Marketing is simply, and literally, “bringing your products to market.” And sales is making the right offer to the right person.
And yet, research shows that “selling” immediately brings to mind negative word associations. It’s as if the world hadn’t dramatically changed since the release of Glengarry, Glen Ross.
But the world has changed, and it’s the prospect, not the salesperson, who has control. So, the simple secret to “selling” is something much more powerful – empathy.
I’m joined today by Marie Poulin, a coach who helps purpose-driven entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life in the digital space. Her advice can help any freelancer or creative entrepreneur who wants to grow the business without sacrificing the soul.
The Show Notes
Transcript
How to Sell Like a Saint
Voiceover: Rainmaker.Fm is brought to you by Authority, the content marketing training and networking community dedicated to accelerating your skills and success. Registration for Authority will close to new members on Wednesday, September 30th, 2015. Go to getauthority.com to learn more.
Marie Poulin: Hi, I’m Marie. I’m a digital strategist and designer. I help people grow online businesses and most recently, I’ve been helping designers transition into strategists. And I am definitely unemployable.
Voiceover: Welcome to Unemployable, the show for people who can get a job, they’re just not inclined to take one — and that’s putting it gently. If you’re a freelancer or solopreneur, Unemployable is the place to get actionable advice for growing your business, improving your processes, and enjoying greater freedom day to day. To get the full experience, register at no charge at Unemployable.com. You’ll get access to upcoming webinars and more. That’s Unemployable.com.
Brian Clark: Hey, Everyone, welcome to Unemployable. I am your host, Brian Clark. Today we’re going to be talking about a whole range of interesting topics that are important to your business.
It’s interesting to me how certain fundamentals of marketing and business get turned into buzzwords by some well-meaning souls in our industry and some not so. One of these words is empathy. It reminds me of another word that got turned into a business buzzword, which was storytelling.
Empathy and storytelling, you can’t get much more human than that. And yet, of course, they’re introduced like they’re the new secret weapons of business. Well, they are actually secret weapons of business, they’re just not new.
Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about that and some other things with my guest, Marie Poulin? Close?
Marie Poulin: Close enough.
Brian Clark: Or Poulin if you’re an American like me. You’re American too. I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s just a French name. And my wife is wonderful with French pronunciation and I’m decent at Spanish.
Marie Poulin: Close enough.
What Is Your Background?
Brian Clark: Close enough. Good. All right. So, how about we get started by you giving us a little background on how you got here with us today? Maybe starting just shortly after birth or you can fast forward through some of that.
Marie Poulin: Yeah, I used to work at a few design agencies after I graduated from York/Sheridan Joint Program in Design. I had an amazing experience working with my boss and mentor, but I was feeling a sense of wanting a little more control over my career. I had no control over what kind of clients we were bringing in, what kind of work I got to do.
I started freelancing on the side, started to really enjoy freelancing on the side and started to realize that there was a lot more potential for earning beyond a certain salary cap. So, I started venturing out on my own. It was a really, really scary decision to make, as I’m sure anybody deciding to do their own thing makes the leap.
And I feel like I ended up with kind of — I’m not going to say strange clients, but I ended up attracting clients unexpectedly. I believe that my superpower was this level of empathy for other people. So, I didn’t market myself. I didn’t know how to market myself. I was definitely a struggling introvert. But I had enough word of mouth people in my community that I ended up just connecting with people on a one-to-one level.
And I never really had to market. I didn’t really understand blogging at the time. It was entirely just conversational. You meet people, you get to know what they need and, “Great, you need help with a website, totally able to help you with that. So, it was a very organic process. And marketing is still something I’m always struggling to learn more about for sure.
Brian Clark: You bring up two things that I think are constant themes especially for all of us in this audience. One is a desire for freedom and some semblance of self-direction, control. No one ever says, “I did it for the money. If anyone says that, I’m really worried about them, because that’s generally not how it works.
The other thing you said, of course, is that, “Well, I didn’t really understand marketing or sales, but I was empathetic and I could have a conversation. And this was me, honestly, because I was at the very beginning just completely clueless about marketing. But I had an inherent… despite sometimes being grumpy, I like to please people, I like to give value, I like to teach, all these things that were natural about me.
It just sounds like the things that are natural about you are what great marketing is. And I think we’re on a mission, all of us, to redefine what that is.
It’s being a human being that gives value to other people that they actually appreciate. And I think wouldn’t that be where empathy comes in?
