Day 24 – WorkStep Eleven: Sales Funnel for BCLA

This step has been re-inventing itself in my mind constantly, as it has in Brett’s mind. How do you build a business from scratch? How do you convince people to spend their money on Alexander Technique lessons? Of course, that is what my entire 12 Step plan is about: now comes the culmination of all the work that preceded it.

What starts the money machine are people wanting something. In Alexander speak, we usually believe that we can only give them that through communicating by touch. While it is true that touch accelerates a person’s development by an order of magnitude, most people discover, study, learn from, and pay for, information that does not involve touch.

For the market in fact – this is normal. It is only Alexander Technique teachers who have a belief that this method of learning is inadequate. I agree that touch accelerates learning, and I believe words have power. Words also have the advantage that they can be leveraged beyond anything touch can facilitate.

One email can be read by one person or a million people – it makes no difference. A website is the same, or an article, a downloaded booklet, a YouTube video, a book, an audio recording. All of these media can leverage ideas to theoretically access an infinite number of people. The limit arises from your own ingenuity, inventiveness and budget - not from any physical properties.

My 12 Step course is entirely about crafting a message with this precision: so those for whom the message is geared will meet it with hungry desire, and absorb it readily. My course – this one – is a living example of my strategy. I only have a few people, but the people I do have are intensely committed, loving the information, willing to put it into effect. You are a good niche!

The next step in your process with me is applying these ideas to your situation. Many of you still need to fill out the application form – which helps you start this process - but you can do so if you join my mailing list, and wait for an email that tells you how to apply. The box up top on the right of my blog is how you sign up.

I have spend months developing content, making relationships and interest to build a new community of people i.e. Alexander Technique teachers and trainees serious about making a successful career out of your work. This same strategy will work in any market, providing you are able to meet the need of that market.

I think for BCLA the first step is not creating a Centre, or offering lessons, but instead offering information: creating an online feast of ideas, exercises, analysis, friendships and connections that meet the needs of a demographically and psychographically defined audience.

In this way, we collect names. We build excitement, anticipation and when the roll call looks strong enough – we can launch. Alexander is industrial – it is not like opening a fitness studio which everyone can understand. This is the unnamable, the thing no-one knows they need until they’ve got it, then wonder how they did without it.

TOMORROW: WorkStep Twelve – People Partners: How Can You Do Without Them?

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