Are People Hungry For What You Offer?
July 25, 2010
You LOVE what you do. You are GREAT at what you do. Then how come your business is slower than you’d like it to be? Are you 
not so great, or what’s the problem?
Here’s the deal….it’s your job to satisfy the hunger in others to have their problem solved. You have to use language that is emotional, not logical. People buy on emotion 100% of the time. They then justify what they have bought with logic.
This is why talking about the features of what you offer makes their eyes glaze over. They DON’T care that your jewelry is 100% sterling silver and comes with a year long guarantee. They DO care that your jewelry will make them feel sexy and pretty when they have been feeling tired and ugly. They care that your jewelry will get them an admiring glance from a husband who hasn’t notice them very much lately.
So, if you want to create sales, create hunger. Tell a story about what your jewelry has done for someone. Show pictures of smiling women wearing your stuff. Demonstrate how someone can place that necklace just SO and it will match their come-hither look. If you can show someone that your stuff creates what they crave then you will make money and even better, your customers will be happy because their problem is solved.
Here’s how to create sales conversations or sales copy that creates hunger:
- Talk about your customer, not you
- Offer clear contrast (before/after or with/without or fast/slow)
- Use tangible examples “more dates, more desire, unbreakable”
- Talk about the beginning and the end only (before/after) don’t talk about the PROCESS that happens in the middle (you choose jewelry, you wear jewelry….not what the order process is like in between)
- Use visual stimuli (pictures) which creates interest 40 times faster than hearing does.
Changing your conversations or sales copy to solve what your customers are hungry for will feed them and you. That kind of satisfaction is just as good as the satisfaction you feel after a good meal, and lasts longer!
Do You Need To Use Worry About The Osborne Effect?
July 3, 2010
Back in the early 1980’s Adam Osborne, who created the Osborne computer, made the mistake of giving a sneak preview of a newer, lighter model called the Osborne Executive. This decision cost Osborne his business, because buyers wanted the less-weighty computer (25 pounds!) so they quit buying his existing computers and waited for the new one to become available. The story goes that the company essentially died on the vine, for the cash flow from new sales dried up while customers waited for the newer model.
Osborne’s big mistake was to introduce a new piece of technology before it was available for purchase. Tech buyers will immediately cease to buy an older model and wait for the newer one once the word gets out…if you don’t have it ready to sell, your sales plummet. This became such a famous case study that it is still known today as the Osborne Effect.
It is always wise to forego advertising a new model until the model actually exists for purchase? It depends on your industry. The movie industry always advertises new movies before they are released, looking to drive up the buzz and make big hits at the box office on opening day. But that’s a different biz model, because they’ve typically already squeezed sales out of the previous releases long before the new movie is out. (Think Harry Potter or James Bond.)
Generally, though, if you sell a product (jewelry, luggage, clothing, air conditioners, etc.) you don’t want to get stuck with a lot of existing inventory because you have started to market a “new, improved” version of the same thing. And you don’t want your sales of existing inventory to tank when word gets out that in a few months the “new, improved” version will be available. A few months can be a long time to wait for cash flow!
Think about your own products and be aware of the Osborne Effect. Plan wisely for releases of newer “models” of what you sell, and don’t create a thirsty crowd if you don’t have something to sell them. Osborne eventually declared bankruptcy. You and I can learn from his mistake.
Pioneer Marketing For Entrepreneurs
May 28, 2010
When I was a kid living (briefly) in Oklahoma, one of my favorite times was the local “Pioneer Days.” Everyone dressed up in pioneer clothing, old Conestoga wagons were brought out of barns, and re-enactments of the early days of the town were carried out in the town square and at the fairgrounds. Everything was “old-timey” — the way it used to be. Some of the men would even grow their hair long and sport the old fashion handlebar mustache and side lamb chops.
I’m convinced that we are now in the pioneer days for marketing. If I’ve read one article about how push marketing doesn’t work anymore and that it is now all about building relationships with the consumer, I’ve read twenty. And every time I read one I shake my head and wonder why no one writes that this is back to marketing’s pioneer days. We now have “Pioneer Marketing.” It’s what our forebears did in every single city and town, and what the best and wisest businesses still do.
