I like to be positive and upbeat, but I have to warn you that I spent years as an activist on different issues. Being positive is important, but it can also lead to a certain blindness that devolves to a belief that everything is okay.
Everything isn’t okay. Our economy is dysfunctional, sick, ailing. No, it wasn’t the housing bubble, or all the unemployment. Those are symptoms.
This came up for me because a friend had written recently on Facebook about how tired he was of “early bird discounts.” His not entirely unreasonable solution was just to be so amazing with what you’re offering, that people buy without any other incentive except it’s amazing.
I took a few breaths and recentered. And read on.
As the conversation evolved, it became more nuanced, and he explained that it was really the indiscriminate use of sales tactics without thought or intention that was bugging him.
That I can agree with, but I couldn’t help going on a rant. This is a critical issue for you as a small business owner. Because I rarely think that just being amazing at what you do brings in clients.
There are lots and lots of very amazing people out there doing awesome things. Holistic practitioners are a good example of folks, many of whom are tremendous, and yet their client slots are empty.
Here’s What’s Wrong
The challenge is that this world of ours has become an extremely distracting place. Extremely. Kids are routinely given ADHD diagnoses, when the real culprit is there is just too much stimulation.
A steady diet of action flicks and drama-filled cable shows with dynamic and frequent camera cuts creates the brain expectation that something exciting happens every three seconds. My life is way more boring than a cable show, thank goodness. And I don’t shift perspective every three seconds, for which I’m grateful.
Our lives are demonstrably more complicated than they were fifty years ago. More bills, more devices, more responsibilities. Add to that the breakdown of extended family and community and you have some very exhausted, distracted, suffering people out there.
Then add to all of that the factor that making decisions is one of the most energy-intensive things we do as humans. Making a decision just plain takes a lot of calories. With a complex life, our brains our exhausted most days, too exhausted to make good decisions.
On top of everything I just dumped on the pile previously, Facebook, Google, even Apple Computer, that I’ve been such a big fan of since age 13 and my first Apple ][+, scrape an incredible amount of personal information from each of us, and it’s used by global corporations with huge budgets to create a “personal” selling experience. Put in plain language, big money advertisers are using the most advanced psychological tactics to try and take advantage of any emotional weakness in our psyches to get us to buy more and more and more of… mostly useless junk.
In an ideal world we’d all live in small towns where everyone knew everyone, everyone would have enough food, shelter and clothing, and we wouldn’t be scrambling to make a living in a dysfunctional, life-sucking economy filled with greedy industries that destroy our environment and our communities. When you spend ten of whatever your currency is (dollars, pounds, Euros, yen?) with a global corporation, only one of those ten stays in your local community. The rest gets whisked away to underpaid sweatshop labor, and to whoppingly insane executive compensation.
I hope I’m not sounding anti-business, because I’m not. I was raised on small business. However, I see a huge difference between capitalism, which seems to mainly be concerned with the concentration of capital, people, resources and money, into as few hands as possible, and a human-sized business economy.
This is a Spiritual Position to Take
In case you were wondering, righteous anger is a spiritually-important position to take. There is language, in case you missed it, about a vengeful or wrathful God. Mostly that language has been misused to make regular people feel small and powerless.
Yet I’ve heard my teacher go on at length about how Divine presence is wrathful towards those in power who corrupt the earth, and betray the poor.
I feel a grief and an anger, a sadness and a resistance rise up in my heart in response to the pain and suffering that has been mindlessly, greedily inflicted upon so many.
I don’t recommend creating from that place of anger, but it can unstick you. It can get some almighty energy moving and get your rear up and out of your chair. Then, you can recenter and move from grace and love and Divine STRENGTH.
The Imperfect Perfection
To have heart-centered businesses survive/thrive in a dysfunctional economy we have to be ethical and smart in using marketing and sales. Not to manipulate people, obviously, but simply to make sure that the people who truly need us can hear us and respond to us through the haze and mess we live in.
I feel very strongly that if we’re going to heal this economy, then heart-centered businesses have to be successful. Being successful means we divert resources in the economy to services and products that are healing, that are transformational, that can change our lives and our economy. The market and business does not provide the entire solution, but it does provide an important part of it.
For instance, always-available, never-urgent offers from amazing people like you can be put off for indefinite periods of time by the people who most want and need your help, yet live in overwhelm. A sales tactic like an early bird deadline, or other urgency, can be important to get clients the help they need, so they will actually make the decision instead of wavering forever on “maybe.”
