A Podcast for Coaches shines a light on one of the most elegant, underrated business models in the world: one-on-one coaching. Mark Butler hosts the show, and he's been a coach and advisor to every kind of online business you can think of, having helped businesses earning everything from $0 to $25,000,000+. Although Mark believes every online business model has merit, he worries one-on-one coaching is viewed as a stepping-stone business for people who aren't ready or able to scale. But it's not true, and A Podcast for Coaches sets out to show people--through clear teaching and rich, current stories of successful coaches who love their business--that one-on-one coaching is one of the most gratifying and lowest "hassle-per-dollar" businesses in the world.
Hey, this is Mark Butler.
And you are listening to
a podcast for coaches.
I have in mind that I want to
create a multi hour philosophical
analysis of the industry of coaching.
And if you know me outside this podcast,
and if you know me through this podcast,
you might know that I have a tendency
to overthink, and I have a tendency to
take what is simple and make it complex.
Now there's certain areas of my life
where that has really served me, but
where it doesn't serve me is when
you're trying to create a podcast
episode that is actually immediately
applicable and useful to this handful
of people you have in your audience.
So I've successfully
redirected myself away from.
That multi hour analysis and I've
boiled it down in my mind to one topic.
That's why the episode is
called how to read a sales page.
Now maybe somebody sent you this podcast.
Maybe you don't know who I am.
Let me take just a second and tell you
why I think I'm qualified to comment
on how you should read a sales page
or how you can read a sales page.
I wrote my first sales copy
in around 2007 or 2008.
And it was actually to sell coaching.
In fact, I remember how hard
I worked on it and how flowery
it was and how dramatic it was.
And now I kind of
laughed, but it did work.
We sold some coaching.
I had a, I had a business partner
at the time we'd sold some coaching.
And then I went on to have the
experience of writing sales copy
that generated, I think, a total of
about 2 million in the period between
around 2008 and the beginning of 2013.
The product that that copy sold
was a membership a bunch of people
went through that membership and
most of the 2 million I referenced
was generated from that thing.
And since 2012, 2013, somewhere
in there, my copy that I write
has not really had a sales intent.
It hasn't had to because
of my business model.
So I haven't written a lot of persuasive
copy even in the last 10 or 12 years, but.
Starting in about 2014, 2015, I started
to be an advisor to other coaches.
Now advisor can mean a lot of things.
In my case, it meant that
I was their bookkeeper.
In many cases, I was their CFO.
In some cases, in other cases, I was
sort of a thought partner, a strategist
where we were talking about how they were
going to do what they were going to do.
And in some cases, I was more of
a pure life coach, where we're
talking about their mindset, their
relationships, their emotional state.
But what it gave me was, The
opportunity to be inside a bunch
of businesses at a bunch of levels.
I've worked in businesses that
generate a hundred thousand a year.
I've worked in businesses that generate.
2 million a year.
I worked in one business
that generate Ted.
I don't know what it generates now, but
at the time it was generating 25 million
plus in a year and it let me see inside
and outside so I could see the copy that's
being written and I can have a personal
relationship with the person writing it.
I can talk to them about the product
they're selling and understand in
a one on one setting what their
psychology is around their own product.
And then I can read the copy
and see how they sell it.
Now, I'm happy to say, and I want
it to be clear that I'm not bringing
you a cynical or a hypercritical
view of this whole topic.
I have been fortunate.
I've never in the, in the 10 plus years
now that I've been interacting with
and supporting other coaches, I've
still never come across a client who I
believed had any ill intent whatsoever.
The way they did what they did
might not be how I would do it.
But I've never ever worked for a client
who I thought was lying or intending
to deceive or intending to harm.
So I'm not coming to you today
to say, Oh, this is a takedown.
This is a takedown of, of
anybody or of any way of being.
That's not what this is.
This episode is an attempt to have
you approach persuasive content
online, particularly content that
attempts to sell you training.
Or sell you experiences and to approach
that persuasive material in a way
that makes it so you're less likely to
regret your decision later, because I
can hold two ideas at the same time.
One idea that I'm able to hold is that
training and community are powerful.
They are positive.
They help people transform their
thoughts, their emotional states,
their ways of being and produce.
Great new results in their life, and I
find it very easy to hold that thought
and to believe that I Also hold the
belief that the hopes the dreams the
aspirations and in too many cases the
self confidence of So many people are
buried in an invisible graveyard that
we don't hear very much about and The
reason they're buried in that invisible
graveyard is because they They didn't
take a thoughtful approach to the
persuasive material that they encountered.
They made one purchase and then multiple
purchases, and then they formed a
habit of purchasing that led to regret,
self doubt, loss of confidence, shame.
And so since I have both
of those ideas in my head.
Both of those strongly
held beliefs in my head.
I bring this episode to you not
to Critique anyone or anything.
Although I suppose my opinions will
come through But to try to create a
tool that a person might come back to
multiple times to help themselves engage
productively with whatever persuasive
material they're seeing, so that they are
less likely to regret the decision later.
See, the industry does an amazing job
with working on how they can be happy
about the decision later, but the industry
doesn't do much with the acknowledgement
that there is such a thing as making
a decision that later on you very.
Honestly, regret that's not coming from a
place of blame or from a victim mentality.
It's just you coming back to a decision
later and saying, I'm not happy
with the way I made that decision.
And I'm not happy with the results
that that decision produced
In addition to the invisible graveyard,
where some people's hopes, dreams,
aspirations, and self confidence
are, are potentially buried.
We also have real financial consequence.
We have people walking around in
some cases with tens of thousands
of dollars in debt that they don't
have any clear path to paying off
Because they didn't know how
to engage productively with
persuasive material online.
We do this thing in the industry, by
the way, where we tend to be very all or
nothing about this topic, which is funny
because as coaches, we really discourage
our clients from all or nothing thinking.
But when we talk about offers we make
or offers that we've made in the past,
we tend to be very all or nothing.
We tend to say things like, well, if
you're all in, if you go all in, then
you will succeed, you cannot fail.
And if a person doesn't get
a good result, we tend to be
very all or nothing about that.
We tend to say, well, if you'd put in
the effort, and we tend to say things
like, Well, there was a guarantee
there was a money back guarantee
and you didn't meet the requirements
of the money back guarantee.
So it's your fault.
We have, there is a, a temptation
to blame the client in our industry,
which I think is very unhealthy.
We have a tendency not to acknowledge
that all human relationships are entered
into with some level of ignorance.
Thanks.
There's confidence, but
there's also ignorance.
So there's hope, but
there's not certainty.
And I'm not just being
abstract and philosophical.
Look at it this way.
We have to acknowledge that sometimes
a person makes a decision that
isn't the best decision for them.
There are scenarios Where we, in our
effort to be persuasive and in our
effort to give the highest possible
service, we invite a person into
a relationship that they actually
don't have any business getting into.
But once the money changes hands,
there, there's a weird dynamic
that can be introduced where we
say, well, you gave me the money.
So now the contract is final and
where there's no going back, but
we're not acknowledging that.
There's a real possibility that
that person is not better off for
having entered into that contract.
That doesn't make us a liar.
It just means that every relationship
has started with some uncertainty.
And just because money has
changed hands does not negate
the uncertainty that was there.
So in the same way that it makes sense
for a person to say yes to a program,
it makes sense for them to back away
from that same program when they
have new information and as easy as
it was for us to take their money,
it should be just as easy to give it
back when we have new information.,
I know it's very opinionated.
I'm bringing strong opinions to that,
but I would ask you to consider it.
It's why, since the beginning of having
anything that looks like a coaching
business, my refund policy has been, if
you ask for a refund, I will give it.
It doesn't need to be
named in some fancy way.
