What is invitational language?

You’ve mentioned invitational language, you’ve mentioned inviting people a couple of times now. What is invitational language?

Jeff: One of the ways to describe that is to talk about what it’s not. Anybody that’s been online for more than one day, has got those emails or promotions that say you’ve got to get this before midnight tonight! We’ve only got three! They’re going away soon!

All the people that do this who hate me for doing this, it might get taken down soon, if you don’t do it by tomorrow your family will starve. That’s an exaggeration, but not really by much. So it creates a whole lot of skepticism, and a whole lot of buyer beware, and a whole lot of resistance.

What Is Resistance?

That whole notion of resistance is important. Something I learned twenty-five years ago, when I was a marriage and family therapist in private practice. One of the things they taught us about in graduate school, was how to deal with resistance. I thought, “I’m not sure I believe it even exists, but I’ll listen because I want to get a good grade.” When I went in to practice, I realized these people are hurting. They are paying me a significant amount of money to help them get past this. Why would they be resistant?

What it led me to Alun, was the notion that if I’m sitting there with a client or with a couple or family, or anybody that is coming to me for help, and I’m thinking, “OK, they’re being resistant.” I need to change my thinking. I need to change that thought from they’re being resistant to I’m just not yet a good enough therapist to help this person the best way. That changed everything, because it went from “I’m in a battle with this client” versus “I just have to hold myself to a higher standard to learn how to help this person.”

Take that helping principle, which is really a business principle, and take it in to online marketing if you will. I don’t even like using the word marketing after that story. Online assistance is better. People come online not because the pool is closed, they’re coming online for help.

Get Clients Pursuing YOU!

The biggest thing I learned by creating content on a regular basis, starting in about 1994, in the local newspaper to help build my practice, was that when you can show people on a regular basis through your content two really important things; how you approach their problems, and how you solve their problems. That radically changes the whole marketing dynamic. You’re no longer pursuing clients, they are pursuing you.

Because of what I’m going to show you on the webinar, what happens for me and my students, is whether it’s online or I’m going to an internet training event, people come up to me and say, “Jeff I love your stuff. What’s your best resource for me.”

Let’s park that for a minute and break it down. When someone is coming to you and saying, “Alun I love your stuff. What’s your best resource for me?” That’s someone who has already made a buying decision! They’ve decided to invest in you. They’ve got their credit card out, but just want you to show them what are the next best success steps.

They look to you as a mentor and a guide. That’s a beautiful way to do business. That’s what I talk about when I talk about invitational language. It’s done throughout what you do. You demonstrate to people how you approach and solve their problems.

What’s The Next Step?

The next step is, “You’ve seen how I approach these things, you’ve seen how I solve them. Let’s take our next success step together.” If it’s an opt-in, offer free instant access. If it’s something to purchase, you could say, “I’m getting a few people together in this course, and we’re going to focus on helping people get more clicks when you send an email.”

That’s invitational. You’ve demonstrated how you approach the problem, you’ve demonstrated how you solve the problems, and you’re saying, let’s just take the next success steps. DANG that was a long answer! I hope I answered your question.

That’s really good. It’s not only what invitational is, but it is hints of how you actually apply it as well.

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