Pioneer Marketing (I think I just coined a new term) has one main tenet, and that tenet is infallible. It works every time because it is based on a law of human nature. What’s the law? “People respond positively and in a timely manner when they are treated with respect, courtesy, honesty, and in a way that has their best interests at heart.” That one law, rigidly adhered to, will win out every time. Your attention may be diverted by aggressive and shiny marketing for a while, but in the end you will go where that law of human nature is adhered to.
Simply put, our prospects and existing customers don’t want to be sold into a product or service that serves the seller and doesn’t serve the buyer. They are tired of push marketing coupled with shoddy goods and lacking customer service. And this is one huge reason that you, as an entrepreneur, have it over the big guys. The big guys have used push marketing, shoddy goods, and lacking customer service for so long that they are scrambling right now to turn huge, bloated, bureaucratic businesses around to save their sales. Meanwhile, you and I can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” meeting and forming relationships with our prospects, selling our expertise, servicing our customers, and making the transaction into a win-win rather than a win-lose. We have memorable and recognizable faces. Large, bloated businesses give you a new and usually non-caring face every time you walk in their door or buy from them online.
Family-owned businesses, solo professionals, and entrepreneurs can step up and capture market share right now. Most of us have a familiar face to our prospects and customers. Many of the big guys don’t, and now that they realize that, they are all about “relationship marketing,” thinking they have discovered a whole new world. It isn’t a whole new world at all, it’s the world that many small business owners never left, the one that our pioneer forebears lived in. Everyone knew the business owners up and down the street and how they treated customers. Everyone knew who to avoid and who to buy from. Business was good or bad depending on the business owner’s savvy and her ability to form and keep relationships. Reputation was everything, and was based on something real, not something manipulated by copious marketing.
People respond to Pioneer Marketing because it is in our human nature. We are wired for relationships. On the frontier, relationships and trust in others meant survival. In the marketplace, it means survival for you, the business owner. And it is coupled with a sense of trust and satisfaction in our customers, as well.
You don’t have to put on a pioneer costume or grow a mustache to use Pioneer Marketing. Just plaster that one law of human nature up where you can see it, and build your business from that place. Let your marketing, advertising, customer service, and sales be aligned with that law. Couple that with good business skills, and you are good to go. The next time you hear about the new “relationship marketing” just smile. You are already there. So hip, so pioneer. That’s you!
Wish, Hope, Pray Marketing
May 24, 2010
With apologies to one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert, I want to ask you to assess your marketing with a cold eye and an honest look. Tell me…..is your marketing system based on the wish, hope, and pray method? Here are some signs that it is:
- No one in your organization has a clear mission of responsibility for creating and running a constant marketing system.
- Marketing falls to the back of the list after client services, bookkeeping, scheduling, errands, and dusting the office.
- Networking in the community and on the Internet is catch-as-catch-can and is handed off to the least busiest person.
- You have no idea how many new customers you have gained in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- You have no idea how many customers you haven’t heard from in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- You don’t really like to market, think it is hard to do, and believe that great customer service alone will do the trick.
- Your marketing system consists of trying to upsell existing clients when they are in (think about the hair salon syndrome….you can’t get out of there without running the gauntlet of hair product, make-up, and spa service suggestions every single time you are there).
If even one of these hits home, you are in the wish, hope, and pray mode and you need to get out of it, fast! Consider your business as a three legged stool, the three legs being marketing, customer service, and expertise. Each of the three legs is completely dependent on the other two, as the stool won’t work without them all.
- Your expertise is what you do, your magic, your passionate purpose.
- Your customer service is all the things you develop and carry out to ensure your customers get 5-star treatment, including how you take care of displeasure and disappointment when it occurs.
- Your marketing is a planned, ongoing, automated system that feeds you a constant flow of potential new customers.
Each leg of the stool is key, and each is as important as the other. If you have sawed off a leg by your disinterest, busyness, or avoidance, I suggest you wish, hope, and pray before you sit yourself on the stool. You may balance for a little while, but in the end you’ll be on the ground. And that’s one place no entrepreneur wants to be.
