To become a more effective marketer, become more of who you are. We all learned to persuade people when we were very young, and that’s what we need to capitalize on!
Have you ever considered that marketing your practice is just a more developed version of how you got anybody to give you anything when you were a kid? You did that naturally, as an expression of your emerging self… you watched what other kids and adults did, tried out different ideas and settled on the ones that felt right to you… how could it be otherwise?
Marketing is just an adult form of that, and it doesn’t have to be loathsome, when you understand how to do it so that it feels like you! The problem is that most marketing ‘gurus’ don’t understand how holistic folks — like Feldenkrais® practitioners — need to market, because it’s not how the gurus do it.
There are three major marketing styles. Over the course of my ‘business education’ I’ve come to the conclusion that most of what’s taught about marketing your practice works for one style — about 1/3 of the world. Most Feldenkrais® practitioners are in the other 2/3 — the part that doesn’t feel right using that approach — because it isn’t natural to them.
If you’ve been trying to learn marketing skills and still have the feeling that you can’t sell your practice without feeling bad about it, it’s likely that you’ve been trying to do it with tactics and strategies developed by people who don’t understand your marketing style. They know that what they’re doing works for them, and they assume that if you do what they do, you’ll be successful.
The only problem is — you can’t do it because it doesn’t feel like you. And an unfortunate outcome of that is that you may have thought you had two choices: become someone else, or have fewer clients than you want.
There IS an another choice!
Many Feldenkrais® and other holistic practitioners are most comfortable when they’re giving people lots of information, then letting their prospective clients take their time about making a decision. This style is very effective at getting clients — if you learn how to make the most of it!
Here are 3 keys to making that approach work for you:
- Give them the information they want.
- Help them understand what the benefits of commiting to work with you are.
- Give them time — but not forever — to decide! It doesn’t help either one of your to have the decision ‘pending’ without any endpoint.
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