Have you put off marketing your business because you’re feeling like you’re bugging people? I know I have and so have my clients.
The funny thing is that I’ve yet to speak to a business owner who had thought that and had actually been spamming people.
What have people thought was too much? Emailing their list more than once a week and telling their readers about a new service. I think we can both agree that we can have quite an odd version of how the world looks!
Think about the emails that you love to receive. For me it’s Seth Godin’s daily emails with his insights on business and marketing and Lauren Belgray’s (of the Talking Shrimp) daily emails with her fantastic style of writing.
I never feel like I’m being spammed, even when I’m receiving seven emails a week from them. I don’t feel like they’re bugging me when they tell me about the services and products that they have, instead I’m intrigued by what they have on offer.
We need to move past feeling like we’re bugging people and look at what’s really going on.
Hello fear
Becoming a business owner means dealing with fear on a regular basis. Instead of warning us about approaching lions fear switches her focus and seeks to protect us from making a fool of ourselves, from our friends becoming sick of us talking about our business or people thinking we’re being spammy.
Or at least that’s what fear tells us. She can be a sneaky creature.
Last year I decided to focus my business strategy work on systems. I decided to email my contacts to let them know about my service and ask if they knew of anyone who could use that service.
My plan was to send one email a day. What wasn’t part of my plan was the massive wall of Resistance that I ran headlong into.
“Who is going to want this service? It’s not very exciting”.
“People are going to feel like I’m bugging them when I’ve not been in touch for a while”.
“I may as well be saying give me some money. This feels so gross”.
As you can imagine it was painful sending those first few emails.
Old Me. New Me.
As luck would have it I came across an exercise that helped me move past resistance. The exercise involved writing down how I was feeling now and how I would like to feel, using the format of Old Me and New Me. This is what I wrote . . .
Old Me
Old me hesitates each time she goes to send her follow up emails.
New Me
New me is on fire! She delights in the long list of lovely contacts she has to follow up with; knowing that her service is just what her contacts need and they‘re going to be so relieved that she is there to help them get their systems sorted.
A simple exercise yet the results were dramatic; over the next hour I emailed eight of my contacts whereas before it had taken me 30 minutes to email one person. My resistance was replaced by delight as I no longer felt like I was bugging people, instead I felt like was sending an invitation.
Of the 42 people I emailed I didn’t get any introductions, liked I had hoped. Less than 50% of those people even replied to my email. What I did get were three new clients, directly from the people that I emailed. I hadn’t expected that to happen and was delighted.
If I’d focused on how Old Me felt I would’ve missed out on those three clients. I also would’ve missed out on the lovely emails that I received, they may not have known anyone who needed my new service but I got to catch up on what they were doing. Now that is fantastic result for me!
When you start sending out invitations like this do keep an eye on your thoughts. You might feel like a failure because half of the people you invited didn’t reply (“See”, said Fear, “I told you that no one wanted to hear from you”) or that people unsubscribed after you sent out a email telling people about your new service (“See”, said Fear, “I told you that you were being spammy. Now all these people have unsubscribed).
Those negative feelings don’t serve you at all. We need to remove the emotion that Fear is bringing to the table and replace it with logic. People are busy so you can’t expect everyone to open your emails. Some people will open your email, not need your service and not reply. Some people will be tidying up their inboxes and your latest email was the trigger they needed as they no longer need what you offer.
We can make this all about us and see it as a sign that we’re being spammy or that no-one wants what we have. That is a sure fire way to send your business in a tail spin. Be practical – if you email your people once a month at the best then suddenly send a daily email that only talks about you then people will unsubscribe. Your emails need to be all about your potential clients and what they need. Even then people will still unsubscribe. Wish them well then refocus on the people who still wish to hear from you. That is where the magic is.
What have you been putting off doing in your business because you were feeling like you’re bugging people? Could you use the Old Me, New Me exercise to shift any feelings of resistance?
Dealing with these feelings head on is one of the things I do for my clients. We may be talking marketing and client follow up yet we need to recognise the very human feelings you’ll have as you run your business.
Ready to create a new way of doing business? Book in for a virtual coffee – we’ll look at the system you have and what your ideal follow up system is.
