Drop the need to handle or overcome objections in sales/marketing -- learn to sell and launch gently

One of the things you're going to learn when you learn marketing and selling is that you're supposed to overcome objections from your prospective client. You're supposed to imagine the doubt, the concerns that they have about your product or your service, the resistance that they may be having to signing up. And you're supposed to, through your sales copy or through the conversation, overcome those objections by, you know, saying how great you are or your service or say, oh, I, I can imagine you're probably thinking about this problem or that concern. Well, let me. Alright, so I've always found that sort of attitude towards the prospective client to be. Yeah, it's unpleasant, isn't it? Because would you rather be selling to somebody who is doubtful of you, who's got their arms folded and you know, kind of waiting for you to say something that confirms that they don't want the product? Or would you rather sell to somebody who has open arms, who is eager to hear from you, who is quite possibly the right fit for your product or service and maybe they just need a few clarifications. Which of these two would you rather sell to? Of course you'd rather sell to the eager one who is probably the right fit. Regardless of what you wrote, it's probably the right fit. So why do we so often assume that we are selling to the doubtful, to the cynical, to the resistant, maybe to even the trolls? I mean, some of us have such a strong inner critic that we project out to the world that, oh, I'm going to have to strong arm them by being clever in all kinds of ways. So if you have been following the kind of marketing that I've been trying to teach you, authentic marketing methods, if you've been doing that, then what you've essentially been doing is nurturing an audience of eager fans. That's what you're doing. You have been building a community of social media followers or email list subscribers who are genuinely interested in your message, probably in your journey as well, and they're certainly open to considering what service you are offering. So if they are available to you, they are giving you their attention, then you don't have to try so hard to make them buy anything. If you, if what you're providing them is the right fit for them at this time, then all you have to do is to whisper. And that's the kind of selling that I really enjoy doing. And not just what I enjoy, what I actually do on a regular basis. If you'll notice, for example, if you have seen my sales pages for my online courses and if you compare it to the sales pages of other marketers, you might notice that my sales pages are shorter. Just give you an example. My recent very well received program that got a lot of sales, got a lot of people joining, is the TLC program. And I'm going to show you this. Okay, Notice the sales page. That's it. That's essentially the entire sales copy is just this, that is so much shorter. If you've never seen other people's sales copy, that goes on and it's like a novel length webpage about all kinds of reasons why they should buy and on and on and on. But this is it. This is the sales copy part. This part of course is just the logistics, what you're going to get and that's it. And then, oh, what's. When are, when are the dates and times. That's it. But the actual. And of course I have some testimonials, grateful for my clients for sharing those. But basically that is the so called persuasion part of it, convincing part of it, not really persuading. It's just a gentle explanation of what I've designed the program to be. And it's because like I said, I follow my own teaching and I've been using authentic marketing now for, for some time and of course I've built an audience thankfully like yourself, who are open to what I have to offer. And if it's the right fit, you know, you, you sign up, that kind of thing. So that, so let's talk about this. It has to be different. So we have two components here that allow us to drop the need to overcome objections in our market, to relax, to relax in our selling, to know that all we have to do is just whisper, just say, oh yeah, by the way, this is what I've got. You know, just be really gentle about how we sell and people sign up, you know, and so how does that happen? We need two components to this. One component is a warm audience. And this is why I have said many, many times in my videos the importance of showing up consistently with an authentic and helpful presence. And as I have also said many times, when you show up consistently with an authentic and helpful presence, it's not just oh, so you can sell to them later, oh so you can make money. Those are kind of cynical reasons to show up with content. It means to an end, it's not deeply purposeful or heart driven, heart based. What I prefer to think about as content is that it is a personal growth journey. The reason you show up consistently with an authentic helpful presence is because you care about your own professional development, your own personal growth. You care about the practice of expressing yourself, journaling publicly, the practice of expressing, exploring your experiences, the ways that you've helped other people, the