It doesn't need to be based
on 61 pages of legal ease.
I've never had a contract.
I will never have a contract.
If you ask for a refund, I will give it.
That has led at some points to me giving
refunds that I don't think were deserved.
That I think I earned the money that I
was paid, and I don't think the person
is, is right to ask for it in return.
But what's my option in that moment?
My option is to hang onto that money
and fight, or to know in my heart of
hearts that I made a good faith effort,
that I've met my end of the contract.
And then now I release myself from
having to do any thinking in the
future about that relationship.
I just.
Giving the money back.
That's the thing they care
about, apparently, so that's
the thing I will give them.
If you want a refund, I will give it.
Anyway, we're supposed to be
talking about a sales page.
Here is how to read a sales page.
Number one.
Find the price.
Scroll past all those beautiful
images, scroll past all the headline
and all the subheads, scroll past
the bullet points, scroll past
the testimonials, find the price.
By the way, if there's no price
published for me, we're done.
If you're going to give me a sales
page, but no price, I'm not sure why
we would continue the conversation
because the message you give me.
Is that you don't think I'm capable
of evaluating the program in
the context of, of its features,
its benefits, and its cost.
So there's an indication.
And again, this is my opinion.
There's an indication
that you don't trust me.
And you're saying I can give you the
information that I think serves me best,
but not the information that I think
might hurt the possibility of a yes.
So if you do all that scrolling
and you still can't find a price,
and if it's something like fill out
an application, but no price for
me, the relationship is concluded.
I need you to respect me.
I need you to trust me.
If we're going to get into a
relationship, I need to know that you
want to be transparent and give me all
the information that I might need to
make the decision without me having
to escalate the relationship further.
For me, it feels like manipulation.
Do I think, do I think that makes
the person inherently manipulative?
No, I, the person who doesn't put
the price on the sales page, I'm not
saying they're acting in bad faith.
I'm saying they have their own fears.
And that's one of the ways
their fears are being expressed.
It's not a confident person
that hides the price.
It's a fearful person
that hides the price.
Okay.
If you're afraid of that, I'm
just not that sure I want to get
into a relationship with you.
So for me, you scroll
down, you find the price.
After you see the price, you've
already seen the headline.
Even if you scrolled quickly, you saw
the headline, you saw the beautiful
pictures, you probably saw some
testimonials on your way to the price.
Now you have the price.
Now, in my opinion, what you do is you
close that browser tab and you walk
away and you spend time with the price.
Why?
Because there is a real cost to using
money on one thing and not another.
One of the things we do in a persuasive
setting is we make every effort to show
the benefits of the thing, such that
there's no perceived trade off in the
purchase, meaning you pay me this money
and it doesn't actually cost you anything
for all these reasons, but it's not true.
Trade offs are a fact of our life.
And if I put a dollar here,
I can't also put it there.
So I'm encouraging you to walk away from
the sales page for 24 hours, maybe for
a week and spend time with the price.
Ask yourself some questions about it.
First and foremost, what else
would I do with that money?
If I weren't doing this with it?
I want to make big financial
decisions in the context of my
next best use of that money.
And I want to notice how I
negotiate with myself, especially
when it comes to trainings.
If I'm saying, well, yeah, that 15,
000 could pay for a family vacation.
It could pay for a car.
It could pay for.
pay down some debt.
It could do all these other things,
but no, no, all those things are going
to be better after I do the training
because then I'll have more money.
If you notice yourself having to negotiate
hard with yourself, that is a strong sign.
It doesn't mean you absolutely
shouldn't do that training.
It means that you are not finding
it to be easily settled about.
The cost of the training.
Another thing that we're prone to
in the industry is we tell people
that that unsettled feeling they
have is fundamentally untrustworthy
because it's based in fear.
And I agree that that is one possibility.
The other possibility is that
person is feeling unsettled because
they have a sense, a feeling,
you could call it an intuition.