Now, that said, an ethical, heart-centered person needs to be using legitimate urgency. In Heart of Business, we use early-bird pricing to keep people from signing up at the last minute because 1) It is a lot of work to make sure someone has everything they need and it’s not fair to our admin staff to get it all done at the last minute, and; 2) People need time to complete pre-assignments to be ready for the class.
Another example is offering limited quantities, but only when the quantity is actually limited. For instance, in a live course there may be only so many spots. Or if you are producing a physical product, you may only produce so many of them.
Mentioning the truth, that there are only a certain number, can help people get motivated to make a decision instead of leaving it in the forever-maybe category. And if it’s true, then you aren’t manipulating anyone.
By using ethical, heart-centered marketing and sales tactics we can make it work. I’ve seen too many people who are extremely good, masters at what they do, languish, exhausting themselves financially and emotionally, because the people who need them most are too distracted to pay attention to the very small attempts they made to get noticed.
The Good News
People are exhausted, tired and upset by the manipulative flim-flam they’ve been exposed to the last fifty or so years. Hearts and minds are thirsty for authentic caring. And if you are genuine, real, and offering something really wonderful, they won’t be annoyed by your sales efforts. They’ll be grateful to find someone real, instead of another corporate veneer.
Please don’t shy away from using marketing and sales tactics to connect with the people who need you. We are all drowning in an avalanche of corporate media and probably won’t hear you any other way. Just stay connected to your heart and to truth when you do it.
I’m curious how this landed with you. Thoughts, opinions, marketing plans, questions. Please share what comes up for you in the comments.
54 Responses
I was participating in a launch of product for sale as an affiliate today. This is a product I value, (and income flow from this would be oh, so lovely about now!) but the sweep copy of emails with glaring inauthentic statements almost made me sick. I deleted much of the hyped up excited tone and spoke in MY voice which would, no doubt, give the owner heartburn. But I felt like I could in good conscience send it out and own what I was saying! It would be interesting to know how it was received and perceived by the recipients, and to know if a more gentle and real approach impacted the sales conversion at all?
Debra- I’ve done that so often myself- I never use their copy- I always speak from my heart. It makes a difference on your long term viability with your clients, for sure.
Mark, I truly appreciated your post, for a number of reasons. One is that I get frustrated with the notion that religion or spirituality are supposed to lead us to a place of continuous peace. Yes, finding peace is part of it, but not the whole story. How about trying to wake up and see the world through the “eyes” of the Divine? If we pay attention to what is happening around us, compared to the ideals of compassion and justice, we might be overwhelmed and paralyzed by pain and anger, so we can’t be there all the time — but it’s important to see this reality, find ways to respond, and to find others with whom we can share this journey.
The business I’m creating — building on my work in a nonprofit that has been very successful in what we offer, but not financially sustainable — serves people who want to explore Jewish identity and community but haven’t found satisfying ways to do so. (I’m a rabbi.) So another reason I appreciate your post is that I’m working on communicating that charging for religious/spiritual coaching and teaching is a good thing, that will enable it to happen, rather than a betrayal of the spiritual. I love your explanation of how businesses can offer healing, not just useless commodities!
Thank you.
Hi Bridget
@Bridget- Here’s to waking up! ROAR! 🙂 And rabbis have to eat, too. Baruch HaShem!
Just one thing to say: Go, Mark!!!!
@Do Mi… Gone! 🙂
Hi Mark
Excellent and stimulating post. Quite warmed my heart that you have the courage to make such statements in this world suffering from a tsunami of hype and outright lies.
However, in my experience there is room for marketing without any form of coercion. Just this week I signed up to train as a Bowen Technique practitioner with a training organisation whose marketing sucks
Leo- It’s an interesting point you make. And I don’t disagree. And yet why are so many truly excellent holistic practitioners sitting around with empty schedules? There’s a lot of reasons for that, and part of it is clarity in their marketing, how they are communicating. I don’t believe either you or I are talking about coercion.
Hi Mark
Leo- Oh no worries- I had no thought that you were saying our marketing involves coercion. 🙂
I love it when you speak on an issue that has moved you to that place of righteous anger (and then on, as you say, to grace, love and strength).
Completely agree with you. I also like how this ties in with what you’ve said about how the purpose of creating a heart-centred website is to help the potential client to feel witnessed and safe enough that your offering is going to both be exactly what they need and not conflict with core values.
