When I hung out my shingle a few years ago as a direct response copywriter, I thought that “getting the sale” was the point of everything I did.
That’s what all of the books said. That’s what most of the experts said.
You learn some strategies and techniques and you combine them in interesting ways so that people buy things.
On one level, that’s true. On another level, that’s probably the most shortsighted view of business I’ve ever encountered.
While “getting the sale” is exciting at first, it really is only a single event in time. It comes, it goes, it comes, it goes.
“Getting the sale” isn’t much of an asset. It’s the symptom of an asset, but it’s not much by itself.
The real asset is trust. It’s a connection between one individual and another individual.
You can’t BUILD this connection with an advertisement. You can only build it with time, and value, and a flow of communication.
If you’re focused on “getting clients,” what would happen if you STOPPED focusing on something so fleeting and instead placed that focus on developing a system that builds trust?
Ideally, trust with far more people than you could ever work with.
There are two immediate benefits to this approach:
First, it takes your energy OFF the idea of GETTING and puts it on the idea of GIVING.
And second, it places the focus of your energy on an activity that NO ONE will ever get annoyed by. Have you ever tried to out give the universe? It just doesn’t happen.
How do you build trust in an age where so many people have been lied to, burned, cheated and let down so many times?
You simply keep showing up.
That incessant refusal to stop giving slowly works magic.
And that’s what the Platform does. It gives without want. It takes a little piece of you and delivers it out into the world… over and over and over again.
This doesn’t mean you can’t sell things. I do that every day. I’m doing that right now with the 25% off sale that ends tonight at midnight (coupon code FALLSALE27).
It’s the energy that makes the difference. Especially when you are trying to attract clients. In your face selling is little more than an expression of NEED. People can FEEL that. It repulses, it does not attract.
The Platform is about attraction. That way, you don’t have to try so hard to SELL, you simply have to create ideal opportunities to buy.