Is Your Business At The Bottom Of Your To-Do List?
April 25, 2010
If you are a female solo professional, chances are that your business is not making as much money as you’d like it to. Perhaps when you got the thought to go out on your own you held a vision of more flexibility, a freer schedule, and making at least as much money as you were making working for someone else. Perhaps you even secretly thought that you had the chance to make it big, pulling in much more money, paying off your mortgage, easily paying for a child’s college education.
Let me ask you…..where is your business now, compared to that vision? Where is it compared to your secret thought of making it big? Have you given up on that dream?
I read a story about makeovers in a recent edition of O magazine that made me think about how women so often put their business at the bottom of their to-do list. We do it to ourselves and our businesses, actually. We think we’re being unselfish and giving, taking care of others before ourselves. But are we, really? Listen to one comment from the O makeover article:
“With the new looks came a new attitude. What a makeover does for all of us is point out that there are BIG possibilites for us all. Maybe we’ll get the idea that from a makeover, we can take another step toward change in other areas of our lives.”
Lack of attention to one’s self is no way to teach our children to stand up and be counted, is it? Making sure that everyone else has new clothes while we schlep around in last year’s sweats only makes us both look and feel at the bottom of the barrel. Paying for private lessons for our children while refusing to spend the money to take a workshop for ourselves sells ourselves and our business short.
Think about it. If you fail to give yourself and your business the nurturing you both deserve, you send a silent message that you are not worth your own time and care, and that your business isn’t important enough to make a difference in anyone’s life. Is that the truth? I doubt it. But you are showing how little you believe you can make it really big when you continue to play safe and small. You are refusing to serve others with your business, in a way that only you can uniquely serve.
When you really tune in to your business vision what does it look like? Have you forgotten about your early enthusiasm? How can you get it back? And if you did, how much cleaner and better would you see the way to that secret vision you have? How much more freedom would you have to be with your friends and family? How much less worry over financial matters would you have? What kind of example would you set for family and friends and other entrepreneurs if you kick-started your business again and made it provide for you at a high level? It would be a powerful message, wouldn’t it?
That’s just not going to happen if you take care of everyone else’s current needs first. Take care of yourself and your business, so that you have the wealth needed to take care of those you love. You aren’t here to serve your family and friends everything on a platter. In fact, if you do, they will learn directly from you to lean on others rather than themselves. Is that what you want? I heard a quote last week that really made me stop and think. “A strong focus now creates a different future later.”
How do you focus now on your business, so that you can have that different future? Here are three ways:
- Change your lifestyle and your schedule around so that you are spending at least two hours every single day building your business. No excuses. You are in business for yourself, right? Two hours a day is a bare minimum. Otherwise, your business is nothing more than a hobby. You can work part time, but you can’t work no time. Two hours, minimum, every day.
- Create a calendar for the entire year. Plan in your vacation weeks, at least three long weekend retreat times for yourself to focus solely on your business, and time for learning what you don’t know and need to know in order to build your income. If you are running out of hours in the week, get help for the low-level stuff and keep your eye on the stuff that creates future income.
- Get a mentor or a coach. Do I say that because I am one? Nope! Virtually every single wealthy business owner works with someone who can pull them out of the weeds when they need it, give them perspective, and save them a lot of time in mastering new tasks. No excuses. Don’t tell yourself you can’t afford it, tell yourself the cost of doing without is much higher than what you’ll pay. Think return on investment, not cost. That’s how a business owner thinks, after all. Are you one, or not?
Why Do Your Customers Buy From You?
April 11, 2010
Here’s a fun way to figure out why people are willing to get out their credit card to buy. Ready? Sit down and think about why YOU bought the last dozen items you spent money on. You might be surprised at your reasons, and you can use the insight to help structure the offers you make to your own customers.
I just spent over $200 on Magellan’s travel supplies website. Why?
- I got their new spring/summer catalog in the mail. Magellan’s used a direct mail piece, their timing was right (I have several trips coming up), and the catalog renewed my TOMA (top of mind awareness) about Magellan’s. The key here? Timing! I regularly receive Magellan’s catalog and usually throw it out without looking. But I’m excited about upcoming travel, and I needed to refresh a few things. LESSON LEARNED: Keeping in touch with your customers over time is critical, even if they haven’t bought from you in a while.