Marie Poulin: Yeah, and like Sally Hogshead, I know she was at the Copyblogger conference talking about her Fascination Advantage. I know mine for sure is passion. So I can’t help but get really, really excited about other people’s ideas. And I don’t work with anybody whose ideas I’m not really, really excited about. So, I think naturally people are going to feel that connection that you really care.
I always encourage people — you’ve got to work with people that you absolutely love, you support their idea 100%. You can stand behind it and you really believe in it. That’s when you’re going to do the best work.
What Does Empathy Mean?
Brian Clark: Absolutely. You’ve written about empathy quite eloquently. It’s not a tactic, put it that way, but it is something that can be heightened. And we’ll be talking about listening and observation as a way of gleaning the problems and desires that are out there. That’s really the first step of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, to use the more colloquial version of empathy.
What advice do you give people when they struggle with what exactly that means?
Marie Poulin: I think it means being a better listener. I think a lot of people tend to talk more than they listen. And this is something that I talk to my students a lot about.
I tend to help people write better proposals. A proposal ultimately is painting the picture of what your collaboration looks like with someone. So, the first thing, you’re not going to start your proposal with a giant price point on the front page. And I’ve seen designers do that. You’re immediately asking for something before you’re offering anything. You haven’t even shown someone that you’ve heard them, that you’ve seen them, that you know what they’re about.
Part of that proposal process is: how well were you listening in that first meeting? What points did you pull? What is that person’s vision? What are their deepest desires and pains? And if you can’t capture that and make it really clear in your proposal… So, just a huge part of that is being a better listener, I think. And that I’m sure takes practice.
Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. I think the whole shift to content marketing is very easy to understand in that, as you pointed out, you’re not asking for something right away. You’re giving something. It just so happens, if you’re doing it correctly, that what you’re giving is addressing those initial concerns or objections or questions they have on the journey to solving their problem.
How to Listen to Attract the Right People
Brian Clark: What are you doing yourself? Let me rephrase. Before we can get to the proposal phase, someone has to find you. Of course, you did really well with word of mouth. That’s still the holy grail and that’s what we all want.
But in order to accelerate the process of getting enough people to be delighted enough to recommend you to someone else, how are you using empathy? Or how do you listen in order to attract the right people to you in the first place?
Marie Poulin: I mean, that can be social listening. It can be on Twitter, Facebook groups. I think Facebook has been a really powerful tool for me. Just checking out different groups where my target audience lives and just listening to the kind of things they’re talking about, and even listening to how they might respond to other people’s questions, input, that sort of thing.
I’m always taking notes, I’m always observing. I’m kind of looking for what’s happening between the lines, like what’s not really being said explicitly. What are the pains, what are the themes? And I’m always just trying to look for those commonalities between people. Because I think a lot of us struggle with the same problems and we keep seeing the same sorts of things over and over again.
I just started an Evernote notebook and I just started copying and pasting. I even set up a few scripts to automate that process actually. So, a few Facebook groups where my ideal people lived, I would just automate the process, send it to an Evernote notebook, and it was marketing research basically.
Brian Clark: I love your answer, because it’s the same one I always give. Not because you agree with me, but it’s true, because I consider social media the greatest marketing research platform in the history of the world. And it is, but it’s like drinking from a fire hose. You have to be selective. You have to, like you said, find where your people live. Facebook, almost everyone is there in some capacity. So, even for business, you’re seeing more and more Facebook groups pop up.
But I just lurk in some of those Facebook groups that are relevant and sometimes I’m just blown away by what people are getting stuck on. It’s the same things they were getting stuck on when I started in 2006. That’s in itself a valuable lesson, that there are always new people coming in, they have generally the same problems and desires. They’re just a few steps back.
That’s something we struggle with, which is you always have to keep the door open for the new people that are coming along, while also coming up with more advanced teaching strategy, tactics, whatever the case may be for other people.
Marie Poulin: It kind of ties into the scarcity thing. I think a lot of people think, “Oh well, it’s all been done before. What could I possibly have to offer, because it’s all been done before? Well, sure, a lot of those problems people are having in different Facebook groups, there are a million and one sales pages out there that might actually solve that problem, but maybe they don’t resonate.
So, it could be a positioning problem. It could just be the way somebody words something resonates differently with someone than someone else. So, I really think there is room for everybody in the market.
Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And that’s common. I try to get people over the whole… I mean, the statement, “There’s nothing new under the sun was in the Bible. Okay, this is not a new thing. But it’s all a perspective — it’s context, it’s voice, it’s resonance, it’s all those things.
