What happened last meeting!?

12-08-09 - Ruth Klein on branding

Written by Editor-On
Wednesday, 16 December 2009 03:19
What happened at the December meeting? We had the usual crowd of practitioners and new people wanting to learn about the Chamber. It was Camille’s birthday so we called her on a cell phone and all sang Happy Birthday to her. In their personal introductions Bruce asked everyone to tell the group what they wanted for Christmas. Many asked for world peace. Tony led another Love Seat process for a person just starting out in a business of dance and movement. Then Ruth Klein of RuthKlein.com delivered a scrumptious talk on branding. It opened several new doors in my mind and I thought I already knew a lot about branding! She deftly connected the Outer Game of Business aspects such as books, articles, logo, elevator speech, with the Inner Game of Business aspects, who you are as a unique person who literally has no competition. She says the age of marketing to the masses is over. If you as a healer say you do all modalities, then you are competing with Walmart or with Cedars-Sinai. She also warned against a common healer idea, “My ideal client is some one who really wants to get well.” This is not a solid branding idea; I surmise because, consumers are rarely in a position to be very objective about their motives. Without pounding or pontificating, Ruth lead me to erasing some of my old ideas about branding and to lay a new foundation. Paraphrase: You have a personal (internal) brand. This can and should reflect your outer brand. The ideal branding enables customers to see all the way into you, into your soul. Each of us is truly unique. No two biographies can ever be identical. So you already have no competition. “What you do internally is your gift—but you have to brand it. “Branding” is the opposite of “generic” This dovetailed with another marketing seminar I listened to on CD from Rich Harshaw who was sharing evaluations he uses to test people’s headlines, elevator speeches and brand and mission statements statements. One test is, “Well, I would hope so!” His example was a barber shop advertising that if you come to them, your hair will be shorter. This addresses the tendency of baby marketers to articulate features rather than unique benefits. Of course you do what you say you do; that’s obvious. What makes you different from others doing this? What makes you stand out? His second test is, “Who else can say that?” If a bunch of your competitors can say what you are saying in your ads and copy, then your approach to your brand is too generic. Only be generic if you wish to blend into the wallpaper behind you. His third test is, “If I scratch out your name, and put in the name of your competitor, do I notice any difference?” If no difference at all, your ad and copy is too generic; it’s too little about who you are uniquely. Rich has a free two CD set that I got several good things from. Order it here http://mymessentials.com/ Back to Ruth. To assist folks to start on the path of identifying their own uniqueness, she had us write down three items each in a “life profile,” hobbies, education, ideal client, experiences, failures and successes. Sophia Sharpe was lucky to get picked as the guinea pig. Ruth looked at her list the way a musician might: do these notes all harmonize? Are any notes out of harmony? The short demo suggested disharmonious notes in a life profile point to blind spots and weak points in our brand creation. She suggests to measure the effectiveness of your brand by how many ideal clients it attracts. Books as brands Ruth has a lot of experience with book projects and runs a group you can join for writers pitching to agents and publishers. She says “every book is a brand.” He books that grab us, the titles that grab us, allow us to see all the way into the core message—the soul—of the project. It tells us immediately how likely it is you want to hear more of that message. Become a celebrity expert Ruth says, in one sense of branding, the goal of all coaches and healers is to become a celebrity expert, to be a person the media comes to when something happens in our field they wish comment on. Not a fan of paid advertising Ruth’s goal with her clients is to have 95% of their biz come from referrals. She is not a fan of ads. She prefers target marketing to a niche you can do well in. Testimonials 101 Ruth listed all the frustrations I and other have about collecting testimonials. She says the best time to collect a testimonial is when they say, “I feel great!” You drop everything and write it down. Do not make them responsible for writing it later, better or anything. You write it on the spot and get them to sign it or approve it. -- Notes by Bruce Dickson of ToolsThatHeal.com
Last Updated on Wednesday, 16 December 2009 03:37

What happened at the last meeting?