I think if the marketing and intention is coming from a loving and authentic place, then early bird discounts and sales are an extension of a very loving gesture – a little nudge to those that know that they deeply crave what it is you’re offering but need a welcome mat or little extra permission slip to take the next step.
@Jo- Yes- the little nudge… thank you.
Fabulous Mark. I SO agree and I love the way that you grasp the thorny questions so fearlessly. I also take Leo’s point that in the USA everyone shouts much louder. It explains why people using a US marketing model in the UK can come across as over-selling and brash, like someone showing up at a party in an over the top outfit and being loud and boorish. Just a cultural mis-match.
It’s interesting, Nikki- There are cultural differences, and yet I don’t think that’s fully what I’m talking about. I think there are legitimate, honest, ethical sales and marketing strategies that can be used- and how they are used is the cultural difference.
Totally agree with all you say, Mark. There’s just ONE incident in the Bible where Jesus gets angry – and that’s with corporate sales techniques in the temple.
Thanks for the reminder that it’s ok to use heart-centered advertising and sales promotion strategies, as long as they’re genuine and not hype.
Keep on doing what you do so well!
@Grahame- Yes!
Well, He yells at Peter a few times and chews out the disciples for flaking in the garden too. And there’s that argument with the fig tree.
Thank you so much for this article and for speaking my “heart” about the situation in which we are serving and also striving to support ourselves well. I too, like Grahame, think of Jesus in the temple and appreciate that this warrior aspect of his life and teaching is available to us. Peaceful strength and strong peacefulness! It helps me also stand in my “warrior,” constructively, with integrity, to grow my business.
Martha- We need more heart-centered warriors, for sure.
Wouldn’t it be funny to do a backwards incentive? I.e. offer the product or service for more money at first, and as it gets closer to the event, lower the price! It seems like the issue here is that there is simple movement, and the money is not the real issue. There needs to be movement so that the offer can be seen, because moving things are easier to see than things that are still, this is a fact of nature. So take the money out of it, which we could all be doing anyway, as that is the sickest part of our lives right now, and what do you have left? Stillness and movement. SO… maybe there is a way to craft movement into the offers that feels more in line with offering from the heart of Divine nature.
@Sandy- I don’t necessarily agree that it’s just the movement, I believe the direction of movement is important. I’d be very skeptical about what you describe- it would encourage folks to wait until the very last minute to sign up- maybe even showing up at the event, wondering if it will go even lower… Curious what you’re seeing.
Wow Mark, this landed directly in my heart. I’ve been immersed in my own unfoldment as a heart-based businesswoman for a year now, and studying every aspect
@Sue- so glad! Yo!
Very helpful, Mark. Very useful explanation of why it is so important to be noticed and heard amid the cacophony! Seems so obvious but not. Thank you for your thoughts!
Christine
@Christine- so glad it was helpful- I want you to be noticed.
@Mark, now THAT reply brings tears to my eyes. Thank you!
Thank you Mark for this message. I’ve just come home from giving Reiki and some spiritual counseling to a woman who really needed my help. I drove 1 1/2 hours in each direction to see her and feel that this was the work I was meant to do. My sensible head is saying it was a lot of time for little ‘reward’ and that I need to do more to connect with the people I can help. I often struggle with the marketing, but your article has encouraged me and helped me to feel that it is worth continuing with the battle – in the sense of being a spiritual warrior.
Meanwhile I’ve got distracted from what I ‘ought’ to be doing to reply!
Lord help me!
Kate
Kate- It is worth continuing, and as long as your heart is happy with what you did, I think that’s fabulous. Sometimes we’re asked to give a lot.
Thank you for putting this out there, Mark. I’ve been thinking (and thinking and thinking) about it, because I offer one-time discounts up front for the people who have been with us a long time. People wait for them and look forward to them, and it helps us get momentum and gives our team confidence when they see people participating in what we’ve worked so hard to create. Otherwise, people do tend to put decisions off indefinitely…because they can.
We listen intently and we serve…that’s our commitment. Getting that same commitment from your clients, customers, and readers is a hard thing to earn, especially when there are so many distractions facing them every day, but we’re working on it. 🙂
@Sarah- you’re one of my heroes in this journey- I love what you and your team are up to!
Sweet and full of fire at the same time. Great post, Mark. You aptly describe the overwhelm and distraction that plagues me as a buyer, and I’m sure my (potential) clients.
Thank you for speaking up.
