Cha Ching! Driving Sales from Your Instagram Page
I have a little secret. It is one that took me a while to figure out so I want to share it with you now in the hope that you will get this all nailed down quicker.
But first, let me tell you a little story.
I was doing a speaking gig somewhere about six years ago for a national association in Florida. I can still smell the room. There was only one motel in town, so I was stuck even though it smelled horrible, had obviously seen its fair share of illegal activity, and I was pretty sure my identity was about to be stolen by the front desk clerk who scanned my driver’s license and credit card.
I knew I could never put myself through this ridiculous torture again. Something had to change.
Since I couldn’t sleep for fear of my surroundings, I spent the night writing a blog post inspired by a recent reading about pricing yourself higher in your marketplace. My firm had begun to do that the prior year, but I still had older clients riding along with their old rates. That was because I was scared of what would happen if I raised them.
The problem was that we were spending so much time servicing those old accounts, we weren’t able to focus on growing new ones. To supplement our income, I did speaking engagements like the one that took me to this “end of the world” night. (It was the only hotel I have ever stayed in where I wouldn’t take my shoes off or use the shower. I still shudder just thinking about it.)
OK, so you’ve got the picture—shoes on, sitting on the bed, exhausted and scared, ready to send out a blog post about why my firm charges more than others, and giving an incentive to my list to book a prospect call with me that week so I could bring in some real money from doing work I loved, from my office, so I wouldn’t have to travel to scary hotels anymore.
Just as I was about to hit send, I stopped.
I thought of a certain woman in my town who always talked badly of me when I positioned myself as an expert in my industry. She didn’t take kindly to my premium pricing or elevated brand, and she was known to start trash talking the moment she saw me marketing.
Do you have that one person in mind who you think of that sometimes holds you back? Maybe it’s a parent? A boss? A co-worker? Maybe it is that unqualified guidance counselor who said you wouldn’t amount to anything. For me, it was someone I had volunteered alongside on a few boards. Someone who held some political clout in the small town where I lived at the time. True, it was just small-town clout, but to me, at that moment, it felt huge.
So there I was sitting on this gross bed in this gross hotel—and I was allowing the fear of a woman who was hundreds of miles away to stop me from improving my life. That’s when it hit me.
What am I doing?
That woman wasn’t going to get me out of this hotel. She wasn’t going to pay my bills. She wasn’t going to ensure my kids could experience a life without fear of lack. She wouldn’t do one single thing to make my or my family’s life family better. Only I could do that. And only I could share the message with the world that I was born to share (with God’s help, of course). I couldn’t let that woman stop me from taking action, because doing nothing wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
That was when a verse came to mind: “He that began a good work in you will continue to perform it until it’s complete” (adapted from Philippians 1:6).
God certainly didn’t plan to keep me in that motel forever. So I hit send.
And you know what?
My firm got more prospect requests that week than ever before. And those folks were all coming to us knowing in advance that we charged premium pricing. And they were ready to pay it. We were able to work with those businesses and help them get their word out to those who needed to hear it.
HOW TO DRIVE PROSPECTS FROM INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS TO CUSTOMERS FOR LIFE
So what I wanted to whisper to you at the beginning of this chapter?
You and I were created with a purpose. The fear of what others will think is just a roadblock to our final destination. We were created with majestic intentions, not mediocrity.
If you don’t take action, no one will be blessed by what you were created to do. The product, program, or service that you offer will help those who need it so much, you have a divine obligation to put yourself out there so your audience can be reached. One way to make this happen? Start selling. Don’t gloss over this chapter and focus solely on follower growth through your Instagram account. You have to get to a stage of selling so you can truly fulfill your purpose and, of course, receive an ROI from your Instagram marketing.
Here’s the thing though: In order to sell, you have to do something most won’t.
You have to be different.
You have to stop looking, sounding, and appearing the same as everyone else.
You are different after all, so stop appearing just as your competitors do.