And That the decision actually is wrong
for them, and they just don't have
perfect words for describing why yet as
the person offering the training, it's
not my job to try to manipulate their
emotional state in the way that serves me.
If I'm truly an advisor, it's my job
to create an environment in which
they're able to explore their emotional
state in a way that serves them.
So if they walk away from my sales
page for 24 hours or for seven
days, that's not them being scared.
Although it might be,
that might be part of it.
It's them giving themselves some
space and time to consider and to
parse and to be with their emotions
as they think about the decision.
If a person comes back to that
decision, having processed
their own emotions about it.
Having thought through different scenarios
about it and they make the decision.
Fantastic.
Amazing.
That's much less likely to be a
decision that carries regret later.
But I, as a coach want to give someone an
opportunity to feel right in their body.
Very coachy thing to say, I know I
want them to have an opportunity to
feel right in their body when they're
putting their credit card into that,
into that form, if they are dysregulated
and unsettled, as that transaction is
happening, the likelihood that they're
going to come back later, filled
with regret is much higher, by the
way, as the provider of the training.
I don't want a room full of people who had
to convince themselves to be in the room.
They are going to send the
most customer service emails.
They're going to have the most
concerns during the training.
They are going to bring up the cost
of the training during the training.
They're going to talk about
how they're afraid of not
getting quote, the full value.
I don't want them in the room.
The person that I want in the room,
when I sell Mark Butler's super
expensive training about who knows
what is the person who finds it to
be the calmest bordering on boring
sort of, of course I'm in the room.
This was the easiest
action I've ever taken.
It wasn't an easy decision.
I took a long time making the decision,
but the action itself to sign up
turned out to be quite easy for me.
That's the person that I want in the room.
We're going to have an
amazing relationship.
So, that is why step one, in my
opinion, find the price and walk
away and spend time with the price.
Oh, side note,, ask yourselves how many
times you could spend that amount of
money without having it meaningfully
impact or even harm your life.
So, for example, if the amount of money
that you'll spend on the training, even
one time, creates some amount of jeopardy
in your finances, for me, walk away.
Because even if the training is great.
Spending that money has changed
the risk profile in your life,
such that it can only turn out
one way and still be a good thing.
Now we have pressure.
Now we have increased uncertainty.
We have potentially more contention
in our key relationships.
So if you look at a price and say, I'm
not sure I can even spend that amount once
without creating jeopardy in my finances.
Walk away.
Go save up, go save up.
Trust me.
I've been in the industry over 10
years, nothing in that training is
so time sensitive that you can't
walk away, save up and come back
and have missed anything meaningful.
Trust me.
There's nothing in that training that
you can't go experience on your own.
That doesn't mean.
You shouldn't do the training.
It just means there's nothing in
a training that through experience
and trial and error that we
can't figure out by ourselves.
So if the money is going to truly
negatively impact our life in the
short term, then we can say, instead
of incurring that cost, I'm going to
incur the cost of trial and error.
I'm going to do it
knowingly and thoughtfully.
I'm going to save up some money and
then I'll come back and do the training.
If I decide I will still want it.
You may discover that that training
isn't so important a year later.
So ask yourself how many times
you can spend that amount of
money without meaningfully
impact or harming your finances.
By the way, it's true on the low
end of the price spectrum as well.
If you could spend that amount of money
a thousand times, 5,000 times, that also
calls into question the value of the
thing, because if it's that easy to get
into, it might not be that valuable.
This is the phenomenon that I've
started calling Funnel Cake.
Some of you don't even
know what funnel cake is.
Funnel cake is like a greasy,
delicious, you know, flour, sugar
combination that you get at the
local fair or at the local sporting
event, which is just fried dopamine.
If a product is for sale
inside of a person's sales
funnel, I call it funnel cake.
Now, I have very good friends and
clients who may be upset with me.
We may have to talk about funnel cake,
but because they sell stuff inside
funnels, but I'm not afraid to call
into question the value of a thing
whose primary purpose is to escalate a
person's decision making toward a bigger.