@CJ- Sweet fire… I love it! Thank you!
as so often we be thinking about the same things at the same time and as always you bring another level of care and wisdom to my thoughts. just yesterday Michele and I decided to drop the early bird on TeachNow (which happens again next month) and instead let the regular deadline be enough. There is a deadline because the program starts. And the incentive to get in and get learning and meeting your fellow teachers. I am, as you so well know, finding my way out of the hype and I love that we can all keep working on changing the world in this dialogue of heart centered business. so grateful for you my wise friend!
@Jennifer- you are doing such amazing work, you and Michele both, with TeachNow. I’m so curious to see how the deadline works- I bet it is enough.
The wisdom and direction you’ve given us as a small business is phenomenal. I’m grateful to be part of your fan club!
This topic is a particular silver lining for me, as we often do events and have early bird pricing – which is there to encourage people to sign up early so we don’t end up canceling the entire event for everyone. We commit to bring the work, they commit to attend. I love how you demonstrate that we can be genuinely honest and in that honesty begin healing – right in our marketing!! This resonates with me because I feel that healing is what we truly offer in our services to our community, our business partners, clients. And when we’re blessed enough to gather them together for events, that healing and inspiration expands and continues to grow. I just wish so many more people knew this, and didn’t feel that speaking about such things as healing, and heart-centered was taboo in business. That’s where my divine anger comes up. From that divine anger we gather that strength and will proceed with grace and love…
And we forge ahead : because even though it’s “oversaid” – it’s truly how I feel when we go marketing or create copy for our audience: we want to be the change we wish to see in the world.
Baby steps.
Yay, Jillian- so glad and thank you! Let’s keep spreading the love… 🙂
I wanted to ask your input about the ethics of finders fees, affiliate marketing, of promoting for others to share in the $ coming in to the seller. There’s something about this that feels uncomfortable to me and I wonder if anyone else is clearer in articulating where the boundaries of what’s healthy networking or spreading the word change to something sleazy? When is incoming cash flow “enough?” Any thoughts from the Heart around this???
It’s a great question, Debra. I might need to write an article on that. Mainly I think 1) you need to be willing to share whatever it is if you weren’t being paid, 2) you need to be free to say exactly what’s true for you, 3) you need to reveal that you are receiving a percentage (that’s actually U.S. law), and you need to thik about whether it’s truly related to what your business is offering.
Thanks for weighing in on this – I look forward to seeing an article commenting about it in more detail if you feel so moved! Cool! Also if anyone else from the reader network has thoughts, I’d be glad to hear what others have to say as well. 🙂
I’ve been thinking about this since the initial thread on Facebook appeared, and after reading this post and comments, I understand why I thought I was tired of early bird discounts. It’s about the decision. I’m a low-volume consumer. I don’t buy many online programs – maybe one or two a year. This means that for me, a person who is usually not at a decision point, the “selling” noise level is sometimes very high. And even though I’m *not* at a decision point, the incentives still kind of work and play on my fear of missing out. I still feel a twinge for the thing I let go by.
It gets me wondering about how well I’m curating my input (if I’m noticing a high noise level, it’s maybe time to re-evaluate and adjust). It also gets me thinking about how I’m going to handle it when I have my own offer to make.
Great conversation, and Mark, I’m glad you continued it here. And I’m going to continue noodling. 😉
Andrea- It’s so worth thinking through, eh?
I love this post and the authenticity of your position, and just want to mention there are other practical reasons for early-bird discounts or incentives.
Since it seems human nature (at least in the US these days) to wait until the last minute to sign-up for things or commit to attending events, event organizers often need to entice early registration in order to a) properly scale a new event/program – such as ordering food or securing space – or to a lesser extent b) gauge if there is enough interest and critical mass to hold an event/program at all. This is particularly the case for smaller or new coaching/teaching programs and small live events.
In other cases, with large events, organizers need funds to be committed ahead of time in order to bankroll the early expenditures they’ll have to make to create the large event. I’m thinking of someone like Chris Guillebeau as an example – he’s not a large corporation awash in unlimited funding and while if he had to at this point he could probably find a way to fund WDS expenditures ahead of time, for his first two years I think that might’ve been a deal breaker for him (especially since he admits to losing money on his first WDS).
So, there are practical reasons that have to do with planning, paying and capacity that often necessitate the early-bird discount and make it a legitimate, non-manipulative tactic that serves both business AND client. In my own case, I am happy to extend a discount to anyone willing to take fast, decisive action as a way of rewarding commitment. And as insecure as this may sound, I’ll happily trade a little profit for market validation, momentum and better cash flow.
