Lessons

Lesson Info

Buy: That Magic Moment

So now we've talked about getting your home in order to welcome people into it. They have discovered you and know you exist. They have gotten closer to you through ongoing content like a blawg and your e mails, and now they are ready to buy. But the question at this stage is how do you turn the traffic and the readers into sales? Now? There are a lot of crafters who have been amazing at building at building blog's or email list that have a lot of engaged readers, but those of readers aren't buyers, and there is a distinction between traffic, which is just people coming to your site that's, a picture of seattle traffic on and and readers who are interested in everything you're right and people who are willing to invest their hard earned money into your hard made product. So we're going to talk in this section all about actually doing that, moving them from traffic on and readers in the sales and the first thing is that it's all about relationships. Now you've heard me talk now for two f...

ull days about building your relationship with your right person and how you can be a service to her and how amazing it is when you connect deeply, but knowing that it's all about relationships in some time. Make it harder for people because they get really freaked out and they start asking themselves, what if they don't like me? What if they think I'm picky and money grubbing for making my thing for sale? Now, all of you seem to be motivated, actually make sales and actually turn this into a business that can support you or your family in some way, so you do need to make money, but that doesn't mean that you're gross are needing to make money. It means that you value your work and you want others to value it, and you want them to be able to own it and enjoy it while used to living a sustainable and supported life. So if that's, how you're feeling, I want to know that totally normal that's one of the first things that I think you're crafty businesses challenges you to dio is get comfortable with the idea of the thing you make having value and people being willing to pay for. So what we're going to talk about in this section is really getting comfortable with selling your work, because that's, the first step to making sales, I know that's kind of is more mental than it is physical, because you have to get comfortable with what you're doing before you're going to be able to make any sales, because your people are going to remember are going to feel you're uncomfortable ity because if you were not comfortable, you risk throwing it out there without crafting it carefully and then back up a little bit to say I see two things from crafters who aren't comfortable you khun sends their uncomfortableness as soon as you kind of come in contact with them and they do one of two things one is that they just dried out there by my stuff I just listed this thing on that see or they'll do that that's the automatic tweet where it's like new on etc and then just like lame title linked to their thing and their twitter stream will be full of that or they're blawg will just be like here's my new product, you can buy it here or there, pinterest feed will just be their product, their product, their product and that is what I mean by just throwing it out there without crafting it carefully. But what far more crafters do that I work with who are introspective, maybe introverted? Ah little shy they just hide it and they don't make it clear whether they don't have a clear by button on their site or they don't regularly talk about what they just added to their shop they might keep making products and keep adding it but not telling anyone and so if you remain uncomfortable you were probably going to fall into one of these two things you can't force yourself tio be clear and concise and crafted carefully worded offer to people if you just feel icky about it. So let's, talk about how to feel good about selling your work, but before we do, I want to know how you feel about selling your work, what you've seen yourself fall into those two things I mentioned before, those air kind of a default that people get into the throwing it out there, not carrying just dog just do it and then the hiding it and not doing it, not talking about it enough. So do you guys have a default that you go to? Do you think maybe you've, you've gotten more comfortable selling? Maybe you're feeling a little comfortable if you're uncomfortable, where do you see yourself defaulting? Yeah, um pricing like I was telling you about on and, um, talking to people about your work like it's, so easy to just like, yeah, I mean, this product that's about it, right? And when an interested person wants to know and your design and you're just gonna intimidated like, I make this wonderful thing and they're just like, oh, wonderful, just like it's hard to balance that how do you talk great about your product without, like, boring the person or yeah yeah and I feel like this could be especially tricky online because in person you at least have the eye contact body language likely he said yesterday if you're talking to like a fifty year old harley writing dude you're maybe not going to talk to men depth about your handmade scarf but if you're talking to a new mom who's like I just feel like I always look like a mess you could talk about your scarf and a little more detail because you can get them what's going on but online we have none of that we're just like who's listening what are they listening for what do they want to know it's very um kind of faceless and so you need to get comfortable first of all envisioning who that right person is and then that you're talking directly to her it's what we talked about that so much and section one because once you have that it will be a little easier to be comfortable and for you I just wanna give you permission like if you're talking to not the right person you say oh I just make scarves but if when it is the right person having that paragraph