Yes.
So if, if I know after, again, a decade
of seeing sales pages and sales funnels,
if I know that the only real purpose of
the thing that I'm being offered is to
prepare me to receive the next higher
ticket offer, then the thing that's in
front of me might not be that valuable.
I was just on a client call yesterday.
We were going through the
client's finances and I saw
a charge for 4 and 95 cents.
And I said to her, Oh, you're in a funnel.
She's like, I don't, I don't
remember what that even was.
And I said, I know what it is.
I know, based on the price
that you're inside of a funnel.
So we Googled it.
She's like, Oh yeah,
it's this funnel thing.
I was like, right.
I know.
I told you it's a funnel.
She said, you're good at this.
I said, it's not that I'm good at this.
It's that I've done it a hundred
thousand times and knowing what I know,
having had the experience that I've
had, I'll say, Oh, you're in a funnel.
And then I'll say, what are you
stressed out about what's going on that
you're out there in people's funnels?
Because usually when people
are in funnels, they're in some
sort of state of dysregulation.
Yeah, that's my opinion.
And now I'm probably going to have
to answer for that opinion with some
clients in the not too distant future.
Anyway, if something is so cheap that
you could buy it a thousand times,
I'm not sure how valuable it is.
People might say, well,
don't you like books?
I love books.
The thing about a book is I can
spend 10 or 20 or 25 and then it
lives on my Kindle and it becomes
part of my personal knowledge bank.
My assets that I can
refer to anytime I want.
I can drop in there.
The technology exists to make that
information, not just low cost to own,
but low cost to access funnel cake.
Very often lives behind
a login or it's a PDF.
I mean, it's low cost to own,
but it's high cost to benefit
from in a way that books are not.
So yeah, I love buying books.
I love having a big library, but
a big part of the value of that
library is its accessibility.
Okay.
I'm really going on some tangents here,
okay.
Next up, the next thing we're
going to look at on the sales page.
I want you to try reading
sales pages in plain text only.
Here's what you do.
You're looking at the sales page.
You do select all, right click,
select all or command a on a Mac or
control a on a, on a PC and you paste
the text only into a Google doc.
Why do you do this?
I want to get rid of all the beautiful
imagery and the amazing web design.
Sorry to any web designers in the
audience, beautiful design and beautiful
images play on our lower brains.
You know, the woman sees the other
woman's amazing hair or fit figure,
the man sees the other man's incredible
jawline or hairline, which I'll say for
no particular reason, it's definitely
not a source of insecurity for me.
I don't know why you would ask.
They see the amazing jawline, they see
the amazing hairline, and that is now
muddying the water of the decision.
Now I'm not evaluating the thing on
what transformation it offers me.
Why?
Because beautiful design and beautiful
imagery plays on our lower brains.
Now sometimes we want that.
Sometimes just being in
the physical presence of a
beautiful thing is a good thing.
Changes our state for the better in the
case of making a financial decision,
especially a big financial decision.
I at least want to have
some awareness around what.
Is working on my lower brain and
what is available to my higher brain.
So if I take a sales page and I
just look at it in plain text,
now I'm more confident that it's
my higher brain that is involved.
So if I extract the text and get
the text into a Google Doc, now
I've at least minimized the impact
of all the beautiful imagery.
And now I'm starting to evaluate
the thing more in terms of its
higher brain value, what is
actually being offered to me?
How is it actually going to
transform me and my experience?
After I'm working with plain text, I go
a step further, or I would encourage you
to go a step further and delete the main
headline and delete the testimonials.
I know this is crazy.
Hear me out.
You've all probably seen videos or read
books or heard podcasts that say that,
you know, it in a persuasive setting.
The headline is the most persuasive thing.
If that's true, then I want to delete it
because the headline is not long enough
to hold enough information to actually
help me make a more informed decision.
