Judith and I were therapists/coaches who entered the world of marketing 3 ½ years ago. Even though we are best selling authors and have four books on the market, as we toured the country promoting our first book, and then not as ambitiously or expensively promoted the next three, it became progressively clear that we did NOT know what we were doing.

It became clear that a quality product wasn’t enough. Marketing was the key. In fact our first book publicist told us, “Just give me a good title, a good first chapter and last chapter, I don’t care what you put in the middle.”

We thought she was kidding. She wasn’t.

“That’s marketing,” she’d smile.

Three and ½ years ago we took Alex Mandossian’s “Teleseminar Secrets” course, which appears to be a course about how to do teleseminars, but it’s really a course about how to market. Teleseminars are just the vehicle.

We went to marketing conferences, and joined a mentorship program – Mike Filsaime’s “I5Gold.”

Some of what Stephen Pierce taught moved us along in our marketing development – primarily what he means by the phrase “your driving force.”

But those moments and men were not enough to overcome the discomfort we felt. Feeling emotionally displaced, in a strange land.

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Only 8 days to go before “Bridging Heart and Marketing II” and we just got two more registrations today! Both came from word-of-mouth. People we’d never heard of telling other people about Soft Sell marketing and this unique conference that supports the expansive, spiritually motivated sales and marketing needs of our care giving Soft Sell
Community.
 
Who do you know that could benefit if they knew they weren’t alone out there? Who do you know who is trying to grow their business with integrity but feeling like there’s no model for what they need to do? Who do you know who feels guilty about charging enough to actually make a living, much less make a lot of money from their expertise?
 
Please tell all of these people - who need your input - to visit our site -

http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com
 
so they can see that they are now alone - that in fact there are people from all over the world coming to share and expand their business genius - so that Soft Sell continues to enhance the businesses and the bank accounts of all those heart-based experts who’ve
not before been acknowledged for their special, soul-based business needs.
 
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
 
Because it’s All in the Connection,
Judith & Jim 

PS — We’ve had a few technical glitches and so the post we promised re: why we chose to have a contest won’t be available until tomorrow or Friday. You’ll get a notice in your email inbox as soon as we post it. Thanks again.

Nineteen people voted — with one abstention.

Doug, from Australia, submitted “prospectors,” and his submission received 7 votes.

Andy Murphy submitted “potential partners,” and his submission received 7 votes.

Julie Erickson submitted “Ideal client,” and her submission received 4 votes.

So we will be send Doug and Andy the links for the MP3 audio files and PDF transcripts of a 2- hour discussion on “The Basics of Keywords” that I (Jim) enjoyed developing with Matt Aaron, a Google Pay Per Click Pro.

Judith and I will write a post this week expressing our response to the entries (which we refrained from during the contest) and why we ran this contest.

The first reason was to generate a conversation and we thank you for joining in.

But also we are very serious about changing the language.

More on that in our next post.

Again, thanks for all you sent it and we’ll be connecting again early next week.

Because It Is All in the Connection,

Jim

PS – Join us at the Ayres Hotel (<Manhattan Beach, CA) For “Bridging Heart & Marketing II.”

Come meet everyone, discover what’s effective for your marketing, apply what you learn immediately, and have fun. September 12 thru 14.

http://www.bridgingheartandmarketing.com

Thanks to every one of you who gave the time and care to take seriously the idea that most of traditional marketing language does not work in the Soft Sell market.

You agree that we must create new language to accurately and authentically reflect what we uniquely believe and feel marketing is and how we want to practice it.

And Judith and I have enjoyed every single one of your entries in our “Drive Traffic” Replacement Contest! And we’ll have a lot more to say once the winner is selected.

But for now, here is the list of entries.

community ………….. guests ………….. potential connections ………….. touches or contacts

trusting relationships ………….. visitor ………….. friend ………….. potential partners

connections ………….. prospect ………….. potential ………….. ideal clients ………….. contribution

associate ………….. footprint ………….. interested seekers ………….. authentic associates

people ………….. participants ………….. riders ………….. guest list …………..

community members ………….. interest ………….. tourists ………….. honored guest …………..

comrade ………….. company ………….. Soft-Sell Vanguard ………….. prospectors …………..

flow ………….. mirror

As we said “We’ll choose what we think are the best three and we’ll have everybody vote.”

