She wanted a JEW..ish partner with 72 different attributes who needed to score above 500 points before she'd even consider returning a message, forget about a date. Meet a woman who "niched" herself a partner by deeply considering the qualities she wanted in her lifetime hook-up. You can listen to her amusing and enlightening account here.

It's an epic scale - finding a life partner - but nonetheless a process that will benefit you when searching in virtual space for a total stranger who would consider an intimate relationship with you on a life-long basis.

Redefine "intimate" a little - but not much - and the above description aptly describes the dilemma faced by an Alexander Technique teacher seeking new students. An Alexander lesson involves forming a deep relationship with another person - it is unlike anything a person has previously encountered. It is feels a bit like counselling, but it is not therapy. It assists effectively with pain and injury, but it is not physical therapy. It involves learning, and rehabilitates.

It defies definition - which we all know to our own frustration.

It's what we do in ATSuccess - crack the code on how to find that stranger in virtual space, and then nurture a relationship based on an equal exchange of value and money.

If you had been inside ATSuccess these last two months, you would have been involved in focusing on creating a clear, consciously designed invitation based on a compassionate understanding of the needs and wants of your prospective students.

This invitation is a template that forms the basis of every other thing you do - posts on Facebook, flyers to hand out, welcome messages on your website, write-ups in Yelp, details about your service, requests for money. Everything.

It is more important than a website, a phone, a biz card (but who still has those?) or even a studio - yet everyone focuses on those things and ignores the invitation process.

However, with a compelling invitation, you'll find the money to pay for all those things.

How To Prepare Your Compelling Invitation To New Students

Have you taken the time to consider who your students are?

What do they want? What are their three biggest concerns? What do they really need from you?

One member of ATSuccess shared in the past that once she stopped focusing on teaching Alexander Technique, and starting focusing on helping her students with their problems, her practise took off. Now fully 80% of the people who come to her are long term, regular students.

When you take the time - which is what we do at ATSuccess - to deeply consider and listen for the needs of your students, the odds of being successful start to exponentially increase. Take a look at an exponential curve one day - for a long time it is almost flat, but eventually it takes off.

This is beginning to happen for some folks in ATSuccess. It could for you too.

Today is the last in my series on sales letters - which we renamed as "invitations to our work."
The posts are all there, ready to inspire you, when you are ready to take your practise to another level. When you do, you will find an incredibly supportive and switched on community of Alexander Technique teachers passionate about helping each other get the work they need to live the life they want.

Why not become of them? What are you waiting for?

How To Write Your Sales Letter - Part Ten

[NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area getting more practical about my general comments above with the other teachers and students in my ATSuccess group. You can join anytime to be part of our discussions.]

Although it is not part of the content of your sales letter, the "look" of your sales letter is critical to it's ability to function. The font, spacing, emphasis, paragraph and sentence length, syntax all impact the reader and need your active consideration before sending out your invitation.

The Beauty and the Beast
As you dig deep into the art of copywriting - it's methodology, history, research findings etc. - there's one interesting discovery that gets repeated over and over in their studies: ugly copy beats pretty copy.

People often spend inordinate amounts of time "beautifying" their flyers, websites and promotional material, whereas a lot of the research shows that the opposite is true: ugly copy sells better. Huh! I don't really understand it, but I've seen that mentioned enough times by people who make millions out of copywriting to know it can't all be baloney.

However, ugly does not mean illegible. There's a big difference. Today's final post (yes, really!) on your sales letter is about the "readability" of what you created, not "how it looks." There a big difference between those two, so bare that in mind as I go through my check list.

Headline Hunting
Back in the days I was Editor and Publisher of DIRECTION, I had the good fortune to have a world class Art Director who couldn't work because of a brain tumour. Annie eventually passed away, but not before she a wielded her fierce red pen on my amateur efforts gloss up the Journal.

A big lesson I got from Annie - the cover of the magazine is a project all to itself. I tended to hurry towards a last minute effort to pull together a cover, and Annie helped me to understand that you can spend six months perfecting the right concept. It is, by itself, a great art.

Great covers are examples of great headlines. Look here for examples to understand my point.

I could probably do another 10 posts on How To Create Compelling Headlines. Dan's book has a great section on that. Make it a job of it's own, not something you add at the last minute.

Your Brand Is Not Your Headline
Brand could be your name, your abbreviated universal USP (Off-The-Matt for example) or anything that is basically nonsensical the first time a stranger reads it. In the brief few nanoseconds you have to capture their attention, make sure you do it with a benefit loaded sentence that shocks, entices, startles, amazes, surprises - creates some kind of emotion impact.

The purpose of your headline is simple: get them to read the next line!

Typeface and Fonts - The Art of The Readable
Don't use italic. It's hard to read, so people don't. Increase the line spacing so there's more room. Have you noticed how modern websites are going to white space and big type? It's all the aging baby boomers - they can't read small type any more.

For fonts - copy your prospect's favourite newspaper. They've studied what is both readable and packable so you following their received wisdom is easy to do. That's the simplest approach. The other way is another Ten Posts. (I've been there with DIRECTION Journal and Annie!)

How The Material Is Presented
Break it up more - make it user-friendly to read. In Cecile's most recent sales letter her opening paragraphs become overly long. The result is that it starts to feel dense and uninviting.

People want to nibble at it a bit, and if it tastes good, they will keep nibbling. Break up your paragraphs into bit-sized bits. One idea per paragraph.

When you make a series of points, number them, space them apart - do something to make them easily digestible for the reader's eye.

Using bold to tell a second story is good - but read all your bolded sentences as a stand alone sales letter and make sure the ideas connect, that the story flows and your reader can grasp an essence by just focusing on them,

If you find you are bolding the opening sentence of a paragraph, instead make it a bigger sub-headline. Then check out your sub-headlines for the way they connect together. If a reader just scanned your Sub-headlines - would the message still come across?

Speak The Speech I Pray You As I Pronounced It To You
I always whisper my stuff aloud - even these blogs - or inside my head, to check on rhythm and cadence. Your words want to be talkative, not academic. Use short sentences. One. Word. Even.

There Are No New Stories
One way to get inspiration is to start a cheat file - look for other examples of sales letters that you know to be successful, and study their structure and presentation.

I must be one of the few people in the world who gets excited by his junk mail. I love seeing how other people are succeeding, or dismally failing, at being able to 1. Capture my attention and 2. Keep my attention and 3. Move me emotionally.

What Does Your Reader Do Next?
You need a CTA (Call To Action) and a PS on your sales letter - check if you have that? Your CTA needs to be repeated at strategic points in the sales letter. It invites action if people are ready, or readies them to take action if they are not.

NEXT: Facing Facebook - Starting Out With Your Account!

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