It's going to play on
something in my lower brain.
Now, is that always true?
No.
Someday, when you see Mark Butler,
super expensive training, and it's
a sales page, it will probably say
something like, welcome to Mark
Butler's super expensive training.
And then the price will be beneath it.
And then beneath that, there will be, if
you'd like to talk about it, let me know.
I mean, that's just probably be
the whole, that will probably
be the whole sales page.
So a headline can't contain
enough information to really
help an informed decision.
And if the research says it's highly
persuasive, then my conclusion is it must
be a little bit, not manipulative, that's
not the right word, but distracting.
If so few words carry so much weight.
I want them out and I want what's left
over to have to do the heavy lifting.
Now, why am I going to
delete the testimonials?
Because come on, if you've written
sales pages, you know, that most
of the time the clients themselves
didn't even write the testimonials.
Usually the smart marketer
says, you're not good at this.
I'll write your testimonial for you.
I want you to read it
and tell me if it's true.
According to your experience, but
I'm not going to let you write it.
You're bad at this.
So the testimonials tend
to be low information.
Here's what I would encourage
you to employ instead.
There's a hack that you can
use when you're buying books.
By the way, you ignore the
five star reviews and you
ignore the one star reviews.
You go to the three star reviews.
The three star reviews will usually
speak to the benefits of the book.
And they will also acknowledge where
the book could have been better.
Oh, I liked this about it,
but I didn't love that.
That's useful to the
person making the decision.
I have found that when I focus on
three star reviews for books, I'm,
I become even more likely to buy the
book because I feel more confident
that I know what the book actually is.
So testimonials on sales pages
are like five star reviews.
They are cherry picked.
And they are safe to ignore, , by the
way, angry social media threads or angry
community forums about a person or a
program, those are like one star reviews
and they can be safely ignored in my
opinion, because what you'll find if you
take any time, which weirdly I have, if
you go into some of these communities
where people are railing against coaches
and their programs, what you'll find is
that the people who participate in those.
Oftentimes, not always, sometimes people
are in there just hurting and wanting to
get some validation in their pain, and
I actually completely understand that,
but there are some people who post in
those communities where if you click on
their profile and you go sort of follow
them around the community, you discover
that they're mad about everything.
They're mad about everything.
Every single thing.
And if a person is mad about
everything and railing and raging
against everything, their opinion
is not worth very much to me.
So I ignore them.
So in that spirit, I delete the
testimonials because those are the
five star reviews that are cherry
picked and probably handcrafted.
And I ignore the one star reviews because
they're mostly just mad for being mad.
And I want to find three star reviews.
Now it's really hard to find three star
reviews for, you know, Certifications,
coaching programs, masterminds.
So there's some work to be done here and
trying to have conversations, have one,
two, three conversations with people
who've actually participated and listen
to what they call the pros and cons.
Because we want to be psychologically
consistent, it's very hard for us
to say that spending a bunch of
money on a thing was a bad move.
So we work very hard to rationalize
and justify ourselves after the fact.
And since that's fundamental
to our psychology, my
psychology, your psychology.
If someone asks me, Would
I make that decision again?
Would you spend that money again?
And if I say the truth
is I probably wouldn't.
That's an expensive thing for
me to admit and therefore more
trustworthy because I had to go
against basic psychology to say it.
But if I say to you,
okay, here's the thing.
There's a lot of it that I loved.
Here are the few things that
I really thought were weak.
I didn't like them.
Here's where I think that the
program did not live up to the
promise that the sales page made.
If a person can say that clearly
and calmly, that's an incredibly
useful, , information set for you.
Who are trying to make the decision of
whether to do it in the first place.
So come on, if you're going to
spend 10 000, you're going to tell
me that it's not worth finding and
having conversations with a couple
of people who've already done it.
And then within those conversations,
you can also kind of ignore the five
stars and the one stars and look
for the three star material where
they say, This was the good stuff.
This is where it could have been improved.