Maybe you don’t think you do. Most of our private clients don’t realize it. When asked about their competitors, almost every new client answers the question, “We don’t really have any.”
Unfortunately, your prospects won’t see it that way. If your marketing isn’t showing up any differently, chances are you appear just like everyone else. That makes you a commodity. And commodities only compete on price. (Just ask Walmart how that’s going for them. “Being the cheapest sometimes on most of the days” is not a great distinction. I’m in Target twice a week, but I refuse to step into Walmart after way too many bad experiences.)
What makes you different from your competitors? And how can you leverage that in your marketing so that you can excel at sales?
Offer Value in Your Instagram Bio
Tell your prospective qualified audience why they should like your page and how it will benefit them (see Figure 8–1, page 142). You can even offer a lead magnet to give them a quick win in their relationship with you (note the link in the bio in Figure 8–2, page 142). Make sure they know right up front what’s in it for them if they decide to follow your page.
Fill Your Posts with Value
Focus on your unique selling proposition—that one big idea that makes you different—and post valuable content around that one thing. For me, it is that we connect marketing with sales, because you have value and deserve to be paid for it, and you have a unique purpose that should be shared with the world. All of my posts are in line with this big idea (see Figure 8–3).
FIGURE 8–1. This Bio Tells You Exactly What the Company’s Page Is About.
FIGURE 8–2. Another Bio that Tells You Exactly What You Need to Know About the Company Up Front.
FIGURE 8–3. Focus on Your Unique Selling Proposition When Posting.
Make Your Posts and Ads About Your Target Audience, Not You
Focus on their needs and how you can uniquely meet them. Most brands are focused on their products and services. Stand out by focusing on your target market instead (see Figure 8–4).
FIGURE 8–4. Focus Your Posts on Your Target Audience
Talk to Them
Ask questions and have a conversation around your one big idea. Engage with folks and build trust to let them know you are looking for relationships. Not sales. When you ask questions, they are much more likely to engage. Here’s an example in Figure 8–5 on page 144.
Be Willing to Be Controversial
The most successful brands have raving fans as well as big detractors. Your goal through your posts is to attract exactly your perfect prospect and repel everyone else.
Be Authentic
One of my pastor’s sermons focused on the masks we wear in different aspects of our lives. Wearing a mask is exhausting. It also creates a barrier to developing real relationships. Take the mask off. Stop trying to be someone else and instead be real with your audience. Different is good. Different stands out. People relate more to those they believe are being real. Occasionally let your fans in a little on your life, your family, and who you are as a real person (see Figure 8–6). People want to do business with people they know, like, and trust.
FIGURE 8–5. Keep Your Posts Focused on Things That Matter to Your Audience.
FIGURE 8–6. Occasionally Let Your Fans See into Your Life So They Feel Like They Know You.
Focus on Transformation, Not Information
This is the most important point to remember. Your competitors focus on their product and service features. If they are slightly more advanced, they also focus on their benefits. But you are better than that. You are advanced and will focus on how those benefits will impact their lives. How working with you will be the exact thing they were looking for to bring them peace, take away a pain, or bring them joy. This will not only help you make the sale, it will also position you as the leading authority in your marketplace. The transition from Instagram follower to customer for life can be seamless and fast. Simply focus on why they should pay attention and take action, and why it is the best decision they will ever make. (See the interview with Dave Dee on page 150 for more on transformative value.)
Are you ready to make the sale? In the next section we will dive into the different types of sales funnels to run and how to make it work for your Instagram marketing.
CHOICES AND MORE CHOICES: SALES CAMPAIGN IDEAS YOU CAN USE
“I go onto Instagram to read more about products, programs, and services.”
Said no one. Ever.
A harsh truth—no one cares about your product, program, or service. No one.
What they care about is how what you have to offer will make their lives better. For most, the outcome should have something to do with saving time, saving money, or eliminating a pain or frustration your prospects are currently experiencing. What they don’t want is more information.
