Lessons

Lesson Info

Describe the Transformation

Let's, move on! This is one of my favorite topics now we're going to talk about describing the transformation and this starts with this problem that I've been alluding to in the last few lessons, which is that I don't know how to communicate what I d'oh or why someone should buy it. I hear this all the time I don't know how to communicate what I do or why should someone should buy it. I don't know how to talk about what I have to offer I don't know how to do it without spending an hour talking about what I you know what I do and how I work with clients. Maybe they should talk to you, michelle, but I'm going to give you in this lesson a really easy way to talk about this and it is well makeover story. Does anyone remember a makeover story on tlc? I don't know if it's still airs I I used teo in college I for some reason it always worked out that I had classes in the morning early morning and I had classes in the late to mid afternoon and a makeover story on tlc with air like right in the...

middle of the day and I would go to lunch, then I'd come home and I'd watch a makeover story I don't know why, but I loved it I loved dead and what I love about a makeover, any kind of makeover is that what it really focuses on is a before and then getting to see the after I want to see the reveal another story I'm still obsessed with makeovers when I'm in we don't have cable at home, but so what? I'm traveling and I'm in a hotel room, especially when I'm in a hotel room by myself. One of the first things I d'oh is turn on the television and turn on hdtv because I want to know what makeover they're going to dio because they're all all about renovation now and so I want to see whatever renovation show is on I want to see the before and the after and I cannot turn off the tv I cannot close my eyes and go to sleep until I see what be after is ba fours and after makeover stories are insanely compelling, they really help us understand, you know the story that's happened, the value that's been created, thie the give us this feeling of love, wonder almost they really connect with us in an emotional way. And so I think the easiest way to describe what you do and the value of what you offer and why someone should buy what you dio is to tell a makeover story. And so this is step five of the product development process it's understanding an articulating the before and after and you absolutely must be able to do this before you start building your product. If you can't describe the before and after, you have no business creating a product yet because you'll waste time, you'll waste energy and you will get beaten down with sales flops if you go about trying to build a product before you khun describe this that's why this comes thiss early in the process and the reason for this is that value is transformation. We talk about wanting to create value offer value, give value with our content, marketing our social media. I just want to be a val you just want to give people value. We never talk about what that actually means. It doesn't mean you write a fifteen hundred were block post and you send it out. Value giving value is changing the way people see something it's changing the way they behave, it's changing the way they see themselves, it's changing ah mindset that they have when you make someone change something because of the way you've explained something, a step by step process that you have to offer an example that you've got a case study that you've got you create value until someone understands that transformation, and still someone understands that change they haven't experienced value if you find yourself you know feeling like you're wasting your time with your blogging if you feel like you're not getting any results from that if you feel like you're wasting your time with email marketing or social media or go showing up to networking events it's probably because you're not creating transformation you have to create change to create value that's what value is and once you know what matters to people right now you need to know what are you need to describe what's possible that is the transformation that you need to make we spent the first four steps understanding what matters to your customers right now what's relevant to them right now with their world looks like right now how they act and what they feel right now now is the fun part you get to describe the after you had to describe what's possible and you might have models for this it might be something that you've experienced were created for yourself uh or it might be something that you're kind of making up a sze yu go you know you're hearing from people what their goals are you're thinking about what those goals look like, what they feel like what they smell like and you're creating a story about that after being able to describe before and after gives you an insanely concrete way to describe what you have to offer someone to describe your product in a way that's insanely meaningful to them with a before and after you get to tell a story, you're not making a pitch, you're not closing a deal, you're telling a story so it's not only sales that works were marketing that works or value description that works it's also value description and sales and marketing that feels really good we love telling stories we love telling story like hypothetical stories we love telling example stories we love telling personal stories and so if you khun make your story a before and an after, then the story that you're telling is also describing to someone why they should buy what you have to offer makes sense cool, so panelists, I'm gonna put you on the spot and ask you now to describe the before and after for the product that you have to offer bridget I'll start with you, okay? I always