Overall.
I'm pretty happy with it.
That's going to help you make
a much more informed decision.
So plain text only delete the
headline, delete the testimonials.
What's left.
Most of what will be left
will be bullet points.
, we all know the bullet points we find
on sales pages, bullet points tend
to follow a feature benefit model.
You will get this and here's
how that benefits you.
Great.
I think these should be, can be the most
useful for helping you make your decision.
What I'll encourage you to do is take
each of those bullet points and ask
yourself some questions about it.
What is the feature?
What is their proposed or claimed
benefit about that feature?
And then how does that compare to what I
know is most important and useful to me
today, wherever I am in my journey, I'm
encouraging you to take a little extra
time and ask yourself what is offered?
Why does it matter?
And does that benefit still
seem compelling given what I
know about my current situation?
Now you might find yourself in a situation
where you don't know what you don't know.
My opinion would be, that's not the
time to whip out the credit card.
My opinion would be that you're better off
acknowledging that you don't know what you
don't know and going and discovering what
you don't know by using Whatever YouTube
books, free content, but approaching all
of that with a critical thinking critical
as in careful, thoughtful, not negative,
approaching all of that with a critical
thinking view and saying, what is it?
Why does it matter?
And how does it relate
to my current situation?
For any given feature, by the way, you
want to be looking at , if there's text
offered in the thing, what, what reason
do I have to believe that the text is
more useful and more consumable than
what I would get from a Kindle book?
If it's video, what reason do I have
to believe that it's more useful and
more consumable than YouTube video?
If it's audio, what podcasts are there?
And if it's coaching.
I really have to ask myself, do I
believe that sitting in a room with
somewhere between five and 500 other
people receiving nearly no attention
from the coach, I have to have a way
of believing that that's more useful
than hiring my own one on one coach.
There are situations where
I believe that's the case.
I've experienced them when I've
consumed certain trainings.
But I do at least want to ask the
question because there is one on one
coaching available from all kinds of
coaches out there So I have to ask myself
in What situation does it make sense?
For me to pay the same or more
money for much less attention and
personalization Now the standard
answer that we give is well we
benefit from observing other people's
experiences And I completely agree.
We just want to make sure that
that's what we're expecting.
And that's what we're getting in the
program, because if I go into a program
saying, I really want to benefit from
other people's insights, I want to
benefit from other people's experiences,
but then we find in the program that the
facilitation is not done in such a way
that that actually happens where we're
all kind of sitting in our zoom room.
We're all staring at our screen.
We're not really having an
opportunity to make a contribution.
We're not really having an opportunity
to engage with the other participants.
Well, now I have a potentially a
lecture and listen situation that I
have to admit to myself is lower value
than my alternative, which would have
been hiring a one on one coach and
getting all the attention for myself.
So for every bullet point, for every
feature and proposed benefit, I've got
to say to myself, what is the feature?
What is the claimed benefit?
And what do I think of that potential
benefit in the context of what I already
know about myself and my situation?
There's a thing that happens where
people will buy a program based on
one promised feature and benefit.
So they'll see a list of 10 bullet points.
One of those bullet points will
be so compelling to them that they
make the purchase based on that.
Do I think that's wrong?
I don't think it's wrong.
Do I think it's higher risk?
I do., my reminder for people when
they're approaching a decision in
this way is don't forget, there's
a ton of protein in milkshakes.
And what I mean by that is if you look
at a milkshake and say, I'm going to buy
it because it has all the protein, you'd
say, there's actually ways to get that
protein that don't come with all the
carbs and fat or with fewer carbs and fat.
So you have to ask yourself, am
I buying a milkshake right now?
Or am I having, you know, chicken and
broccoli, which is a ridiculous thing
for me to say because I'm not choosing
the chicken and broccoli the vast
majority of the time, but I'm being more
honest than I ever have been about the
fact that the protein in a milkshake
is buried in a bunch of carbs and fat.