So (warning, controversial statement here), I recommend that you forget “Blueprints and Checklists” as your lead magnets. When it comes to social media marketing, I have found the greatest success is in focusing on buyers instead of leads, skipping over giving them information, and instead offering them a low-cost tool for sale.
Because a buyer beats a lead or a “like” every time.
Selling something upfront allows you to:
Obtain real contact information, because when someone enters their credit card information, they have to give you their correct phone number and will likely give you the proper email address so they can get the thing they just bought.
Get more information than you could normally. When entering a credit card, your buyer will give you their mailing address, even if the item is just $1. If it was just a free digital download, there would be no reason to give that to you.
You now have a buyer instead of a lead, developing a stronger relationship from the start.
Your sales team will have higher-quality leads to follow up with as they come in, and something to talk about—the item they just purchased.
You are filling your email list with more qualified leads, which increases email open rates and overall deliverability rating from Yahoo! and Gmail.
Here are some examples.
Brick-and-Mortar: Music Matters
Music Matters School of Music is located in Batavia, Illinois, and run by Jeff Matter. They were looking for a new way to get students onto their mailing list and signed up for classes.
Instead of running a “12 Ways to Pick Your Music School” cheesy report, we went right for those serious about coming in. We ran a coupon that required someone to enter their contact information in order to claim it.
We decided on an offer of 47 percent off your child’s first month of lessons and, of course, ran the ads with adorable pictures of kids playing instruments that would make any mom swoon.
The Results
Offer length: about 30 days
Offers claimed: 41 (this does not include the folks who saw the offer and called the school instead of filling out the form)
Cost per conversion: $18 to $25
Jeff Matter says, “Using the coupon offer instead of a free report, we achieved a significant increase in class inquiries and sign-ups. Through driving targeted traffic from an offer for classes, I can track each dollar spent on marketing and know the exact return it is giving me while staying true to my mission of spreading happiness and creating memories through music.”
How to Apply This to Your Business
Is there a loss leader discount you can give up front to get people through your business door? Request contact information to redeem the offer, and follow up with those who don’t respond on their own. Plan multichannel follow-ups including phone calls, email, and direct mail.
B2B: American Society of Tax Problem Solvers
Ever hear that social media marketing doesn’t work for B2B businesses? That simply isn’t true. We have multiple B2B client accounts successfully using social media to grow their businesses.
The American Society of Tax Problem Solvers targets accountants as their target market. Instead of offering “The Business Blueprint” or some other piece of information, we put together a tool that would appeal to their target. We developed a collection of five letter templates to use when contacting the IRS.
Results
Total spend: $1600
Buyers of their $1 offer: 298
Cost per buyer: $5.29 each
How to Apply This to Your Business
Ignore those who say social media can’t work for B2B. With their $1 sale, ASTPS acquired other businesses as customers for under $5.00 each. What template or tool can you provide your target market to collect leads while positioning yourself as the leading authority or expert for just five bucks?
Online Training: Ted Thomas
One of the best ways to build a list of buyers is to run a webinar. With a webinar, you are collecting the contact information for your lead, building trust, and ultimately making the sale during the training.
Ted Thomas had previously only sold through live and on-stage trainings. He wanted to scale his business with an evergreen webinar that would teach people the basics of buying tax liens as a real estate investment option. This allowed us to grow his email list while also bringing in revenue.
Results
$614.21 spent
137 conversions
$4.47 per conversion
How to Apply This to Your Business
Is there a topic you can share via a webinar to drive leads and sales automatically into your business? Could you leverage a webinar as a way to make sales automatically?
eCommerce: Stay Loyal Dog Food
A dog food manufacturer in Australia, Stay Loyal, sells its dog food via subscription. To increase sales, we created several funnels targeting different audiences. One of the campaigns offers a $1 sample of its dog food.
