Why Can Masterful Practitioners Be Found Struggling to Fill Their Schedules?

I’ve been holding office hours for our 2010 Opening the Moneyflow course participants recently to individually discuss what’s going on in their businesses. Predictably, there is a lot of ground to cover on these calls. The topic of creating a promotional campaign to sell an offer popped up a few times.

The Moneyflow participants are all heart-centered people who care deeply about their clients and about their own integrity. They would no more want to manipulate or push someone into buying from them than they would walk by a baby abandoned in a basket in the winter. Yet a few of them are facing some low response rates to their offers.

This is especially heartbreaking to see when someone is truly a master at their craft, with years or decades of experience. They create a space for their clients to experience amazing healing experiences. Yet they are having trouble getting enough people to show up in that space.

Paradoxically, this problem is caused by how much they care for their clients. Blinders are getting in the way. We don’t want to reduce the caring. We do, though, want to remove the blinders, because they screen out the true purpose of promotional campaigns.

When Does the Healing Start?

We’re about to do our next promotional campaign for the 2011 Opening the Moneyflow course, as well as a mini-campaign for the November 19 Virtual Retreat, so I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot.

If someone is truly needing to work with you and receives tremendous healing and help in the space you create, when does the healing begin? Does it start when they sit down in your space? Does it start at some magic moment in their time with you when everything changes?

Or does it start much, much earlier?

I believe the seeds of healing come not from us as practitioners, but are continually sprouting in the client’s path, nourished by countless factors and decisions.

Let me lay this one on you: I believe our clients have a strong desire to be held in a healing space not just in sessions or workshops, but all along their path, leading us to a different understanding of a promotional campaign.

A Promotional Campaign is a Long Healing Session

What if you were to have faith that the people you were meant to help were already heading toward you? What if your job was to help them find their path and welcome them in? How would you do that?

A promotional campaign is not about trying to persuade people to show up. It’s about creating an intentional space of support and love for those who are on their way to you. It’s about extending the conscious intention you have in your client sessions and workshops to several weeks or months before.

Of course, it won’t be as intense or conscious as the time you spend with someone sitting in front of you. Yet it can be a deeply loving space, one where your email, blog, Twitter, snail mail, Facebook, or some other way of connecting act as a conscious holding and presence of those struggling to find their way forward.

And it’s a letting go of all those who receive your invitations but don’t accept because it isn’t on their path to do so.

Preparing the Way is as Important as Showing Up

I bet you put a certain amount of time into preparing for clients and workshop participants, whether it’s your own spiritual practices, cleaning up your office and preparing the space, getting any needed handouts ready, sending out pre-session information so people arrive prepared.

There’s a lot that can go into having a successful moment with someone.

Promotional campaigns are similar. There are a lot of details, from writing the sales page, to setting up the schedule and timeline, to setting up promotional notices, to answering questions of inquiring folks.

But really preparation is preparation. With a promotional campaign, you are preparing the way for them to participate, and with the session or workshop itself you are showing up. Still, though, you’re preparing the way for the client to leave the session or workshop with you and continue on their path.

Right This Minute

Think about someone who has said yes to one of your offers in the past. Ask in your heart to be shown the path they took and how much care and love they needed to be able to show up in your space. Even if they were really confident and clear, ask anyway, be willing to be surprised at what your heart may show you about them.

Now take a moment to think about your current offer. It may be a holiday special. It may be an upcoming workshop. It may be your regular offer for clients to come in and work with you.

Ask in your heart to be shown what it would be like to strongly hold the same caring and love you bring to your clients who come to you for six to eight weeks prior to them showing up. What if you were to express that care all along their path as they tap into their own guidance about whether or not they should work with you?

It’s Not Just Internal

You know the saying, “the road to that hot place is paved with good intentions”? Well, it’s great to have the intention of love and caring in your heart, but how is that showing up in the world?

Are you sending out reminders far enough in advance that people can actually rearrange their schedules?

Are you sending enough reminders so that your offer has a chance to enter their consciousness and not just be swept away in the flood of life they are in?

Are you making it easy for them to say yes in your enrollment process, so they don’t have to face more than their own doubts?

There is a lot that goes into a promotional campaign. While you need it to be effective for your business, the intention of everything you do should be about extending care, support and ease to the people who really want to work with you.

That’s all a promotional campaign is really about, an extension of the love and caring you bring to your clients. They are coming to you, so why not give them the caring before they arrive?

If you do, you just might find more of them showing up for your offers.

In working with our Moneyflow participants, some of them were brought to tears in facing this question, realizing that they hadn’t extended their support to the people who were trying desperately to show up in their space and who really needed their help.

Consider at least one thing you would do differently if you were to bring this intention of love and support to your promotional campaigns?

p.s. Do you need to clear out the gunk so you can get into inspired action?

The Virtual Retreat, November 19 will be a profound way of nourishing your heart and the heart of your business, so that you can move forward. Register now, because you know you’ll need it right before the holidays get crazy. 🙂 Read more about The Virtual Retreat and Register.

p.p.s Keep an eye out for Opening the Moneyflow 2011.

We’re working hard at getting all the details up in a way that’s easy to read and respond to. If you are wanting profound, in-depth, hands-on support for your business, watch this space. It’s coming soon.