in sentence that she wrote yesterday in segment for off how to say it you can just default to that I mean I often say the same sentence or two sentences about my work when I meet the right I can tell she's got a crafty business she's into learning more because they're trying to come up with that new each time would just be too much, you know, and like that's, how I keep myself from defaulting, because what I really want to do is, like just classes, you know, but that's not helpful, that's not helping her that's, not helping me and that's really acting like I'm ashamed of what I do when I'm not I just I felt nervous, you know, so we're going to get comfortable as we go on. I'd like to know, is anybody in the chat saying that they see themselves and when those two default settings yeah, this is a great comment from mitnick in the chat room, and they say, I have found that when I'm at shows, if I worry about selling things or making money, I managed to do neither born. But when I relax and I enjoyed, the people get into conversations, et cetera, that's when I make sales and I do so effortlessly. I was writing in the right state of mind, exactly and that's why we focus so much on right people in your message in your sparkle, so that when the time comes and you have everything else going on that makes you feel shy, you khun just default back to the thing you've already planned and you've already practiced it. So you know what to say, and especially when you do craft shows, it could be so kind of overwhelming and easy to get obsessed with them. I'm going to make this money back, and I'm going to make the sales booming focus on him here to sort of these people. I serve these people in this way, I feel this need, ok, I just need to get centered in that. I mean, like, honestly, talking on video, super stressful or it was before I started doing it and I just kept going back tio this is how I know that I can help. This is what I know, I'm there to d'oh, so you can do the scariest things when you keep in mind this is who it's for this is how it helps them. This is how it's going to really improve their life, and the good news is you're going to do get better at it, the more you try it. And the more you make clear offers on your web site, the more you talk to the right person, face to face, you'll get more and more comfortable. I mean, teaching on video by the second day of a lot easier, so if I can do this, you can absolutely talk to people craft shows, you're in store owners, gallery owners and just the buyers who are coming to your site, you can start to practice talking openly that I have this thing for sale, and you can find it here. We're going to talk more about making a clear offer, but we're first going to talk about how to feel good selling your work now, we focused on the right people, so you know what you're selling now, and you know who you're selling it, tio, but this is how you're going to start feeling really good, and we have we have to get feeling good before we even start trying, because when you're not feeling good, you're going to either default to one of those two things I mentioned, or it's gonna come across in your tone that fear that you rising earlier about something desperate, that desperation comes across, and I know you guys have seen this where somebody's just sound desperate in their etc, listing or their block post just sounds like, oh, my goodness, please buy it. You want to buy it? Uh, no matter how you edited out your intention, when you write, when you take photos, when you share that will come across, and either you'll do things and be annoying to people, or you'll be so afraid of being annoying that you don't actually do anything and you stop showing up noon on ly make sales if you're showing up consistently and regularly, not just to remind people that you're there, but that builds that trust. We're talking about being trustworthy consistency builds trust, showing up again and again and again and that's kind of annoying to hear because I wish there was a faster way, but instead it's really consistency you on ly phil, be consistent if you first feel good. So a few tips on how to feel good about selling your work keep in mind it's all an experiment, and I like thinking about it is an experiment, because when a science told an experiment, there isn't good data and bad data. It's all good data if I have a hypothesis and I do an experiment to test it and that hypothesis is untrue, I learned that thing didn't work out that's good data that's just good to know my experiment was still successful because I learned something. So everything about selling your work from what you put on your home page to how you write trip log, what you offer as your email, opt in all of that's an experiment that's why, when people give asking the questions they say is up to you and your people and you should just experiment because nobody has the answer, you're going to test it and you're gonna get data if you test something and the thing you're testing is that your opt in and after six months, you get no more, no more subscribers without often, ok that's a data let's try a different opt in and you can always go back and say, why didn't that work right? I think didn't speak to people, maybe nobody signed up, not because of your opt in, but because nobody heard about it. So everything's an experiment, everything, the data that will keep you from feeling like you're failing, which will keep you feeling good about selling your work. So the next thing is to remember is that you're right, people want it. We talked so much about the benefits and the needs that it fills so that you could remember the person who this is right for you. It actually feels a need in her life it actually gives her something that she wants and if you have that you're in your mind you're going to feel a lot better about talking to someone about buying it because you were talking to that hurried mom who wants to look good because you know this will help her look good not so that you could make money or that you can be rich and famous but because you know she needs it and once it and is interested and so just get makes you kind of chill out about the stress of like oh no so the third thing is patients this I mean building a business takes a lot of haitians it takes a lot of time I mean I told you guys before I started my first business in two thousand six and before that I even managed a small business for two years and it's two thousand fourteen so it has been years of figuring this out and I still I have no idea what will work on a day to day basis I'm still experimenting and testing so having some patients just reinforces that it's okay that you are where you are and that you're going to be fine just because it's taking a long time doesn't mean it's never gonna work or that you're wasting your time it means it's a long process for everyone and then the last thing is perspective so something concealed like it's taking your really long time but you've gotta have the long term perspective like I told you earlier, you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life so if it takes urine stores a good year to kind of get what you're teaching them but you do this for another twenty years, that was nothing you know? And if it takes, you were talking about just having one subscriber to your list like everybody just has one subscriber to their list at some point and that's that's where it has to start it has to start somewhere and so by keeping perspective of where you're going and the long term nous of this and that if you went six months and you've got only three subscribers, that six months is actually really short period of time for most of us were going to be doing our business or some form of their business maybe will shift businesses. But for most of us who want to be creative and share our creativity with the world, this is a very long process. So some perspective on whatever happened now also we're talking about perspective since we just talked about e mails in the last segment um un subscribes you know you send her email and people unsubscribe that's one of things we didn't get to last time is that don't let that freak you out to take some perspective on the issue, keep in mind that that just means that person didn't want to get your e mails anymore for whatever reason, it has nothing to do with you, and it has to do with them in their inbox. I regularly unsubscribed e mails I was totally enjoying, but I'm just clearing out my inbox it's like before I came here, I think I unsubscribed over one hundred fifty just because I mean and there were ones I wasn't getting every week there's no one that some came every month or every six months or something because I knew I'm going to be a way I don't my inbox to be crazy I wasn't even looking at who it was from it wasn't even anything about them, so keep perspective that when people do things or react a certain way or you get a negative review or you get a unsubscribe that's one person out of the tens or hundreds or thousands that you've reached so far, most of the makers that I work with actually don't get their first negative review or negative feedback until they've already served so many hundreds but they can only remember the negative one and that's actually a bias that our brain has a negativity bias where you pay more attention to the thing that's bad then tio it takes you nine more things that are positive toe outweigh that but I think when it's your own craft and something you made with your own hands, it would take thousands to overweight that one negative thing, because you just care about it so much, and it means so much to you. So if you can scale back and get some perspective, it will help you not be so overwhelmed, because if you're overwhelmed, you're gonna feel bad and you actually not going to do the work. And the key here is first to build a business you really love. And so you have to be in that place where you can keep working away at it because it takes so long, you've got to keep your momentum and your motivation up. So I said, it's, all an experiment, and that means you have to keep experimenting. You know, a scientist said it by hypothesis, test it and then go a madonna science. You know, they take that hypothesis that was proven true or untrue, and they go into the next hypothesis and the next type offices they might build from there, and they might say, ok, well, I thought it would work like this, but really, it works like this, so now I'm going to experiment on that piece of it. And I'm gonna experiment on that piece of it. They keep experimenting to they have something that's working, and then once they have something that's working, they come up with something new and that's exactly how marketing is. So we will too tomorrow really work on in session three on creating a plan and a filter for the actions you're going to take. But those action that you choose to take and to start working on right away are just going to be the round one of an experiment. You're going to take some of the ideas that you're not ready to work on yet, but you might be ready to work on them in six months and then experiment with those so all of the questions that come in when people ask, what should I put on my home page? Where should I have my opt in? What should I do? Pop ups? The answer is to experiment on them to experiment some more because we don't know nobody knows what's going to work or not work for your people. So those are some tips on feeling good about your work wanting to get into that before we actually talk about selling because it can be you gotta have this kind of in order and you've got to keep reminding yourself of this over and over as you start talking about the moment where they buy for most of its really for most of us it's really easy tio create that content and connect with people and build relationships but where it gets hard is where we're like and now you should buy my thing right? I mean, I have had this experience