The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [66]
Jena had never sent anything like this to her list. It totally flew in the face of the “brand” marketing that her board of advisers was recommending to her. She had mostly been sending nice, corporate, boring “Here are the services we offer”–type e-mails to her list. These e-mails, of course, never resulted in any sales, but at least they were safe and comfortable and didn’t risk rocking the boat.
Jena was scared about this new e-mail—it was so much more vulnerable and human, so much more emotionally raw, than the normal corporate communications. But she realized this was the time to try something new. This e-mail focused on her prospects’ needs, not on her need to sell them stuff. (Did you see how many times it contained the word “you”?) She gulped, and pressed Send.
The e-mail created howls of protest from some members of her board of advisers. “You’re going to ruin the brand we’ve spent years creating with this!”
But, it also brought in $8,000 of new coaching business in the space of a single week.
Jena had never seen results like that in the entire history of her business, despite many highly educated advisers giving her marketing advice. (That e-mail, which she has sent to new subscribers to her list many times over the last two years, has generated over $150,000 in new coaching business.)
She became an instant convert to direct-response marketing. She signed up for a live event with Eben, listened to his recordings, and read every book she could get her hands on by Dan Kennedy. Through her efforts, she completely turned her business around, rejuvenating it. Within months it was in the black again—and growing rapidly in the middle of a recession.
As we both expanded our self-education in marketing after this experience, the financial pressure on our relationship disappeared, to be replaced by ease and abundance. We weren’t even engaged yet, but I do believe that Eben and Dan Kennedy saved our marriage, because our new relationship might not have survived the financial stress of the early recession had Jena and I not discovered their teachings and implemented them in our lives and businesses. We have a completely new relationship together because of it.
A note on integrity: an objection you might have to all this direct-marketing stuff, and a reason you might dismiss it, is that you think it’s manipulative. For example, it might seem manipulative to talk with prospects about their fears of health concerns, or their fears of never losing the weight they want to lose.
These are important concerns. When you talk with anyone about their deepest fears, desires, and dreams, there is a potential for manipulation. That’s why you must always check in with yourself and approach these encounters with the highest integrity and the most giving, generous intentions. You must truly believe that what you are offering will benefit the prospect enormously. If, in the course of talking with them, you come to see that what you’re offering isn’t actually a good match for their needs, then you must actively discourage them from buying it and, if possible, refer them to a better solution.
However, if you have a product or service that you truly believe will benefit someone, then—as my friend the marketing coach Marie Forleo says—you’re actually depriving them of these benefits if you don’t communicate effectively and discuss together with your prospect whether your offering might be a good fit for their needs. You’re being stingy and selfish with your gifts, she says, if you don’t take the time to learn how to get your gifts out into the world, into the hands of the people who can benefit from them. Good marketing—honest marketing, high-integrity marketing—is the art of getting your solutions out into the world, into the hands of the people who need them and will use them and derive real benefits from them. It’s the art of spreading your gifts as widely as possible in the world.
A final coda to the story: