I’ve been an entrepreneur for 13 years, but I’m still learning things that make me feel like slapping my forehead. Know what I mean? Something comes along that’s just so smart and eye-opening that I think I should have known it years ago. Or I should have come up with it myself!
In just the past week, I’ve had three such light bulb moments. So I thought I would share them with you. The resources linked in this post all taught me things I wish I’d known when I started my coaching business 13 years ago.
I’ll give you one highlight from each of them.
Why People Don’t Buy From You
Brendon Burchard has put up a free video series to market his Total Product Blueprint program. For your opt-in, you get three meaty videos outlining:
- The basic structure of an information product, and the 12 types of information products with money-making potential.
- How to market information products.
- What makes information content valuable and how to take your teaching to a deeper level.
This is worth the investment of time (nearly 3 hours). I learned things on these videos that are going to improve my ability to get clients and make money. Brendan is planning on taking these videos down tomorrow, so grab it while you can by opting in here.
(I’m not affiliated with Brendan’s campaign, and I’m not encouraging you to buy – just to learn.)
Brendan teaches that there are six universal reasons why people don’t buy. Or to turn that around, six shifts your marketing must accomplish for people to buy from you:
- They must understand what you’re offering.
- They must want and value it.
- They must believe you.
- They must believe they can do it.
- They must believe they can afford it.
- They must WANT IT NOW!
Why Selling Coaching By the Hour Wastes Your Time
Max Simon, being the generous guy that he is, has posted an hour of the video footage from his last live event on his blog here.
This is Max sharing the love with his tribe of entrepreneurs – and whetting our appetite for his next event in the process.
There’s a lot here, but right at the beginning he offers this provocative piece of advice: Quit working with people by the hour. Don’t ever do it again.
His point? People don’t transform in one hour, and if you to have to keep re-upping the relationship after every session, that’s not an efficient use of your time. Instead, enroll people for longer-term, higher-priced programs where you can foster a deeper transformation.
How to Enchant Your Audience
Guy Kawasaki has a new book called Enchantment, on building influence as an entrepreneur. As always, Kawasaki’s writing is sharp, easy to digest, and funny. This book is directly relevant for coaches, because the heart of it is about how to achieve trust.
According to Kawasaki, “enchantment” is the purest form of marketing – the process of delighting people with a product or idea. The three pillars of enchantment are likability, trustworthiness, and a great product.
Here’s what he says about how to be trustworthy:
- Trust others first. You have to trust your customers before they will trust you.
- Be “a baker not an eater”. Eaters want to get their slice of the pie. Bakers believe that you can always bake more pies – everybody can win. Those are the trustworthy people.
- Default to yes. If your people ask you for something, you will say yes. Always be thinking how you can help people.
You can harvest the main points from the video here, but I recommend heading down to your local independent bookseller and picking up the actual book.
Comment below and let me know what you think of these resources – or share your own recent favorites.