and crafted this or it's really obvious they come in, they start talking to you and then you're like ball going by it, you know, like stand here and talk and and obviously that's not what you say, but that happens online people will read your blogged forever and ever and ever and if you never no no blood post ever point your products, you never say if you'd like more, you can buy it here if you want to get this any time you can buy it here if you don't regularly say that people aren't going to know if in this workshop we just did the work shop and we never mentioned how you could get any time access nobody would buy it because nobody would know so we have tio be ready to do that and be comfortable doing that and be practiced it doing that and that is what I call making a clear offer an offer is I saw this thing and this is how you can get it and this is exactly what to do to get it we're going to talk a little bit more about making a clear offer hey um talking about my work especially when it comes to pricing his heart because I live in an area and surrounding areas where my products aren't for that market um where everyone wants to get light, go to walmart and buy something and so I can a lot of people are like oh my gosh, I love your work but I'm not paying that rise like ok like just trying to like except that you know what? They are my market right and that's why she's she goes, yeah, yeah some people are willing to pay for quality handmade stuff and some people just are not ready you can't worry about it and it's not a reflection on the value of your work, but it sounds like you know that too like you just recognize that's that person would need a lot of practice a lot of accepted and that's about perspective to is to recognize this isn't the place this isn't the time this isn't the person my thing isn't for them and that's that's fine, it has nothing to do with me or my product, so I raised my I'd like doubled my price is about a year and a half ago and it completely did not lower the volume of my sales, and so I'm sure that there were people who couldn't afford to buy my product anymore, which was fine because bottom line I couldn't afford to sell it at what it was priced out, and I did a lengthy blood post about why I was changing my prices. I acknowledged that some people were not going to be happy with that, and I do get the occasional are you fucking kidding? The email and I just send them the link and literally that's what it says wait, and we're talking the difference between eight dollars and twenty dollars, and people are willing to send that email. Yeah, but I just say perhaps you'd be interested in reading my blood post on this. Yeah, and so that I feel that I've been, like, gracious about it, but yeah, and you would I cannot say on the tv, I think yeah, and that's, the thing is that especially people who are willing to be so rude and demanding about your prices, like, cut them out of your life, I mean, you know, I'm always selling clients like stop interacting with that person, if that person is complaining about your products or e mails you I often get long lengthy emails about all the reasons they can't afford it and I say ok, I understand because dude I mean you don't have to explain yourself to me and I don't have to explain myself to you you know, like work we're just living your own life man like be cool it's ok? You don't have to buy my thing for you to keep reading more participating and but but that perspective on it that just knowing like it's going to be fine, you're going to find the people who can't afford it because twenty dollars for an intricate knitting pattern is not that much two people who know people make e need to double my prices again you know it was expensive I was thinking on people will send me e mails like well, you know the highest price pattern other than yours on rivalry is eight dollars in like great and you can like then be stabbing yourself with a knitting the way many of violence over braces on dh so that's the thing with all of this is like it could be aa lot of new crafters and makers have a hard time even getting to that point because they hear other people say it like I don't want anybody to not like me and I want anyone to ever be mad but you cannot have a successful business or even really a successful life if you spent all of your time thinking about what other people are thinking about you, I mean that's just like general life one o one you've got to do your own thing and you've got to make your business work for you. So if that means that your crimes art for the people who live in your town or your prices are the prices, people are used, tio, or you're just kind of weird and that's part of your sparkle that you're offering, then you know, you got to go with it because that's what's going to set you apart and no amount of marketing is going to help if you just blend in with everybody else, you know, people aren't going to know why they buy your thing versus a thing at wal mart unless you have that little bit of difference, so yeah, yeah. So buried someplace and all of that when I do a blawg post or a newsletter, I always link tio the product page where they can be purchased. Is that enough? I mean, if I'm talking about the powder and I always like it, yes, but do I need to sit, say, at some point? And really, you should, by the way, we'll talk a little bit about how to make it clear, offer link in just a second. But I dio. So the thing that you mentioned there is whenever you mention a pattern, you linked directly to it. I can't believe how many bloggers don't do that, or makers they will tweet about. Uh, I just sold two more of my ex, but then they won't actually linked where to get it. And it's like, well, I don't even know what starting about it might make sense to you, but I have no idea the same thing in your blogged like I was just working on. This new pattern will link to the pattern. So that's that's one of the steps. But then you can also even be more specific.