- A notice on the catalog’s front cover offered free shipping on orders over $100. I figured almost any order would come to that amount, and free shipping saves me money. A deadline on the free shipping (May 9th) spurred me to take action now rather than lose the catalog on my desk. LESSON LEARNED: Make your special offers time-limited, with a relatively short time frame.
Let’s look at what I ordered and my reason for each purchase.
- Spill-proof pouch – because the last time I was on a plane one of my face care products leaked out into my cosmetic bag. This pouch SOLVES A PROBLEM.
- Electronics travel case – I didn’t go looking for this item, but I saw it browsing the catalog. I’m thinking “Hmm, I’m sure tired of all my various chargers and USB cables getting into a big knot at the bottom of my briefcase, so maybe I’ll try this.” This purchase SOLVES A PROBLEM and was a win for Magellan’s because of 1) A GOOD IDEA and 2) SUGGESTED SELLING.
- Personalized luggage strap – This is actually a gift for my husband. His luggage looks similar to many, and more than once he’s picked up someone else’s at the airport. The strap WORKS AS A GIFT and helps SOLVE SOMEONE ELSE’S PROBLEM.
- Extra-large mesh pack-it cube – These things are hard to find in large sizes, so Magellan’s gets a star for carrying them. They allow me to pack clothing inside my rolling duffel luggage and quickly pull out what I need without digging around. If I get stopped for inspection, I can easily pull these out without re-shuffling and wrinkling my clothing. I’ve used 2 gallon kitchen zipper bags, but the zippers don’t hold up to being open and closed over and over again, and the 2 gallon size is now hard to find. These mesh cubes SOLVE A PROBLEM but also GIVE ME A FEELING OF LUXURY. I get to graduate from packing my clothes in baggies.
- Blackberry pouch – When I’m sight-seeing I try not to carry a purse, but I often need my phone and camera with me, and my pants usually have no pockets. This handy little pouch hangs around the neck and will hold both my Blackberry and my small camera. Perfect! Again, solves a problem and makes something easier for me.
- Walkstool – One of the downsides of having a new knee is that it’s still hard for me to stand on concrete for very long without pain. This innovative product offers a sturdy, foldable instant stool but weighs very little, and can hang off a belt, a backpack, a purse, or my shoulder. Next time I think I better not go on a walking tour because we’ll stand and listen to a guide for 15 minutes, I’ll be able to go and know I can sit when I need to. HUGE problem solved for me and a solution I can live with (not too heavy or too bulky, small and easy to pack).
- Inflatable neck pillow – I use one on planes, and foolishly over inflated mine a few trips ago. POW! It burst at 30,000 feet and that was the end of that! I’ve looked around in airports but balked at paying $30.00. Magellan’s had one on sale for $12.99. What sold me? REASONABLE PRICING and PROBLEM SOLVED.
As you can see, I’m a buyer who will spend for solving problems. I also respond to suggested selling and to the feeling of having something a little fancier for myself. But these are not the only reasons Magellan’s got $200 from me. They are smart in how they set up their web site, too.
- Their website is easy to maneuver and loads quickly.
- They offer customer reviews of their products, which talked me into the stool and the Blackberry pouch.
- Their page for each item tells me immediately that the item is in stock. (One of my pet peeves is ordering online only to find that the item isn’t due in for 30 days or so.)
- Their page for each item offers more pictures than the catalog, allowing me to “look” at items in detail.
- Their check-out process is easy.
Take a look at what you’ve spent money on and list the reasons why you bought. You can then look at what you offer to others and think about whether your offers are attractive for those same reasons. If they are not, tweak them and your sales copy, and see if your sales improve. I bet they will!
(c) Sue Painter
How To Manifest What You Want In Your Business
April 4, 2010
I’m a big believer that you can envision something and make it happen…..it’s something I’ve done all my life, in fact. I’m certainly not the only “visioneer” though. Most elite athletes use visioning to “see” themselves going through their competition or their games successfully. Musicians envision themselves playing a particular piece of music in their mind – going over and over the musical score, seeing their hands making the correct moves on their instrument.