first um so before is, um in the simplest terms most people there before is that they have some sort of website shame or feeling like they're not really doing a good job communicating their ideas so they're holding themselves back. They're not like putting their message out in the world is full of they can be because they know on some level that there's like leaks in the system because it's not being represented a swells it could okay not their language but that's pretty close yeah and it's it's descriptive which is also extremely important with the after so they're after is is that they feel really confident putting their message out there and um part of the before that a mist is that they feel like they're speaking just kind of into the air like you don't feel like they're really connecting and so after they're also feel really comfortable that they know that they're meeting people where they are and so they feel confident in their message they feel like they can stand behind it and they know because they've done the research that they're speaking of their customers language and it'll resonate nice jen so a lot of people come to what if with like two major issues one is disconnect a lot of the work alone in their homes they feel disconnected from the rest of the world especially in person connection that they might be connected online but that's not really connection connection and the other thing is they often feel bogged down I'm confused frustrated overwhelmed it's just too much what do I do now? Um so that's why they show up okay they leave with a family of six, two hundred people that are going to hold them accountable in their goals and empowered to not just do the work but to do the work efficiently and effectively and have lives that matter on top of businesses that are doing well nice that sound like an event you guys would like to go thank you should we owe three what's your before and after I put like foreign after right in the sales page right below the little girl from fumbling freelancer to trusted advisor and a lot of people were like well like yeah so that's a really high level of value when you can change someone's identity and I'm sure in the rest of your sales page you probably really described like what a funding freelancer looks like and all the pieces of nine the whole story yeah all those pain points and then what was the other trusted advisor yeah so you probably describe what all that looks like a swell and how that changes your behavior and you know the way you schedule yourself and the types of deals that you're closing right but that shift from that shifted identity is a century winningly high value now I have a system I can fall back on him yes beautiful jennifer all right so the product that I'm speaking on is a signature workshop experience that I do for my membership community and in the beginning there feeling some guilt or shame around their hobby because they lack motivation they're not creating as much as they would like to be or even when they do set it set aside time they're just wasting it scrolling on pinterest okay that's a huge problem I want to stop you just right there for a second because that like that one of those little examples where you could be like, oh, yeah, that's what ideo like that kind of descriptive, like, really minute detail is so effective, and I think sometimes we shy away from those things because we're trying to, you know, we're trying to make a generalisation about a group of people, but we don't you could bring it down to that level of real personalization and that that tiny little detail that one thing can make can make your whole description of what you d'oh, right? And so, like with marie, you might be able to say, you go from wasting your time on pinterest too, to feeling energized about your hobby focused and clear about what your priorities are and what you want to create confidence that you actually know what you're doing unburdened by this, like guilt and shame about what you are or are not doing in your hobby. Um, self accepting that you are taking time for this this time for yourself and relieved that you have this plan to revisit this process because what we do is we do it seasonally and so you don't have to only think about your scrapbooking once a year and when you're totally disorganized, it's all chaos, you can revisit every quarter so you can do a little reset and then go off, create things, live your life and then you know that you'll be able to come back to it later. Her facts sasha what's, your reformed after the before is that you have there's quite a specific person who has it on their bucket list to learn tango and one aside, a steven got people who write it down and they want to do it, but they don't have a way to do that because it's so scary and I don't want to go alone and there's a general feeling of like I don't want to travel alone. I would like to have other companions, especially single women, which is the market um and the after issue no, the the glowing feeling of confidence, of having conquered a fear being edging out of your comfort zone and dancing, becoming a tango dancer very quickly because we have a way of just getting you on the dance floor and all the benefits that create yeah, and so I think we talked about this in a previous lesson, too, but you're creating a big change in identity to from kind of your average jane to a tango dancer that I mean that's huge, right? Yeah, it's the beginning of the road I mean, the reality is it's a lifelong path, but actually having that experience is huge and many people would I have a lot of fear and never do it yeah absolutely okay great. So now I want to put this to the test with one of our students in a hot scene all right remind us who you are, what you do and where we can find you online my name's