The top-performing image: Those interested in the topic are sent to a sales video and offered to purchase a $1 sample of the dog food.
Results
$553.62 total spent
32 conversions
Cost per new customer $17.30
How to Apply This to Your Business
Can you sample something from your business to get a buyer?
Marketing Agency
Our agency, Elite Digital Group, took information and flipped it on its head. We turned it into a tool. Our best-performing buyer funnel is a simple lead page and offers 35 ad templates and bonus training for $1 at https://elitedigitalgroup.com/adsbonus.
This allows us to add serious marketers and business owners to our customer base every day.
Results for a One-Week Period
$428.69 spent
64 conversions
Cost per buyer: $6.70
How to Apply This to Your Business
Ignore what the masses are doing and forget leads and likes. Focus on the best possible outcome from Instagram for your business: buyer acquisition.
Webinars
One of the most popular ways to move a prospect from Instagram to being a customer is through webinars. They are very common in online marketing funnels; companies get the lead first, then drive that lead to a webinar in order to make the sale. I’ve set up my webinars to be more like free trainings, and at the end, I offer our membership trial for $1 if they want the slides, recordings, and bonus resources from the workshop. Or we sell one of our other social media training programs from www.EliteDigitalGroup.com.
When I am running opt-in offers for a webinar or other promotion, I will change my bio link to the opt-in page and run posts promoting the event (see Figure 8–7, page 149). There’s more on webinar and online sales in the interview with Dave Dee on page 150.
FIGURE 8–7. Use Your Instagram Posts to Promote an Upcoming Event, but Be Sure to Change the Bio Link to Drive to More Information.
Set up a marketing and sales funnel that first offers content and then remarkets to start a sales conversation. (See more on setting up your marketing and online sales funnel in my interview with Oliver Billson in Chapter 6.)
A Prize for Lead Generation
For many local businesses, we have run sweepstakes for lead generation and each person receives a prize of a gift certificate toward a product, program, or service (see Figure 8–8, page 150). It was a prize that would be fantastic to get and the perfect lead-generation tool for the business. For example, for a business selling a $10,000 product, a $500 certificate can be a great prize to the business’s audience and fantastic lead generator. We have one client who gives away a day of handyman work to get contracting jobs. Think strategically about what your perfect prospects might want as a way to start the sales conversation.
Most Important, Start Selling!
In the next section, I dive into the number-one source of Instagram monetization—online sales events.
I don’t know if that mean lady still talks trash about me. She very well may, but the thing is, I don’t pay attention anymore. And you shouldn’t listen to the trash any longer, either. Start selling to those who need your products, programs, and services and fulfill the passion and purpose you were created for.
FIGURE 8–8. Offer a Prize Your Key Prospect Wants.
To help you along the way, check out my interview with the amazing Dave Dee, salesman extraordinaire, where you’ll find strategies to take your sales to an unparalleled level.
HOW TO DRIVE MORE SALES IN ONE DAY THAN YOU DO ALL YEAR, WITH DAVE DEE, THE MONETIZATION MASTER
Dave Dee is the man who will “sell more of your products or services in a day than you now do all year.” Previously, he was a struggling entertainer—a mentalist, to be precise. Then he discovered the power of sales and marketing, and his business skyrocketed from three shows a month to an average of 25 shows a month in less than 90 days.
Based on what he learned, and by incorporating techniques from his mentalism show, such as cold reading (the art of getting inside someone’s mind) and hypnotic language patterns, he developed a bulletproof system for crafting webinars and online events that literally created buying frenzies.
Dave lives in Georgia with his wife Karen and their five children.
Tell us about your past, your celebrity, and all the amazing things that brought you to today.
Dee: I have a pretty diverse background. I always wanted to be a professional magician. That was my lifelong dream ever since I was three years old. After pursuing some jobs that didn’t work, I finally got to pursue that dream. The problem was, I could only land about three shows a month, and I was deep in debt. I was about $80,000 in the hole.