Written by Administrator
Tuesday, 13 October 2009 01:54
A chronological blog, latest meeting on top, of who spoke and one person's impressions. Contents: Sophia Sharpe, Young Living Oils Brian Whetten, SellingByGiving.net Sophia Sharpe spoke with unusual coherence, without any notes, of how oils played into her life and how her life plays into the oils. She handed out small samples and twice went around the room with bottles of oil dabbing it on everyone's wrists. She could have titled her talk, "How I made the Law of Attraction work in my life." She makes over $10,000 a month from her Young Living Oils business. By her own telling, she did not begin her involvement until she was 60 years old. She did hands-on massage prior to oils. Her sister got her into the biz. Her sister told her three things, 1) You have to believe in your product. If you can imagine yourself one hundred years from now still believing in the product, then it's something you can commit to it now. 2) You have to put in the time. It helps if you allow yourself to "be the product of your product." Make a three year commitment. Don't evaluate until then. 3) Don't let anyone steal your dream. People will throw all sorts of cold water on your dreams. Find what is true and bright inside you to counter their punches. After hearing this, Sophia wrote down what she would be making in three years. A check for the balance of that number showed up on the last day of that three years. There was substantial interest in the nuts & bolts of acquiring distributors and she spoke about her Monday night home Oil Parties. ===================================================== Bruce’s notes from Brian Whetten, SellingByGiving.net 10-09 Better master networking questions when with other practitioners: Who can you help? How can I know who to refer to you? Mainstream medical model is the Karpman Drama Triangle. The Perpetrator setting everything into motion is the DISEASE. Rescuer, “I’m Only Trying to Help You” is the DOCTOR. Victim, “You’re The Only One Who Can Help me” is the PATIENT, who classicly takes no or only minimal responsibility for change. [Karpman’s 2007 update on his original TA invention: http://www.karpmandramatriangle.com/pdf/thenewdramatriangles.pdf Our culture makes unnecessary distinctions between sales and service. We downgrade sales as kill or be killed and we idealize service. You see this in our distinction between non-profit and for profit biz. We also see it in the supposed polarity between service and competition, as if the two cannot and do not co=exist. Service goes up to God, $ goes down to survival. This is more like what we have inside us, in the inner child. When we as self-employed entrepreneurs try to span the two and embrace both service and marketing, we span the high and low inside ourselves—making our business a mirror and battleground of any unresolved issues we have. The range between service and competing in selling is so wide, any issue can come forward to be a block on that spectrum somewhere. Brian deconstructs old time hard selling like this: trying to give value when we are not clear on our offers. “Conscious sales” remedies this a lot. Healers sell intimacy. It really is heart surgery! It’s not selling bananas. It is life changing work at its best. Our people do not buy heart surgery based on the low price leader. They buy by trust and value. So your best strategy is to create a web of trust for old and new clients to enter. This is what Facebook and social media sites offer: Within your own group of friends on Facebook—not everyone and everybody, just your own list of friends—you have created a web of trust. Messages circulating within your web of trust will tend to be—trusted. Traditional Economics is based on law of scarcity. Spirit is based on the Law of Abundance. Whatever you want, if you start giving it away, you get more. [If you create a flow from Spirit thru yourself and out to people, then Spirit shows you how to make the opening bigger]. Permission marketing is what Google did. Home page has zero ads. No ads appear until you ask to be shown something good. Then it tells you what many other people thought was good in that area. The only way to sell intimacy is via permission. Your practice is a superb vehicle for personal growth—if you accept [your biz is a mirror of your own issues]. Brian promotes going for broke, being outrageous, making outrageous offers, make it more important to you for clients to get it than for you to get their money. When you go all out, have a Safety net. The safety net can be a money back guarantee. Myth many inexperienced entrepreneurs believe: freedom equals a lack of structure. No. Your systems give you freedom—once they are set up and running. [Another frequent myth: “I can do all the things I need to do as a small biz person all by myself.” No. You must identify what you do poorly and give it away. You’ll be amazed at what wind this gives your sails.] “Charge them til it hurts.” Charge them until they are fully committed. People are scared to grow and need to take changing their lives seriously—and have a $ back guarantee. The death of most practitioner business is clients who come for only one or two sessions. It’s too hard to get new customers. Have to find a way to paint a picture of a life long wellness machine. How can you not afford it? Money $ back guarantee. Brian’s coaches Steve Chandler, http://www.stevechandler.com/ ============= From another coach’s emails: Now, imagine a prospect, connected to her inner knowing, who never before has seen so clearly how her pain could be transformed. She's in a lifeboat with you. You're showing her the way. But, alas, you encourage her to go off and "think about it," to use her intellect to decide whether she wants to invest. You return to the ship, and she's out there alone, adrift, with her logical mind, her small self and her fear to help her decide. You probably thought that you were honoring her process, but what if you were actually encouraging her away from her intuition, from her best, highest source of information? Do you see what a disservice that would be? Instead, encourage your prospects to remain in the lifeboat with you until they decide from their hearts and intuition YES or NO. Here are 4 ways to facilitate that process. 1. First of all, remember that people are investing in themselves not in you. When you really understand that people are not investing in you, but via you, you take ego out of the equation, and so many things become possible. You're more able to tolerate a person's tension while they're in the gap, you can price your services based on their value to your clients, rather than trying to gauge your own personal value, and you can serve your clients better, from a higher place. 2. Don't focus on the delivery system. I've seen this so often: presenters spend 90 percent of their time talking about the delivery system, whether it's a teleseminar or CD or webinar, and only 10 percent on the outcome or transformation their offer provides. Prospects don't care much about the form in which the transformation arrives, they want to hear how your offer will improve their lives! 3. Elicit specific information. Vague questions yield vague answers. But specific questions, such as "How many fights did you have last week with your wife?" Or, "What is your body fat percentage?" elicit specific information that connects your prospects with their pain. Once they get in touch with what their situation is costing them, you can then have an authentic dialogue about the possibility of transforming that area. 4. Encourage them to make a decision. You're not trying to get your prospects to say yes. You're supporting them to make the best decision for themselves. Assisting the prospect to either a yes or a no is a real service. If it's a no, this isn't for me, then the person is now free to find something that is. And if it's a yes, it's a hell yes! and now you have a client fully invested in the transformation you're about to embark upon together.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 December 2009 16:48