Herein lies the problem, I need to get the product known in the market place and into the shelves at stores, such as GNC. I am doing my best to leverage social media with profiles and outreach on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and my own website (this is currently in the works). However, I have no existing relationships at a company (such as GNC) to build on and no recommendations yet to get in the door. In order to get stores to look at us I have had to pick up the phone and cold call. However, the success rate of cold calling is historically dismal. How do you avoid that during the early stages of a company when your product is not known? How do you provide value when your potential customers do not yet know your product? I personally take NeuroMuscle every day, twice a day. I know it works. I am passionate about getting this product out because I think it can help a lot of people be more productive, but how do I get that message across to the customers?

Thank you in advance for your advice,

- Adrian

Thank you for publishing the story. Hope my testamony resonates throughtout your readership and beyond.

Robert

A few weeks back you shared with us an inspirational story on how to overcome those obstacles that so often challenge us from successfully achieving our business objectives. The article, titled Shattering Rocks, illustrated the missionary efforts of a group of young men from Belen High School as they volunteered their personal time over the summer to help the poor communities of the Dominican Republic. In your story you mention a particular incident were the students, engaged in the construction of an aqueduct project, came upon a massive boulder that proved to be virtually impossible for them to move or break… at which time the students were able to witness what was undoubtedly such a unique solution by the very same poor community they were helping.

This story served as an important reminder to me of how, in business, we must constantly assess challenges from all perspectives, even those considered to be “out-of-the-box” solutions. The story also reminded me of a challenge that I myself experienced early in 2008 as a result of the global recession, and one which I would like to share with you today.

At the time, I was serving as the Director of Marketing for a multi-national engineering firm, which until then had experienced significant annual growth results (for both revenue and staff size). Soon after the global recession hit, it became clear that the firm had to scale back its staff size significantly, or risk shutting its doors. Having grown the marketing department to a size of over two dozen marketing professionals, across more than half a dozen locations throughout the U.S., Caribbean, and Latin America, I was now presented with a severe mandate from the organization’s officers and board members: reduce my staff by ¾ and increase marketing activities.

You can imagine the difficulty of the situation I was now placed in. Not only was I to begin laying off staff, an emotionally difficult task in and of itself, but I was also to figure out a way by which to increase the marketing activities across the entire company. The most immediate solution was to increase the workload and hours of the remaining staff [indefinitely]. This of course would have proven disastrous, as the remaining staff would soon reach a level of “burn-out” that would prevent them from effectively carrying out their responsibilities. The eventual solution arrived when I realized the opportunity available to me through our offices in Latin America, were the marketing support skills I needed are abundantly present in the multitude of young professionals competing for jobs in those markets, and salaries are a fraction of what they are in the U.S.

The Result – After a few months of planning and coordination, I was able to increase the department’s marketing support staff to a size that was actually greater than what I had originally started off with, thereby increasing the marketing activities across the entire firm… all within the anorexic operating budget assigned to me, and using the already present infrastructure of one of our Latin American offices.

Though I cannot morally consider this effort to have been 100% successful, given the nature by which I was forced to lay off staff, I can say with certainty that the solution was essential to the survival of the firm – and now serves as a life lesson… a reminder if you will… that even when faced with the darkest of obstacles, a solution is obtainable.

Thanks for letting me share this personal testimony.

Keep up the great work!

Recently someone sent me an e-mail with instructions to visit your website. I can’t recall who sent it. I visited the site and gazed through it’s content and came across the article on “Shattering Rocks” which I found to be incredibly inspirational.

After being in the mortgage industry for over twenty five years and considered myself to be professionally able, efficient and respected in my field, I find myself, along with hundreds, if not thousands of industry professionals desperately seeking an answer on whether to stay and weather the storm or seek an alternate career path or income flow capable of sustaining a respectable standard of living.

For over twenty five years in an industry and at age fifity five it has not been an easy transition. I have been through adverse times in the past and have bounced back. I was orphaned at age eleven. served my country in the military, experienced a divorce of a previous marriage with two children, lost a business and fell on hard times twenty years ago among other things.

I have no doubt I will be back, in fact the boulder in my path is turning red hot and shortly I will be pouring the cold water on it with God’s help and that of my loving wife, children and friends.

I made copies of the story for my co workers and shared it’s power of faith.

Your’s truly,
Robert Colon, Sr.