My wife was working two jobs at the time when we found out she was pregnant. I had to figure something out fast. Fortunately, I went to a seminar and came across a marketing program. I never understood how marketing was the key to finding success. I thought I just needed to get really good at my craft. I thought to be successful I just had to work harder. Then I discovered it doesn’t matter how good you are if no one knows about you.
I started implementing my new marketing skills in a big way. In less than 90 days, I went from doing three shows a month to averaging 30 shows a month. The very next month, I did 57 shows after tweaking my marketing further, and my life radically changed. In a year, I paid off all of my debts. I bought a new house. I bought a new car. And best of all, my wife quit both of her jobs.
From that success, I started speaking at events. Other business owners would ask me, “How did you do it?” Those were savvy business owners because they understood their business was not different. They understood that marketing is marketing is marketing.
So I started consulting and coaching other business owners, which then led me to teach them. I took my skills as an entertainer and marketer and brought them online. I believe in the power of selling online through live-streaming events for one important reason: They are one of the biggest breakthroughs for entrepreneurs and business owners that there is because we can sell to our prospects en masse. Without anyone ever having to leave their home, entrepreneurs can sell around the world.
I started doing online sales and really developed that skill. I mastered the system for selling online via webinar, webcast, and live-streaming events. The results are pretty spectacular, not just for me but for my clients and students. For example, we’ve done $272,000 in sales under three hours for a new client her first time. We’ve done $420,000 in one day. . . . one client . . . did $117,000 in just 57 minutes.
All of this took place online and all without ever needing to leave home. The beauty is that you can then put it on autopilot after doing it once live. At that point, you have a system for generating this kind of sales and paydays on demand and on a regular basis. I just love it.
I just recently interviewed the client who reached $420,000 in sales, and he was saying that it totally changed his life. It rebooted his business and self-esteem. It’s such a thrill and an honor to work with entrepreneurs and business owners who get it, right? They see the vision—business is going online, marketing is moving online, and products are selling online.
And what’s even better, we can sell more than one-on-one. We no longer need to send out sales people. We can sell en masse online, in addition to or in place of selling one-on-one.
That brings up a great point. Coming from a traffic source like Instagram, you only have one link, one option, and one place to send people. Or maybe you’re running ads on the platform and you can send traffic to whatever landing page you like—why should I choose a webinar instead of funneling toward that one-on-one sales appointment?
Dee: Let’s say you do have a one-on-one, and let’s say that one-on-one is really your sales conversion mechanism. You’re selling coaching or consulting, or you’re a financial advisor or an attorney, maybe. You’re probably not going to close that appointment through a webinar. However, what you will do is position yourself in the viewer’s mind as an authority, celebrity, or an expert (the ACE formula).
By positioning yourself as an authority, celebrity, or expert, a number of things happen for you. That’s why people will want to do business with you. They want to do business with the person they see as the authority, as the expert in the field, in the webinar, or live-streaming event. Whatever is online definitely positions you as that.
If you’re perceived as the celebrity or expert, you will be more in demand, and it will separate you from your competition. But it also preframes the sale. When someone watches you on a webinar and then comes into your office, you are the expert, and they are predetermined to buy. They are presold. Even if it’s on the phone or web consultation.
In a five-minute training, I’m probably not going to close an estate sale, but I can have someone watch my webinar in a nonthreatening environment and then when they come into my office they are much more likely to buy.
On the other hand for many other businesses, you can actually sell through webinars. Most of my clients sell right on the webinar in the live event. There are two differences. Most people think of webinars as just online events, but there are many ways they’re even more powerful.
You can use your webinar as a lead generation magnet from Instagram. You can collect a prospect’s contact information and then have them watch your webinar. Once you have made this an automated webinar, it can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So your Instagram account becomes a 24/7 sales generation machine. This is how you use your webinar as what we call a lead generation magnet.
You are building your email list at the same time you are making sales!
