Day Thirteen – Ask

There is an important distinction between marketing and selling. Marketing is about getting them to your front door, selling is about asking them to come in. There is something way more confronting about selling. It's the moment: "Will you give me your money?" Up until that time, one person (the seller) has been working hard to make it fun for the other person (the buyer). That's all marketing. Now it's time for the potential buyer to take another step, make a commitment, show they care. Selling is that moment of asking them to do that. You can enjoy marketing and hate selling, many people do. Marketing is all about creating an atmosphere, creating comfort – reassuring people that you are OK, they are OK and the thing you are talking about is OK. Marketing is about bringing people together, getting them to agree. That comes more naturally to people. But selling is drawing a line in the sand. It's saying, all right – if you want to keep going, this is what I want from you. As I have written before, selling is the world's oldest profession: I'll give you that, you give me this. An equitable exchange. Not a friendship. Separation is permissible at any time. Selling is all about asking: it's the judgement of whether all your efforts to make a person feel at home with you and your service have worked or not. Rejection is one of our biggest fears, and we meet this fear in sales. They either pay or they don't – there's no maybes. Your Mission – Make Sure You Add Selling to your Marketing

For most of you, there are three main ways you represent your Self to your niche: your website, your mail list and social media. Social media is definitely a marketing environment. You do not want to sell there. Emails are a mix of the two. Sometimes you are just delivering great content, other times you are asking for something. Websites need to ask, they need to sell. Websites can sell three things: 1. Memberships (like this one) 2. Products (E-commerce) 3. Information (get your email) Most AT websites fall into the third category. Looking at your average Alexander Technique website: they do a reasonable job of content marketing generically (not niche) and a lousy job selling. Remember – selling is about asking. It may be you are asking for money, but it can be about anything. What it needs to be about, what matters most, is to get their email. But there are lots of ways to gather an email… Call To Action (CTA) What does your website ask them to do? Your website must ask them to do something. What is your CTA? Every page of your website needs a clear CTA. Check them all this week. Every page. Put it in your global navigation bar - that's the simplest, but still offer it in other ways within the text too. Why? You don't know where they will be when the light comes on and they think "Yes! This makes sense to me. I like this." At that point, lingering nearby is a button, a contact form, an email address, a phone number – with a clear message: "Click here to find out More" or "Get A Free Chapter From My Book" or "Chat to find out more." Notice how many websites are offering Live Chat these days? Same thing. So what will the action step be on your website? You want their email address. Not even their name, but I would go for that too as this is a personal business. What works most powerfully is to offer them something in return for giving you their precious email address. People guard this carefully these days. So what's your offer? What does your avatar want so much, they would be willing to exchange their name and email to get it? You've seen these everywhere for the simple reason that they work. Now you need one too. What will it be? Your mission (should you be wish to accept it) is to produce something for your avatar that would have them rushing to give you their email. And then put this offer everywhere you conceivable can throughout your website. All pages lead to this.