In fact, “seeing” myself playing a piano piece or “practicing in my mind” as I then called it is one of the first ways I learned that I could make things happen. An early-bird piano student (I started when I was 7), I somehow realized that I could read the music and then re-play it in my head, and “watch” as my hands played the piece. In today’s world (7 was a long time ago, ha!) we call it visioning. Visioning is a key precursor to manifesting what we want to do with our life. And it’s a very handy little tool to have. I’ve used it in all sorts of ways.
- Learning music for piano, flute, and guitar for recitals and concerts
- Teaching myself how to do proofs in geometry
- Remembering positioning, draping, and treatment routines for neuromuscular therapy treatments when I took my national boards
- Seeing myself walking again after back surgery as a child
- Finding the exact piece of furniture I wanted for a room in my home
- Speaking to large groups successfully
- Finding the perfect office space for my business
There’s more (ask my husband about my “finding” the perfect car on Ebay for a song), but you get the point. Visioning leads to manifesting, and manifesting is a critical skill to have as an entrepreneur. I’m not saying that one doesn’t have to put the time in to get what one wants, but you can work with the flow of things and get there a lot faster than working against the flow. And working in the flow means having a clear vision, a picture if you will, of what you want to create in and around you as you work.
Here, then, are three ways to make things happen. You can use them to accelerate your income, build your business faster, get clear about the products and services you want to offer, and even find the perfect office space!
- Step one is to find about 15 minutes of totally quiet, alone time for yourself. Get some paper and a pen, sit or lay down, and close your eyes. Ask yourself “how exactly do I see my business?” And then wait until words or pictures form in your mind. Follow them, make them fuller. If you see yourself in an office, look around and get a detailed look. How much of the time are you there? Are there other staff members? What are you wearing? Where is this office located? Do you see people there? Make whatever pictures come to you as full as you possibly can. If you’re traveling in the pictures that come to you, ask where, how much you travel, who you are with, what you do when you get there. No matter how outlandish the pictures or words are that come to you, let them become detailed and full, and follow where they lead. Jot down anything you think you won’t remember about the words or pictures. Keep at it until you have a full vision of the things you want to manifest in your business.
- Make a vision board. You can do this any way you like. I sometimes use large poster board, sometimes just a sheet of paper. Either way, go to Google images and search for pictures that represent what you want to make happen. Get the pictures out of your mind and into the world. Print them, stick them onto your vision board, and put it where you can see it often. Your eye will go to it many times during the day, and your brain and your energy will lock on to the visions you put there. Soon enough, you’ll begin to see your way to each one of those pictures. Your energy will be so full of what you want to manifest that you literally will begin to pull the thing toward you. I’ve had completely doubtful clients do vision boards in my workshops, only to call me up six months later and report that every single thing on their board was “magically” accomplished or found. No, it isn’t magic. It’s putting your energy and intention toward what you see in your mind’s eye, and have helped to make real by creating your vision board.
- Share the vision board you made with your family, friends, and team members. If you want to put even more thrust into your vision, take the time to share what you are going to make happen by showing your vision board around. You’re not asking for help, you’re just saying what you are going for to those you spend the most time around. You’re creating a wider, broader energy for what you want, even if you don’t think anyone will actually do something to help you. The fact is, you just never know. One person might mention something in passing to another person, who happens to be just the person you are looking for to help make something happen. Sharing your vision deepens your own commitment to it, too. It helps you lose the “oh, I don’t know if this will actually happen” self-doubt that seems to always be lurking underneath us. Just make your board, share it with a few people, and go about your business. You don’t even need lengthy explanations – let the pictures speak for themselves.
The thing about envisioning is that it will become a habit for you if you do it consistently. You’ll find yourself stopping for a few seconds to envision even little things in your life – the perfect dinner one night, exactly how you want to look and speak in front of a group. Learning how to open yourself to the inner knowing, the vision inside yourself, is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your business. Set aside visioning time once a week for the next six weeks, and notice how your life and your work begins to change.
