Selling sucks.
I’ve been running online businesses for 20+ years and let me tell you, it doesn’t get better when it comes to selling. You either love it because you’re some sicko or you just don’t feel great about it.
Maybe you’re insecure. Maybe there is imposter syndrome. Maybe you don’t like it when it’s done to you.
There could be any number of reasons.
Selling sucks.
But we gotta pay the bills and as they say, “Likes ain’t cash.” So what do you do?
Some Creators suck it up and start to go hard on the selling.
“Buy my templates. Did you know you could buy my templates? If you’d just buy my templates your life wouldn’t be miserable. I’m holding your 3rd cousin hostage; if you don’t buy one of my templates, not good things are going to happen.”
It’s just one thing you don’t want to do.
So whenever I don’t feel like doing something, I ask myself a simple question.
Is this mandatory?
I have to ask this question because there are a ton of mandatory things that I don’t like doing but must get done. So it’s important that I make sure I’m not avoiding something that is necessary. And selling feels like it’s necessary and it is.
But what is selling? I have a pretty unique definition of it.
“Selling is the art of getting someone to see the world the way you see it.”
That’s a very important way of framing it because when you do it like that, it allows you to think of tactics that help that definition. World-building is a topic that I’ll dive into more in the future but for now, think about how you could get someone to see the world the way you see it.
(And for this I just mean how you see the world for your niche. Not everything else.)
This email is the perfect example. I believe you can make a lot of good money without having to feel like you’re selling. I believe you can do more pull marketing where people are attracted to you because of what you do versus push marketing where you try to shove an offer down someone’s throat.
The more I talk about these things and show you how to achieve them, the more you begin to see the world the way I see it. The more you begin to love my worldview, the more of it you want.
It gets to the point where buying my offers just makes sense.
Seth Godin says that marketing is about serving your audience. This is the best way to do it.
But can you really get people to buy if you don’t pressure them or use scarcity? Most definitely.
I’ve been doing it for over 6+ years. And you can still apply some of those fancy selling tactics when the need arises.
For example, I might be getting ready to launch a course and say that the first 20 people to pre-order also get my next course for free. That’s scarcity and urgency, but not in a way that (I think) is terrible.
Now, this is a much bigger topic than I can fit in an email so I want to explain my first funnel for you.
I’m launching my first Odd Noodle course on the 19th. It’s called Feel Good Funnels. I’ve put it up for pre-order now with the exact funnel that will be up when the course goes live.
Clicking that link you can see it in action, but before you do let’s talk about it because it’s probably not something you’ve seen before.
My sales pages aren’t traditional sales pages. They are meant to be. Again, I don’t like the heavy sales tactics so I take a more subtle approach to things.
The sales page walks them through how I view the world of funnels and marketing. If you agree with it then you’ll keep on reading. If you don’t then you’ll bail.
One of the major purposes of the sales page is to segment people. You might think you’re trying to convince everyone to buy, but you’re not. You need to make sure the people who shouldn’t buy the offer understand that they shouldn’t.
The sales page is a Gatekeeper.
You can go through the sales page and see what I mean, but you’ll notice something at the bottom that you NEVER see anywhere else. And that’s ways to get off of the page.
If someone isn’t ready to buy I want to give them an out that still keeps them in my world. In this case, they can sign up for the Bootcamp or they can read the story about my first 5-figure month.
The Bootcamp gets them on my mailing list where over time they can get more familiar with me and decide if they want to buy the course later. The real fun happens with the first 5-figure month story.
That in itself acts as a sales sequence. It’s a couple of sales pages combined together to form a narrative. Along the way, I’m applying traditional copywriting and storytelling techniques, but you don’t notice them.
Each of these things continues to align your worldview with mine. Once you get to the end of the sequence you’re taken back to the sales page.
It’s a loop.
What is the point of this? Let’s assume there are 3 parts to the Customer Journey:
- I’m not ready for the solution yet
- I might be ready for the solution but not completely sure
- I’m ready for the solution right now
With #1, the traditional thing is to get people to sign up for a freebie and then you hit them with a sales sequence. This is to better educate them on your solution and at the end of the sequence they get the sales pitch.
It’s not bad. I made a lot of money doing this. The biggest problem with this is that if they aren’t ready for the solution yet, then what do you do?
They already went through the sales sequence. For email marketing purposes you get kind of stuck.
This sequence also works for #2.
But here’s the problem with #2. If you have to put them through a sales sequence that means you’re telling them to WAIT to get to the solution. What if they just need to know a little bit more? Should they have to wait 5-10 days?
#3 is your favorite person. They are ready right now. To make them wait would be silly and not cool. This group you’d rather send straight to your sales page, but what happens when you send groups #1 and #2 directly to your sales page?
They think you’re being pushy.
This leaves you in a weird dilemma where you have 3 different groups of people but only one link on your social media. Where do you send people in hopes that you get the best results?
With the funnel that I set up, I have no problem sending them to the sales page. You can see how it handles all 3 groups.
That means I can use the link to that page everywhere that I post because the page itself acts as a resource. Of course, there are things to consider and fancy doodads to implement, but you can see the gist of it.
And this leaves me to just focus on creating content which is a beautiful thing.
If you want to check it out, here is the link again.