ways that you helped yourself, what you've been learning, the ways that you've transformed yourself and helped others to transform themselves. You are consistently showing up to explore those things in a way that you genuinely hope is helpful for others, but also in a way that you are always stretching your ability to communicate and explore and understand more deeply those experiences. And so showing up consistently with content isn't just, oh, so that now I'm ready to launch my program because now I've got an audience. I mean, yes, you could do that, but if you show up with content in that way, you are treating content as a means to an end. And anything done in life as a means to an end is not heart based, it's ego based. Essentially, it's like, well, I'm doing this so that I can have that result. Well, what about doing that for its own sake? Every activity, including content creation, can be done for its own sake. That no matter what happens, that activity itself is worthwhile. And you make any activity worthwhile by bringing more of your heart into it, by connecting it to your higher purpose, your deeper self. So, on the one hand, what you need to be able to sell gently and with a whisper is to have an authentic audience. And that happens organically, naturally, through the process of you showing up consistently with an authentic, helpful presence. Again, we're not doing it for building an audience. It just happens to be the way it happens. It's a natural thing. It's like the quote from Viktor Frankl, the author of Man's Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor, who said that you don't pursue success, you pursue a cause higher than your little self. And along the way, success happens. Same thing. You pursue content creation as a cause in and of itself for your personal growth, for your professional development, and for the service to humanity. And along the way, an authentic audience builds. It just happens that way if you show up consistently with an authentic, helpful presence. So you need two components, an authentic audience. And then secondly, you need the match between your offer and the audience. The analogy that I've been using lately is imagine you've got a friend that you want to hang out with, and you have this idea that maybe you'll go see a movie together. And you have a sense that your friend probably wouldn't mind or would even enjoy watching a movie with you. So you say, okay, so you have two choices, right? You're going to go see a movie with a friend. You're going to invite your friend to a movie. Now you have two choices. You can either pick the movie and try to convince your friend to go with you. You know, not, not caring or knowing about what, what they really want to see. You just say, oh, I really like XYZ movie. You got to come along. This is this the best filmmaker? It is, it is. I really love this actor. You're gonna love this after too. No, just, just don't think about it. Just come along with me. Okay, that, that requires persuasion. And your friends probably like, yeah, but you know, I don't know. I don't like that genre very much though. I'm. I don't know. I, I don't, I haven't, I don't know about that filmmaker or whatever, right? Like, you have to strong arm your friend into seeing a movie you've already chosen. It's your own interest, your own passion. You want to see it, you have to strong arm them to, to go with you. And that's. Yeah, some people, some of you actually enjoy doing that, trying to persuade your friends to do stuff with you. But when you bring that into selling, it's not very pleasant. Like what I said, the first component you already have is an authentic audience. It's kind of like having a bunch of friends. I've said before that the way I think about authentic marketing, it's growing friendships at scale. That's what authentic marketing is, which is why we don't need to overcome objections. Growing friendships at scale. So now you got a friend. Let's go go back to that analogy. You got a friend you want to invite to a movie. Do you choose the movie and make your friend go with you? Probably begrudgingly, because they, you know, especially if it doesn't happen to interest, sometimes you're lucky. And what you've chosen is exactly what they want. And that's wonderful. That's you're lucky. Okay? Some just like sometimes when you sell something you didn't do any market research, you just say, I want to sell this and you sell it and it happens to be something the audience wants. You're lucky. That was luck. Okay? But sometimes the movie you've chosen isn't what your friend wants to see. And so wouldn't it have been better for you to talk to your friend first to say, hey, I've got a couple of movie choices and I just want to make sure we're both seeing something that we enjoy. So which of these three choices would you most enjoy? Or is there. Is there a fourth one that, that I didn't name that, that we should consider too? Wouldn't it be better and better for your friendship too, because you're communicating, you're, you're just the, the act of collaborating on the decision deepens a friendship, right? So you're communicating and you go, hey. And then you, they say, oh, yeah, I like ABC movie. Oh, abc, yeah, Actually, that, that one looks