So here are our choices:

prospectors ………….. potential partners ………….. ideal clients

Please enter your vote in the Comment Box below - and we’d love to hear your reasoning.

The Deadline for Voting is Sunday August 24^th at Noon PST.

Once the voting is complete we will announce the winner Sunday evening.

Then on Monday we will share with you why we chose the 3 finalists and not the others.

AND remember, the winner will receive -

** The MP3 audio files and PDF transcripts of a 2- hour discussion on “The Basics of Keywords” that I (Jim) enjoyed developing with Matt Aaron, a Google Pay Per Click Pro.

Because It’s All in the Connection,

Jim

Have you yet entered your choice in our contest for a term to replace “traffic?”

We’ve had a terrific response so far.

You can see for yourself by reading the comments in the post below.

And the winner of the contest will get MP3 audios and PDF transcripts of a two hour discussion on the basics of keyword I enjoyed with Matt Aaron, a Google Pay Per Click Pro.

So get your choice in . . .

The deadline for entries is this Friday the 22^nd at Noon Pacific Time.

Because It’s All in the Connection,Jim

Recently I heard a major hard sell Internet marketer say:

“Traffic equals money. “

Traffic = $

That’s true of course. Without traffic (virtual or physical) no business can survive.

That means you are traffic. I am traffic. We all are traffic.

But here’s the question —

Do you like being perceived as walking money . . .

The wallet end of the transaction?

Read the rest of this entry »

This past Wednesday and Thursday nights we held two panel calls with the Speakers for our next Bridging Heart & Marketing conference (September 12 -14 ).

We know there is a far-reaching and deep hunger for information about the Soft Sell approach to sales and marketing and we are enormously pleased and very excited to be proven right.

718 people registered to attend the two calls! And we did an Ask Campaign (basically a survey asking what people wanted to know about Soft Sell marketing), and we received 765 questions with only a few duplications.

In discussing this huge turn-out and what it means, Judith and I were talking this morning about how Soft Sell isn’t a marketing revolution. It’s a marketing evolution.

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Judith and I just spoke at a conference focused on wealth building. This is not a usual venue for us and we looked forward to what would happen.

It became clear that most of the people there were interested in real estate investing—many of them focused on very high-end real estate—even though the event producer had scheduled a variety of speakers and topics.

He asked us to speak about Internet marketing and our “Bridging Heart and Marketing” conference.

Our focus was to introduce the participants to the joys and benefits of Internet marketing as well as invite them to register to attend our next conference, “Bridging Heart and Marketing II” -September 12-14 at the Ayres Hotel in Manhattan Beach, right near the Los Angeles Airport.

We decided that the people there wouldn’t be in the mindset of Soft Sell Marketing so we designed our presentation to minimize our Soft Sell approach. Read the rest of this entry »

In my post of 7-6-08 titled “What Are the Real Values of the Soft Sell Point of View — Interdependence” which you can read below if you haven’t already, I wrote: 

“. . . we all exist within the interdependent nature of being alive in this universe. Nothing stands alone. Life IS relationship.”

And . . .

“We need each other, not just to get what we need to stay alive, we need each other to co-create the way we go about that getting.”

Two days ago, my friend and colleague, Robert Ware, (Melbourne, Australia) sent this passage from  The European Dream, written by Jeremy Rifkin. 

“For Europeans, freedom is not found in autonomy but in embeddedness. To be free is to have access to a myriad of interdependent relationships with others. The more communities one has access to, the more options and choices one has for living a full and meaningful life. With relationships comes inclusivity and with inclusivity, comes security.”

Let’s look at two points from Rifkin that bear on Soft Sell marketing:

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Recently we attended a weekend Internet conference. 

As Judith and I settled in on the first day we were looking forward to what we were about to learn.

The first person up, the conference organizer, began with aggressive intensity telling us that if we couldn’t take the heat we should leave the room. And after that the door was going to be locked.

“This information is too valuable and too powerful for anyone who can’t handle it.”

Judith and I were really put off but I figured it was just bravado, trying to be impressive and macho tough. Well, I was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »