The Desert of Arizona
Clear 57 Degrees 4:50 a.m.
I sold my first product online back in 2002.
The entire first page of the website was a big logo. Clearly, I had a lot to learn about the art of persuasion and attraction.
But we all start somewhere.
The business was selling oboe reeds. Little pieces of wood people who are crazy enough to play the oboe (apologies to my wife!) need to actually play. (If you’ve never heard an oboe, here’s a recording of my wife and I playing a live recital in NYC years ago. Me on harpsichord and her on oboe.)
While the website was terrible, I DID soon learn enough to sit down and figure out that the oboe reed wasn’t what was being bought.
It was the vehicle. What was being bought was freedom and peace of mind. What was being bought was the FEELING you got knowing you could just sit down and play your instrument without having to worry about your oboe reed.
Once that was clear, we could go about demonstrating that result through testimonials etc.
But the clarity was the key. Freedom and peace of mind is what we had for sale.
We didn’t compete on price, we didn’t compete on speed. We were not selling those things.
You probably know what you’re selling, but are you clear on what people are buying from you? Are you sure?
I used to have no idea for myself. And I really didn’t have a way of figuring it out either. So I had to guess and guess and guess. Almost every time I was wrong.
Oh, you can ask people. You can survey them. From my perspective, you rarely get the truth with that method. So I don’t really bother. I don’t care what people say, I care what they DO.
Instead, I use another method: the media platform.
This is ONE benefit of the platform model of client attraction. Your media platform (your newsletter, podcast, whatever) slowly provides feedback so you can develop a deeper insight as to why people come to you.
Once that signal is clear, once you have that clarity, EVERYTHING works better.