Joe Polish: Selling Past Barriers (Part III)

People support what they help to create.

If you have people that aren’t buying from you, ask them, “Why are you not buying? Why are you buying? I’m thinking about putting together this product, this service, this seminar, this book, this website. What do you think would be cool?” Get their feedback.

And then, once you utilize whatever feedback they give you, you then notify them that, “Hey, by the way, here’s the question you asked me, here’s the feedback you gave me, and I have this thing set up for you now. Would you read it, look at it, buy it, whatever?” And all of a sudden, people will. People support what they help to create.

One thing that always struck me as interesting is like how many people are like, “Well, I’ve already got all your stuff, so I don’t need anymore.” They would really use terminology like that. Like, “I’ve got all your stuff.”

It’s like if someone was to buy one of your marketing programs that you created say 5 years ago, and several years later you send them an offer. And you just happen to talk to them, and they say something like, “Yeah, I got your stuff from before, and I haven’t used it all.”

Lance Armstrong wrote this book. One of his earlier books was It’s Not About The Bike. When I read that book, I really loved it, and I actually bought like a couple hundred copies, and I sent them out to some of my best clients and friends. I just thought it was a really good book.

The point behind it, there’s another guy at Merrillville Spa, which I’ve been to many times, his name’s Wyatt. He actually does the equine experience at Merrillville, where they actually take horses and groom horses.

I even spent a few minutes talking with Oprah, the first time she went to Merrillville, because I was there that day. I told her to go do the equine experience, because I thought that was one of the coolest things that they did at Merrillville Spa.

Basically, the guy wrote a book. I think it might have even been written before Lance Armstrong, called It’s Not About The Horse.

The whole thing, “It’s not about the horse,” the horse just happens to be the mechanism of how you experience the process they take you through there. And Lance Armstrong’s thing, “it’s not about the bike,” is just a great analogy.

The marketing stuff that we’re teaching people, going to seminars, joining a coaching program, it’s not about the stuff.

One of the things the stuff does is it defines the game. In a lot of ways, a book, a course, will define the game. Ongoing coaching actually teaches you how to really play the game, how to be consistent with it.

We can use sport analogies all day long. There’s not a professional person, typically, not just in sports but in the entertainment field, from plays to singing, to bands, to athletes that do not have one or many coaches, support structures, agents, you name it, people that are helping them continually hone their skills. At least the people that are the best in the world have those sort of individuals. It constantly surprises me, how many people that are entrepreneurs don’t avail themselves of the same sort of methods, although they are continuously surrounded by it. And not only do they not avail themselves of it, they don’t even think of it.

So, to answer the question, “Did anything surprise me?” Yes.

Lots of people said, “I got all your stuff.” They wouldn’t say, “I got some of your stuff” – they would literally use terminology like, “I’ve already got all your stuff.”

My thoughts about that are: “What’s all my stuff? If you had all my stuff, you’d freaking be in my office, with my million-dollar library. You’ve got nothing close to all my stuff.”

“And secondly, even if you had all my stuff, you wouldn’t be able to use 1/100th of all my stuff, nor should you. You don’t need 1,000 tools in your toolbox, you need one or 2 or 3 that you really kick ass with and take names. And if you’ve already got those one, 2 or 3 best tools but you’re not fully leveraging them or you’re not fully maximizing it, then it has nothing to do with the stuff, it has to do with your skills and your habits using it.”

So, the thing that surprised me the most was just the levels, the degrees that people delude themselves into thinking that getting better in business has to do with, “I’ve got a free recorded message set up, so therefore I can’t go to an event or get any coaching on something on how to better use this or other marketing strategies, because I might learn something else, and that’s going to completely throw me off, and I’ll be distracted and I’m not going to be able to do this. So, I need to wait until the right time is there.”

See part four of this series next week.