Before bed this past week, I’ve been reading a book about direct marketing. A couple nights ago, I read the following:
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You need to identify all the categories of solutions available to your prospect. Make a list of their pros and cons. Your job is then to close all the doors to buying other solutions by identifying all the ways your solution is better than all those other solutions.
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“WOW,” I said out loud. “This is GREAT advice! I should totally do this with my newsletter and with the offers I make!”
Then I shrank back a bit, and looked around my bedroom to make sure nobody had heard me.
I realized what I’d read is perfectly normal, commonplace advice about any kind of selling.
In fact, back when I used to write lots of advertorials and sales pages for clients, this kind of “dismissing alternatives” was a major part of my research process, which took probably 60% of the entire time I devoted to any copy project.
And yet…
A different part of the brain is involved when you’re solving a problem for other people than when you’re solving a problem for yourself. At least that’s how I explain to myself why I never think to apply things I knew to do so well for clients to my own newsletter and my own offers.
I once heard marketer Sean D’Souza say:
“If you wanna solve your problems, go and solve somebody else’s problems.”
That’s one reason why I recently started offering 1:1 coaching.
Of course, there are other good reasons too.
For one, doing 1:1 coaching gets me talking to the most motivated and proactive people in my audience, which makes me feel much better about what I’m doing in the world, and the impact my ideas and work can have.
For two, 1:1 coaching is market research. It exposes me to my audience’s problems, objections, and desires in a way that I never woulda thought up.
For three is that thing Sean D’Souza says. I’ve realized that my best advice to others is really advice I myself should be following as well, but that, for mysterious neurological reasons, I could never give to myself directly.
I just gave you three good reasons why you too should consider offering coaching, if you’re not doing it already.
Only one problem:
Like I wrote a couple days ago, “coaching” is actually a terrible offer.
The only way “coaching” sells is if you have built so much status or bond with your audience that they are basically buying YOU, in spite of that vague and unattractive “coaching” offer you made.
(That’s why I can kinda sorta get away with it.)
But what if you don’t have the same level of status and bond with your list yet?
From what I’ve heard among people on my list and inside Daily Email House, it’s a real problem. As one House member put it:
“I have thrown coaching to my list before, but the crickets were so loud I couldn’t hear the quiet ‘maybe.'”
A couple days ago, I talked about a new and 100% different offer you can make instead of “coaching.”
It’s a transmutation of “coaching” into something else, which sells better, is easier to deliver, and still gets you all the benefits I listed above.
Could this be something you’re interested in?
If so, hit reply and let me know.
Yes, I am selling something here ultimately. And if you hit reply and express the smallest bit of interest, my crack team of D2D salesmen will immediately descend on your front lawn, set up camp, and start a round-the-clock door knocking campaign…
No, none of that.
If you do reply and express interest, I will simply reply back, in order to find out a bit more about you, so I can see if this “alternative to coaching” could be useful to you.
If I think it can be, I will give you the full details.
If you like the sound of it, you can take me up on what I’m selling.
If it’s not a fit for any reason, you can tell me no. You won’t hurt my feelings, or sour this relationship we’ve got going on.
Does that sounds like something you can bear?
Then ask yourself whether a different, easier-to-sell offer instead of coaching could be valuable to you. If it could, hit reply and tell me so.