Again, I’m not saying it replaces one-on-one sales. That is still very powerful. But, man! If I can sell to a hundred people or two hundred or five hundred people at the same time and not have to leave my house—and they don’t have to leave their house—you remove all obstacles.
This is where we have headed. People aren’t leaving their house. I mean, I get an Amazon Prime delivery every day, sometimes twice a day, right? I don’t want to go to the store. You know where this is going. This can be applied to nearly every business.
What are some mistakes you see businesses make when it comes to online presentations?
Dee: There are three key elements. To run a successful event, I call it the online success event triangle. The first step is to get people to register for the event. That’s really important. Whether they’re coming from Instagram, Facebook, direct mail, or your own email list, you’ve got to have a way to make sure you’re getting people to register. And, you’ve got to get people to show up for your event.
The second thing is creating your irresistible offer. What is your offer? Is it solving a major pain for them? Is it clear? Is it addressing something they want to solve? All of these things need to happen in order for our audience to take action.
The third thing is the actual presentation. Whether you’re doing a webinar or a live-streaming event online, the key is the core presentation. That’s where a lot of people go wrong. And one of the key areas where they go wrong is by building their presentation from the beginning until the end.
But as the late Steven Covey taught, you should always begin with the end in mind. Therefore, we should start from our irresistible offer. We need to know precisely what it is we are selling and we need to start from there. Build up your offer first.
Create an order form for your offering. That way your presentation will seamlessly relate to your order form and the product you are going to sell. If you do it the other way around, trying to structure your offer around your presentation, it doesn’t work.
The second biggest mistake people make is overlooking the power of the structure—meaning they don’t construct their presentation all around selling their offer. Every word, every slide, everything you do should be designed to lead to the sale. Everything you present should build up desire in your prospect.
It’s a big mistake for you to teach, teach, teach, and then at the end, remember, “Oh, I need to sell!” This doesn’t mean there’s not really good content in your webinar or online event. You can have tremendous content, but if it doesn’t set up the sale, it won’t sell.
These folks wait until the very end and then add on the close or the sale. The truth is, your entire presentation is the close. And so is the way you deliver the information. It all needs to set up that sale.
One of the ways to do this is to tell people what to do—but not how to do it. For example, let’s take estate plan attorneys. On a webinar, the attorney might talk about all of the documents you need and why a will is not good enough. It leads to the importance of having an estate plan. He’s going to give you all the reasons why but not show you how to do it. Your goal is to educate on why the audience needs it—not on how to do it.
The second tip is to give useful but incomplete information. For example, let’s say I’m selling a course on how to use Instagram, which obviously I never do, Kim, because I have you and you’re the best in the world at it.
But let’s say I created a course for Instagram. And let’s say there are seven big secrets for getting results from Instagram. Well, I could say I don’t have time to go over all seven of the big secrets for making Instagram extremely effective for you in this webinar. However, let me give two of the most powerful secrets in detail. Well, guess what? What does that do for the audience? It creates a desire to learn the other five secrets. Then when I get to my close, I say, “In section number seven of the manual we go over all of the seven strategies for making Instagram quietly effective.” Right? So I set up the desire with the content part of my presentation, which then leads to that close where I present a method to get the solution. They buy the product, feeling completely fulfilled.
It’s really about truly understanding your ideal prospect, your ideal buyer, your ideal customer, client, or patient. What makes them tick? Because before we can develop an irresistible offer, we have to know what our prospects want. Not necessarily what they need but what they want. We need to sell people what they want, while in the process, delivering to them what they need. That’s a really important concept.
Here’s a question you can ask to find that out. What keeps your prospect awake at night staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep, or just frustrated when it comes to the product or service you’re selling?
For example, if I am a financial advisor, I imagine my clients wonder, “Am I going to have enough money for retirement? Am I going to be able to retire? Am I gonna run out of money?” That’s something that keeps them awake at night. The reason we want to know these pain points is because people are more motivated to take action to get out of pain than they are to gain pleasure. We need this knowledge in order to develop our product offer—courses or products or services.