corey huff and I run the abundant artist dot com we teach artists how to sell their art online perfect so do you have ah particular new product in mind that you're working on right now too? So tell us about one of those sure one is we're doing a complete rev on our flagship course how to sell your art online okay and the other one is our conference next summer theobald don't artist conference okay, cool let's let's start with your signature course what what's the before uh wanting to burn your art and frustration because nobody cares okay, you laugh but I've seen it happen a lot to learn your art there's like three things there you're frustrated and no one cares what else what else is the before? What else is so sure? Yeah, I have I have lots of eso something that people say to me a lot is people don't buy art, okay? Which is crazy uh okay and I don't know what to do people think why is it so hard my art isn't good enough uh so people do the artist do things like burn their art I've seen artists actually create a video where they ceremonially ceremonially burned all their art and quit the profession wow yeah that's perfect yeah also you get things like artists protesting capitalism in general the idea of business and joe interesting okay having soul sucking crappy day jobs that suck away all their creativity so they have no room left it make anything okay um is really a downer that's okay, so this is that's actually a really good point so one thing that often stands in the way of people being able to sustain tilly and clearly described the value that they're creating is that they there afraid of creating shame or more fear we're really stepping on people's pain in describing this before fore and aft er and so what they end up doing is on ly describing the after and when you don't describe the ba floor you can't you can't see the journey you can't describe the value this feels really unreachable and it does there's no value there because it's just this it's just the after if values transformation you can't have transformation without a before the great thing about the before is that this with there's a way that you do this that could absolutely shame people and make them feel worse about themselves but when you do this right and it's not hard to do it right but this is the way you naturally relate to people when you do this right what you're instead saying to people is I see you I hear you I understand you and I can help and that is hugely empowering you can actually make people feel better about themselves by acknowledging thereby before by acknowledging their pain so yeah if you start getting through this and you're like me and that's super depressing don't be don't be too afraid don't be too afraid you know you don't you do want to be careful that there's there's nothing in there that is shaming or that is going to make someone feel worse but at the same time you do really want to make sure that you're acknowledging people you're creating empathy with whitney has would like me to mention that hi whitney you're creating empathy when you're acknowledging people's pain anything else that needs to go yeah I was going to say one other thing and there is a lot of artists in the before stage they're not sure if it's a hobby or a vocation okay cool okay, great. What does the after look like? Um I have a really good example so one of our students that recently took our course she is a natural introvert like many artists are okay on dh she wa she is partially deaf okay, so she had a real problem even talking to people about her heart and after the class she immediately felt freed up to go and talk to about about her are she had a show she went and showed her our she's sold a bunch of pieces she's been written up in three or four different magazines she sold twelve thousand dollars worth of art within like two months of the class ending nice and she gets regular recurring revenue from print on demand sales and she's continuing to grow she also branched out and added ah line of sculpture to her paintings and those have been selling as well but more but her feedback to me was not so much about the sails but the feeling of confidence and power and feeling like she's a real artist so uh I mean I have a pretty good at a picture of the performed after one of the concerns that I have is overselling because obviously not everybody's gonna have that level of result sure right esso I dont wanted to tell proud to tell everybody this is what you're going to get because it it everybody's different everybody situations different and so the question is do I do I paint that picture or do I paint one that's maybe ah little more realistic so I would advise you to do both ok eso what would you say is the more realistic picture I would say like by the time the class is over or we in a couple of months of the class of being being over, I would say that you would be selling are regularly okay that if you're you know, if this is where you're starting if you're this far down you're selling regularly, which means of stable part time income okay uh and you'd be on the way you have a pretty good idea of where you need to go to get to that other example, okay on the path to being full time yeah uh, alright, yeah, so the way I see this shaking out is that I would talk about the before and I'd say, you know, I know as a part time artists just or maybe even someone who doesn't identify as an artist yet you're feeling frustrated, you feel like no one cares about the work that you're creating you might wonder if people even buy art anymore or if business is really the way to go about selling art to begin with, you know you're frustrated being at your crappy day job all day even wonder if this is if this is just a hobby or if there really is an opportunity to make this your vocation to