When I started Copyblogger in 2006 talking about copywriting and what now is known as content marketing, I was constantly attributing things to the people I learned them from. You don’t have to pretend like you made it up, but Copyblogger still grew because the lens with which I presented that information was mixed in with me and my own personal experiences and an application I think in a new environment, and it’s a home run.
But yet, the same people today might say, “Well, that was fine for you, but it doesn’t work today. I’d say there’s more opportunity today.
Marie Poulin: I agree. And I think being willing to be a little vulnerable that way and bring yourself into your business — I do think that’s my super power. Whether I realized it or not, I’m willing to take people along the ride with me. I think people feel attracted to that vulnerability and it sort of feels like anything is possible and, “Hey, I make mistakes too, but I’m working through them.
What Drew You to This Medium?
Brian Clark: As we all do. You mentioned earlier about being an introvert. INTJ here. I guess everyone’s picture of me is cackling away in a lab planning world domination, which is only true part of the day. But, definitely, you and I were talking before we went on air about, and I’ve mentioned this before, there’s no way I’d take a sales job. I would never knock on doors or cold call people or network with that intention in mind. And I still don’t. But I knew I could write and then I taught myself a specific type of writing, which happens to be conducive for marketing and sales.
This is interesting to me, and I wonder about your perspective, because a lot of the early bloggers and social media people are introverts, because this was our medium. It’s not like we’re so shy or something that we can’t communicate with people, we just get drained by people. And this is a place where we can communicate, we can provide value, and then we can walk away when we need to.
Is that your sense? I mean, is that what attracted you to the medium other than everyone’s online now?
Marie Poulin: That’s a good question. There’s definitely a safety in being able to write your words in sort of a peacefulness of your home office and put them out on the Internet. And who knows who’s reading. For me, video doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s definitely something that…
Brian Clark: I’m the same way.
Marie Poulin: It’s like I’m willing to kind of work through it or I’ll study it, I’ll take a course on it. I’ll watch what the experts do and do that if I need to. But if I can connect with people with my words, and that does seem to be effective for me, then great. Stick to what works.
So, I think blogging has been a really great way for me to connect. Even with my online programs, it’s mostly text-based. And some people may prefer video, but I think people that tend to know me and have been attracted to what I’m doing have found me through my words.
I’m sticking to what works, but I’m also willing to push myself out of the comfort zone, experiment with Periscope, try that, see how that felt. Do group video calls and that sort of thing. I’m always willing to push a little bit out of my comfort zone. But I do think as an introvert writing feels more comfortable as a way to connect with people.
Brian Clark: Yeah, obviously that was my approach early on and we of course attracted a large audience of readers. In 2010 when we started our first podcast, it connected with a certain subset of the audience, but certainly it didn’t get any sort of traction like articles. And I made the mistake at the time of not realizing that audio is an audience expander. If you can get comfortable with it and you want to move beyond your core audience, and you don’t necessarily have to, that was just something that was important for us.
So, audio, I do enjoy. In fact, in 2005, before I had the idea for Copyblogger, my idea was to start a podcast. How bad would that have turned out? I wouldn’t be playing to my strengths, none of this would have happened. So, fortunately, I guess everything worked out.
But by the time we really were ready to move into new formats of content, audio was a natural in that I did have that kind of desire, that radio personality. I find that kind of cool. I’ve never had any desire to be in front of a camera. So, maybe the reticence there is still kind of tied to that, “You can’t see me, you can’t hurt me.
Marie Poulin: Yeah, it’s weird how that happens. But audio is very intimate. You’re hearing somebody’s voice and hearing them in your head. It’s a very intimate experience.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it is. I think it’s actually pretty powerful. And video will always have the most mass appeal, I think. And so, I think it’s good that you’re experimenting with Periscope. Haven’t done it myself yet, but I probably will just try it out, see what works.
I’m also of the mindset sometimes that who wants to watch me on Periscope? But if people vote otherwise, then I guess I should listen.
Marie Poulin: I think it just ties back to, I think it’s good for people to experiment, but I think people shouldn’t feel like they have to do everything under the sun, just because “They said video is the most important thing. Got to do video. If you’re awkward in front of video and you’re not making an effort to get better, maybe video is not necessarily the platform that you have to use.
