wasters, no budget, too much diversity, no budget, limits on time and oh, did we mention no budget?

The thing is, people don't think of these things as challenges - they think of them as reasons to fail. They are obstacles, or barriers, but therein lies the beauty of language - obstacles can be overcome - a challenge is exactly that, it's something that challenges you. It's something that, with the right tools and the right attitude, can be met.

Our mission here, is to turn challenges into goals. If you have a clear picture of what your company is NOT achieving, then you also have a clear picture of what it is you want to achieve. All you need to do now is calculate the best route from where you are to where you want to be.

Now I'm not claiming to be one of these business coaches that stampedes into your office to start telling you how to run things. I'm not going to start proposing that you all come into the office naked on Fridays (seriously, did you see that Naked Office show on telly? How utterly ridiculous). I want to help you when it comes to rising to your marketing challenges, so I shall end this blog with the very same question with which it began, and would ask you to please get in touch so that we can work on solving them together.

So tell me, what's your greatest challenge?