Is there enough pain in your life?
Let’s keep Glenn’s Money Making Secret count going:
- Research
- Contrarian Advice
- Let the Market Change You as a Person
- The Paid Consultation
- Marketing to the Not Me
#6 is “Taking the Pain”
This one’s easy to explain, but takes a lifetime to master.
“Taking the Pain” means making yourself vulnerable to constant, relentless critique from trusted coaches, mastermind partners, telegroups, and your audience at large.
Here’s the problem…
It’s EASY to criticize other people’s marketing…
But it’s DAMN HARD to accept and genuinely integrate other people’s criticism.
In fact, nothing hurts worse than pouring your heart and soul into a marketing system (salesletter, website, blog, videos, mp3s, etc), only to have it literally ripped apart by people who’s opinion you value and trust…
Nothing, that is, EXCEPT FAILURE in the market place.
It seems like such an obvious truth…
Yet time and again, I see the vast majority of marketers shy away from the pain of valued criticism, not knowing they’re choosing the much more difficult pain of jumping into a market unprepared and not-fully-reviewed.
I don’t blame them, it’s only human nature…
But it turns out that short term pain really IS the easier, softer way.
I’ve got a mastermind partner who’s rather brilliant. In fact, he’s a BETTER marketer than I am.
Except, if you look at the ratio of marketing systems I’ve exposed to HIM vs. those he’s exposed to ME for review, I’m probably beating him 3 to 1. And as a result, I grew in my business about 3x faster.
It’s a little sad, because he’s got about 10 more years of direct response experience than I do, and when he does take the pain, he integrates and uses it in a more immediately powerful way… but I know from my psychological experience that there’s really no way to force people who don’t want to “take the pain” to take the pain. (Unless you enlist them in the military, of course)
I continue to take the pain in all these ways…
- I think I’ve spent more on coaching than anyone else on the planet. Literally millions of dollars. (Literally – I’ve got the cashed-checks and credit card receipts to prove it, and I’ve had as many as four coaches at one time)…
- I’m constantly asking my mastermind partners to be brutally honest about their reactions to my sales pieces…
- I’m constantly running telephone groups and gotomeetings with consumers to “feel” their reactions to my marketing. I know, I know…everyone’s told you focus groups are hogwash for direct marketers… well, I’m living proof of the opposite! Market tests DO trump them, and you DO need to keep their input in perspective, but there’s nothing like LIVE FEEDBACK to help you learn what your prospect “smells like”, and which pieces and parts of your sales piece aren’t pulling their weight. (Remember what Olgilvy pointed out… it’s entirely possible to “unsell” a prospect who was otherwise convinced to purchase from you with just one wrong-headed statement, image, etc)
- I do surveys… lots of fricking surveys… and each one inevitably tells me that I was headed in the wrong direction in some way, shape, or form…
- I research the hell out of everything… it’s painfully slow sometimes, but in the end it’s the fastest way I know to succeed! (You’re just moving the work up front, before you’ve spent too much money and time going down the wrong path)
- I ask my wife what she thinks (always a dangerous proposition for a man married 22+ years!)…
In the end, marketing is pretty much a “no pain, no gain” game.
Is there enough pain in your life?
Food for thought,
Dr. G 🙂
Hyperresponsive Research Secrets | Coaching