The next question you want to answer is: How does your prospect fill in this sentence? “If I could just (blank)?” Maybe the prospect says, “Man, if I could just have a sound financial plan. If I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would have enough money for retirement, I would be happy!”
Now, when I know the answers to those questions, I can develop not just an offer but an irresistible offer that can fulfill precisely what they want, which moves them from pain into pleasure.
When you focus on looking at the offer, it reminds me of something you taught me, Dave—make sure everything in your presentation is about your prospect, and not about you. To me, people tend to focus way too much on themselves. Do you have any formula or checklist that you go through in order to make sure you’re keeping the presentation on your prospect and not on yourself?
Dee: Yes, I call it my seven-figure template, and there are different chunks or sections of the presentation. I open my webinar or live presentation or streaming video presentation by telling attendees what they are going to learn. “In the next 60 minutes, you’re going to discover a 1–2–3 step-by-step strategy that will allow you to . . .” Whatever the thing is they want. For example, “In the next 60 minutes you’re going to discover a 1–2–3 step-by-step proven strategy for making sure you have enough money at retirement to live the lifestyle that you want. I can make a virtual guarantee that you haven’t heard this exact strategy I’m going to describe to you. But it could be life changing.” Notice, I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about what’s in it for the prospect.
When I get to the section where I do have to talk about me—and this is really important, advanced information—I do it in a way that even while I am talking about me, I’m framing it in a way that I am relating to my prospect.
After I became a successful entertainer, I put together a marketing program that I sold to other entertainers. So I would tell my story about being a struggling entertainer, about being $80,000 dollars in debt (just like I did at the start of this conversation). I would share that I had a dream. My prospect who is watching can instantly relate, because while I’m telling my own story, I’m also essentially telling their story. I share with them that I had the same dreams, the same aspirations, and the same goals as they are having now while they are struggling.
But what if you don’t have that kind of story? Then you want to tell your core business story.
Talk about why you got started in your business. Again, this should be all about the prospect. For example, “I became an estate-planning attorney because I really wanted to help people. I saw how the government was basically stealing people’s money through state taxes, and families had been just devastated. I wanted to help those families for generations to come. So that’s why I became an estate-planning attorney. And here’s what makes me different . . .”
Next you talk about what makes you different, but phrase it in terms of how that difference is a benefit for the prospect. So first you tell a personal core story or business core story, but in either case you frame it as, “Hey, this is why it’s important to you, Mr. Audience, Mrs. Audience Member.” This is why it’s important to you; this is what it means to you. When you do this, your presentation is always talking about the benefits and outcomes that your prospects are going to get.
When I go through my offer, and I mention a “feature,” I always go beyond it. A feature is like an air bag in a car. That’s a feature. But the benefit is that when you’re in an accident, you’re not dead. So whenever you explain the feature, you want to give the corresponding benefit—and of course it’s the benefit that is what the buyer actually wants to receive.
There’s a really important concept that ties us all together, and I called it my “hierarchy of persuasion.” If you think of a sales letter, the lowest rung on the letter, which a lot of people operate from, talks about features, right? “Here are the features of my thing . . .” The next level up on the ladder are the benefits. “So here are what the features actually mean to you . . .” This is where probably 90 percent of all entrepreneurs and salespeople go wrong. They just stay at features and maybe benefits. But the next rung on the ladder, which is more persuasive and more powerful, is that of outcomes. “Here’s the feature, here’s the benefit of it, but now here’s the outcome. Here’s what will happen for you when you have this feature with that benefit.” This is the rung, which almost nobody goes to. Most people never get to the outcome.
But let’s say we do get to the outcome—there’s a higher level still, and that higher level is transformation. Transformation is what those features, benefits, and outcomes are going to do for the person. This is how it’s all going to affect their life as a whole. Powerful, right?
