Day 26: Asking for Money (Ouch!)

Asking for money. It can be a painful disconnect.

You love being part of the collaborative CustomerLove community. Everyone helping, sharing, amplifying and encouraging one another. It’s an extended Valentine’s Day in the land of kindness, and it’s fun.

But now the end of the CustomerLove challenge is near, which means that scary thing is looming:

“Make them love you. THEN ask for money“

You love what you do. You love being your own boss. You love your right people. You’ve been out there being your fabulous self, being visible, and openly offering them lots and lots of beautiful, heartfelt, sparkly Valentines. And you got their attention, and their interest: They said yes! They WILL be your Valentines!

But, now that you have their attention, suddenly it’s like you’re alone together, you and this person. And you’re wondering if you look less attractive, even needy, under this lighting: You have something to sell. Isn’t that kind of, well, dirty?

Is this loved person now nothing more than a prospect? Ick. Maybe you should ask for as little as possible, so as not to offend? And not be demanding about it, just quietly put the “for sale” page over there to the side, where it won’t bother anyone?

Your Story Doesn’t Have to End That Way

Reality Check: You Are Gorgeous. And what you do for your right people makes their lives better. You should be proud of that.

But loving your right people has to include loving your business. So it will thrive.  So it’s there to sustain you and support you, to be of service in your business, in your community, to your friends and family, and to yourself.

You are hereby officially allowed to charge good money for your work.

And remember, people pay for:

• Results. Show the results that the people who work with you get.
• Value. Be clear about what they get and how valuable that is.
• What they passionately want. Help them say yes. Show them all the reasons why they passionately want your offer.

But you’re smart! You’ve been thinking ahead. You followed the Customer Love Challenge method, so you’ve been out there loving your customers and being so “totally ridiculously awesome” to them that by the end, they are ready to buy something from you.

You can ask for money without sounding – or feeling – icky.

If you’re hesitating, here are a few ways to show value while also making an offer:

Ways to Ask and Have it Feel OK

Special offer via Twitter, only open for a few hours

• Very Fast Sale on Social Media
  Jade Craven told Twitter about a special sale offer, of 10 – 15 consulting slots, one weekend day, saying she felt like she was “in the groove” and wanted to be helpful. There was plenty of social proof in the resulting social media conversation, and because her special offer was only available to those paying attention to Twitter at that time, urgency too. Jade amplified the urgency by mentioning that the first time, she’d had to take the offer down after only an hour, (and that her rate would be going up soon.) Jade’s sale didn’t feel like hard-sell, because the price was attractively low and the offer so short (and cheerfully offered.) Instead, demand for her other services was higher for weeks after the promotion.

Is this for you? Requires plenty of followers and or friends with followers to re-tweet you. Note that Jade was paying attention to the number of requests that came in so she could take the page down when she’d reached her limit.

Testimonials

• Tweetimonials
  Jenny B. Bones‘s people tell you in their own words how much value they got from a session with Jenny, on her Conjuring Clarity Tweetimonials page, at Up Your Impact Factor.

• Client Spotlight Interview
  Rachel Acklin doesn’t just show the design work she did for Catherine Caine of CashandJoy — she shares a great mini audio interview between the two, about the experience of working together. For someone thinking about working with Rachel, the Caffeinated Elf of The Caffeinated Design Studio, it’s a great way find out what it’s like to do just that. (Bonus: It’s easy to see what’s great about working with Catherine too: Catherine has already had multiple people refer to the audio interview when contacting her.)

Is this for you? Testimonials and interviews on your site are a great way to help your right people see the value that others got from working with you. New businesses can benefit from this approach too (even with their newest business-building-special-offer-client!)

List Building Special Offers

• Insiders Only (and an Invitation to step behind the Velvet Rope)
  The Idea Stylist, Lisa Valuyskaya, recently celebrated her birthday by sharing some Birthday Cake and a special sale with subscribers to her email list. But she also gave Twitter followers a good reason to go sign up for her email list: A heads-up that her email subscribers should be watching for something extra cool, coming up. Lisa then rewarded her email list with a set of very special offers, only for those insiders. (New “insiders” also got Lisa’s own eBook, a demonstration of design skills and marketing chops that’s sure to attract new business to her.)

Is this for you? To have your special offer be successful, you’ll do it at the end of plenty of time spent building your lists (email, Facebook and Twitter,) giving and engaging, meeting new folks and helping them know you, while you’re doing lots of useful and loving things for your people. Be ready with a good giveaway for your list, and a fun offer.

What if your “thing” is a live class or product that isn’t always available?

• Launch Mode
  While preparing the next Customer Love Machine Class, LaVonne Ellis and Jonathan Wondrusch, are active on Twitter and their blogs, doing guest blog posts, writing eBooks and leading projects like CustomerLove for Japan and the Customer Love Challenges. We have a chance to get to know them, see them in action and see results from their work. Sometimes, they mention the upcoming class, inviting interested folks to join the list to get the details.

Is this for you? Requires you to be out there building your list, talking about your thing and showing the value you offer, ahead of time, so your right people never find themselves suddenly, without warning, on an unexpected sales page. What can you do to make sure they’re not just ready, but instead are eagerly looking forward to what you plan to offer?

Sure, making all that work together isn’t child’s play, but it isn’t rocket science either. You can do it!

Why is charging money the loving thing to do? You get to stay in business, so you can go on helping your right people.

PS. Don’t forget to ask for the money. Check out the video for help with asking.