(c) Sue Painter
Why A Solopreneur Can Offer Less But Make More
March 28, 2010
One of the most surprising things for solo professionals to find out is that their prospects (potential customers) actually will more often make a purchase when they have less choice about what they can buy. It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? I’ve seen more than one solopreneur run herself ragged, trying to finish many different “product lines” because she believed it was the way to make more money. In other words, if you have 3 e-books to sell, 12 e-books is better because there are four times as many chances that you will make a sale. Or, if you have bookkeeping services to offer, and you also add personal concierge services and web design, you will surely sell more over a year’s time.
Guess what? Neither neuroscience or marketing research backs this up! I remember one of the first things I heard from Ali Brown a few years ago, and I’ve now heard it repeated by several other top Internet marketers. “The confused mind doesn’t buy.” Ali applies this to several situations. She’ll say, for instance, that if your prospect isn’t crystal clear about exactly what next to do to place an order on your website, you will lose the sale. But she also means it when she works with you in creating what you offer. “Don’t make it too complicated, keep it simple and streamlined,” she’ll say. “The confused mind doesn’t buy.”
Sometimes this is tough to take for a solopreneur who is good at many things. Those types of people tend to fight narrowing down their target market like tigers fighting over the last piece of carrion. But the truth is, if you say you are good at everything, you do make people wonder what, indeed, you are best at. It’s wise to narrowly focus, knowing something very well and sticking to offering products and services around that thing. Later on, when you’ve met your market and built credibility, you can add another target or create another offer.
Professor Sheena Iyengar, who teaches at Columbia Business School, has been studying the science of decision for years. If you want to pick her brain on this topic, get a copy of her newest book, The Art of Choosing. She first discovered that children were happier when they were given only one toy to play with rather than a wide choice. Over time, she came to understand that what matters to us is the number of options we have when we make a decision, not just the options themselves.
Another researcher, a professor at Princeton, discovered that after about five to nine items our ability to choose becomes too complicated. This is one reason I teach my business clients to limit packages to three offers for their customers. We can easily wrap our minds around three. If you are a wedding planner, for instance, and you offer a bridge and groom 3 main types of packages, they will choose one and go happily on, perhaps asking you to customize one of the packages a little bit for them. But if you offer that same couple 27 packages, it becomes too complicated and overwhelming. They may well walk away, trying to decide. And BAM! Someone comes along with a simplified version of what you offered, they sigh in relief, and pick one – from the smarter wedding planner.
Here’s my best advice to solopreneurs who are wondering about how to showcase what they offer.
- Keep your offers very simple and clear. If you have several different categories of products and services, label them very differently.
- Offer no more than 3 options of any one category. You can always charge more for customizing one package if that is requested.
- Keep your payment plans simple. Depending on the price point of what you offer, provide options for a single payment and perhaps a two-pay or three-pay installment over one or two months. Keep in mind that you want to collect your money before your product or service is entirely consumed, however.
- Use a matrix (a chart) to show what options are included in each package. People can then see at a quick glance what they are purchasing, and what is not included. It makes choosing easier.
Keeping your selections simple also goes for how you offer your products and services, but that’s a topic for another day. Don’t overwhelm your potential customers, and don’t overwhelm yourself, either. You will make more money in less time, and you will also have more satisfied customers. It’s a win-win all the way around! Less choice = more sales. Strange, isn’t it?
(c) Sue Painter
How To Fail As An Entrepreneur
March 24, 2010
One of the things that catches up the entrepreneurs I work with is perfectionism. I see this almost every day, an unwillingness to 
launch a product, produce a video, do a live event, publish a book, launch a website unless it is perfectly done. The fear of failure is often immense. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, and I know that it is a peculiarity of American culture much more than in other cultures. We seek to be entrepreneurs who always shine, don’t make mistakes, and look perfectly in control.
The problem is, holding perfectionism as your goal means that you are always chasing your tail. Just like a puppy who goes round and round until exhausted, you chase after yourself. You go round and round, when what you want to do is move forward. I’ve had clients who take months to write perfect copy for a website launch, losing tons of time in building their list. I’ve had more than one mompreneur resolutely stay exactly where she is in her business, because every single time she will chose to service her family rather than her business, indulging in a fantasy of being the perfect mom.