make this your full time gig, I want to tell you a story I want to tell you a story about one of the people that I've worked with before that's exactly how she was feeling now she's able to talk about her work in ways that make people excited. She's been featured in a number of magazines. She makes more money now. Then she thought was possible. She's, super confident and in control when she appears at art fairs and she finally feels like a really artist. Now you know that these results may not be typical, sure, but I can help you create a plan for selling your art regularly finding the confidence to talk about your art, really turning what you do into a part time income so that you'll be on the path to becoming a thriving, full time, abundant artist. Does that sound okay? Cool on dh, so we'll talk about what you can do with this later in the day. But this is exactly this is this is exactly it. Any other questions about this? No, that makes a lot of sense. I think the idea of presenting like, the ultimate goal on then scaling it back a little bit and saying and this is what's realistic so that you're acknowledging the people that you're not overselling, yes, exactly, and that that helps to build trust, too. I've done that on a couple of sales pages now. One for quiet power strategy, where I talked about a client who had tripled her revenue instead of doubling her revenue, which is the goal that we have, we create a plan for doubling your revenue? I don't say I will help you double your revenue, I say we'll create a plan together that looks like that s o she had tripled her revenue, she was she was just absolutely on fire. So I actually started the page with her story where she was stuck, what things were in her way transitioned into her after and then repositioned the before and after for the wider audience. So one of the one of the challenges I have is because my audience so introverted most of what I have a lot of success stories like this, but most of them aren't willing to be identified. Um, so so I can make up a name, but I I'm not sure that's okay? Yeah, that really is okay. Hypothetical stories work really well, too. I wouldn't necessarily put a hypothetical story in a sales page, but I've definitely done it in block posts and it works really well. Sometimes I just say, you know, this is this is jane, this is what jane does, this is what her problem is, our sometimes is based on a real person sometimes it's it's just a you know, a conglomeration of things that I've heard from lots of different people, so it feels really rich and true, but I think that works really well, you can certainly change the names to protect the innocent thea the other way I've done it is to tell my story so, like sales pages I just wrote last week for our master class program, I used my story because I'm not the one teaching the programme, so it was a lot of fun to be able to use me as an example on, so I talked about how, you know, teaching wasn't my strong suit, I always felt like, yeah, I've got great ideas, I have a lot to offer people, but I don't teach very well, I kind of vomit information at people, and I decided that if my business was going to be more successful, that I needed to figure out how I could also be a more successful teacher. And so I changed this and I learned this, and now I do this every time I teach and it's led to these results, and they were pretty it's a pretty incredible results on dh. Then again, I reframed at that in terms of if you're here now and you want to be here, this is the program for you, yeah, cool, yeah, thanks corey all right, any questions about framing up the before and after because this is so important marie I'm just curious um on a sales paige how much or how soon you go into the before and after and you kind of weave those stories throughout or is it kind of like this is the before and after area and then we kind of moved into details about the course yes, so I would say the before and after is one of the very first things that you need to talk about on your sales page but there's a few different ways that you can lead into it I mean the classic way to do it is bullet point by bullet point by bullet point what you just heard me do with with cory and then with the two other examples that I mentioned was much more story based so they didn't have a whole lot of bullet point at the beginning maybe if you just for readability, but it was much more narrative on dh that allows me to have kind of a softer lead in that makes the sales paige feel more like a piece of really valuable content because it actually is a piece of really valuable content and I've had people share my sales pages as content before because I'm actually teaching something I'm showing what the transformation is and how it happened on the sales page itself s o that there's mohr trust and more reliability built into the process. No, yeah, so it kind of depends on what you want, the strategy for your message to be and one. This is a really good question, because one way that you could actually think about all of the different options are the ways that you talk to people in person about these things. One of the biggest questions that I get. I know I've said this a lot, but this is where I get all of my biggest questions from his product development. One of the big questions that I get is, you know, terror. I do really well with one to one sales when I'm talking to someone on the phone when I'm talking to someone in person, I have no problem closing the deal when I go to write a sales page when I goto have a launch when I try and market online, it just always ends up falling flat and that's because you don't borrow enough from your one to one sales conversations. So if you good. If you think of all the different ways those sales conversations happened, those air