For example, when I was selling that program to entertainers, the features were that they got a binder of marketing material I used that was effective. That was the feature. The benefit was that they didn’t have to create all of the materials themselves and wonder if they were going to work. That’s the benefit. The outcome was that they would be able to send those materials, use those apps and letters, book more shows, and make more money.
But the transformation is that it means they were finally going to be able to live the life of their dreams. They would finally be able to do the things they’re passionate about. They’re finally going to prove to all of those people who said they couldn’t do it, that it wasn’t practical, that they were wrong. They’ll finally be living their ultimate dream.
See the difference between just sharing features (that binder of stuff) and transformation (living your ultimate dream)? There’s a huge gap there. That’s the “hierarchy of persuasion.” And if you keep focusing on that throughout your presentation, you naturally need to focus on your prospect. You’re talking about what they’re going to get, what they’re going to receive, how they’re going to be different.
Focusing not just on benefits gives you a competitive advantage because benefits is where most people stop. They don’t move on to the outcome. And they almost never share the transformation step. By focusing on the transformation, you really are setting yourself up for sales. It gives you that expert positioning because your competitors are not doing that. They’re simply focusing on the benefits.
Dee: Well, honestly, most presenters get stuck on features—a few of them on benefits. But you know, features and benefits are first grade. We’ve got to get out of the first grade. As the late Jim Rohn used to say, “That’s why they make the chairs so small, so when you’re seventeen and don’t fit in the chair anymore, you know it’s time to move on.” You have to move on to more sophisticated selling. When it comes to persuasion—and make no mistake, that’s what your webinar, live event, or webcast is—this is a sales tool that can later be automated, producing more money in one day than you do now all year, with paydays over and over again.
Would you mind sharing some of your client stories?
Dee: My very first private client happened to be an estate-planning attorney and we used a basic form of my seven-figure template that was nowhere near what it is now. But the foundation was there, and we used this formula to get her into a new business. At the time she had no list of prospects, no product, and no clue how to go about it.
She had earned $117,000 in her previous year of business. Within six hours of her webinar, she brought in $117,000. Then we automated it and within a four-week period she brought in over $250,000. I recall two vivid memories: I’m on the phone with her after we do the event, and she opens up her email to see the sales pouring in. (By the way, that never gets boring—waking up every morning and seeing how much your automated marketing made you the night before. I never get bored with that.) But she literally saw sales pouring in. I remember her just screaming, enjoying, laughing, and crying all at the same time because she was struggling and everything just changed for her in that one instant.
Recently, the same type of thing happened with a live video broadcast I produced. The client did $420,000 in sales. Right out of the gate, he sold 137 of a $1,500 product. His wife was there and we all just started jumping up and down, hugging each other and high-fiving. It was so phenomenal. Again, this is all following the template we just talked about here. Create your core presentation, and share not just the features and benefits but the outcomes and transformation.
It should also be noted that these clients were B2B. They were selling to other accountants and attorneys. Those are two industries you might think could not sell in an online presentation.
But it doesn’t matter what the product or service is. The biggest mistake one can make is to think that “my business is different and that won’t work for me.” What I’ve found is that when the most successful people in the world hear a new concept, they immediately think, “How can I make this work for me?” That’s what you should be thinking. And yes, this will work for you, almost regardless of what you’re selling.
That’s why I really love what I do. A guy came up to me at an event, just shaking with excitement, tears swelling up in his eyes. He said to me, “Thanks to your program, I’m a better husband. I’m a better father. And I’m happier than ever before, because now I actually have the business of my dreams, and I don’t have to worry about money.”
That’s my goal—helping good people, good entrepreneurs who provide valuable products and services—to help other people. That’s why I do what I do. It’s really a blessing to be in the business that we’re in.
To discover more about Dave Dee and his system for selling more in one day than you do all year, visit http://EliteDigitalgroup.com/DaveDee.
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