And I think that happens with people
buying trainings in the coaching world.
This suggests that you ought to
have your own hypothesis about
what is true about you and about
your coaching practice or whatever
training you're considering consuming.
It, it suggests that you ought to have
a hypothesis about this is who I am.
This is what I want.
This is what I care about.
And these are the pain points I
have that I'm actually trying to
solve right now so that we don't
get distracted by shiny sales pages.
And let the person who wrote the sales
page tell us who we are and what we
care about and what our pain is right
now, because if they're a very good
copywriter, they can do that in the course
of one sales page or one sales sequence.
They can persuade you to buy
into a new version of yourself.
And a new definition of your
current circumstances and a
new belief in the solutions.
The tricky thing about our world
is everything I just said, I could
probably say in another setting.
Wow, that's great.
It's great to offer people
a new view of themselves.
It's great to suggest new
definitions for their problems
and new potential solutions.
In another setting, I'd be
calling that great leadership.
So all of this has to be done together.
, I want to consider the price.
I want to consider the features.
I want to ignore the headline
and the testimonials.
I want to evaluate the
proposed individual benefits.
And I want to measure all of that against
what I believe to be true about myself.
And once I've done that, then I
can acknowledge the new version of
me that is being offered to me and
the new way of thinking and the
new solutions to the old problem.
I can do all of that with clear
thoughts and settled emotions.
And having done that, I'm so much less
likely to regret the decision that I make.
And so much more likely to go
into that training energetic,
happy, and enthusiastic.
It's going to have its bumps in the road.
There's no perfect training program,
and I'm not suggesting that anybody has
to create the perfect training program.
But if we start the relationship in
the right way, I think we drastically
reduce the likelihood of regret.
We can see how that's good for clients.
If you're a coach, if you're a trainer,
this is also good for the brand.
I talked earlier about these insane
reddit threads where I mean, I have
some commentary on some people's way
of being in their training businesses.
I've got my opinions
even about past clients.
I can say, well, I wouldn't do that.
I don't love how that was done.
But these Reddit threads are so absurd.
And I think part of the reason
they go to such a crazy place is
that the well intentioned trainer
offering what they're offering.
They didn't consider the fact that
the better you get at selling, the
more likely you are to sell someone
who's mad at you later, because
you persuaded them harder than they
were able to persuade themselves.
And at some point they're going to come
back and want to punish you for it.
A brand's best move is to sell with
a little bit more care and even
a little bit more caution so that
if somebody does make it into the
room, they're happy to be there.
And they're very, very unlikely
to go out screaming into the world
about what a horrible person you are.
That's the worst case
scenario of all this.
It's more prevalent, I think, in
2024 than it's ever been, because
there are more places for it to
happen than it's ever happened.
And I think it all comes from
a person who thinks their job
is to persuade at all costs.
And I would rather have a person in my
program who was persuaded in a pretty
mediocre way, and they said yes anyway.
Because now I think we've entered into
the relationship in a healthy way.
Does anybody want to date a pickup artist?
Maybe I guess I've been, I've been
out of the dating game for 22 years.
So maybe I'm, maybe this isn't the
metaphor for me to reach for, but the
fact that a person can be incredibly
skilled at getting into a romantic
interaction does not mean they're a
person you want to relationship with.
So if a has an absolutely
incredible funnel and sales page.
You have to ask yourself, is this a pickup
artist or is it a person with whom I
want to be in a long term relationship?
It's just food for thought.
All I'm trying to do is create some
counterbalance in an industry where
there is so much powerful persuasion,
but maybe not quite enough acknowledgement
that these decisions can be made a little
more slowly, a little more thoughtfully.
And frankly, There, there probably
should be fewer yeses in the industry.
There probably should be a little bit
of a balancing out where some of the
people who are buying these trainings
would be happier if they didn't.
So that's how to read a sales page.
I hope it's useful to you and
I'll talk to you next time.