all the different ways that you have to write a sales page two you can tell a story you can reflect back to someone what there before but what there before is and what they're after might be you could tease out different pain points and hear what they're different road blocks are and then going to create afters for each of those there's all different ways that you could do that one book that I really like in terms of copyrighting that goes into that a lot specifically how you lead off the sales message and how you use a before and after like this is a book called great leads by michael masterson great leads elliot d s so like how you lead off copy that book like changed my life so I highly recommend highly highly highly recommended does that help cool any other questions about before and after? Yeah melissa well, I'm thinking about after my hot seat yesterday I've been thinking about the the three by five idea that we were talking about and I'm sitting here looking at my possible with before and afters and I think I don't know this is really a question but I think I'm I'm at a place where I just need to dio more you know get some more feedback from my people because like I know what they need yeah, it's to start sharing their work, but I don't know if they think they need that. Yes. So that's where that question, what do your people want to buy? Right? Really comes into play see you want to take their before and think, what does someone with this before I really want to buy? And so, you know, in that case, it might be a simple, as, you know, they really like buying new journaling things on dh, so this is kind of a way for them to journal, but you're going to put a spin on it, and you're going to say, you know, one of the reasons that you might not have made its much progress with your journaling and the past is because it's been a private endeavor, and I'm going to help you turn your journaling and your self reflection into an opportunity to connect with other people and experience the validation of connecting with other people and sharing your work and use that to make you more confident, creative person does that make sense? Yeah, cool. And I think testing your before and after is another good thing you can absolutely test her before and after. Through content marketing, social media just the same kind of ways that we've been talking about just pick which parts don't try and test it all at one time pick different pieces of the story to focus on right a block post about it write a social media post about it, put a pin and image about it something like that and see what the responses do people say yeah that's exactly what my day looks like yeah that's it exactly how I'm feeling right now yes you you you've got it it feels like you've read my mind if that happens then you know you're on the right track with that piece of the story you can do the same thing with the after is this really what you want, right? And you can kind of test that out in different ways um you know another thing to think about and I'm not sure that this was part of your question or part of, you know, fun you finding clarity here but for anyone who's feeling like yeah, this looks good but it's not good enough yet the way he really make it good enough is to ask yourself what does this look like? So if you keep finding yourself coming up with words like confidence or power o r speaking your truth with just my personal soapbox yeah, uh ask yourself, what does that look like? What does that look like? If someone speaking their truth, what does it look like? What does it look like in their marriage? What does it look like with their kids? What does it look like with their boss? What does it look like with themselves? And instead of saying, I'm gonna help you speak your truth, you say I'm gonna help you do these four things, and you list them out is what your marriage is going to be like. This is what your relationship with your kids is going to be like. This is what your relationship with your boss is going to be like, and this is what your relationship with yourself is going to be like. And each of those things is very concrete and specific and detailed, the more details you can put into the before and after the better. Corey, for instance, burning your art. I don't know that I'd necessarily put that in like a bullet point list of before and after, but this could be a great story through you. Yeah, if you want to lead into a sales page was something super provocative, you could say, you know, I am sick and tired of watching emerging artists burn their work on youtube. I am sick of it, it's a fake right, I am so disturbed that that's a big butt, but you could start off on that because it gives you a passion point to start with. So this is the before it is something that it is a you know, problem that people get teo but it's also a passion point for you and that leads into before that, then feels really rich and provocative and and detailed. So your task for this lesson is to describe the transformation your prospects can affect. Expect inasmuch detail it's possible describe the transformation your prospects can expect. It is much detail as possible detail, detail, detail, detail, detail, more details he put in the better story you're going to tell, don't worry about excluding people with details details could only help you include people very often, you know, we see ourselves in details that aren't even ours, right? We knew tell a really specific story about someone it actually helps you see see yourself in their shoes, whether that's your world or not. So the more details the better if you're saying again, if you're saying things like confidence, power speaking, your truth, not feeling so frustrated, ask yourself what that looks like and how you could include some of those details.