It’s my job to help entrepreneurs lose that habit of chasing perfection. Replace perfection with curiosity. You give yourself much more opportunity for growth. You quit using perfection as your excuse.
- Consider launching your website with the copy you have right now. As the weeks go by, see how it draws people (or not) and change the copy if you need to. Websites are, in fact, never done. It doesn’t matter if your website isn’t perfect. It does matter if your website isn’t launched.
- Consider baking one less set of brownies for your child’s homeroom, or missing one out of hundreds of sports events. Instead, take that hour to complete and launch a new product or service offer, and consider that being a financially successful mompreneur might be just as important a model for your child than the memory of an extra set of brownies. Which serves you and your child more?
In Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Tao is a verse I often read:
“The mature person is like a good archer;
When he misses the bull’s-eye,
he turns around and seeks
the reason for his failure in himself.”
We have total responsibility for what we do. When we get stuck in seeking perfection, we use it to hide, to keep ourselves from being responsible. Instead of the problem being within us, we look for an outside person or event to blame. It’s much easier to say “I’m just not sure if the web copy says what I want it to say” than it is to to say “I’m scared to move forward.” It’s much easier to say “Oh, I have to cancel our meeting, I have a soccer practice to attend” than it is to say “I’m going to get this done now, it is equally or more important for me and my child.”
If you want to fail as an entrepreneur, practice perfectionism. If you want to make money, practice shooting the archer’s bow, and keep practicing until it hits the mark. Learning from what doesn’t work is just as important as hitting the bull’s eye first time out.
(c) Sue Painter
7 Ways To Get More Clients To Attend Your Events
March 11, 2010
One of of my clients who lives overseas is in the midst of marketing his year-long high level Mastermind group. We’ve been through setting up the sales copy for his website, and he’s pulled together some introductory workshops to give his potential clients a taste of what he does and how he works. Still, he wants to do all he can to maximize enrollment, so he asked if I had more suggestions for him. Sure do! Here are 7 ways to fill your events:
- Be clear about how many people you want. What size does the group need to be to function well, let connections and bonding take place, but still remain manageable? Share this number with your potential members, and spend a little time actually envisioning the group in your meeting place. See the faces as you look around the room. Clarity and visualization are two ways to manifest what you want.
- Leave yourself enough lead time to schedule more than one “preview” workshop for something that is as big as a year-long higher priced offering. Choose a different location. It’s rare to attract all the people you have potential with for just the one single day you have planned.
- Schedule at least one teleseminar, and preferably 3. Use these hour-long open and free calls to provide valuable, useful content to your listeners. Have them sign up to gain access to your call through your website, so that you gain their name and e-mail address in return for sharing a sneak preview of your content. Talk about the what, but not so much the how. Take a break before the end of your call to spend a full 5 minutes making your offer for the big event. Talk about the benefits, not what you plan to do. Talk about the pain points you feel your listeners have and what can happen when these pain points are eliminated from a person’s life or work.
- Review the stories of the people who have already signed up for the big event, and ask yourself why they opened their wallets for you. These early adopters can tell you a lot about what other people are feeling, too. Change your sales talk and copy slightly if you need to, in order to cover and emphasis these benefits since you already know that they are strong selling points for you.
- Consider offering a half-price ticket to the spouse or business partner or assistant of someone who has already paid full ticket price for a seat. This can be a very effective way to fill your seats. Essentially, you are upselling the already-registered client. It’s a great benefit to them to bring someone along, and a great benefit to you to have another person at the event. (Be sure, however, that you are covering your costs with this 50% person.)
- Be wise in the use of experiential work in your one-day workshop previews. People buy on emotion, not logic. So bring the emotion up at these workshops and when it is high, make your offer.
- Make sure that your offer is time limited. You can offer the half-price “second person” ticket for a limited time. You can offer an early-bird discount for a very brief time. You can offer a bonus but only if the person registers for your big event within the next 24 hours.
Filling the seats at your events and longer-term programs takes persistence and the use of multiple marketing strategies. Using these can help you gain visibility and build excitement for your big event. Let me know how it goes!
(c) Sue Painter