good. Let's do it. And so you're doing it. You both enjoy that genre, that filmmaker, whatever, and you both go to the movie and you make the decision together. Okay. And therefore you don't have to persuade your friend they have a say in the product that you experience together. So same thing with your selling. Are you going to just pick a random movie that you like and hope the audience likes it? Sell a random something you came up with and hopes that the audience is really into it, or where you treat your audience like you treated that friend and ask them, hey, of these three things that I could sell, which of these three interest you the most? You will notice if you follow my Facebook business page. This is where I've been doing my market research mostly follow my Facebook business page notice on Wednesdays. Yeah, you can scroll back into all the Wednesday posts. On Wednesdays, I'm either selling you something or I'm doing market research asking you which of these three titles do you like the best? Which of these three options should I think about launching next? I ask you before I make the decision. And by the way, I also have an affiliate group where I ask other deeper questions and get their feedback on the offer and the sales page and stuff. So I do some market research. Now that I have an affiliate community, I do some market research outside the public eye, but publicly. I still ask my audience publicly about which of the three titles do they like for the. The upcoming program and launching or whatever. You see what I mean? So, so do have these both have. When you have these both, you have an authentic audience, which is kind of like an audience of friends at scale. You've. You've done your marketing authentically. So it's kind of like you have this community of friendly people, people who are friendly towards you, who are open to, to hearing from you and to. And to considering your offers. You've got this authentic audience and on this other side, you are doing the process of market research with your audience. So it's like inviting your friend to a movie by asking them what they would like so you can go together to something you enjoy. And by, by doing, having the. On an audience through consistent, helpful, authentic content and by doing market research with them, you now have this powerful combination of an audience who wants what you provide. And that is where magic comes in. That is where you no longer have to persuade, convince, manipulate. You no longer have to sell hard. You no longer have to exhaust yourself with big launches. You can now launch easily like I do. You can now sell gently like I do, and you can trust that if it's the right fit, you've done your market research. Again, just because you've done your market research doesn't mean that everyone you talk to is going to buy. No, there's still timing. Different people have different say, oh, you know, that sounds really good, but because of what's going on in my life right now, I can't sign up at this time. And that's fine. You have to respect, just like your friend. You know, you may ask a friend and they say, oh yeah, I would like to see a movie, but I can't. It's Friday night. I've got to, you know, take care of my, my kids or my, my, whatever they have to do. You see what I mean? Then you ask another friend the same thing. When you have an audience of people, you don't have to have all of them by. It might be 5% of them buy. It's okay though, because the others appreciate. Even if it's just 1% of them buy, the 99% of them appreciate how gently you asked and how lovingly you launched and sold to them. And so they're much more open. So this is where I, I see so many people just unaware like they learn from, they learn from mainstream marketing experts to sell hard and to launch exhaustively exhausting launches, exhausting the business owner. But it also exhausts the audience. They see get so many, the audience gets so many emails, you know, like, you know, five emails during the launch week. No, not even five. I mean, I've seen launch templates over 18 emails. And during the final week of the launch, I mean, I'm like, are you serious? That's insane. Both for the business owner have to customize 18 emails. Of course, the marketer has given them the perfect emails, the templates, which of course are never authentic to the business owner because it's written by somebody else. Now you customize 18 emails or five emails. Even when I launch, typically two emails. That's it. I typically, if you notice, if you join my launch email list, you see two emails a month. One email is, hey, pre launch happening. Why do I do pre launch? Because I want to make sure there's enough people buying before I decide to do the real launch, which is one more email to say if I want to go forward with it. So the pre launch people get usually get a little bit of a discount. But anyway, so it's like I do two emails compared to the regular launch sequence of at least a dozen emails or more. And it's like, therefore I have the stamina to launch every month because my launches are so easy, they're so gentle. Two emails, I could do two emails. And two emails are, you know, more or less the same format. And once you've come up with a format that's authentic to