By the Ocean
Cloudy and Rainy 76 Degrees
6:53 a.m.
$20 million of “sideways” selling…
Not long ago, I had a client from my past reach out after 7 years of not hearing from him.
He left me a voicemail and asked me to call him.
He was a partner in a business in the health space and we had worked together to create a new promo for one of his primary products.
The promotion I wrote was tested to cold traffic (total strangers) but the conversions weren’t high enough to make it work in their funnel. This wasn’t one of those promotions that screams “look at how great my product is!” because I don’t create those…because they are cheesy and embarrassing. And because that’s what everyone does. This was an education-based promotion that led the reader to the same conclusion without US having to say it.
So they took my promo written as a salesletter, “chopped it up,” and tested it as a video sales letter. You might call that “sideways” selling. The sale is happening at the other end of what is really just a low budget T.V. show.
What happened?
They sold $20 million of the stuff.
The reason for his call was to say thank you!
A lot of things go through your mind when something like this happens.
Whatever the feeling is where you feel really smart and really dumb all at the same time, that’s what I was feeling!
This was years before I moved into results-based compensation or even becoming a partner in the business type of arrangements with the people I work with.
Back then, I just did X and got paid Y. This was simply where my confidence was in the early days. I had no idea about the value I carried.
So while I was happy for them, I was also reminded of how dumb I used to be 🙂
My hunch is that, if you’re an expert, you probably don’t fully appreciate your value either. If you did, you would speak differently, write differently, act differently… more in alignment with the TRUTH about what you add to the world.
The real trick is to be the LEADER when it comes to communicating value. You want to go FIRST. SHOW THEM so you don’t have to wait for them to get it. Otherwise, you run the risk of the marketplace never realizing just how powerful, unique and priceless what you have actually is.
If you’re carrying around diamonds, part of the work is to act like it.