It's always difficult to admit you've failed at something. Call it what you will (and I usually do). Learning experience anyone? My particular learning experience - or the price of my first website - was £60,000. Okay so it's not much on the Scarface scale. But it's still a huge amount of money for anyone who doesn't have Montana as their last name. It's also more money than my undergraduate degree and two postgraduate degrees cost, combined.
And now after a year of maternity leave (and I found this far more frustrating than happily failing at my business day after day which is what I was doing pre-baby), I'm back in the saddle learning more than I ever did at school. Why?
Because now, I have a mentor.
In fact I have several. Only yesterday, one of them taught me on of the most valuable lessons I have learnt (and this one came for free).
People don't buy what they need - they buy what they WANT and what they WANT is the stuff that looks like it will bring instant success.
And when he said that, a light went on in my head (I do so love those moments). It is indeed a truth. A truth stems from the depths of the human psyche. Such is the power of the ego over our judgement, that we refuse to acknowledge deep, deep down that we need lessons from those more experienced than ourselves. We like to think we know it all and it is our lack of humility that drives us to keep trying at something that patently will not work. Most entrepreneurs are hard workers (in fact you have to be). But if you don't truly accept that you need teaching, then it will be sheer fluke if you succeed.
The problem is this. I want my clients to succeed. And of course I think I know how they will. I also think that they won't if they buy all the hyped up junk out there (plus they risk wasting £60,000 pounds...ouch!). But what I THINK I know is totally unimportant to the customer. Worse, it actually turns them off. So how do you show them what they NEED to succeed instead of what they want? Well in the words of my mentor.
Genuine marketers HAVE to revert to a hype-y salesletter that tells people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Otherwise, people would ignore our products and buy from the hype-y gurus who give poor quality on the back end of their funnels...
So the only way to save as many as possible is to join the hype - give them what they think they want and hopefully educate them in the product so they'll learn to only buy what they need instead.
We can only hope to catch some before they have spent up on rubbish promising the earth that doesn't deliver anything of real value.
There are some really great mentors out there and he's one of them. In fact today's goal is to put together a free mini-course for my clients to supply the details of some of the mentors who have helped me along the path to success (watch this space). For now, I'll leave you with a link to sales page training from my mentor quoted above and thank him in public for giving me such great advice. Thanks Randolf Smith from Mediakettle*, for reminding me that I'm not so clever after all... ;-)
*The link above is an affiliate link which means it will generate me money if you end up buying Randolf's product. You can also go straight to Mediakettle itself (that's not an affiliate link) - because at the end of the day, what I really want for you - and all of us - is to succeed.