you, you can more use more or less the same format again and again and again. And if it's the right fit, then again, whether it's 1%, 5%, 10% buy it. The other 90 to 99% who didn't buy it on, your audience will appreciate how you did it. And so they'll be much more open versus the mainstream way of marketing where they're selling hard and they're launching with many emails where they're overcoming objections. They burn out so much of their audience over time because the audience doesn't want to keep receiving dozens of emails per launch. But let me show you one more thing. I want to come back to the whole overcoming objections thing as we complete this video. I did a split test. What's a split test? A split test is where when a visitor lands on the sales page, they either randomly see version A or randomly see version B. So it's like an AB test is what some people call it. So when you visit my sales page, you don't know. You don't know because the software does it automatically. You don't know whether you've seen version A or version B. There's like signi, maybe there's one slight change or one significant change. So I did a split test three separate times with three offers, with three products. I've done many split tests, but in this case I did three split tests about whether I should have a money back guarantee. Let's talk about this. A money back guarantee, of course, is when you say, hey, I'm so confident that this product is going to do you right, that if you don't like this product at all, please let me know within 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, whatever, however long, 90 days or whatever, let me know within that time. And I'LL give you your money back. So is it a good idea to offer a money back guarantee? Most marketers would say, of course. Of course you should offer money back. You should remove the risk from your audience. Right. Well, here's what's surprising. I thought so too. I mean, I've been trained in mainstream marketing, so I thought I got to offer a guarantee, but I started having doubts about it for some reason. Like, let me, Let me split test it. So I tested with three different products. Okay? One page had a money back guarantee and the other page did not have a guarantee at all. Okay? It's one page guaranteed, the other page not guaranteed. Again, I tested this three separate times, and I was shocked to find that all three times, the page version without the guarantee had at least double the number of sales. Let me say that again. The sales pages that did not have a money back guarantee had more than double the amount of sales compared to the version that had the guarantee. Baffling. If you were to. If you were to mention this to a mainstream marketer, they'd be. They'd be like, that's crazy. Really? Why? Because I've built an authentic audience that doesn't need me to posture and to persuade and to cajole and to make sure they buy. My audience, authentic audience just needs me to gently say, oh, yeah, this is what I've got for you this month. And they happily sign, in fact, the guarantee. My theory about it is that the guarantee introduces doubt. They're looking at it, they're already eager, they're ready to buy, and then there's a guarantee. They're like, maybe I should. I don't know, you let me know. Maybe. Some of you may have seen the guarantee pages. Many of you didn't. If I offer guarantee, would you? I mean, now that I say it, it might bias you. But anyway, the objective testing showed all three times that the one without the guarantee had a lot more sales. So that's why I'm doubtful about overcoming objections. I'm doubtful of whether we should write our sales pages with in mind the troll or the person who doesn't like us yet who doesn't trust us yet, writing for them. First of all, that's unpleasant to do. It's not enjoyable. You'd rather talk to a friend rather than someone who doubts you. Right? And so I say do your regular showing up, which naturally builds an authentic audience. Do your market research, because it's like being with a friend, inviting them to do something and then just gently launch. Gently say, hey, here's what I've got. I don't need to persuade you. I don't need to, you know, make guarantees or whatever. No, just this is what I've got. I don't need to make super big promises. No, this is just what I've got and it's the right fit. I hope you join me and if not, no worries, right? Because remember, just like a friendship, it's a long term relationship. Not just you don't buy not my friend anymore. No, no, no. Just a long term relationship. So I hope this is interesting and helpful and if you have any reflections questions, I'm always open to seeing that in the comments below. And those of you who don't know who I am, I am George Kao, Authentic Business Coach. Love talking about how do we grow a business that's truly from the heart that benefits our personal and spiritual growth? You might say, regardless of results. But of course we bring our our spirit and our heart into it. We're much more likely to keep doing it. We'll grow personally regardless. But we keep doing it. We're going to grow in the skills which naturally leads to good business results. So all right, I wish you well and I'll see you in the next video. Take care.