Learn To Sell Or Quit
Sorry for the harsh (but fair) advice to start your day. It’s not exactly a classic Thanksgiving week message of gratitude, but perhaps you’ll look at what I have to say as a blessing in disguise.
This goes out to so many people that are procrastinating through preparing, through organizing, through perfecting, through busywork, and through doing anything that isn’t selling.
Listen, if you want to make money online … eventually you have to sell something. Some of you don’t want to, even though you say that you do.
Actions speak louder than words.
Recently a coaching client of mine found out the hard way that you can’t just put out a weak sales message and expect to make a lot of money.
He thought having a launch just meant creating a product and asking his friends (i.e. affiliates) to send promotional email for it.
It was like that classic South Park ‘Underwear Gnomes’ episode…
Step #1 – Collect Underpants
Step #2 – ?
Step #3 – Profit
He didn’t realize that affiliates would actually expect to make money from it.
When they didn’t, they bailed on his launch.
It’s all because he didn’t put the effort into his copy. He procrastinated on becoming a sales person. He avoided the hard work.
So I said to him…
Don’t worry about pushing back the launch.
You are not the first.
So far this year three BIG dawgs in my industry have cancelled or postponed product launches. And they cancelled launches on day 1…after many big name affiliates mailed for them.
Like you, they were frustrated…
…but the FACT was their copy did NOT convert…and it was hurting their affiliates. The launch could not go on.
It had to be cancelled…or it would have everything worse.
Just like yours had to be pushed back.
There was NO other option.
So…here’s my hard but fair assessment of your situation:
1) There is NO problem with your product. We know it works and you have put a ton of work into it. That’s great. We don’t have to worry about that.
2) But your copy does not work. It will not make affiliates money. They will not mail for it.
3) You can get an okay improvement in your copy by doing a copy logic…but it will NOT work miracles.
4) Writing great copy is HARD work. It is an incredibly tough skill to learn…and takes many hours.
You need to put a LOT of time into fixing the copy in order to make this work. You need to become a student of copywriting like Bedros, Joel, Shaun Hadsall, Jon Benson, Mikey Whitfield, and Gary at ETR.
5) But here’s what I see…and let me first say, there is NOTHING wrong with this, but here’s the reality:
You’d much rather train clients than learn how to write copy. you’d much rather focus on your fitness competitions than study hard-core Internet Marketing and Selling. Sorry.
But that’s fine…because that’s your choice. It’s your life.
So…
You have two options:
Option #1) You get serious about Internet Marketing.
You stop with the fitness competitions & cut back on your training business.
Then you hole up in your home office, eliminate temptations and avoid distractions, and you wake up first thing each morning and spend 3 hours working on your copy and studying other copy that works. Do this for 60 days (about 200 hours of study and re-writing) and you should have copy that works. Then it will be time for you to test it using this formula:
a) A blitz week to your list to find the best emails
b) A blitz week with a couple of willing affiliates who are happy to test without the promise of amazing results
c) A plan for a real launch for 2015
Option #2) You decide Internet Marketing isn’t for you.
And you focus on your training business, your fitness competitions, and just being an affiliate instead of building a big online business.
Neither option is wrong.
It’s okay for you to say that being a hard-core copy guy is not something you are interested in…after all, it requires a lot of sitting in front of books and computer screens for hours and hours at a time.
That might not be for you. It’s not for a lot of people.
You can still have a huge impact on the world – and your community – by training clients.
Bottom line:
We are impressed by the results your clients are getting.
We know you have a great product.
But without great copy, it will be tough to sell to strangers outside of your community.
Copy is a tough game…and there are no promises.
It may or may not be for you.
I’ll let you decide to either…
Get serious or quit.
Because at the end of the day…
…you have to do what is right for you.
Stay strong but real,
Craig Ballantyne
“When you are starting a new business, selling must be your #1 job. Learning to sell is an obligation, not a choice. Your educational objective during the start-up stage of your business is to simply learn how to sell one particular product to one particular market. You just need to do one thing well: Sell the hell out of your one product. You will get to $1 million quickly, and perhaps even to $10 million, simply by repeating this one trick over and over again. As long as it keeps working, keep doing it.”- Mark Ford