For the last five years, I’ve been seeking to answer two key questions.
“Why do so few coaches, counselors and healers have full, abundant practices?” and “How can we change this?”
What I’ve learned has been profound. I’ve learned that as practice builders, most of what we’ve learned about business is wrong. Standard business works for big companies selling mass marketed products. But what we do doesn’t involve selling soap or bananas.
What we sell is based on intimacy. It’s based on love. We don’t sell plastic toys. We sell heart surgery.
Standard sales and marketing is based on advertising and interruption. It’s based on trying to “get the word out” in ways that break through our defenses to being sold. When a telemarketer calls during dinner, or
an advertiser interrupts our favorite program in order to tell us about “the purple pill,” they’re trying to interrupt us and take our attention in order to talk about something they care about, which we probably don’t.
As heart centered service professionals, this doesn’t work for us. It doesn’t work energetically, because it feels so out of integrity. And it doesn’t work practically, because it’s just not effective.
Can you imagine getting a buy one get one free offer in the mail – for heart surgery? “Special Offer! Limited Time! Buy One Heart Valve Replacement, and Get The Second One FREE! Yes, FREE!!!”
It would be ridiculous. Yet how often do we think that this is what we have to do in order to be successful?
Our “common sense” about sales is based on watching what big companies do to market beer, mattresses and used cars. It involves creating glossy, slick looking advertisements and web sites, and competing over who can offer the lowest price. But this is the opposite of what works for us.
A healer told me last week that she’d created a bunch of flyers for a free workshop, distributed them around – and then had two people show up. She thought that the key to success was to “get the word out” about something and make it as cheap as possible.
That might have worked if she’d been selling a commodity. But what she offers is the opposite of a commodity. It’s an intimate, sensitive, life transforming service. A service based on her calling, her commitment to being of service, and her love.
In teaching practice builders how to create a full, abundant practice, I find that one of the biggest challenges is helping people unlearn most of what they think they know about sales and marketing. Last month, we had one woman in our Practice Building Academy break down in tears as she realized that sales could be so much easier than she thought. So much more in alignment with her calling. So much more joyful. And so much more effective.
This was my experience as well. In my prior career, I got to be really good at sales the way it’s normally practiced. Given this, I thought it would be easy for me to build a full practice. But what I had learned as a
high tech entrepreneur didn’t work for me as a purpose driven coach.
In order to be successful, I had to learn a new, different, more loving, more effective way of doing business. I had to unlearn most of what I thought I knew about sales and marketing, and replace it with something that worked for me spiritually, emotionally AND financially.
Does this resonate? I recently realized that instead of trying to jump right to the solution, the biggest gift I can offer most practice builders is to help them understand their challenges at a deeper level. It’s to
help us get an accurate diagnosis of the problem, before rushing to prescribe solutions.
For most practice builders, most of what they know about business doesn’t work. It just plain isn’t effective. And the harder they try to make it work, the worse things get. Not because they’re lazy, or because they don’t offer exceptional value. But because they just don’t know how to do business in a way that works for them.
If this resonates, we’d love to continue building relationship with you, by giving you tastes of exceptional value.
To access your free practice building kit (a $197 value) please visit:
http://www.sellingbygiving.net/online-program.php
Thursday, November 11th, 10:00-11:30 am Pacific, 1:00-2:30 pm Eastern
Thursday, November 11th, 6:00-7:30 pm Pacific, 9:00-10:30 pm Eastern
Thursday, November 19th, 10:00-11:30 am Pacific, 1:00-2:30 pm Eastern
Thursday, November 19th, 6:00-7:30 pm Pacific, 9:00-10:30 pm Eastern
Love and light,
Brian