I don’t think advance discounts need apply to everything, and yes they’re probably used without discernment, but it also seems human nature that people need limiters as motivation to act – and not just in today’s ADD society. As a student of the history of advertising, I’ve learned that the many of the psychological motivators and tactics seen in advertising in the US have been in use for much longer than the past 50 years. So, I wonder how many of these tactics are in response to overcoming our built-in negative bias as humans (there’s been a ton of research on that by the way) and how much are sheer manipulation? I don’t know, but I wholeheartedly agree with you – as heart centered business owners we must come from the heart before deciding in our own cases what is both ethical and audience-appropriate.
Certainly breaking through the clutter of infinite demands competing for our attention has never been more challenging than now, though, as you so wisely point out. Thanks again for such an impassioned post which seems to have inspired an equally impassioned reply!
Karen- how thoughtful and clear- I love the clarity that you bring. And yes, What Chris G did seems very large to most solo businesses, and yet even to relatively small business, it’s not a huge venture, cash-wise. My family’s little retail business did $5 million a year in revenue (not profit) and supported at least a dozen employees. And we need to be clear about how we’re going to keep ourselves afloat as we continue to create and serve.
Thank you for your post. Upon leaving the marketing and advertising world 10+ years ago, I developed an allergy that has kept me “stuck.” Just reading your post lights a path for me. I’ve intellectually known that marketing is needed and can be done without manipulation…but DOING IT has created immense dissonance within me.
My “vacation” from marketing is over. Thank you.
Debilyn- I love it! Vacation over… now the fun begins. 🙂
I think,You’re right and it’ll be pleasure next. Thanks for your nice post.
Thanks Mark and everyone else – very interesting.
You have explained succinctly why in the three years of learning about online marketing, the methods I used didn’t work more often than not – I was doing what I was told, having been assured by the teacher that if I did exactly what they had done, I would get the same results. Ha! It never worked, and it has taken me all this time to realise that this was because I had been sucked in to what I now see were psychological tactics being used in a manipulative and inauthentic way, and not having the confidence to use my own voice and listen to my gut feelings.
Forttunately I have grown through this experience, and now DO have the confidence to just put out there what feels right to me – and that includes using things like early bird pricing etc for the very reasons that have been stated here. I also agree with what has been said by Leo I think about the British being extra-sensitive to the hyper sales techniques. Although I got caught by them! Anyway, it’s all a big relief, to return to my heart – and work is coming in. Hurray!
Jane- I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that work is coming in now that you are expressing your own heart. That’s so beautiful! I’m also glad you can cast a positive spin on what you went through before…
I normally enjoy and resonate with your articles. This one seemed one notch up, because I felt you had some “authentic anger”. And I completely concur with your message. Thanks a lot fro your courage to speak out. Urs
Thanks, Urs.
Hello Mark,
Having recently signed up to ‘Heart of Business’, and after reading this post; I know it was right for me.
As I was reading I found myself, several times, saying, “yes”, out loud in agreement with your main points.
I recently was working for a solar panel company, calling potential clients on the phone. When asked if I wanted to renew my contract I said; “No” I did not, as I didn’t like their sales technique, in that, I was being asked to lie and use coercion and manipulation to try to win contracts and make sales.
This experience served to kick start me into beginning my little homegrown business ; designing, making and selling ethical, earth friendly accessories.
Like you I was angry, sad, and to be honest, despairing at times, with what I saw in the world. The poverty, injustice, greed, waste and other ugly things in our society, all got to me.
There were times when the sufferings and needs of the world would overwhelm and almost paralyse. How could I help? What difference could I make? Years ago now I had the revelation that I had a sphere of influence and that I could make a difference within that. Ripples would go out and touch someone else’s sphere and ‘sew’ on and ‘sew’ on (yes I have spelled so as ‘sew’).
My business may be a very small pebble in a vast ocean but I am being true to my ideals (my heart) and helping to support other ‘small’ pebbles. One vast long beach is just a collection of millions of small pebbles.
Blessed to have crossed your path and looking forward to growing and moving forward.
Anne
Hi Anne- Yeah! So glad to see you here. We’re all just pebbles leaning into one another, aren’t we?
I am with you Mark, especially when it comes to copywriting from the hearts.. Well explained strategies of copywriting and it is the words which weave potential sales in the minds. Truly said altogether Mark.