Brian Clark: Amen. Absolutely. Play to your strengths, and then get braver. But if you don’t feel like being brave, at least you’ve got your base and obviously, you’ve got that, we’ve got that. And it is kind of cool to test the waters, because personal growth and business growth often go hand in hand, especially with the smaller businesses.
Marie Poulin: Yeah, I think it all comes down to how do you connect with people? Find the way that you connect most easily and stick with that.
Generosity in Business
Brian Clark: You mentioned earlier scarcity and not in the sales sense, which is highly effective and always will be because people tend to have “I don’t want to lose out mindset. But in business, going back to what we talked about earlier, I think generosity and wanting to give value, when I look back, that’s the only reason I’ve been able to do this stuff. And yet, I think for some people in business, they feel like they’re being a chump if they’re being generous.
Do you know the name of the book Give and Take? It’s a Wharton school professor, Adam something, but it’s called Give and Take. It’s a great book about how more strategic generosity, not necessarily, “I’m doing this for you, you have to do this for me, because that doesn’t work either, but someone who just doesn’t give blindly. Someone who gives in a way that has the ability to come back at some point, even if you don’t know why.
These are the most successful people in business and the over-givers. And the scarcity people are the least successful. And that’s all based on research. It’s pretty fascinating if you haven’t checked that out.
Marie Poulin: I love that you brought that up. It’s a topic that I love talking about, I’m always curious about. Even with the first launch of my program, I did a “Pay what you can for the very first version. It was, “Here’s the suggested price, here’s what I think the program’s going to look like. Accepting ‘Pay what you can.’ I’m going to accept everybody regardless of the price that they offered. And I had a whole range from very, very low to almost zero to paying full price.
I did it as an experiment. I wanted to know what was possible. And I also wanted to build my confidence, because it was the first time I was launching this program. I wanted to know: can I really pull this off? Can I bring in the results that I think I can for people? So, it was a bit of an experiment in generosity and it ended up working out really well. It did help me build that confidence, and I needed to do that. And in the end, I built a tribe of raving fans, because they knew they’d gotten so much value.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it’s true. I call ourselves “the anti-Apple when it comes to launching new things. Apple will put out something that you know is going to be about 50 times better on version four. And yet, the early adopters were like, “Take my money, take my money. And we’re always like, “You’re an early adopter, thank you. You’re going to help us make this better, so you get the best deal.
And I’ll always stick with that for many reasons, because it helps you get better faster. But also, those people deserve to get your best deal.
Marie Poulin: Yeah, absolutely.
What Do You Offer Designers?
Brian Clark: So, you work primarily with designers at this point?
Marie Poulin: At the moment, yeah. I’d say it’s like 75% designers, 25% small business owners at the moment.
Brian Clark: Yeah, well, a lot of your advice I think is transferable across the board, but we also have quite a few designers in the audience. Give us a few specifics about what you have for those types of people.
Marie Poulin: Yeah. I run a program called Digital Strategy School, which is moving designers into more strategic work, more digital strategy, even just running their own businesses more strategically. And the idea is helping other people create more value for their clients.
Just getting better at design, there’s only so far that that can take you. So, I’m really pushing designers to think a little more strategically about: what do your clients want at the end of the day? They don’t want necessarily a prettier website. Or they do, but again, that’s only one small part of the picture.
So, I’m trying to help designers think a little more big picture with both their business and their clients’ businesses.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I noticed a lot of similarities between the advice you’re trying to get into, I guess, the business of design is much more than the pretty picture, although you’ve got to do good work, obviously. Same thing with writers. I’m like, “No one wants to hire a writer. What do they really want? They want an outcome and you know that words are going to get them there, but they don’t value words. So, package it a different way.
I mean, that is the essence of strategy. You do what you do, it’s how you present it to the client that determines whether they hire you, how much they pay you, how much they love you afterwards.
Marie Poulin: It’s all in the packaging. Absolutely.
Where Can We Find You?
Brian Clark: Absolutely. All right, tell us where we can find you and we will link that up in the notes. And I, of course, appreciate your time.
Marie Poulin: Yeah, thank you so much. People can find me online at mariepoulin.com. You can find me on Twitter @Marie Poulin as well, and you can check out digitalstrategyschool.com. If you’re a designer, we have a self-study version as well. So, yeah, you’re free to check that out.
Brian Clark: Awesome. Good stuff. Thank you, Marie. And thank you to everyone for tuning in. We’ll talk again next episode. Until then, keep going.
Marie Poulin: Thanks so much.